You Don't Need to Pass a Test to Be an American
If You Do, You Probably Aren't
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Vivek Ramaswamy, the Alzheimer drug scam artist1 and pro-H-1B Republican2 who is now running for governor of Ohio, decided to step on a rake and incur the wrath of Americans yet again.
He did so in a speech on February 25, saying, “We will require every high school senior in Ohio to pass the same civics test we require of every legal immigrant who becomes a naturalized citizen – because you can’t respect a country that you don’t know basic things about.”
This follows his much-derided comments about how American culture is rotten, which mainly boiled down to an anti-athletics, anti-social life claim that children need to stop having sleepovers with their friends and instead sit down for endless rounds of math tutoring.3
On one hand, he’s right. Americans know far too little about their country and have picked up an annoying habit of latching onto entitlement and welfare programs4 rather than trying to do something exceptional,5 or even productive.
So, that needs to be fixed. We need the America of McKinley,6 not the America of slothful Ayn Rand villains.
But that’s only on a surface level.In a much more real way, the way that matters, it is a ridiculous assertion.
Listen to the audio version of this article here:
George Washington was out in the fields and woods from a young age, not being berated by a Tiger Mom into his twenties. He took no multiple choice test that put him on the same level as some impoverished immigrant from Bengal or Bali, nor would he have stood for some recent immigrant berating him for thinking himself an American without passing a civics test geared toward immigrants. The same is true of every great American figure, from Andrew Jackson to George Patton; they were Americans not because they took some test or did their math homework, but because they were clearly part of the American people and culture.
And, of course, they, along with all Americans of their day, would have found it absurd to suggest that those whose blood stretches back to the War Between the States, if not the Revolution, or even the Mayflower or Jamestown, need to pass a civics test to be considered “as American” as those who just landed on these shores.
Were America just an idea, perhaps Vivek would be right. He could do his homework, scribble the right sentences, and get an A+ in his “What is America?” class. That appears to be what he wants, as some funny tweets have pointed out.7
But the thing is, America isn’t just an idea. It is a home. It is a people. It is a culture. It is something distinct that is our land.
As Vice President Vance put it, deriding the idea that America is a mere idea:
One of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas like the rule of law and religious liberty -- things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation.
But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is in short, a nation. Now it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That's the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 past to, hopefully, 250 years in the future.
Continuing, he described his familial cemetery and said:
Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country, who've built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.
Now that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principles, even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland.
People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their homes. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.
One of my favorite young conservatives on X, Nate Hochman, made a similar point, noting, “‘Ideas’ didn’t settle a continent, conquer a frontier, raise a civilization from the wilderness, or put a man on the moon. Americans did. There is something unique and distinctive about this people, in this nation—and reducing America to a set of ‘principles’ robs it from us.”8
In other words, America is not just an idea. It is not a “land of immigrants.” It is, rather, our home because our ancestors settled a vast, untamed continent and made it their home. Admittedly, not unlike the Boer identity of South Africa, that culture was a polyglot one created by the various ethnic groups and cultures who settled our continent. Particularly, our home’s culture is one that was built by the Cavalier and Puritan Anglo-Saxons, the fiery Scots-Irish, the impoverished Irish, and the stolid German peasants. All of whom contributed to what is classically regarded as American culture.9
Hence why there’s a sense of Anglo traditions (bird hunting, horse racing, etc.) as being “classy,” but also a deep scepticism of England. It’s why we, as a people, are devoted to ordered liberty, but have also long been comfortable with state police powers being used to crush activity seen as anti-social. It’s why we’re individualistic, but also yearn for a sense of community and camaraderie. It’s why we’re firmly republican, disliking monarchy, but also distrust democracy and have long been led by wealthy gentlemen and country squires. All those traditions and the culture they created are informed by what it took to conquer this vast wilderness and what the people who did so brought with them.
By the time of the War Between the States in 1861, that culture had largely set. The first rounds of Western expansion had occurred, the yeoman farm and industry-focused North had clashed with the estate agrarian South10 and created a unique blend of beliefs and institutions, and the grand scale of our continent-sized country had forced the European traditions we brought with us to adapt, becoming something new and distinctly “American” in the process.
Later immigrants, principally Southern and Eastern Europeans, were eventually able to assimilate into American culture and become Americans. But they were expected to assimilate into that American culture, which, again, was largely in existence by the mid-1800s. That culture was real, created by the groups and conditions that made this country, and was no wilting flower that disappeared in the face of even the heavy immigration of the Gilded Age.
That is what Vivek misses.
Yes, knowing who the 18th president was (Ulysses Grant) or who brought cannons to Washington outside of Boston (Henry Knox) is the sort of historical information Americans ought to know. But rote memorization of the sort Vivek champions, multiplication tables and historical details, is the action of an idiot savant, not an American.
For example, it’s doubtful that the men defending Cemetery Hill or charging up that hellish patch of land could tell you the random details Vivek thinks knowledge of qualifies one as an American. Idiot savant-like recall of random details isn’t something for which the hardy Americans of the mid-nineteenth century were necessarily known. However, those brave boys in blue and grey were surely Americans. They were bred here, born here, and grew up in a firmly American culture that had fused together various elements of Old World cultures and turned them into something new in a New World. Much like the Boers were something new forged by the South African veldt and their polyglot bloodline, Americans had become something so different from Europe it was discernable.
So, had you told them that nothing makes an American other than an “idea” (and an idea with which they likely would have disagreed strongly, at that), they would have thought you absurd. Had you then told them that because America is a mere idea, they have to allow their families, lives, and jobs to be replaced by a billion pagans who believe in different gods, have a different culture, and have no intention of assimilating, they probably would have beaten, caned, stabbed, or shot you.
They, actual Americans as they were, knew that America is more than an idea, that there was something real and tangible that existed here and made America their home rather than whatever European state they originally came from. Further, they generally disliked immigration by the time of the war and thought that if anyone was allowed in at all, those who came here must assimilate if they were to become Americans rather than mere foreign nationals here for work.
Though there were issues, particularly with the impoverished Chinese and Japanese laborers in the American West, that largely worked. In fact, it worked well into the twentieth century. Helpful was the effective moratorium on immigration that came in the years before the Depression11 and, after the assassination of President McKinley at the hands of an immigrant, the willingness of authorities to deport immigrants who didn’t assimilate and held radical beliefs (such as socialism and anarchism).12 With the rotten apples deported and few more coming over, the massive throng of humanity that arrived during the Gilded Age was able to learn what America was and assimilate into that culture, sometimes changing it at the margins with their cultural practices (though this was rare), and becoming Americans in the process.
But then came the egalitarian liberalism of the post-WWII period13 and, alongside it, the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965, which President Kennedy signed into law; this opened America to the Third World, and with it, multitudes who had no intention of assimilating landed on our shores.
Now, we have Sudanese officials in Maine’s government decrying the very idea of assimilation,14 Somali members of Congress saying they are here to represent Somalia,15 and Vivek saying American high schoolers need to pass a test to be considered Americans.
None of those involved really care about becoming Americans. They refuse to accept even the basic, sometimes superficial aspects of American culture, from Protestant Christianity at the most important level to bacon cheeseburgers at the superficial level. Such things conflict with their pre-American identities, and when there’s a conflict, they always choose the identity before the hyphen.
But some, like Vivek, don’t want to admit as much. Hence the attacks on American culture (do more math, don’t play team sports!), the attempts to frame young Americans as essentially immigrants who need to check the same boxes immigrants do, and the constant refrains that America is merely an idea.16
They are wrong, however. America is not an idea. It is a place, it is a people, it is a unique culture. All of that can, and has, changed a bit over time. We added on the Louisiana territory and the culture adapted as it was settled. The Irish and Italians were integrated, with the culture changing a bit as they were. But the essential aspects of it, from our deep attachment to ordered liberty to an inclination of individualism, didn’t change. That remained part of America, and those who became Americans assimilated to it. Those who wish to be Americans still must do so; math problems and historical knowledge don’t make an American.
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This can be seen in our national policy too:
Much of this is covered well in Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer, and American Nations by Collin Woodward
This is covered in The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America by James Huston
What makes Vivek unamerican is that he thinks a civics test and studying hard are what makes an american. Actually its closer to sleepovers, biking around suburbia with friends, and the football qb - prom queen idealization that makes you American. Thinking that the A+ and no social life is better than the A- with friends, having a fun childhood because “line go up more” is precisely what makes him not American. The more he studies, the better his grades, the bigger hole he digs.
Great article! Perfectly articulated what I've also been thinking, but had trouble articulating when I raise concerns about immigrants self-segregating.