Colin Woodard: There’s Still a Shared American Story, and JD Vance’s Blood-and-Soil Vision Isn’t It

I’ve always enjoyed Colin Woodard’s work, not because I agree with his liberal vision of American civic identity, but because at least he understands how far back this debate goes. It gets tiresome having to deal with people who believe America was fine until the Jews came here and ruined it.

New York Times:

“There is a battle raging across America (and soon in the halls of the Supreme Court) over what it means to be an American and what our nation should aspire to be.

It’s part of a war between two stories of nationhood that we’ve been waging since the United States was created 249 years ago.

One vision is civic. It says that we Americans may lack a common history, religion or ethnicity, but what we share are the ideals in the Declaration of Independence: Each human has a natural and equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To be American, in this tradition, is to create a society dedicated to making these ideals a reality.

The other vision — an animating force inside the Trump administration — is exclusive and ethnonationalist. Vice President JD Vance laid it out explicitly in a speech this summer: a national identity based not on ideals, but on privileged heritage and bloodlines. …”

Is America a White Man’s Country?

Is American national identity based on race?

Yes, the majority of White Americans were race realists who believed America was a White Man’s Country until well into the 20th century when the last vestiges of race-based citizenship were dismantled in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Racial considerations shaped American immigration policy from the American founding through the Immigration Act of 1965. As late as the 1960s, Americans were still grappling with questions like whether Catholics were fully American.

No, the liberal current has always been an important part of the American history and the role of race in American identity has been contested since the earliest days of the Republic. Some of the leading figures of the Founding generation like Thomas Jefferson were race realists while others like Samuel Stanhope Smith were passionate racial egalitarians. Most states restricted citizenship and voting rights to Whites but New England with the exception of Connecticut was more inclusive. The Puritans originally tried to integrate Indians into their settlements. Davy Crockett opposed Andrew Jackson’s forced relocation of the Five Civilized Tribes to Oklahoma. John Quincy Adams defended the Amistad slaves at the Supreme Court. Massachusetts repealed its anti-miscegenation law in the antebellum era and pioneered civil rights. The Dred Scott decision, which established that blacks were not American citizens, was so controversial that it was one of the causes of the Civil War. John Brown attacked the South at Harper’s Ferry in an attempt to incite a race war against slaveowners. Southerners repeatedly voted down the Wilmot Proviso which would have reserved the Western territories to Whites. Texas seceded from the Union to remain a White Republic. Blacks were recruited and fought for the Union Army during the Civil War. John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln because he wanted to give voting rights to blacks in Louisiana.

The truth is that White Americans have always struggled over the issue. Woodard is correct that there has always been this tug of war over defining America between civic nationalists and ethnonationalists. The ethnonationalist camp itself has been divided in the past between white supremacists and White Nationalists. This fracture was central to the debate over the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. Similarly, the liberal camp fractured during Reconstruction into integrationists and skeptics of democracy. The liberal side was ascendant during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The ethnonationalist camp mounted a comeback in the Gilded Age and Progressive era. Liberals were empowered like never before to redefine the boundaries of American identity in the post-World War II era. We are currently in the middle of the latest conservative retreat from the Second Reconstruction.

It is impossible to reduce this complex debate over American national identity and all the twists and turns it has taken over the course of 250 years to “IT’S THE JEWS!!!” Even if every Jew in America vanished tomorrow, there is no reason to believe it would be concluded. Granted, it is true that Jews have played an outsized role in this debate for the last century, but they have simply weighted it to one side.