Isn the American identity defined by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Americans ideals — the ideals summed up in such famous phrases as “all men are created equal” and “liberty and justice for all” — have often had a problematic relation to American reality. It is true that the American system of government was founded on such ideals; but it is false to say that America is nothing but its system of government. Our Founding Fathers did not create something out of nothing. They created the Union, but they did not create its constituent states, nor their common language, customs, institutions, and law, nor the generations of history predating their own. America is a nation, and any nation, whatever its weaknesses, is something stronger and more solid than any “proposition.” The American identity is defined by the British colonists who founded this country: white in race, Anglo-Saxon in culture, and Protestant in religion. It was also marked by a certain amount of inherited class-stratification, which was effaced, sooner or later, in the Revolution and its
