To Be, and to Become, an American

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, January 22, 2026

 

On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, Vivek Ramaswamy offered up a definition of what it means to be an American. “Americanness,” he wrote in the New York Times, “isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry.” Rather, “you are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.”

 

As a strong advocate of the notion that America, in a meaningful sense, represents an idea, I found a lot to like in this explication. Nevertheless, I think that it’s missing a crucial word: “good.” What Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate now running for governor of Ohio, describes is a good American, an ideal American, an American as Americans are imagined in our founding documents. It is true, in my estimation, that to be a good American is to believe in the rule of law, and in freedom of conscience and expression, and in colorblind meritocracy, and in the Constitution, and in the American dream, and to swear exclusive allegiance to our nation. It is not true, however, that the Americans who do none of these things aren’t American. An American who opposes the First Amendment or wishes to implement a caste system or loathes the U.S. Constitution is a bad American, certainly. But he is still an American — with the same rights and status as everyone else. To adapt Ramaswamy’s rubric: At the fundamental level, Americanness isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your commitment to noble ideals.

 

Perhaps this sounds a touch pedantic? It shouldn’t. After all, the fact that, as a practical matter, Americans are permitted to believe anything — and, indeed, that they are able to vote in accordance with those beliefs — is precisely why it is so important for us to be careful in the selection, education, and assimilation of our immigrants. As an existing polity, we ought not aim simply to create new Americans; we ought to aim to create good new Americans. As one might expect, I have no time whatsoever for those who claim that there is such a thing as a “heritage American” — a citizen who, because he has more American-born ancestors than another citizen has, is a superior or “more real” form of citizen. But to reject that idea, as we should, is ineluctably to accept an alternative set of obligations. If the United States is, indeed, a creedal nation — and if its creed is identifiable and particular — then we must emphatically insist that all newcomers be well versed in that creed. The alternative to this — which involves the rejection of blood-and-soil claims and an indifference toward the national doctrine — is civilizational nihilism.

 

Which is to say that it is neither diversity nor homogeneity that is “our strength,” but assimilation. And assimilation necessitates judgment. On the test that the federal government requires would-be citizens to pass, there are correct answers to its questions — which, in turn, means that there are wrong ones. Among the questions are “What is the supreme law of the land?,” “What is the economic system in the United States?,” and “What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?” The acceptable answers are “the U.S. Constitution,” “capitalist economy” or “market economy,” and two among “freedom of expression,” “freedom of speech,” “freedom of assembly,” “freedom to petition the government,” “freedom of religion,” and “the right to bear arms.” Once a person has been admitted as a citizen, if he decides that he opposes all that, the government cannot do much about it legally. But the citizenry can do something about it — and it should. One cannot have a country based on an idea unless that idea is rigorously defended and its enemies vehemently opposed. There is nothing wrong with our concluding that Ilhan Omar is a bad American and that Craig Ferguson is a good American, or with our deciding that we would rather have more Craig Fergusons and fewer Ilhan Omars. To do so is not mean or McCarthyite; it is imperative to the survival of the project. An existing polity that does not pressure and cajole and make demands of the new arrivals is a polity that consents to have its way of life permanently altered.

 

None of this is new. Five years before the Constitution even went into effect, Thomas Jefferson was worrying aloud in Notes on the State of Virginia that an influx of outsiders could imperil the unique principles of the nascent republic. Acknowledging that there were many upsides to immigration, Jefferson asked nevertheless whether there might be any “inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners.” Acknowledging that “every species of government has its specific principles,” he suggested that “ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe.” And yet, he presumed, the country would soon be populated by “emigrants” from places with completely different political cultures, who would “bring with them the principles of the governments they leave.” Indeed, “it would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.” Short of such a miracle, “they will transmit to their children” their alternative ideas, and, “in proportion to their numbers,” put them into “legislation” via the political process.

 

Jefferson’s worries were only partly substantiated. Yet the risk he is describing here is self-evidently real. Mercifully, America has remained unique. But that uniqueness is not intrinsic to the soil; it is the product of blood, toil, tears, and sweat. On America’s 150th birthday, Calvin Coolidge remarked, “About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.” He submitted that “if all men are created equal, that is final”: “If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

 

Taken seriously, Coolidge’s construction suggests that the United States has no choice but to insist on the continuation of its fundamental ideals — which are not merely some ideals among many but the only ideals suitable to a free country. Naturally, these ideals cannot be maintained by our pivoting to an interest in “heritage Americans.” Neither can they be sustained by our taking an unholy interest in the immutable characteristics of each person, as if stupidly tallying up categories were some mysterious shortcut to national flourishing. Rather, our only path is to identify which traits undergird America, and then to adopt and enforce whatever rules are necessary to ensure that those traits are passed on to the future citizenry.

 

When doing so, we must avoid the sophistic conclusion that America’s principles themselves require us to be agnostic about the political assumptions of our immigrants. In essence, this approach holds that (1) America is a creedal nation, (2) one of our principles is toleration, and (3) it is therefore none of our business what newcomers to our society believe, providing that their behavior is not criminal.

 

As a description of how we ought to treat native-born Americans, this is satisfactory. It is regrettable, of course, but if a person who was born in Des Moines finds that she simply does not like the United States, or its people, or its system of government, or its economy, there is nothing much we can do about it other than, assuming her schooling had failed her, to propose reforms to the education system or to attempt to persuade her to participate more fully in the culture. But this attitude cannot apply to immigrants, because immigrants have in almost all cases chosen to move here and because it is morally unacceptable to choose to move to a new place and then immediately try to nudge it away from the ideals that made it compelling in the first instance. (It is true that refugees often did not choose to move here, but in my view, if you are a refugee and the United States took you in to save your life, you have no excuse for being anything other than ecstatically grateful every single day of your life.) An immigrant who does not like the United States should not be in the United States. An immigrant who does not like Americans should not become one. An immigrant who does not favor the Constitution should not be accorded a vote within its protections. An immigrant who wishes to socialize the economy to his benefit should be rejected as an unwanted drag. Right up until the point at which an immigrant becomes an American, it is the prerogative of his hosts to evaluate whether he fits in. Immigration, among other things, is an audition.

 

In making his case, Vivek Ramaswamy quoted Ronald Reagan, who once said: “You can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. . . . But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.” This line often provokes grumbles from figures who insist that, pace Reagan, it is entirely possible to move to France and become a Frenchman, or to England and become an Englishman, or to Australia and become an Australian. Those grumblers are half correct: One can, indeed, emigrate to those places and obtain citizenship, but it is not the same as becoming an American, which for 250 years has implied something far more magical, more expansive, and more aspirational than exists anywhere else. America, as Fitzgerald put it, has “about it still that quality of the idea.” It’s an idea that can continue to inspire devotion indefinitely, if the people responsible for its conservation have the confidence to keep their standards high.