"With his usual panache, Vivek Ramaswamy, erstwhile presidential candidate and DOGE co-czar, current candidate for governor of Ohio, kicked off one of his classic Christmas agonies with a speech at Turning Point USA's annual AmFest confab. Ramaswamy, who last year took the opportunity of Our Lord's birthday to defend the merits of H-1B workers relative to "mediocre" Americans, enunciated an aggressive version of the "propositional" theory of America-those are Americans who subscribe to the American creed (a phrase that makes the Menckenites among us smile)."
"Ramaswamy's many and articulate critics, including our own Andrew Day, have pointed out the problems a conservative might have with this very loose definition of America, not least that it tends to prioritize the interests of would-be Americans over the actually existing nation notionally served by our government. It is also historically suspect. Our traditions, liberal and expansive as they are in orientation, did come from a particular people in a particular place;"
A prominent political figure promoted a propositional theory of American identity that defines Americans by adherence to an American creed. Critics contend that this loose definition can privilege the interests of prospective citizens over the existing nation's political community. The historical record complicates purely credal definitions because American traditions emerged from particular peoples and places; regime construction does not happen in a vacuum. The United States historically absorbed many primarily Western European migrants across languages, traditions, and religions, which undermines political efforts to deny membership to assimilated, anglophone, taxpaying, law‑abiding descendants of earlier immigrant waves, prompting questions about why assimilation succeeded and why it may be harder now.
Read at The American Conservative
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