Nationhood: An American Activity

IF WE WERE to approach a passer-by in Paris, London, or Berlin and ask him the question: “What is a Frenchman (or an Englishman, or a German)?” we might not get a clever reply, or an accurate reply, or in Germany a short reply. What we would get, however, would be a reply. The speaker would know what the entity in question was—even if he could not always describe it in a convincing way. He would not be baffled by the question, nor confess that he had always wondered the same thing.

But if we are to believe the learned journals, magazines of opinion, op-ed pages, and television talk shows, the same question here would produce a puzzled and astonished response. Acres of print are spent agonizing over the question: “What is an American?” It is said by some to mean a legal resident or citizen of the United States; by others to mean a member of one of the many ethnic groups such as Italian-Americans. combining to form the U.S.; by others to signify an American national identity of an ethnic kind, similar to a French or British identity; and by perhaps the dominant opinion to mean someone who subscribes to the principles of the Declaration of Independence embodied in the Constitution.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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IF WE WERE to approach a passer-by in Paris, London, or Berlin and ask him the question: “What is a Frenchman (or an Englishman, or a German)?” we might not get a clever reply, or an accurate reply, or in Germany a short reply. What we would get, however, would be a reply. The speaker would know what the entity in question was—even if he could not always describe it in a convincing way. He would not be baffled by the question, nor confess that he had always wondered the same thing.

But if we are to believe the learned journals, magazines of opinion, op-ed pages, and television talk shows, the same question here would produce a puzzled and astonished response. Acres of print are spent agonizing over the question: “What is an American?” It is said by some to mean a legal resident or citizen of the United States; by others to mean a member of one of the many ethnic groups such as Italian-Americans. combining to form the U.S.; by others to signify an American national identity of an ethnic kind, similar to a French or British identity; and by perhaps the dominant opinion to mean someone who subscribes to the principles of the Declaration of Independence embodied in the Constitution.