Two essays on being an American. Read it you teary-eyed foreigners

Will Griffin-CTI 409 Immigration Essay 3 Cultural Pluralism and the American Identity I am sure of two things. I want freedom, and I am not alone. This is a limited understanding of the world. I do not know much else. I think there is a God, but I don’t know. All other “good American” values and systems spring from this foundational consciousness. The positive identity claims of what America is by the civic nationalist are not rooted in the bedrock of American consciousness. The blank slate is what the roots of this blossoming nation have wrapped around. It is what anchors the nation against heavy winds and what will allow us to stand firm until the flood water recedes, absorb, and grow. The liberal pluralist is a more persuasive view to apply to the issue of the American identity simply because it makes fewer claims. I intend to argue this through the arguments and assumptions of the civic nationalist. I hold the American identity, or lack thereof, as a moral proposition representing the overwhelming importance of the national project. I will weigh this against the civic nationalists who justify their proposed identities through the paradigm of a policy maker. At the end I will address this paradigm. While describing the overall liberal worldview encompassing both the civic nationalist and the liberal pluralist, I have you down as saying, “Liberals do not believe that all people can be good.” I’m not sure precisely what you meant, so to address this, I think this means the liberal does not believe that all people will be good and do good in a world in which their needs and wants are not met, an imperfect world. No excuses, just a reflection of human nature. There is pretty good data to support that over time the world has improved and removed some worldly barriers or distractions to goodness. My notions of justice and the evaluation of the moral health of this nation are complicated by the liberal beliefs that in general, the impoverished have less time for justice, and that the famished do not have time for a good life. Other key assumptions about identity that the civic nationalist and liberal pluralist share are that identity is constructed, that individuals may shift, and that individuals might identify with multiple groups. According to Walzer, in practice, pluralism allows people to remember who they were and define who they are, whatever mess of identification that may entail. Pluralism does not make the truth claims that the civic nationalist makes. It is designed for practical maintenance and balancing of freedom and coexistence. Its inspiration and intent is to legitimate and perpetuate manyness. This means some individuals will lack cultural identity, or will be “anonymous.” And as part of the design, there is an expectation that people who choose America and choose the option of manyness will be one, or united. This is a strange concept, but for the pluralist it is the best concept. The good and true path can be found in incoherence and paradox. Our identity is a lack of identity. America is unfinished, it always has been, and it is a distinctive feature of this modern nation that we don’t feel the need to be finished. People can question themselves while they defend themselves. A singular positive claim on our identity is not un-American, but it is dangerous and we ought to be satisfied by its absence. We are simply association of free individuals who have a working but malleable framework that provides for our coexistence. We can be as much or as little as we desire. The fundamental conflict between civic nationalism and liberal pluralism when applied to the American identity is that the civic nationalist will in one way or another attempt to define and defend the value of a national identity in terms of positive claims. The liberal pluralist does not value or desire a national identity. So in short, other than descriptively, we are not Christian, anglo or anything else they might throw out there. The benefit of the way I will defend the liberal position is that I do not have to put a lot of effort into constructing or revealing what the American identity is, and therefore have less to defend. I am not going to put much effort into defending it as a policy. I will mostly rebut the claims of the civic nationalist and others, because my claim is that the American identity is a negative rather than positive. It is the maintenance and recognition of the tabula rasa. It is a respect for anonymity. It has a disdain for positive truth claims and does not act or believe in anything too seriously because we reject authority. This makes us a group, a group interested in making sure that our cup is never full. That’s why we work so hard to refill it, because we poked holes in the bottom of the cup. It is an expression of humility inherent in freedom. Freedom aims to create a void. It consumes identities and the idea of identity. The civic nationalist’s argument is incomplete at the most fundamental level. American identity as the civic nationalist and the pluralist describe it is being challenged by other national identities, sub-national identities, and transnational identities(Huntington I). As a pluralist, I would group these three and simply say that the American identity is being challenged for better or worse, by identities, and that the civic nationalist concept of American identity is being challenged by a fourth and overwhelming motivation—the desire not to have to over-identify. I generally agree with Huntington’s historical account of America and his description of our central values. But for some reason, he pays little attention to what he identifies as the original notion that drew people to our shores: that America was tab rasa (Huntington III). I don’t think he treats it as a component of the American identity, and also strangely leaves out freedom as an official value, because he would agree that it is anti-identity. The decline of American power and identity correlates with the expansion of freedom. Groups die when the goal is achieved, and freedom is spreading. Only honest and uncoerced assimilation spreads the American values of the time to others. The previous holders of those values lose importance. American style freedom, which we can trace back to a number of sources, is the best method thus far of achieving progress and it will only be sustained by appropriate adaptation. Tab rasa is at the core of Protestantism and individualism. This is a nation that can still be settled. At the core of the Protestantism, the Christianity without Christ that describes this nation, is not where we came from, or what we have become, but that we had the courage and God given right to move (Huntington V). An immigrant can be a settler. I agree with the distinction between immigrant and settler (Huntington III). I agree with the pluralist, it is essential that we remain a place that may be settled (Walzer’s articulation, negotiation, and incorporation). The frontier is an idea, not just a bunch of geo-historical lines. The limits of the mind seem infinite, so identification with ideas ought to also have low salience. Huntington, the civic nationalist says that we have to know who we are before we know our interests. We should fear static notions of what America is and should be. This strikes at the core of the divide between the civic nationalist and the pluralist. The pluralist, supporting the flourishing of manyness begins by recognizing the interest not to be identified, but to be free to identify with. This means we must provide some protection for groups. How much is a practical issue. The civic nationalist ought to critique my moral paradigm. What is important is that we have this highly functional society that is safe, productive, provides for its people, etc. In practice, it is important to the maintenance and strength of the philosophical project I describe that we identify with, support, and require assimilation to what I have said are excess values attached to our identity. My response is two-fold. First, to what end? We ought to be considerate of functionality, strength, and prosperity. But at some point we need moral confidence. Second, pluralism is a practical solution. Many other notions of what it meant to be American have faded in history, yet we have continued to function well. I have highlighted Protestantism as something that traces its roots back to the same foundation as America, freedom, hence it survives, because it is a claim in the negative direction. I cannot say the same of the Anglo-claim on the American identity, or some other values. Huntington says the coming danger is that we will kill each other for who we are and not for what we do. Let us be less. Excess value on the American identity is dangerous and weakens the national project and the state. Making that part of our identity, much less emphasizing it has normative implications that will burden, tire, and distract America. And the argument is self-defeating. The separation of church and state facilitated the flourishing of religion. I would argue that traditions, or languages, laws, and values that are worth having will survive in a free market of ideas. Identity crisis is a welcome outcome of prosperity and freedom. In the face of a shared society, multiculturalism, and a wave of immigrants, America should not entrench itself in historical or contemporary notions American identity as advocated by civic nationalists. Let Americans hear the argument. But keep the slate officially clean because we reject authority and at our core, it is freedom that we will die for.