What’s Special about the Fourth of July?
Let’s take another look at the Declaration of Independence, so definitive of what it means to be an American.
We should remember that independence may have been declared formally in the Declaration on July 4, 1776, but the official end of the war actually came seven years later when Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783, formally recognizing that independence.
What prompts my interest this year are some remarks then-Senator J.D. Vance made in his July 2024 Republican Convention address accepting the vice-presidential nomination.
This was the key paragraph at issue: “You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”
The question is, however, what makes a country “a nation”? President Trump’s comment that immigrants, and especially illegal immigrants, are “poisoning the blood of our country” comes dangerously close to the Nazi emphasis on “Blut und Boden”—blood and soil—as the basis of a nation.
Vance’s argument is more sophisticated, though, for it suggests that what makes a people “a people” and a nation is not so much a commitment to a shared set of ideals and values but, instead, a set of common, shared experiences over an indeterminate length of time.
Yet while the American colonists talked before 1776 in terms of the rights of Englishmen, we should remember that the colonies themselves were founded over a long period of time by different people for different purposes. See here. Of the 13 original colonies, the first, Virginia, was founded in 1607 essentially as an investment, and the last, Georgia, was founded 125 years later in 1732 as a haven for the poor and debtors. Other colonies were founded for Catholics (Maryland) or for religious freedom (Rhode Island).
Still, by 1776, the Declaration itself talked about the British and the Americans as two different peoples. Recall the famous introduction: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . .”
Despite this reference to “one people”, the use of the term “perpetual union” in the Articles of Confederation, the first governing framework of the new country, suggested more of an alliance than what we might consider an actual nation. Article II refers to each state’s sovereignty, and Article III refers to “a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence . . . .” This is not so different from NATO today, and NATO is not a country.
If Vance’s argument is that what makes a people “a people” and a nation is not so much a commitment to a shared set of ideals and values but, instead, a set of common, shared experiences over an indeterminate length of time, what makes Donald Trump or Elon Musk an American?
According to History.com, “Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s.” Musk became a naturalized American citizen in 2002. What makes him an American?
More generally, what turns German, Scottish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, and all other immigrants into Americans—especially when so many groups maintain their ethnic pride?
As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic put it in his piece reacting to Vance’s argument, “If America is a creedal nation, then anyone can be an American. But if real Americans are those who share a specific history, then some of us are more American than others.” See this as well, but also, on Vance’s side, this.
I am certainly not suggesting that each person reads through and reflects daily upon the Declaration of Independence. Rather, it’s the only universal principle transcending particular national and ethnic identities.
Specifically, the Declaration makes the United States, in political-theory terms, an essentially liberal nation. The central principle of the liberal tradition is that there is a universal, common human nature; everyone “under the skin” is essentially the same.
Both the conservative and the radical traditions in political theory deny this idea of a universal human nature. For the former, either race or class—defined as royalty, aristocracy, and commoners, all unchangeable—is the core determining element. For the latter, that element is race, gender, or (economic) class; different races, different classes, or different sexes are essentially and existentially different.
Yet the Declaration states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This says “all men”—not citizens or subjects of a particular nation with a set of common, shared experiences.
So, at best, perhaps the core of Vance’s “set of common, shared experiences over an indeterminate length of time” is itself our national commitment to the principles of the Declaration as establishing what it means to be American. (Heck, if you remember the musical group the Fifth Dimension, they even sang the words of the Declaration.)
Without it, July 4 wouldn’t be July 4. This year, at least, it would just be a Friday.
Thanks Dennis! Great observations.
Many thanks, Barry.