I am about as heritage as they come - a ancestor who sailed on the Mayflower on my mother's side and my namesake was an indentured servant to William Penn, but I don't see that as making me more 'American'. My first wife's ancestors fought for the Confederacy, mine for the Union. So my two daughters from that marriage are definitely 'heritage'. Daughter #1 married a Jew. Are her children still viewed as 'Heritage' by the purists? My second wife came to the US in the 90's from Western Ukraine. Are my children with her still 'Heritage'? Frankly, the true 'Heritage' Americans are the Amerinds, who have been here for greater than 10,000 years, not a paltry few centuries.
I don't count myself more American than my high school peers, one of whose parents were refugees from Shanghai after the revolution, or my other peers who were children of the Holocaust survivors. My friend, the Chinese refugee descendant, spent his entire career as a Physicist for the US Navy.
I never had any use for idiots who were trying to claim social status by the activity / accomplishments of their distant ancestors. My first wife's family had members deep into the Daughters of the American Revolution and the equivalent Confederacy ancestry organization. I could not care less.
What have you accomplished? What have you tried to do - but failed at? I give credit for trying to do something interesting or significant, not what did your ancestors did many generations ago.
I am confused by your "no one can answer this" rhetoric since don't you still work with Eric Kaufman who has written extensively on ethno-traditional nationalism
Personally I'm highly sympathetic to the perspective of the late Samuel Huntington, who articulated in his book Who Are We the distinction between a nation united by ethnicity and culture and a nation-state as a political entity governing a large group of individuals. As many have been noted, at times nation states have in fact contained multiple nations, as exemplified by the former Yugoslavia.
I've always been struck by the claim made in Who Are We and other books like Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow that if immigration had completely ceased after 1790 that the American population even as recently as 1990 would've been around half of its actual size at that time. A sizable portion of white Americans can in fact trace their heritage back to the original colonial stock.
That being said, I think many people missed the point of Vivek's tweet. He followed up his initial comment by clarifying that he wasn't advocating for unfettered immigration, but rather that he was arguing against the notion of employing a caste system to rank the quality of American citizens based on their ethnic heritage. While we certainly can be selective about who we let become American citizens, the idea of a heritage citizen above and beyond any other American citizen is ultimately counterproductive. What would be the end goal of such a distinction? Would it be to somehow create different rights based on the grade of American one was deemed to be?
Ultimately, as Vivek argued and as I also believe, we can recognize America's ethnic history and heritage without becoming captive to it.
The Founding Fathers themselves saw America as a White Westerner nation and an extention of the Anglo-Saxon world. They were not color-blind Civic Nationists at all
Even Tucker Carlson acknowledges that we can't go back to a notion of the US as a white nation. There is no point in bringing it up. It just stirs things up for no reason. It's OK to debate whether e.g. new Somalis are bringing a positive impact to the US, or even advocate restrictionism in order to promote an integration/assimilation period, but this entire "white western nation" stuff is nonsense. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The Founding Fathers established a democratic system where the people could vote to change government policies, including immigration policy, and the people chose to do so. End of story.
And yes, if it matters, I am a "Heritage American" with ancestors going back to Jamestown and the Revolution based on clicking around on some ancestry websites (surprisingly easy and fun). Wasn't able to find a single ancestor who arrived after the US Civil War.
They fought multiple wars against various "White Westerner" nations lmao. They didn't pay much attention to the Asians and Africans and Latinos because huge parts of those racial groups were geographically isolated from the US due to technology limitations of the time and were involved in various self-contained colonial struggles of their own with non-US parties. Or because the territories were still uninhabited.
I’m pretty versed in founding-era history and I don’t know of many examples of them expressly espousing such views. Perhaps the example quotations are just suppressed as unwoke? Please do share.
Read the writings on figures such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, etc on race. They all saw America as a spin-off of England, and they didn't want too many Non-Anglo Whites (and basically no Non-European people at all) immigrating to the nation.
Is there reason to believe that, by limiting naturalized citizenship to whites, they were trying to prevent Asians or Persians from attaining citizenship, as opposed to just not wanting to cover blacks?
There's never even any plausible mechanism through which all this heritage American stuff is supposed to flow. They always propose these bizarre theories where the number of 'generations' you've spent in a country will somehow determine your personal investment, as if humans didn't rebel against their families all the time. Generational memory isn't a thing, and willingness to change your personal views based on circumstance is a sign of intelligence.
Most people don't actually know how many generations they've been in America because most people don't care about that nonsense at all, except as a matter of curiosity. Successful people define themselves through their own accomplishments. It's only the failures who have to look to their ancestors for achievements.
Peasant-brained morons, all of the people who believe in this. Cast them into the cold of Bumfuck Missouri with the shamans and witch-doctors, and bring a bunch of deserving world-class scientists from India and China in their place.
I was being deliberately inflammatory for effect, some parts of Missouri are probably cool.
Though I fear you may be caught on the wrong side of the border after the blue states secede and form Libtopia, while all the heritage Americans are left behind in Trumpistan.
An outlier like Hanania who is at best a second generation ‘American’ with no connection to the country other than ‘a land of opportunity’ would naturally take umbrage at being reminded that belonging to a country requires more than believing in ‘creeds or propositions, ‘ and possessing a passport.
There is tension between America is An Idea, with lofty ideals (unique in the world) and America the Mundane, a physical place with borders and a population (much like any other country). In a legal sense, the lofty ideas win out when a new citizen gains 100% of the rights of a Mayflower descendant. But I'm not convinced the lofty side completely beats out the mundane side when it comes to other aspects of American-ness. Generational transmission of knowledge and values is a thing in human societies.
Heritage American is a euphemism for white, unless I’ve seen the folks that parade this around claim that the South African refugees that Trump administration brought in will never be American and should return to South Africa. Instead it is mostly used against Indians.
There can be a logically consistent way of applying Heritage American and in that way neither Peter Thiel nor Elon Musk will qualify (nor Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, Steve Jobs etc) who anyone would consider American.
This is because America is not Europe, in Europe >90% of famous personalities who embody a country probably have a thousand year lineage tied to that country while in America even expecting their parents to be born in US seems like asking too much. And so we can never apply the heritage criteria consistently, we can only apply it dishonestly to disinclude Vivek or Indians, Asians, Africans etc or whichever group the right feels does not belong in the country, were unfairly invited in by the left and should leave.
We can change the definition of what it means to be American. This government and this country NEED to put its citizens first. In furtherment of that goal, *requiring*:
1) Acceptance of the rule of law (applying to those in power, as well)
2) Freedom of expression *for all citizens* (not just the ones you like)
3) Colorblind meritocracy (which values effort & capacity over prejudice)
4) An oath to the U.S. Constitution & the American dream
5) and most importantly: Swearing exclusive allegiance to our nation
You know what? I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Vivek Ramaswamy.
All these requirements make sense & the times call for them.
Prioritizing the preferences and welfare of heritage citizens is good public policy because it introduces a citizenship switching cost to disincentivize citizenship gaming for reasons of tax arbitrage or escaping self-inflicted bad governance (i.e. Venezuela). There SHOULD be a strong stigma associated with emigrating from a third world hellhole if it is a hellhole because of bad choices by its citizens (in contrast to terrible natural disasters or externally caused war).
Newly arrived legal immigrants should be treated well and with kindness. Illegal immigrants, by contrast, should be removed by force if necessary since they are basically robbers (stealing the benefits of residence without going through proper channels to receive them). But even legal immigrants should be told that they will never be a full American in a true sense because complete assimilation for adult arrivals is basically a myth with only a few rare exceptions. Their grandkids and great grandkids who are raised from early childhood in the country and lack meaningful connections to the ancestral homeland will be fully American, but they themselves will not be, even if they are allowed to vote. They will always be a "hyphenated American".
"Prioritizing the preferences and welfare of heritage citizens is good public policy because it introduces a citizenship switching cost to disincentivize citizenship gaming for reasons of tax arbitrage or escaping self-inflicted bad governance (i.e. Venezuela)."
I doubt many Venezuelan immigrants to the US are communists.
If "citizenship gaming" is a true problem, the solution would be to restrict dual citizenship and so forth. It's already the case that naturalized citizens cannot be president (RIP Arnold Schwarzenegger, the exact leader the US happens to need at this moment). If necessary, we can take steps to e.g. further restrict birth tourism, etc. without establishing an ancestry-based caste system which goes against the country's founding ideals.
"But even legal immigrants should be told that they will never be a full American in a true sense because complete assimilation for adult arrivals is basically a myth with only a few rare exceptions."
I'm sure nothing will accelerate assimilation like telling people they will "never be a full American" đŸ™„
Many of the top posts on /r/MURICA, America's premier meme subreddit, are about celebrating naturalizations
I agree that dual citizenship should be heavily restricted or outright banned (with no ability to rescind a foreign citizenship renunciation or use aliyah or citizenship by descent). Dual citizenship is a massive problem. If we lived in a world of exclusive single citizenships then I could agree to a compromise position of treating naturalized citizens as full Americans despite their recent arrival, but we don't live in that world, so until we do heritage Americans should be given preference.
But why do you choose to advocate for the position "heritage Americans should be given preference" instead of "dual citizenship should be heavily restricted or outright banned"?
Banning dual citizenship is an actual policy which could in theory be implemented tomorrow, and it doesn't implement a caste system which goes against our nation's founding ideas.
This "Heritage American" stuff is more of a vibe than a policy which simply engenders ethnicity-based conflict and makes our culture wars worse.
Stop talking about "Heritage Americans" and just switch to talking about dual citizenship. It's fine if you want to be proud of your ancestry, but it shouldn't have implications for government policy, hiring decisions, or anything like that.
I wrote about it here because it is the topic de jure. But I have written extensive comments on one of Richard's prior posts about why I believe banning dual citizenship is essential and the ideal solution. A dual citizenship ban is the first-best policy. But given the systemic corruption among the oligarchs who personally benefit from dual citizenship, banning it is not politically practical any time soon. This leaves preferencing heritage Americans as a second-best policy because it at least introduces a stigma and switching cost to citizenship gaming even if it does not fully solve the problem (analogous to a sin tax reducing cigarette smoking even if it does not completely end it).
Can we simply tax dual citizenship so that no one besides oligarchs can pay enough to maintain it?
What is your "threat model" here?
The US is extremely safe. We have oceans on both sides, one of the world's largest economies, one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals. Why all the paranoia?
The biggest threat is dual citizens using their influence and power to steer US foreign policy towards the pet projects and animosities of the other country for which they have citizenship.
I am about as heritage as they come - a ancestor who sailed on the Mayflower on my mother's side and my namesake was an indentured servant to William Penn, but I don't see that as making me more 'American'. My first wife's ancestors fought for the Confederacy, mine for the Union. So my two daughters from that marriage are definitely 'heritage'. Daughter #1 married a Jew. Are her children still viewed as 'Heritage' by the purists? My second wife came to the US in the 90's from Western Ukraine. Are my children with her still 'Heritage'? Frankly, the true 'Heritage' Americans are the Amerinds, who have been here for greater than 10,000 years, not a paltry few centuries.
I don't count myself more American than my high school peers, one of whose parents were refugees from Shanghai after the revolution, or my other peers who were children of the Holocaust survivors. My friend, the Chinese refugee descendant, spent his entire career as a Physicist for the US Navy.
I never had any use for idiots who were trying to claim social status by the activity / accomplishments of their distant ancestors. My first wife's family had members deep into the Daughters of the American Revolution and the equivalent Confederacy ancestry organization. I could not care less.
What have you accomplished? What have you tried to do - but failed at? I give credit for trying to do something interesting or significant, not what did your ancestors did many generations ago.
I am confused by your "no one can answer this" rhetoric since don't you still work with Eric Kaufman who has written extensively on ethno-traditional nationalism
Personally I'm highly sympathetic to the perspective of the late Samuel Huntington, who articulated in his book Who Are We the distinction between a nation united by ethnicity and culture and a nation-state as a political entity governing a large group of individuals. As many have been noted, at times nation states have in fact contained multiple nations, as exemplified by the former Yugoslavia.
I've always been struck by the claim made in Who Are We and other books like Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow that if immigration had completely ceased after 1790 that the American population even as recently as 1990 would've been around half of its actual size at that time. A sizable portion of white Americans can in fact trace their heritage back to the original colonial stock.
That being said, I think many people missed the point of Vivek's tweet. He followed up his initial comment by clarifying that he wasn't advocating for unfettered immigration, but rather that he was arguing against the notion of employing a caste system to rank the quality of American citizens based on their ethnic heritage. While we certainly can be selective about who we let become American citizens, the idea of a heritage citizen above and beyond any other American citizen is ultimately counterproductive. What would be the end goal of such a distinction? Would it be to somehow create different rights based on the grade of American one was deemed to be?
Ultimately, as Vivek argued and as I also believe, we can recognize America's ethnic history and heritage without becoming captive to it.
Samuel Huntington was a pseudointellectual charlatan
The Clash of Civilizations is looking far more prescient than The End of History!
One book being less shit than the other doesn't mean that it isn't shit
The Founding Fathers themselves saw America as a White Westerner nation and an extention of the Anglo-Saxon world. They were not color-blind Civic Nationists at all
Cool. We ignored them. What now?
The majority of Americans agreed with the Founding Fathers until the Civil Rights era
Even Tucker Carlson acknowledges that we can't go back to a notion of the US as a white nation. There is no point in bringing it up. It just stirs things up for no reason. It's OK to debate whether e.g. new Somalis are bringing a positive impact to the US, or even advocate restrictionism in order to promote an integration/assimilation period, but this entire "white western nation" stuff is nonsense. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The Founding Fathers established a democratic system where the people could vote to change government policies, including immigration policy, and the people chose to do so. End of story.
And yes, if it matters, I am a "Heritage American" with ancestors going back to Jamestown and the Revolution based on clicking around on some ancestry websites (surprisingly easy and fun). Wasn't able to find a single ancestor who arrived after the US Civil War.
They fought multiple wars against various "White Westerner" nations lmao. They didn't pay much attention to the Asians and Africans and Latinos because huge parts of those racial groups were geographically isolated from the US due to technology limitations of the time and were involved in various self-contained colonial struggles of their own with non-US parties. Or because the territories were still uninhabited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War
You are a Low IQ idiot lol. Actually read what the Founding Fathers said about race
Why don't you tell us what the Founding Fathers said about race that upsets you enough to call a person you've never met an idiot?
I’m pretty versed in founding-era history and I don’t know of many examples of them expressly espousing such views. Perhaps the example quotations are just suppressed as unwoke? Please do share.
Read the writings on figures such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, etc on race. They all saw America as a spin-off of England, and they didn't want too many Non-Anglo Whites (and basically no Non-European people at all) immigrating to the nation.
Specificity would be great thanks. No rush
Are you unaware of the Naturalization Act of 1790?
Is there reason to believe that, by limiting naturalized citizenship to whites, they were trying to prevent Asians or Persians from attaining citizenship, as opposed to just not wanting to cover blacks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#European_Americans
>they didn't want too many Non-Anglo Whites (and basically no Non-European people at all) immigrating to the nation.
But they were too retarded so they waited for 100 years for all the Founders to die to pass the first restrictive immigration law in 1882 lol
Maybe they valued social cohesion.
Are those non-citizens who were awarded the Medal of Honor and subsequently were naturalized less than draft dodging descendants?
Nice post.
Telling maga righties that they’re identitarians just like woke lefties is delicious and hilarious irony.
There's never even any plausible mechanism through which all this heritage American stuff is supposed to flow. They always propose these bizarre theories where the number of 'generations' you've spent in a country will somehow determine your personal investment, as if humans didn't rebel against their families all the time. Generational memory isn't a thing, and willingness to change your personal views based on circumstance is a sign of intelligence.
Most people don't actually know how many generations they've been in America because most people don't care about that nonsense at all, except as a matter of curiosity. Successful people define themselves through their own accomplishments. It's only the failures who have to look to their ancestors for achievements.
Peasant-brained morons, all of the people who believe in this. Cast them into the cold of Bumfuck Missouri with the shamans and witch-doctors, and bring a bunch of deserving world-class scientists from India and China in their place.
Hey, I live in Missouri and we have plenty of world-class scientists from India and China here!
I was being deliberately inflammatory for effect, some parts of Missouri are probably cool.
Though I fear you may be caught on the wrong side of the border after the blue states secede and form Libtopia, while all the heritage Americans are left behind in Trumpistan.
An outlier like Hanania who is at best a second generation ‘American’ with no connection to the country other than ‘a land of opportunity’ would naturally take umbrage at being reminded that belonging to a country requires more than believing in ‘creeds or propositions, ‘ and possessing a passport.
There is tension between America is An Idea, with lofty ideals (unique in the world) and America the Mundane, a physical place with borders and a population (much like any other country). In a legal sense, the lofty ideas win out when a new citizen gains 100% of the rights of a Mayflower descendant. But I'm not convinced the lofty side completely beats out the mundane side when it comes to other aspects of American-ness. Generational transmission of knowledge and values is a thing in human societies.
Heritage American is a euphemism for white, unless I’ve seen the folks that parade this around claim that the South African refugees that Trump administration brought in will never be American and should return to South Africa. Instead it is mostly used against Indians.
There can be a logically consistent way of applying Heritage American and in that way neither Peter Thiel nor Elon Musk will qualify (nor Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, Steve Jobs etc) who anyone would consider American.
This is because America is not Europe, in Europe >90% of famous personalities who embody a country probably have a thousand year lineage tied to that country while in America even expecting their parents to be born in US seems like asking too much. And so we can never apply the heritage criteria consistently, we can only apply it dishonestly to disinclude Vivek or Indians, Asians, Africans etc or whichever group the right feels does not belong in the country, were unfairly invited in by the left and should leave.
"...and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation..."
Underrated point Vivek made here. I've always thought dual citizenship is contrary to the American ethos.
We're Americans.
We can change the definition of what it means to be American. This government and this country NEED to put its citizens first. In furtherment of that goal, *requiring*:
1) Acceptance of the rule of law (applying to those in power, as well)
2) Freedom of expression *for all citizens* (not just the ones you like)
3) Colorblind meritocracy (which values effort & capacity over prejudice)
4) An oath to the U.S. Constitution & the American dream
5) and most importantly: Swearing exclusive allegiance to our nation
You know what? I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Vivek Ramaswamy.
All these requirements make sense & the times call for them.
Prioritizing the preferences and welfare of heritage citizens is good public policy because it introduces a citizenship switching cost to disincentivize citizenship gaming for reasons of tax arbitrage or escaping self-inflicted bad governance (i.e. Venezuela). There SHOULD be a strong stigma associated with emigrating from a third world hellhole if it is a hellhole because of bad choices by its citizens (in contrast to terrible natural disasters or externally caused war).
Newly arrived legal immigrants should be treated well and with kindness. Illegal immigrants, by contrast, should be removed by force if necessary since they are basically robbers (stealing the benefits of residence without going through proper channels to receive them). But even legal immigrants should be told that they will never be a full American in a true sense because complete assimilation for adult arrivals is basically a myth with only a few rare exceptions. Their grandkids and great grandkids who are raised from early childhood in the country and lack meaningful connections to the ancestral homeland will be fully American, but they themselves will not be, even if they are allowed to vote. They will always be a "hyphenated American".
"Prioritizing the preferences and welfare of heritage citizens is good public policy because it introduces a citizenship switching cost to disincentivize citizenship gaming for reasons of tax arbitrage or escaping self-inflicted bad governance (i.e. Venezuela)."
I doubt many Venezuelan immigrants to the US are communists.
If "citizenship gaming" is a true problem, the solution would be to restrict dual citizenship and so forth. It's already the case that naturalized citizens cannot be president (RIP Arnold Schwarzenegger, the exact leader the US happens to need at this moment). If necessary, we can take steps to e.g. further restrict birth tourism, etc. without establishing an ancestry-based caste system which goes against the country's founding ideals.
"But even legal immigrants should be told that they will never be a full American in a true sense because complete assimilation for adult arrivals is basically a myth with only a few rare exceptions."
I'm sure nothing will accelerate assimilation like telling people they will "never be a full American" đŸ™„
Many of the top posts on /r/MURICA, America's premier meme subreddit, are about celebrating naturalizations
https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/6oa9gq/after_10_years/
https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/8drkta/today_i_became_a_citizen_here_is_my_1st_dinner_as/
https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/77ta8g/just_became_us_citizen/
https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/91b2jj/i_came_to_this_country_when_i_was_2_years_old_and/
I agree that dual citizenship should be heavily restricted or outright banned (with no ability to rescind a foreign citizenship renunciation or use aliyah or citizenship by descent). Dual citizenship is a massive problem. If we lived in a world of exclusive single citizenships then I could agree to a compromise position of treating naturalized citizens as full Americans despite their recent arrival, but we don't live in that world, so until we do heritage Americans should be given preference.
But why do you choose to advocate for the position "heritage Americans should be given preference" instead of "dual citizenship should be heavily restricted or outright banned"?
Banning dual citizenship is an actual policy which could in theory be implemented tomorrow, and it doesn't implement a caste system which goes against our nation's founding ideas.
This "Heritage American" stuff is more of a vibe than a policy which simply engenders ethnicity-based conflict and makes our culture wars worse.
Stop talking about "Heritage Americans" and just switch to talking about dual citizenship. It's fine if you want to be proud of your ancestry, but it shouldn't have implications for government policy, hiring decisions, or anything like that.
I wrote about it here because it is the topic de jure. But I have written extensive comments on one of Richard's prior posts about why I believe banning dual citizenship is essential and the ideal solution. A dual citizenship ban is the first-best policy. But given the systemic corruption among the oligarchs who personally benefit from dual citizenship, banning it is not politically practical any time soon. This leaves preferencing heritage Americans as a second-best policy because it at least introduces a stigma and switching cost to citizenship gaming even if it does not fully solve the problem (analogous to a sin tax reducing cigarette smoking even if it does not completely end it).
Can we simply tax dual citizenship so that no one besides oligarchs can pay enough to maintain it?
What is your "threat model" here?
The US is extremely safe. We have oceans on both sides, one of the world's largest economies, one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals. Why all the paranoia?
The biggest threat is dual citizens using their influence and power to steer US foreign policy towards the pet projects and animosities of the other country for which they have citizenship.
I like "hyphenated American." What do you think MAGA conservatives will be called after we denaturalize them all in 2028 for their Nuremberg trials?