“Are We a Nation?”: Samuel Goldman at the PEP

On Monday, May 24, Samuel Goldman presented his lecture, “Are We a Nation”, for the Political Economy Project. An Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, Prof. Goldman serves as the Executive Director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and Director of the Politics and Values Program. 

Prof. Goldman’s talk consisted primarily of three sections in which he explained the three types of American nationalism that he expounds upon in more detail in his book, After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division.  

Before describing the three kinds of nationalism, Prof. Goldman explored the deceptively simple question “are we a nation?”. He began by noting that virtually every sovereign state refers to itself as a “nation” and that many international governmental organizations, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, use the term rather than “state” or “country”. In contrast, Prof. Goldman pointed out that there is “A peculiar ambiguity in the name of the ‘United States of America’” as there is no nation-state of “America”, but a federal arrangement of sovereign states which comprise a larger geographic formation and constitute a country .

Prof. Goldman lamented the existence of media bubbles and online echo chambers which have exacerbated ideological polarization and intensified the battle between academics proffering very different narratives of American history–see our piece on the 1619 Project and Phillip Magness’s critique thereof. And why is a shared understanding of the history of our nation so important anyway? Prof. Goldman argues that it is a shared mythology–stories, cultural products, and other ways in which people try to understand and express their connection to a larger group–that makes a state (or, in our case, a collection of states) a nation by creating an imagined community. This is particularly true for the United States of America which, unlike other nations, does not have a shared cultural or ethnic identity. 

So what are the imagined (not imaginary, as Prof. Goldman was sure to emphasize) communities that have been offered as accounts of the United States of America? While a non-exhaustive list, Prof. Goldman posits three accounts that have historically been used to account for the existence of an American nation. Note the alliteration; Prof. Goldman humorously emphasized the necessity to alliterate items of a list if you want your reader to retain the information.

1. Covenant: an allusion to the biblical relationship between a people and God

• Relatively high barriers to entry
• Image of a racially and ethnically homogenous community obedient to a particular god was revived by the puritanical settlers of New England. Eventually, this notion of the “city on the hill” was expanded to include New York and Pennsylvania… proved insufficient to unite a diverse and geographically dispersed population.

2. Crucible: more familiar under the term “melting pot” 

• Shifts national identity from the past to the future
  • There are no shared great ancestors of a common ethnicity 
• Recognizes the diversity of ethnic, religious, and cultural origin but through shared experiences these various peoples will be transformed into one great nation 
• Often associated with territorial expansions and the Western frontier, i.e., Manifest Destiny 
• Theological implications of being emerged in a transcendent and transformative liquid (baptism)

3. Creed: faith is shifted from the biblical God to a set of political principles and institutions 

• The Constitution as a kind of sacred text, Founding Fathers and figures like Dr. M.L.K., Jr. become pseudo-deified as saints and martyrs. 
  • The embrace of the political principles of liberty and equality make us Americans 

After explaining the timeline of imagined American communities, Prof. Goldman discussed the current identity crisis our nation finds itself mired in. Prof. Goldman believes that the uncertainty about how to answer the question of nationhood has to do with the erosion of the conditions that sustained the creed. WWII and early Cold War creed was strongly (and sometimes coercively) promoted by U.S. institutions, e.g., standardization of school curricula, military training, narrow range of media, etc. Conversely, in the late Cold War to present day technological and sociological conditions have been “disaggregating” Americans. What Prof. Goldman means by this is we no longer share the same experience of information (like Walter Cronkite) or of a shared set of principles. 

And why has the commitment to a shared set of principles eroded? Prof. Goldman believes that the pervasive inequities that remain between white Americans and black Americans has led many Americans to lose confidence in the brand of liberalism that promised through slow, progressive reform, America could realize its ideal of equality between white and black Americans, despite its history of slavery, Jim Crow, and prejudice. Prof. Goldman describes  this liberal program as the master narrative of American politics for the past five decades. The empirical reality that enormous inequity persists in academia, politics, and economics is straining Americans’ commitment to our creed of equality and justice for all. 

Prof. Goldman believes that the fights about the creed are really fights about understanding the reality of persisting disparities of outcomes between white and black Americans. Some observe this reality and conclude the creed itself must be wrong; a neutral commitment to equal liberty is just not going to work. Others believe that the creed of equal liberty is well-founded and are unwilling to consider the corrosive impact of the continued existence of such racial disparities or believe we must simply accept them. Prof. Goldman believes neither of these responses are particularly convincing nor conducive to creating an American nation. 

So what’s to be done? Prof. Goldman believes that racial disparities between black and white Americans must be taken seriously and synthesized with a commitment to the creed of equal liberty. Ironically, Prof. Goldman is convinced that this synthesis will not come from historians or other academics but through artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators of culture. Prof. Goldman emphasized that story-telling through language, image, and gesture is how we are most likely to persuade each other of what we have in common and what goals we should pursue in unison. Textbooks will not achieve this. 

In other words, Prof. Goldman believes it is the poets, not the philosophers, who can create an imagined community that unites Americans by creating shared, sacred myths.