There was a recent brouhaha in Congressional circles over a leaked proposal for a new Congressional caucus: The America First Caucus. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) were reportedly planning to launch the new group to unite members of Congress who wholeheartedly endorse the messaging and policies of the Trump administration and wish to carry the Trump brand of politics onward.
A rough draft of the caucus’s platform was leaked on April 16th by Punchbowl News (a newsletter based news outlet focused on Congress), with the 7 page document covering everything from election fraud to the Chinese Communist Party. The most explosive part of the document was to be found under the heading: “Immigration”. To quote the first paragraph:
“The America First Caucus recognizes that our country is more than a mass of consumers or a series of abstract ideas. America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions. History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country.“
The majority of readers heard in these words a distinct echo of past racist movements, loudly enough that many of the most Trumpy people in Congress, including Greene and Gosar themselves, moved quickly to claim that the document was a low-level proposal that had not been reviewed, much less approved. As I write, Rep. Greene’s office says the congresswoman has no plans to move forward with the new caucus.
(My intention here is not to pile on a woman who is probably stupid and gullible rather than evil and has spent the past few months embarrassing herself at every turn. But, I want to note that even if the honorable lady from Georgia is telling the truth about the document being a low-level proposal, she cannot get around the fact that the people writing it must have believed it was what she wanted to hear. )
The line most are focusing on is “Anglo-Saxon political traditions”, and I am concerned that the nativist elements of the right using such a term is going to discredit said tradition, just when we need it most, not because (as they seem to think) it can defend the purity of American culture, but because it is the only system that has proven to be flexible enough to allow a pluralistic society to thrive.
When the author of this caucus proposal wrote “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” I suspect he or she wasn’t giving much thought to what that actually means. So, since they didn’t define their terms, I will exercise the prerogative myself.
I begin by assuming they were thinking of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as part of that Anglo-Saxon tradition. Now, I would like to point out before we even get started that while the Constitution was written in English by former British subjects whose ancestors hailed from the island of Great Britain, the Founders didn’t just pull from the English tradition. Oh no. Consider that the principal of separation of powers seen in the split between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches was borrowed from a Frenchman, the Baron Montesquieu. The concept and name for the Senate came from the ancient Romans (that is to say, southern Europeans), and the idea that there is a higher law that establishes all people with certain rights can be traced to a shepherd turned emancipator who came down from Mount Sinai with 2 stone tablets for his Jewish brethren.
So, having acknowledged that America, even in 1788, was more than England 2.0, let’s consider the English system and show why one can and should be proud to live in a country governed by a variant of that system, regardless of your race or creed.
Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom doesn’t have a written constitution. What they do have is a millennium (give or take a few centuries) of experience living in a country that has needed to accommodate vast differences in worldview while still being a cohesive unit when needed (see Battle of Britain, 1941).
Shakespeare may have poetically referred to his native ground as a “fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war”, but the true history of England is much more complex and violent than that of a peaceful citadel. For much of recorded history, starting with Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire coming to town in 55 BC, the island has seen various invasions and battles for dominance, between peoples, cultures, religions, and ideas. And it is out of the centuries of wars and rumors of wars that the true “Anglo-Saxon” heritage of pluralism and government as a defender of rights and freedom was established so that it could be applied to America.
The “Anglo-Saxon” part may be a misnomer, as the major turning points in the development of the English system all came, after the Norman Conquest of 1066 which displaced the Anglo-Saxon leadership.
The first occurred in 1215 when English barons, infuriated with King John’s disregard for established legal norms, forced him to sign the famous Magna Charta or Great Charter, which was an early and limited attempt to define the rights of people in relation to government. This document played a major role in the minds of English legal philosophers before and during the American Revolution, and helped inspire the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. While it is true that the Magna Charta was written by a group of elites to protect their interests rather than being an idealistic proclamation of freedom for all, the precedent it set that the king’s power was not limitless would be essential to the future development both of the modern English constitutional monarchy and the American presidency.
The next can be found in the Reformation. Henry VIII infamously founded the Church of England in large part due to his battles with the Roman Catholic Church over his serial marriages. The mutual feud between Henry and the Pope created an opening for Protestants to set up their own state sponsored church to replace Catholicism. Unfortunately, church and state have never functioned well when merged, and the bloody seesaw between the two factions depending on which way the monarch went served as an example of what not to do.
Adding another log to the fire were the Puritans, who rejected both Catholicism and Anglicanism. Both of the established churches attempted to squash these dissenters, but they only grew more and more determined to make a home for themselves. And in a totalitarian system, the only way to have a place in the system is to control the system.
Hence came the English Civil War, where the Puritan Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, deposed and executed the Anglican King Charles I. In a foreshadowing of future revolutions, Cromwell made himself Lord Protector, which when one strips away the seventeenth century branding wizardry, was no more or less than Dictator for Life. The fact that after Cromwell’s death the people of England welcomed King Charles’s son back as King Charles II rather than continuing under the Puritan dictatorship should illustrate Cromwell’s popularity.
After the Restoration of King Charles II and continuing for the next century, the Brits took a few large leaps forward, learning from the mistakes of the past to begin developing a more free system, focused on making room for cultural differences rather than eradicating minority views. It was at this point that the Parliament began asserting itself as the defender of the people and the law against overreaching monarchs, much as the barons had done with the Magna Charta centuries prior.
Recognizing that attempting to crush out minorities tended to result in a never ending cycle of violent grabs for power, Great Britain started to become the free society we know today. It was a model for the rest of Europe of how civil liberties and a laissez-faire approach to matters of conscience and race would result in a more peaceful, trusting, and better society, and allowed for four distinct people groups (English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh) to live for the most part in harmony under one government.
And now after this far too quick overview of the development of the English way, we turn to the English colonies in North America that went on to become the United States. Many of the colonies were founded as an escape for a specific group of people. Massachusetts was of course founded by the dissenter Pilgrims, Rhode Island by Roger Williams, who dissented from the dissenters, and Maryland was founded as a haven for English Catholics.
A major breakthrough came from the Quaker William Penn, who had the idea to establish a colony in the New World which would hold as its primary value the freedom of thought and expression. Penn’s Woods (or Pennsylvania) would go on to become one of the most dynamic colonies due to the freedom people of every creed and race could find in Philadelphia and points west.
When the colonies became one group of United States, the pluralistic colony of Pennsylvania became the neutral ground for representatives from around the new nation to gather and hammer out the American system.
William Penn’s vision of a land free of prejudice and open to all, informed by his faith and the English experience of wars over religion and regional differences, is built into the American experience from the cornerstone of Independence Hall, to the tip of Lady Liberty’s torch greeting immigrants as they landed at Ellis Island, to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 proclamation naming Penn and his wife Hannah honorary American citizens (two of only eight people ever to be so honored).
Let’s return to the present day here in America. It is increasing clear that many people on both sides want a return to the all or nothing wars of the past, undoubtedly because they have no idea what that would really mean. “Burn it down” and “Punish our enemies” has already moved from mere slogans to actual actions and policy proposals. At such a time, we need to return to the traditions of the founding, call it the “Anglo-Saxon” tradition if you will. But attempting to use that tradition as a rallying cry for racism and nativism is not only going to turn people against traditional American values, it also demonstrates a lack of understanding of what that tradition really means.
What the America-First crowd really wants isn’t the “Anglo-Saxon tradition” of civil liberties and minority rights, it’s the European tradition of blood and soil nationalism. But blood and soil nationalism has never made sense here, because then you must ask: whose blood and whose soil?
And that gets complicated, because anyone whose family has been here long enough to make themselves feel like Real Americans is a mutt. We’re all descended from a mix of nationalities, ethnicities, and even races. So who is to say that I, a German/English/Swiss/Scottish (and 5% Norwegian, per Ancestry DNA)-American is a Real American, but a Mexican or Pakistani can’t be?
And nationalism based on soil doesn’t make much sense either, since I don’t see the nationalists giving the soil back to the Cherokee, Sioux and Navajo.
The America First caucus proposal gets it exactly backwards. America is indeed an idea and a set of values. E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One. And what erodes societal trust and political unity isn’t immigration, it’s the fear that someone you don’t agree with may try to use the government to force you to agree with him.
So I repeat. The real American tradition is this: for over 200 years, there has been one place to go for anyone who desires a better and more free life. And out of that melting pot has come one proud nation of people, who don’t all agree, who don’t all look the same, don’t all worship the same, don’t always even like each other very much.
But we should be able to agree on one thing.
We are all Americans.
And if a Pakistani, Korean, Mexican, Colombian, or any other -an wants to come to America to find a better life, then come on in.
Just like our ancestors did. They became Americans, and so will the new folks.
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