Friday, August 15, 2025

American Nation based on Genetic Identity

John Jay wrote the 1787 Federalist No. 2:
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- 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, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.

He did not know about genes, but he is essentially saying that Americans have a common genetic identity, and that our constitutional government is naturally suited for that identity. Wikipedia comments:
Since its publication, the conception of nationality presented in Federalist No. 2 has been a persistent issue in American politics. It relates directly to debates of naturalization and multiculturalism, and it was most directly challenged by the American Civil War that contradicted Jay's conception of unity. ...

Federalist No. 2 established the main idea of the Federalist Papers that Americans were a national community with a common interest that necessitated unity.[18] This idea was a direct response to one of the main ideas of the Anti-Federalist Papers, which argued that Americans were too different from one another to form a single nation.

Those differences were minute compared to what is found in immigrants today.

I guess Wikipedia is saying that the nation was wreck in the Civil War by a sub-population outside the main genetic identity.

The lesson here is that the US Constitution was designed for a nation of might be called today Heritage Americans. Others are not suited for the American political system or way of life.

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