Americans Still Believe Ideas, Not Blood and Soil, Define Our Nation

Americans Still Believe Ideas, Not Blood and Soil, Define Our Nation

Despite President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s efforts to advance a crabbed blood and soil vision of our nation -- where how long your family roots go back in our nation’s history or whether you are of white European ancestry somehow makes you more American -- an overwhelming majority of Americans still believe we are best understood as an idea and that we remain a nation of immigrants.  Nearly 8-in-10 (78%), for example, believe that “America is best understood as a nation built around the idea that all people, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or station in life, have equal rights and freedoms,” according to a new Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll. “Just 19% believe that “America is best understood as a nation comprised of people with a shared heritage and homeland.”

 

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 This bedrock belief in America as an idea that all can embrace undergirds the fact that in the face of years of demonization of immigrants by the Trump administration and others, most Americans still view immigration as a source of strength, rather than as a dangerous threat. Nearly 6-in-10 (57%) Americans “agree that the growing number of newcomers from other countries strengthens American society,” as compared to 4-in-10 (41%) who disagree, reported PRRI.  Along the same lines, “about two-thirds of Americans (65%) disagree with the idea that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”

 

Americans’ generally positive views of the impacts of immigration explain why most disapprove of the President’s performance on the issue overall, at the same time as they give him high marks for his undeniable success in severely restricting illegal immigration through tightened border security. Americans are against what they perceive as overreach and cruelty.  More than 6-in-10 (63%), for instance, disapprove of the Trump Administration’s “arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States with no criminal record, compared with 33% who favor.” About 2-in-3 (65%) Americans also “oppose the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons in El Salvador, Rwanda, or Libya without due process,” while only about 1-in-3 (32%) are in favor.

 

One can imagine that FDR, who could trace his roots in this nation back on both sides to before the American Revolution, would reply to J.D. Vance’s claims for special status for those whose families have been on American soil for generations in the same way he responded when speaking to the “Daughters of the American Revolution,” an organization strongly opposed to immigration, in 1938.  “Remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists," FDR remarked.

 

As the principled conservative, Charles Krauthammer put it, “America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It’s founded on an idea and the idea is liberty.” 

 

This same thought is expressed by another conservative, Ronald Reagan, who understood that America’s unique strength was that the power of it as an idea attracted the world’s dreamers, strivers, and entrepreneurs to our shores, continually replenishing and revitalizing our nation. "I've spoken of the shining city (on a hill) all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it…. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here,” Reagan remarked in his Farewell Address. "That's how I saw it, and see it still. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”

 

It is ironic that a president and movement that have adopted the slogan” Make America Great Again” (MAGA) fail to grasp –and often reject--our true sources of greatness; namely that we are founded on and stand for appealing universal ideas and that we are a nation of immigrants.  The good news is most Americans still truly understand and embrace these unique strengths. That is the hopeful foundation upon which to build.