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This world. 14th Amendment, baby. You don’t get to pick one line from the Constitution and ignore the rest. Citizenship is more than a paper guest pass.
You can’t help but equivocate between counting ancestors and “character of the nation” bullshit. I think you’re just parroting any excuse you can find. There is no coherent threshold that keeps the people you like in America while driving out the nasty foreigners.
Maybe you’re far enough up your own ass to have your own Ariernachweis going back to 1788. Which of the 28,000 voters was your meal ticket? Who secured the blessing of liberty for you?
American culture is awesome. I don’t think you deserve it.
Why not? Everyone else does, and whatever objections you and I might muster have clearly failed.
To be clear, I do not endorse the assessment described above. I do not believe that "American" is a boundary that can be effectively drawn on racial or ethnic lines. Unfortunately, that agreement is downstream from my assessment that "American" is not a boundary that can be effectively drawn at all.
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Care to take a stab at defining it?
Sure. I wasn’t fully satisfied with my ramblings during the user viewpoint post, anyway.
Tl;dr The American ethos is classical-liberal individualism by way of the marketplace of ideas. Everyone has certain rights, and if you play along with America’s rules, we’ll enforce them for you. And you should want to play along.
Points 1-2 incentivize cooperation over defection. Point 3 hedges against some of the worst outcomes for subcultures, again incentivizing cooperation. Point 4 is just business, and Point 5 keeps the whole thing running.
Adopting point 2 is probably the hardest part, and it’s one that plenty of other states have fumbled. We really had to believe that there were other people deserving of those rights. Even then, we almost lost it all due to the economic incentives of denying those rights to some people.
I’m willing to believe that our start was only possible due to the combination of British law, Protestant religion, and our particular economic situation. But once the engine was going, we were able to stabilize and adapt when other cultures were collapsing. We handled the development of nationalism better than basically all of Europe. We won the Cold War right as we reassured ourselves of point 5. Our culture works, and I expect it will continue to work.
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I'm not him, and culture is of course very slippery to define. But I'd like to try. (I'm also American, but I've lived abroad enough to see clear differences)
Language: Most of us speak English, but with a sizable minority who speak Spanish. There are isolated areas where people speak other languages, but there's usually strong pressure for the kids there to learn English, and most of us never make much effort to learn a second language other than English.
Geography: the US is a very large country, with people spread out all over it, and our cities are also fairly low density. This leads to a lot of detached single-family homes, car ownership, and driving. I'd say it also contributes to a culture that's fairly closed off, with most people only sharing their real feelings and thoughts with the people physically in their home.
Religion: Used to be overwhelmingly Christian, but that's changing rapidly. Still lots of cultural traditions inherited from Christianity though, like the Christmas holiday season and most businesses closed on Sundays. Most people are fairly accepting of others' religious beliefs, as long as it doesn't require us to actually do anything.
Fashion: Very casual. Most people wear something like jeans and t-shirts, or sportswear, almost everywhere. Exception: politicians, lawyers, and fancy offices still wear the traditional suit-and-tie. It's rare for people to dress in formalwear or any sort of traditional ethnic clothes. People also speak in a casual manner to almost everyone.
Food: Large portions of meat, cheese, salt, and sugar, with fairly simple presentations. Lots of soda and coffee, moderate alcohol. Smoking is increasingly rare. Not a lot of vegetables, and they're most often served raw in a side salad. Tap water is safe to drink, although many people buy a filter or bottled water anyway. Most people have a kitchen with a large oven that can bake pretty large sizes, so it's easy to prepare, say, an entire turkey at Thanksgiving. Not common to eat routinely eat street food or at communial dining places. Drive through fast food very common though. Obesity is quite common.
Politics: People tend to be pretty blunt and outspoken, and are happy to tell you their thoughts on whatever is in the news lately without much filter. They have a strong sense of "law and order", and are shocked when people don't follow the law. But also a lot of cynicism about governmeng in general, especially Congress, so they don't expect to be able to have much personal interaction with government. Liberals often like to do public protests, but this is mostly performative, not a serious attempt to topple the government.
Economy: Highly capitalistic culture. People trust the currency, and don't worry too much about things like counterfeiting or fraud in their normal life. "High inflation" means like 5%. There's a lot of talk about things like side hustles, startups, and the stock market. Almost everything is bought through market transactions. It's considered quite unusual for someone to go hitchhiking, couchsurfing, home farming, homemade clothes, etc- much easier to just get a job and then pay for all that stuff with money. People expect that infrastucture like water, power, sewage, etc will generally work but occasionally have issues.
Recreation: Traditionally centered around watching TV at home, now more often digital. Children do a lot of sports and hobby clubs, but those are increasingly rare for adults. Lots of time spent watching and talking about the "big 3" sports of American football, basketball, and baseball, plus smaller amounts for other sports, but not many people do them in real life. Media shows a lot of violence, some swearing, but sexuality makes people uncomfortable. Lots of self-deprecating humor about the faults of America.
What do you think of this list? Obviously a lot of generalities and exceptions here, but I think it works pretty well overall.
Ha. We went in completely different directions with our answers, but yeah, I’d endorse this one.
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Was about to get a little chuffy on this one, being in the South and the "bless your heart" cliche coming to mind, before I caught it was under politics. And that point I was thinking of is under your 'Geography,' good catch on the closed-off-ness.
Yeah, I think this is a great broad-strokes; really, a lot more detail than I expected anyone to reply with! Thank you kindly.
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I think this is a pretty good effort at defining "American culture", and do not believe that I could do better.
Suppose you are confronted by an angry and possibly violent mob of Americans. Which of these features you have listed would you appeal to in attempting to talk them down and convincing them to disperse? That is to say, which of these features provide serious, reliable traction on an interpersonal level?
Talking down angry mobs is something notable leaders have needed to do many times throughout history, and generally "culture" is what has allowed them to do it. Do you believe you are describing that sort of culture above?
I don’t believe any nation could quell revolt by appealing to food and fashion. Not without some clever metaphors!
You’re looking for something more civic-minded. Something like Washington’s Newburgh address. What an absolute legend.
Thing is, that’s not a speech to a mob. Rioters aren’t usually good listeners. Do you have any examples in mind?
The specific speech that brought the question to mind was Alexander's purported speech to his mutinous army at Opis. A neat parallel to your own choice, it seems.
I feel both these examples are quite distant, and that I have seen and heard many examples of leaders or prominent men being noted for addressing hostile audiences in circumstances of significant danger, and nonetheless persuading the audience by their appeal. Unfortunately, I can't recall them; as with our two examples here, it would be interesting to see what elements of shared culture people appeal to under duress, and assess whether those elements are meaningfully shared under current conditions.
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Most of the time we just do nothing. Let them rant, they'll eventually get tired and go home. Trying to "talk them down" usualy just makes them madder, and if they're angry enough to do violence then it's kinda too late for talking. If it's a big mob then the police will show up, and maybe start arresting people if it really gets out of hand. But I think we've seen this week how that can easily go wrong.
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Aren't you a mod?
Leave the backseat moderation to heritage mottizens.
Amusingly, @LykovFamilyBand joined the Motte the same month you did. (S)he just has 4 comments to your 4700.
I'm not sure it really fit, but I couldn't resist the joke.
Of course. I was just amused by the massive discrepancy in posting - I originally assumed it was a new account.
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I mean, can you even be considered true aristocracy if you weren't around in the /r/SlateStarCodex culture war thread days?
Depends on the family. Does his wife's father have any AAQCs? What about his paternal cousins?
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The list of moderators
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If there are no specific thresholds or expectations attached, then it may not be a paper guest pass, but it's certainly just a paper something. A renewable subscription? A season ticket? A no-show job?
Frankly it's incoherent for you to do all this harrumphing about how precious and sacred citizenship is, and how gauche and un-American it is to question the quality of someone else's citizenship, if you're going to then claim that it's perfectly fine and acceptable for someone to be culturally and socially alien while still retaining all the powers and privileges of American citizenship. If it's such a flimsy, ephemeral concept, no deeper than some words from a piece of paper somebody scribbled on a long time ago, why shouldn't it be subject to re-negotiation, attack, and even abnegation?
I did not make those claims. I don’t support illegal immigration, amnesty, opening the borders, any of that. Nor do I deny the expectations and responsibilities of citizenship. Immigrants should arrive and naturalize legally, then assimilate.
I rejected the claim that only “ourselves and our posterity” count as Americans, and I despise the idea that even “polite and law-abiding” “model” minorities are “an aberration which should be worked out.” It is gauche and unAmerican to cast legitimate, legal citizens as “guests”. Note that KMC did not argue that citizens who are socially alien were not Americans, but that minorities were inherently “not American, not native, and don’t belong here.”
Any serious definition of American citizenship must accommodate the 14th Amendment. Ignoring it in favor of one line from the preamble is chicanery.
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As leftists are so fond of saying, the Constitution is not a suicide pact
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The paper citizens are the problem. Reminding me they are citizens does not make them any more American, it just highlights the problem.
You have devalued US citizenship rather than transmogrifying foreigners into Americans.
You haven’t articulated at all why exactly where somebody’s grandparents grew up or what language they spoke has any connection whatsoever to how “American” that person is. In which chromosome is it recorded whether or not somebody’s great great grandfather was American?
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'Culture is downstream of genetic personality traits' is the missing element that ties these together. Not stupid stuff like eating rice vs. potatoes, but 'in-group vs out-group preference', 'openness to experience', 'sensitivity to impurity', 'tendency towards religious experiences', 'collectivism vs. contrarianism' etc.
I think this cuts both ways though. Cultural preferences will drive genetic personality traits.
It's a feedback loop, which if anything makes the effect more powerful. I think absent heavy coercion you will struggle to change it for immigrant populations, but the more important point is that even if you do, you are still dumping masses of new genes into the pool. The overall character of the pool will be changed no matter what you do.
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