America: People, Principles, Place

What does it mean to be an American? How do we define America? Some say it’s an idea. Others say a place. Still more say a people.

In truth, America encompasses all these components. Each plays its unique part, but they also reinforce one another, forming an organic and indivisible whole.

An analogy from James Madison illustrates this understanding. In The Federalist Papers, our fourth president articulates his theory of separation of powers and checks and balances: Although the branches of government have their unique responsibilities, each branch holds a piece of another. For example, the president can intercede in the legislative process by vetoing a bill passed by Congress. This dynamic interaction ensures that all act with fidelity and binds the whole.

Something similar is true of people, principles, and place. They individually contribute to America’s meaning, a piece of each is present in the others, and they cohere to become our country.

People

While America was founded as a constitutional republic in the crucial years between 1776 and 1787, “We the People” had a concrete existence prior to those years. Americans already had a long experience of self-government at the local level in colonial legislatures, as well as the rule of law as manifested in common law.

The original colonists had the advantage of similar customs and religious practices and a shared language. About 70 to 80 percent attended church regularly. As John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 2, the colonists were:

“A people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.” Jay continued, “by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war,” they “nobly established general liberty and independence.” Shared history and sacrifice bound early Americans together.

The American national character developed through civic friendship and living a life in common. As John Quincy Adams articulated, the “sympathies of men begin with the relations of domestic life.” Those sympathies spread outwards, forming a complex of charities that bind the American people:

They are rooted in the natural relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister; thence they spread through the social and moral propinquities of neighbor and friend, to the broader and more complicated relations of countryman and fellow citizens.

Civic associations are the primary facilitators of civic friendship. Involvement in community and uniting with neighbors to resolve shared problems establishes unity, goodwill, and trust.

In 1783, George Washington laid out his plan for the ongoing formation of the American people. He identified four pillars, the last of which was the “prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the people of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and, in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the community.”

Washington’s second pillar was a “sacred regard to public Justice.” The other two are a federal union and the adoption of a peace establishment. Together, the four pillars form the fabric of independence and the American national character. The basis of them, Washington argues, is “Liberty.”

Thus the concept that unites American citizens are the principles of self-government. Washington understood “principles” and “people” as inseparable.

Principles

As the distinguished scholar of the Founding Dr. William B. Allen writes, regimes are guided by “a shared view of justice that makes a people a people. This was a very old idea, one expressed by Plato, and Aristotle, and Cicero, and Aquinas, and even Jefferson.”

The principles of the Declaration of Independence reflect “the America mind,” the consensus of the American people. The Declaration harmonized “Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney” and other sources, as the Founding generation drew on natural law, ancient philosophy, Christianity, English common law, and the Scottish Enlightenment.

The soul of America is animated by republicanism. As articulated by Abraham Lincoln, the “central idea” is that “all men are created equal,” that no person has been born to rule over others absent their consent.

This does not mean human beings are the same in all respects. Moral and civic equality is not doctrinaire egalitarianism or a desire to level all human distinctions. As John Adams explained, “The Equality of Nature is a moral Equality only: an Equality of Rights and Obligations; nothing more. The Physical Inequalities among Men in a State of Nature are infinite.”

The Founding generation not only recognized the inalienable rights of mankind granted by “nature and nature’s God,” but the requisite duties of respecting the rights of fellow citizens.

By nature, human beings are social creatures. As Cicero wrote, “the power of reason associates man with man in the common bonds of speech and life…prompts men to meet in companies, to form public assemblies and to take part in them themselves.” Such understandings call us to live in accord with one another, unite as a people, and attend to the common good.

These principles have implications for society, but also for government. Only a government based on the informed consent of the sovereign people is compatible with the precepts and mission of establishing a self-governing nation.

As James Madison wrote, “no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the revolution; or with that honorable Determination, which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.”

In its full signification, self-government also means that individuals literally govern themselves, with reason directing passion rather than the opposite. Thus through mechanisms like voting and representation, self-governed people rule America’s institutions.

Place

Ever since the Founding, the physical territory of America has made the experiment in self-government possible. The abundance of land meant that most citizens could have a tangible stake in their country. Private ownership of property reflects and reinforces the principle of sovereignty of the people.

Madison’s solution to the problem of faction also relies on America’s extended territory. As long as freedom exists, groups whose interests are opposed to the common good will always emerge. In a large country, those factions will be numerous. It will thus be difficult for any one of them to gain a legislative majority. To do so, any interest would have to persuade most citizens. This obstacle makes it more likely that justice will prevail and encourages deliberation, as particular interests must negotiate toward policies that serve citizens more generally: a practice central to America and the American character.

In addition, simple physicality matters. Attachment to a place is often instinctive and powerful. We human beings love our home as our own, delight in its irreplaceable beauties, and find comfort in our particular civic and familial ways.

That impulse itself is not unique to Americans. Alexis de Tocqueville, however, did observe that “there is nothing more annoying in the habits of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans.”

Americans will tolerate no criticisms of our homeland, “except perhaps” when it comes to “the climate and the soil.” And “still, one finds Americans ready to defend both as if they have helped to form them.” 

In a sense, we did form them. And they formed us.

At one point, the American territory was untamed and unknown to the American people. But the harsh conditions of the frontier developed the spirited, informal, and resilient habits that still describe the American people today.

Our civilization was built by generation upon generation. What “constitutes” the American people underlies the written constitution; that givenness provides stability and continuity.

The physical world around us is a tangible reminder of the contributions of past Americans. We have buildings, roads, cities, national parks, battlefields, and monuments. These things form the place we call home.

Our free institutions are a result of collective effort, mold our character, and make our liberty possible. Through knowledge of this, instinctive patriotism develops into reflective patriotism.

Caring for the land has connected the American people across generations, forming ties of gratitude for an unearned gift. As James Madison wrote, “the improvements made by the dead form a debt against the living who take the benefit of them. This debt cannot be otherwise discharged than by a proportionate obedience to the will of the Authors of the improvements.”

Through the taming of our heartland and the preservation of natural beauties, Americans become stewards. We own the land and have obligations to it and to our forefathers. Of course, the weightiest debt upon the living is to those individuals and family members who consecrated the ground by giving up the last measure of their devotion.

This debt is something that ties one generation of Americans to another, cohering contemporaries, ancestors, and posterity as a single people. The “place” makes possible the “principles” and forms the “people” across time.

Conclusion

People, principles, and place cannot be cleanly separated. While each contributes in its own way, they combine as an organic, inseparable, and reciprocal whole to form what we call America.

There is no better time than America’s 250th year to recommit ourselves to the cause of self-government and what it means to be an American. It is an eternal experiment, an exceptional place, and a particular people. May the next 250 years be as dynamic andcohesive as our first.