Americans are arguing about national identity. Is our nation’s identity wrapped up in slavery as alleged by the 1619 Project? Or is the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, a testimony to the nation’s ideals of liberty and equality and the basis of American pride?
It’s a fundamental disagreement and one that echoes an older one from a few years ago. President Obama used to refer to so-called “untoward” aspects of American life as “not who we are.” Then came Trump voters who disagreed. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat captured this disagreement as one between views, the first being that America is “not-Anglo-Saxon, not-European; the prototypical American is not-white, not-male, not-heterosexual.” Trump supporters, by contrast, identified with “the Pilgrims and the Founders, with Lewis and Clark and Davy Crockett and Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
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