Ooh this is a tricky subject - extremely interesting though.
1) I highly recommend "The war in the west" and "the strange death of Europe" by Douglas Murray - he talks about many of those same "identity" based issues in those books (albeit from a conservative British perspective)
2) controversial opinion: I suspect "black American" culture was a way to reclaim a distinct "non-white" ethnic identity in the wake of the abolition of slavery, however that was by definition a rejection of a culture rather than being founded upon a set of positive principles. Conservative black Americans such as Thomas Sowell, Glenn Lowery and Larry Elder reject this premise entirely, hence why people such as FD Signifier claim they are "not black".
3) there's a very interesting essay somewhere on substack about "American" being a "post-national" idea rather than fitting neatly into the worldview of "nationalism". (On a side note the Israel-Palestine conflict can be described as being a pre-national / pre-enlightenment conflict i.e. a tribal blood feud)
4) the youtuber Greg Owen has asked on behalf of his adopted (black) daughter "what is "blackness"?" He hasn't yet made a video on the subject but as he seems a very emotionally intelligent man I'm looking forward to his take on the subject. He's also made a video with a Nigerian YouTuber about how poorly Hollywood tends to portray non-American cultures - which leads to:
5) (continuation of 3+4) is America a nation, or is each state a nation with America being a "meta-nation"? If that's so, why do Americans misunderstand other cultures so badly? Also, it makes the existence of the 51st and 52nd states seem a lot more plausible if you look at it that way (regardless of whether you think that should be a thing or not)
That's all I can think of for now, shame we can't edit comments here on Substack, if I think of anything more I'll have to comment some more!
- American identity is largely a collection of subcultures. As a midwesterner, gumbo and barbecue are not in any way part of “my”culture. Those are southern things. I eat walleye and cheese curds. Yet I love me some good American southern cooking, especially when traveling, and am proud that those other cuisines exist inside of my larger American identity.
- America is such a global power that the commonalities across its subcultures are exported across the entire globe. This makes them hard to identify. Blue jeans, Hollywood movies, and pop music aren’t always recognized as “American” because they’re everywhere.
-Americanizations of other cultures is part of the American identity. Panda Express is not Chinese food, it’s American. And while there’s always some guy that’s like “um actually pizza is Italian” if you take any Italian to Chicago they’ll be like “wtf is this how dare you call it pizza it’s clearly a different food”.
-The difficulties in defining culture call back to the nominalism vs realism debate. How do you define an object? Neuroscience and the statistics used in the field can actually help answer this. Objects are clusters of similar experiences. As humans, we use our sensory organs to sample observations (subjective) of the physical properties (objective) of the world around us. We then group similar readings into clusters. A dog is something we interact with in the unique ways dogs do, a cat is a cat in the same way, and they are both part of larger categories like “animal” and “pet”. The identity of the specific object is fundamentally infinitely unique, but its categorization based on proximity to the center of the cluster is self-evident. The existence of the cluster is not “made-up” because it is a deterministic grouping that results from objective properties of the object in question. The cluster itself is real regardless of what you name it. This also allows for outliers to be identified accordingly. Take an albino black bear. The color of a bear’s fur seems to be part of its objective identity as a black bear, yet a black bear can still have white fur due to albinism and still objectively be a black bear due to sharing all other properties that black bears have. Just because you’re a little unique does not mean you don’t still end up in the same larger cluster, and larger clusters can be further subdivided into smaller clusters so that we can identify “albino black bears” as their own unique subgroup.
When applying this to culture, you don’t need to follow an exhaustive checklist of “these things make you American”. Instead you identify a grouping in n-dimensional space where “Americanness” hangs out. To be American is the extent to which you are proximal to the other Americans in the infinite number of cultural measurements you can apply.
Using your argument, it can be argued far more effectively that, given the distance between PF Changs cultural origination, as well as current standing. It falls far more aptly into the Chinese category, rather than anything that can be considered “American.”
Im gonna take this in parts and address my thoughts as they come up i think.
1. the role of ethnicity and race in american nationality
I think this is a problem of white American primarily because we are fundamentally lost in the sauce of the American cultural zeitgeist. The ethnic enclaves you talk about are indeed vibrant and culturally distinct but that is because they stand in contrast to the cultural climate we all live in as a matter of course. In this way I think its readily observable that ethnicity and race is not a contributor to the American nationality in the slightest as we do not recognize race or ethnicity as being a determinant of cultural inclusion, and it is in fact cultural distinctiveness that we recognize as different and interesting. This points to a strong underlying civic nationalism that pervades the cultural canon which supersedes racial considerations. Even in the case of ethnic enclaves and immigrants such as Einstein, and Suzuki like you mentioned their contributions were adopted as American and they are recognized as being American, or at the minimum naturalized Americans; this is another strong indication of civic nationalism but more importantly, civic nationalism being a source of cultural pride. It is wrong to say that inclusivity is the part we value, indeed integration is a necessary part of becoming America. Failure to integrate results in cultural enclaves which we view as interesting and quaint, but also distinctly not American in so far as the observable culture of our nation.
2. defining national identity required exclusion of others
I couldn't agree more on the basic premise, fundamentally that we are means that we aren't other things around us. I would say I disagree on the point about authoritarianism though. Americans may talk a big game about resisting authoritarianism but we often fall short and either acquiesce to it or willfully enable it. Throughout American history multiple examples are observable where Americans willfully supported the enabling of executive (meaning unilateral authoritarian power) power. A recent example would be the patriot act and an older example would be the new deal, both of these were enabled during a point of national tension however that they remained long past that point indicates the people are highly willing to accept executive authority. However I do agree that Sharia Law is not something that would be implemented in the United States and that is not because of the executive enablement, but instead our inherent revolution to the Islamic tradition. Americans drink beer, eat bacon, and gamble their life savings in shiny resorts with scantily clad women. the idea of taking those things away and supplanting it with a foreign culture is beyond imaginable.
3. features of american nationality
I have an inclusion for the list for you to consider: Based Consumerism
Based Consumerism as I would define it is the accumulation and usage of wealth to enable to grandeur of ones nation and or family.
In the American tradition we are a merchant nation before anything else. From the point of our founding we did so to avoid paying taxes in order to empower ourselves. We went to war against multiple nations to empower our trade and income. We designed a multinational alliance of superpowers that enabled free trade for our own benefit. Engaged in a cold war against what was purely an economic rival, and did all this while making a middle class and wealthy business that put anything else in history to shame.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. take em or leave em my dude
I think some of the things you listed as defining the American nationality were accurate, and while you did touch on the idea as a maxim, I think you should also give credit to the cultural impact of idea that “all men are created equal”. In my experience, we Americans define our identity through many things, but they all share the same root in this idea. We love “freedom” but when we say “freedom” we don’t really mean any specific policies or maxims, we just mean the vibe that hey, it’s a free country, nobody is better than anybody else and you can do what you want. We often define ourselves as being very capitalist, but this shares it’s root in that equality: capitalism (in theory) offers everyone an equal shot at success, and this mythologized characterization of it is at times a part of our identity. You already mentioned freedom of speech and Christianity, and both of these things have connections to the idea that all men are created equal.
Hopefully my point is made, I think you should give more credit to the cultural impact of the sacred saying and belief that “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”
I don't think it is a problem to try to ground a baseline, affirmative American identity in our foundational political beliefs, America is the country of immigrants, we are the country of tolerance and of freedom. Consider the petersonian dialectic that every right exists contingently on responsibilities, without somebody to ensure that both positive and negative rights are followed and respected they would not be able to exist. This makes it easier to conceptualize a positive American nationality as a society of people who are devoted to the responsibilities necessary to ensure their idealized freedoms. This also creates a structure to account for how we are able to accept and incorporate the numerous American subcultures derived from ethnic or cultural traditions into the wider umbrella of the American identity: without the mutual coexistence and positive affirmation of the rights and liberties of the other groups, they would not be able to exist. For example, the mere fact that community X does not interfere with community Y is an affirmation of the negative rights of community and therefore represents the passive assumption of the responsibility of the right on community X.
TLDR: even the fact that we do not commit to an ethnic or cultural national identity could be seen as a sort of positive identity because we have to positively commit to the responsibilities of honoring that mutual tolerance.
how much of implementation is dependent on the your ability to convince us to meaningfully adopt your ideas? where does that desire come from ultimately? what's the ultimate motive? is realistic implementation of a collective national American identity dependent on abiding by the same ideological framework?
i wouldn't say i'm religious in the organized disciplined or worldly sense of the word but I also don't carry the common western atheist distain for the ideas. Isn't this issue largely due to the societal death of a collective understanding of an objective highest moral authority, the greater shared idea of the form of the good and true - that which we can all collectively agree to place at the tippy top of our hierarchical belief structures? That and also what we have in turn put in its place and its inherent subjective nature?
I'm not an american, but I will leave my opinion eitherway.
Isn't nationalism what is tearing your country appart? As a european, defining our nationality only has resulted into few things: a rise on tensions and a cultish like thinking towards our governmenta. We have let ourselfs get to positions where we are not defending our ideas, nor our people and community, but our state and its structure. We haven't defended liberties, we have defended -without questioning- our institutions.
We have the example of richer countires throughout history: both ideologically (as in libertarian) and militarilly; that have been all multycultural and non-national-discriptive in nature. For example, austrio-hungary, or venice in the middle ages, and somewhat rome (although they overextended themselfs too much)
All of this countries, with fewer or more nationalism sentiment, have been --relative to other nations in their time-- very open as in identity, and also very inclusive. There may be a way to be inclusive with a strong national identity, but this often leds to treat other cultures as infirior, and promoving general bad behaviour towards them. I mean, if you have your national identity, that you understand as the glue of your community, and therefoee its happiness, why wouldnt you hate those who oppose it?
Therefore, i ask this questions. Wasn't this multi-culturalism what made, and makes, america grate economically and iedologically? Are you sure you want to try the chances with ultranationalism, as a solution to the dissident right, or the people its leading?
As a European, I can only tell from an outside perspective. And I agree to many things mentioned. One vital thing I feel is missing, is the united stance against tyranny and kings. I feel that many think of “what is America” is rooted in the American revolution, and in particular, how Americans will rise up and fight tyranny. This is where the free speech, the gun laws and the unique patriotism for the American flag (and much more). Much is rooted from the American revolution.
And this I feel have been static throughout the time. The speech from Ronald Reagan on this makes me tearful just by the display of bravery and courage (https://youtu.be/JDVT-8tUfiE?si=IXdUvRaFk_UIEaQ3).
So when Trump is announcing that Ukraine is supposed to surrender to tyranny, and there is not a mass rise against this internally in America, I feel that the core of America has changed. I mean the reason for your liberal gun laws is to be able to rise up and defense against tyranny. And when tyranny is in the face of you, Trump is cowering out, retreating and surrendering. And when Trump display himself as “King” (https://x.com/whitehouse/status/1892295984928993698?s=46&t=r_bBjf9E9GsHh6SwsnpU1w) and there is not a mass rise against that, it is the second time in a single week where it display that maybe America has lost its core values.
The question then becomes, can you go back to your values, or will we see a “new set” values for what is America.
This Substack is speaking much of “what used to be”, but I feel with Trump, that the values that used to be are displayed to be no more.
Ooh this is a tricky subject - extremely interesting though.
1) I highly recommend "The war in the west" and "the strange death of Europe" by Douglas Murray - he talks about many of those same "identity" based issues in those books (albeit from a conservative British perspective)
2) controversial opinion: I suspect "black American" culture was a way to reclaim a distinct "non-white" ethnic identity in the wake of the abolition of slavery, however that was by definition a rejection of a culture rather than being founded upon a set of positive principles. Conservative black Americans such as Thomas Sowell, Glenn Lowery and Larry Elder reject this premise entirely, hence why people such as FD Signifier claim they are "not black".
3) there's a very interesting essay somewhere on substack about "American" being a "post-national" idea rather than fitting neatly into the worldview of "nationalism". (On a side note the Israel-Palestine conflict can be described as being a pre-national / pre-enlightenment conflict i.e. a tribal blood feud)
4) the youtuber Greg Owen has asked on behalf of his adopted (black) daughter "what is "blackness"?" He hasn't yet made a video on the subject but as he seems a very emotionally intelligent man I'm looking forward to his take on the subject. He's also made a video with a Nigerian YouTuber about how poorly Hollywood tends to portray non-American cultures - which leads to:
5) (continuation of 3+4) is America a nation, or is each state a nation with America being a "meta-nation"? If that's so, why do Americans misunderstand other cultures so badly? Also, it makes the existence of the 51st and 52nd states seem a lot more plausible if you look at it that way (regardless of whether you think that should be a thing or not)
That's all I can think of for now, shame we can't edit comments here on Substack, if I think of anything more I'll have to comment some more!
Correction no.2:
In counter argument to one of the comments on the Youtube community post:
"separation of church and state" should be one of those fundamental values.
I knew it, I remembered something else!
You've probably already seen this one:
Ryan Chapman's "history of nationalism" YouTube video.
Overall I like it. A few loose thoughts:
- American identity is largely a collection of subcultures. As a midwesterner, gumbo and barbecue are not in any way part of “my”culture. Those are southern things. I eat walleye and cheese curds. Yet I love me some good American southern cooking, especially when traveling, and am proud that those other cuisines exist inside of my larger American identity.
- America is such a global power that the commonalities across its subcultures are exported across the entire globe. This makes them hard to identify. Blue jeans, Hollywood movies, and pop music aren’t always recognized as “American” because they’re everywhere.
-Americanizations of other cultures is part of the American identity. Panda Express is not Chinese food, it’s American. And while there’s always some guy that’s like “um actually pizza is Italian” if you take any Italian to Chicago they’ll be like “wtf is this how dare you call it pizza it’s clearly a different food”.
-The difficulties in defining culture call back to the nominalism vs realism debate. How do you define an object? Neuroscience and the statistics used in the field can actually help answer this. Objects are clusters of similar experiences. As humans, we use our sensory organs to sample observations (subjective) of the physical properties (objective) of the world around us. We then group similar readings into clusters. A dog is something we interact with in the unique ways dogs do, a cat is a cat in the same way, and they are both part of larger categories like “animal” and “pet”. The identity of the specific object is fundamentally infinitely unique, but its categorization based on proximity to the center of the cluster is self-evident. The existence of the cluster is not “made-up” because it is a deterministic grouping that results from objective properties of the object in question. The cluster itself is real regardless of what you name it. This also allows for outliers to be identified accordingly. Take an albino black bear. The color of a bear’s fur seems to be part of its objective identity as a black bear, yet a black bear can still have white fur due to albinism and still objectively be a black bear due to sharing all other properties that black bears have. Just because you’re a little unique does not mean you don’t still end up in the same larger cluster, and larger clusters can be further subdivided into smaller clusters so that we can identify “albino black bears” as their own unique subgroup.
When applying this to culture, you don’t need to follow an exhaustive checklist of “these things make you American”. Instead you identify a grouping in n-dimensional space where “Americanness” hangs out. To be American is the extent to which you are proximal to the other Americans in the infinite number of cultural measurements you can apply.
Hopefully that last point made any sense at all.
Using your argument, it can be argued far more effectively that, given the distance between PF Changs cultural origination, as well as current standing. It falls far more aptly into the Chinese category, rather than anything that can be considered “American.”
Im gonna take this in parts and address my thoughts as they come up i think.
1. the role of ethnicity and race in american nationality
I think this is a problem of white American primarily because we are fundamentally lost in the sauce of the American cultural zeitgeist. The ethnic enclaves you talk about are indeed vibrant and culturally distinct but that is because they stand in contrast to the cultural climate we all live in as a matter of course. In this way I think its readily observable that ethnicity and race is not a contributor to the American nationality in the slightest as we do not recognize race or ethnicity as being a determinant of cultural inclusion, and it is in fact cultural distinctiveness that we recognize as different and interesting. This points to a strong underlying civic nationalism that pervades the cultural canon which supersedes racial considerations. Even in the case of ethnic enclaves and immigrants such as Einstein, and Suzuki like you mentioned their contributions were adopted as American and they are recognized as being American, or at the minimum naturalized Americans; this is another strong indication of civic nationalism but more importantly, civic nationalism being a source of cultural pride. It is wrong to say that inclusivity is the part we value, indeed integration is a necessary part of becoming America. Failure to integrate results in cultural enclaves which we view as interesting and quaint, but also distinctly not American in so far as the observable culture of our nation.
2. defining national identity required exclusion of others
I couldn't agree more on the basic premise, fundamentally that we are means that we aren't other things around us. I would say I disagree on the point about authoritarianism though. Americans may talk a big game about resisting authoritarianism but we often fall short and either acquiesce to it or willfully enable it. Throughout American history multiple examples are observable where Americans willfully supported the enabling of executive (meaning unilateral authoritarian power) power. A recent example would be the patriot act and an older example would be the new deal, both of these were enabled during a point of national tension however that they remained long past that point indicates the people are highly willing to accept executive authority. However I do agree that Sharia Law is not something that would be implemented in the United States and that is not because of the executive enablement, but instead our inherent revolution to the Islamic tradition. Americans drink beer, eat bacon, and gamble their life savings in shiny resorts with scantily clad women. the idea of taking those things away and supplanting it with a foreign culture is beyond imaginable.
3. features of american nationality
I have an inclusion for the list for you to consider: Based Consumerism
Based Consumerism as I would define it is the accumulation and usage of wealth to enable to grandeur of ones nation and or family.
In the American tradition we are a merchant nation before anything else. From the point of our founding we did so to avoid paying taxes in order to empower ourselves. We went to war against multiple nations to empower our trade and income. We designed a multinational alliance of superpowers that enabled free trade for our own benefit. Engaged in a cold war against what was purely an economic rival, and did all this while making a middle class and wealthy business that put anything else in history to shame.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. take em or leave em my dude
You have so many false assumptions and presuppositions written in your paragraph, I’m going to have to go on my computer to point them all out.
been like half a month bro you gonna get on that?
I think some of the things you listed as defining the American nationality were accurate, and while you did touch on the idea as a maxim, I think you should also give credit to the cultural impact of idea that “all men are created equal”. In my experience, we Americans define our identity through many things, but they all share the same root in this idea. We love “freedom” but when we say “freedom” we don’t really mean any specific policies or maxims, we just mean the vibe that hey, it’s a free country, nobody is better than anybody else and you can do what you want. We often define ourselves as being very capitalist, but this shares it’s root in that equality: capitalism (in theory) offers everyone an equal shot at success, and this mythologized characterization of it is at times a part of our identity. You already mentioned freedom of speech and Christianity, and both of these things have connections to the idea that all men are created equal.
Hopefully my point is made, I think you should give more credit to the cultural impact of the sacred saying and belief that “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”
I don't think it is a problem to try to ground a baseline, affirmative American identity in our foundational political beliefs, America is the country of immigrants, we are the country of tolerance and of freedom. Consider the petersonian dialectic that every right exists contingently on responsibilities, without somebody to ensure that both positive and negative rights are followed and respected they would not be able to exist. This makes it easier to conceptualize a positive American nationality as a society of people who are devoted to the responsibilities necessary to ensure their idealized freedoms. This also creates a structure to account for how we are able to accept and incorporate the numerous American subcultures derived from ethnic or cultural traditions into the wider umbrella of the American identity: without the mutual coexistence and positive affirmation of the rights and liberties of the other groups, they would not be able to exist. For example, the mere fact that community X does not interfere with community Y is an affirmation of the negative rights of community and therefore represents the passive assumption of the responsibility of the right on community X.
TLDR: even the fact that we do not commit to an ethnic or cultural national identity could be seen as a sort of positive identity because we have to positively commit to the responsibilities of honoring that mutual tolerance.
how much of implementation is dependent on the your ability to convince us to meaningfully adopt your ideas? where does that desire come from ultimately? what's the ultimate motive? is realistic implementation of a collective national American identity dependent on abiding by the same ideological framework?
i wouldn't say i'm religious in the organized disciplined or worldly sense of the word but I also don't carry the common western atheist distain for the ideas. Isn't this issue largely due to the societal death of a collective understanding of an objective highest moral authority, the greater shared idea of the form of the good and true - that which we can all collectively agree to place at the tippy top of our hierarchical belief structures? That and also what we have in turn put in its place and its inherent subjective nature?
I'm not an american, but I will leave my opinion eitherway.
Isn't nationalism what is tearing your country appart? As a european, defining our nationality only has resulted into few things: a rise on tensions and a cultish like thinking towards our governmenta. We have let ourselfs get to positions where we are not defending our ideas, nor our people and community, but our state and its structure. We haven't defended liberties, we have defended -without questioning- our institutions.
We have the example of richer countires throughout history: both ideologically (as in libertarian) and militarilly; that have been all multycultural and non-national-discriptive in nature. For example, austrio-hungary, or venice in the middle ages, and somewhat rome (although they overextended themselfs too much)
All of this countries, with fewer or more nationalism sentiment, have been --relative to other nations in their time-- very open as in identity, and also very inclusive. There may be a way to be inclusive with a strong national identity, but this often leds to treat other cultures as infirior, and promoving general bad behaviour towards them. I mean, if you have your national identity, that you understand as the glue of your community, and therefoee its happiness, why wouldnt you hate those who oppose it?
Therefore, i ask this questions. Wasn't this multi-culturalism what made, and makes, america grate economically and iedologically? Are you sure you want to try the chances with ultranationalism, as a solution to the dissident right, or the people its leading?
As a European, I can only tell from an outside perspective. And I agree to many things mentioned. One vital thing I feel is missing, is the united stance against tyranny and kings. I feel that many think of “what is America” is rooted in the American revolution, and in particular, how Americans will rise up and fight tyranny. This is where the free speech, the gun laws and the unique patriotism for the American flag (and much more). Much is rooted from the American revolution.
And this I feel have been static throughout the time. The speech from Ronald Reagan on this makes me tearful just by the display of bravery and courage (https://youtu.be/JDVT-8tUfiE?si=IXdUvRaFk_UIEaQ3).
So when Trump is announcing that Ukraine is supposed to surrender to tyranny, and there is not a mass rise against this internally in America, I feel that the core of America has changed. I mean the reason for your liberal gun laws is to be able to rise up and defense against tyranny. And when tyranny is in the face of you, Trump is cowering out, retreating and surrendering. And when Trump display himself as “King” (https://x.com/whitehouse/status/1892295984928993698?s=46&t=r_bBjf9E9GsHh6SwsnpU1w) and there is not a mass rise against that, it is the second time in a single week where it display that maybe America has lost its core values.
The question then becomes, can you go back to your values, or will we see a “new set” values for what is America.
This Substack is speaking much of “what used to be”, but I feel with Trump, that the values that used to be are displayed to be no more.
As a """Canadian""" I can say that I sympathize quite a bit with confusions over nationalities