Jill Lepore is one of our leading American historians domiciled at Harvard University. In this slim volume she distinguishes what we may call liberal nationalism over illiberal nationalism: a positive reading of our history. Both kinds of nationalism can be found in American history.
Illiberalism arose after the Civil War with the failure of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and restriction on immigration. The current controversy over immigration is nothing new in our history. We can cite liberal nationalistic impulses in our history short of globalism with our founding idealism and the furthering of our democracy and economic opportunity.
"Nations are made up of people but held together by history, like wattle and daub or lath and plaster or bricks and mortar. For a generation, American history has been coming undone and the nation has been coming apart, the daub cracking, the plaster buckling, the mortar crumbling. This tragedy was foreseen." P. 15
Maybe I should the Degler book she likes to talk about. P. 15-16
I didn't realize that studying the nation fell out of favor. P. 19
Nationalism is the same as patriotism. P. 23
Nationalism is a by-product of the nation-state. P. 26
"The United States began not as a nation but as a confederation of thirteen states and, before as thirteen colonies. The land had for tens of thousands of years been inhabited by people from Asia. It had then been seized, conquered, and settled by people from Europe who brought with them people from Africa, held in bondage. The thirteen colonies had established had little in common, so that in 1775 John Adams remarked that they differed almost 'as much as several distinct Nations.' The devising of an American 'nation' out of that past if pushing a cart uphill. P. 28
The Declaration of Independence never defined a nation; it involved not national but universal ideas. P. 29
"The American Revolution was an extraordinary turning point in the history of the world, a new beginning. But it had little to do with the idea of an American nation." P. 29
Long after the revolution and even today many people continue to view the US not as a country but as a confederation of states. P. 29
The United States ARE, not IS. P. 29-30
The Constitution never called us a "nation." Hamilton, Madison, Jay and others called themselves Federalists even though they were nationalists. They were proposing to replace a federal government with a national government. Calling themselves themselves "Federalists" was a stroke of genius for it made their opponents call themselves "Anti-federalists." P. 30
Should the convention have given the slave states disproportionate influence to guarantee a national government?
We should always remember that ratification of the Constitution was a closely fought battle, and it could have gone the other way.
A state before a nation. P. 33
States rights talk was a cover in the 19th Century to avoid talking about the conquest of lands held for centuries by indigenous peoples and the existence of people in this country originally brought to our shores against their wills, denied every possible protection given to European white settlers, held as property, until a bloody Civil War finally led to changes. P. 35
In Common Sense Thomas Paine called America "an asylum." No more. P. 37
We were once considered a pluralist and cosmopolitan country in the 19th Century. No more. P. 38-39
Indian removal WAS protested by many in the 19th Century. P. 53
The case for the nation in the 21st Century is liberal and universal. P. 54
The Civil War was a struggle between two nationalisms. P. 57
"Ours is the Government of the white man," South Carolina's John C. Calhoun declared in 1848, arguing against admitting as citizens by the people of Mexico, people he did not consider to be white." P. 58
We continue in 2019 with the two nationalisms battling to the death.
The US is composed of a composite people - Frederick Douglass P. 67
Emancipation and Reconstruction was the world's finest effort at democracy said W.E.B. DuBois. P. 68
"What is a nation?" Ernest Renan, 1882 P. 73
Progressive historians like Charles Beard explained history as a matter of economic conflict. P. 82
T. Roosevelt called for a "New Nationalism." Both liberal and illiberal. P. 84-85
The 1924 immigration act placed restrictions on immigration. P. 88
Carl Degler's book, the best of the 20th Century historians, took it all in. P. 114
"If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans; Polacks are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. As long and you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet." Malcolm X, 1964 P. 115-116
I need to find out more about the immigration act of 1965. P. 117
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