Re:The Collapse of American Identity
by jollybean on Thursday July 01, 2021 @09:18AM
(#27698753)
This is your ideological, moral perspective, which is frankly kind of a distortion of the historical reality of those aspirations.
But the 'American identity' is something more objective, i.e. what Americans and others thought of themselves over time. Obviously we can debate a lot about how to interpret reality and history, the point being 'what it is' is a matter of record, not a matter of 'what you think it ought to be'.
No doubt that 'classical liberal' ethos (as you hint at) is part of it, and that the US is quite different than other countries in that way ... but in the end I think culture, language, customs and institutions are the primary artifacts of everything, just as in other places.
If you were to take the 'classical liberal ethos' and overlay it into a different colonialist situation, with a different cultural foundation - that nation would look completely different.
But the 'American identity' is something more objective, i.e. what Americans and others thought of themselves over time. Obviously we can debate a lot about how to interpret reality and history, the point being 'what it is' is a matter of record, not a matter of 'what you think it ought to be'.
No doubt that 'classical liberal' ethos (as you hint at) is part of it, and that the US is quite different than other countries in that way ... but in the end I think culture, language, customs and institutions are the primary artifacts of everything, just as in other places.
If you were to take the 'classical liberal ethos' and overlay it into a different colonialist situation, with a different cultural foundation - that nation would look completely different.