We often hear that mass immigration is good because we are “a nation of immigrants.”
The implication is that anybody has a right to move here and make the United States into anything.
Should immigrants assimilate? If so, what culture should they assimilate into?
Does our nation even have a core culture? Is it just a hodgepodge of ethnicities?
These are appropriate questions to ask this year, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That’s a quarter of a millennium, making the U.S. the 23rd oldest nation-state in the world.
President Donald Trump, hosting a state visit by King Charles III of the United Kingdom, delivered two short addresses in Washington, D.C. on April 28th, one outside the White House and the other inside at the state dinner.
In these speeches, Trump set forth clearly — as no recent president has — the origins and roots of the United States and its core culture, the one which made America great.
“Here in the shadows of monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, honoring the British King might seem an ironic beginning to our celebration of 250 years of American independence. But in fact, no tribute could be more appropriate,” President Trump stated during the outdoor speech.
He explained why:
“Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea.”
The American people already had an identity and a culture before Independence and were already being called “Americans.”
“For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride,” Trump said.
Our flag has 13 stripes to honor the 13 English Colonies which became the U.S.A.
“The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage, their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true,” the President said.
“In recent years, we’ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea.”
There are characteristic American ideas, but America is a nation of a real flesh-and-blood people with a genuine, concrete history.
“But the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776,” he continued.
“The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic.”
English history is the “prequel” to American history. From medieval times to the 1700s, there was conflict between kings and nobles, the development of Parliament, the common law legal system (which we still use), the recognition of rights, and on this side of the Atlantic, the development of the 13 Colonies with their legislatures.
“Fate drew a long arc from the meadow at Runnymede [where Magna Carta was signed] to the streets of Philadelphia that ran through the lives of people born and bred on the British code that no man should be denied either justice or right. American patriots today can sing ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty’ only because our colonial ancestors first sang ‘God Save the King,'” President Trump said.
Did you know those two songs share the same melody?
“The first Americans saw themselves as free men carrying the forward and central liberties and ancient rights of the Anglo-Saxons into this new and beautiful world. In the eyes of America’s founders, our war of independence was fought not to reject this heritage, but to reclaim it and perfect it,” Trump stated during his address in the evening.
There’s more good stuff in these speeches, I recommend readers watch and listen to them both.
Bravo to President Trump for defending the roots of our nation. Now it’s up to us all to preserve that nation going forward.
You can find more of Allan Wall’s work at his website and Mexico News Report.
