Americanitas

Introduction

So this post is the last post of NQN 2024, and as the calendar would have it, it is also the day just before Thanksgiving. In the spirit of both Thanksgiving and NQN, I intend to write a paean to America, and do so without any qualifications. I do not intend to stint, and there will be no “on the other handing.” Sometimes you avoid qualifications that would soften the blow, but other times you do so in order to not soften the praise.

Definitions First

However, there does need to be some preliminary work. I want to begin with a key definition, move on to the gratitude, and conclude by presenting the gospel to any and all ungrateful Americans who have waxed fat and kicked. That number is sadly not a small one.

There is a school of thought out there that holds that the category “American” does not really represent an ethnos in the biblical sense. “American” is thought to be defined by lines on a map, or by a bureaucratic naturalization process, or even by crossing our Southern border when eight months pregnant. The modern nation/state, it is claimed, has no right to be defined biblically. And then there is a follow-up claim—sotto voce—that therefore we get to define it. But we don’t. When you stop looking to Scripture for your basic definitions, and start looking to “nature raw,” one of the first things you will discover is that nature appears to leave a lot more leeway for your ethnic animosities, which for some is a selling point. But not here.

Because I have always disliked the word Americanism—be wary of all isms except for prisms—the qualities I am talking about can be called Americanitas.

So here is my baseline definition.

And not only is it a nation, but it is also a distinct ethnos—the Greek word for tribe or nation. It is the word used in the Great Commission, where we are told to disciple the nations.

So I want to argue that Americans really are a distinct ethnic group. Now one of the characteristics of ethnic groups is that they differ from each another. This means that it won’t work to say that we can’t be an ethnic group because we are different from the others. All ethnic groups are different from the others. Blacks don’t have freckles and Irishmen do. The same principle applies here if we just zoom out. Because of all the disparate groups we have going on here, America has freckles and Japan doesn’t. We are a sprawling empire-like country, but still with a recognizable type of inhabitant, and this is very different from a smaller, tighter ethnic group, like the Navajo.

Change the metaphor. A good salad has a lot more distinct elements in it than does a bowl of tomato soup. But either one of them can be what’s for dinner.

So it is quite obvious that Americans have become distinct enough as a people to have become a target of envy, and the diversity jihad has been the principal weapon of choice in this assault. If you flood the country with millions of illegals at a rate that prevents any kind of reasonable assimilation, then this means that the receiving population will do no assimilating, and will at some point be simply overwhelmed.

If the cook says that the stew needs more salt, that is one thing. Well and good. But if the Biden administration answers the call by trying to dump a whole container of Morton salt into the pot, there will quickly come a point when the stew ceases to be stew. It then gets even more preposterous when the salt vandals start accusing us of not liking stew. Or salt. We apparently don’t like salt either.

But there are others who have lost their memory of what it was like when it was recognizably stew. When we argue for that well-remembered time, we can easily be accused of being nostalgic, or of acting like boomers, or something of the kind. And to be fair to younger folk with legitimate questions, the case for American being a distinct ethnicity is a harder sell for someone who has grown up in a fragmented America. But this fragmented America did not just happen all by itself. As the master of the field in the parable put it, “an enemy has done this” (Matt. 13:28).

If you doubt the reality of a distinct American “type,” ask yourself this. Do you think that Brits, or Germans, or the French, have any American jokes that they tell? So why do the generalizations that lie underneath such jokes make the jokes work? Because there is something to them.

As an aside, someone might say that they still don’t think American completely fills out the definition of ethnic identity given above. Well, hear me out, but let me say in passing that the category called “whites” doesn’t fit it at all.

Younger questioners can look at Bryan’s definition above and say that they don’t see any of that in the chaos around them. Instead they see colliding names, a free-for-all over languages, rootlessness with regard to place, mobs pulling down statues marking our history, a widespread sense of animosity toward others, a deliberate rejection of shared customs, and an all out assault on our central beliefs and values. But I am telling you that there was a time, within living memory when every element of that definition above was vibrant and alive.

I can still remember what it tasted like to be American then.

Nothing But Gratitude

No list like this can be close to exhaustive. It can only be representative. All of us, every day, stand under a Niagara Falls of blessings, and I want to show you a few tablespoons of water I have collected.

In order to begin my small catalog of things I am grateful for, I need to take a leaf from Vladimir Putin’s playbook, and go back to the 9th century. I want to go back to Alfred the Great, the father of our common law. He is one of the foundational reasons I was born a free man, and have been able to live as a free man.

I want to express my deepest gratitude for the Anglo Saxon legal/political tradition. It has grown organically over the centuries, and there have also been times when we have had to beat back the encroachments of those who would corrupt and overthrow it—the Magna Carta and the American War for Independence would be two great examples of such wonderful resistance—but in the main this tradition has been a bulwark for us that has stood for a thousand years. I am most grateful. We are, as an aside, in the process of beating back the interlopers again. Wish Elon luck.

As a result, we have in many ways enjoyed blessings like the rule of law and clear title to our property, resulting in the kind of wealth that we enjoy. That wealth would stagger Nebuchadnezzar, if he were only given a glimpse of it. He would give you all the gold in one of his treasuries for your 2006 beater of a Toyota—just so he could drive around the walls of Babylon in it, showing off. And then you, in the passenger seat showing him the ropes, could turn on some music just to see the expression on his face.

Speaking of music, I love American music, a glorious confluence of Celtic and African. This has given us the blues, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Americana, and more. The progressives love to attack this sort of thing as “cultural appropriation,” and so it should be noted that America’s middle name is cultural appropriation. If you were to take the influence of black Americans out of the equation, you would have gutted a good portion of American culture. In a similar “cultural appropriation” vein, we also have TexMex cuisine, and we have American blue jeans, made out of denim, a legacy of the Huguenots. And, believe it or not, there are many Americans who actually understand and enjoy sushi.

If I might, I also need to express how thankful I am for how vibrant American English is. We have a rowdy language, one that really enjoys the rumble bumble of words. It does know how to dress up in a tux and go to meet the queen, but it is also capable of putting on some gaudy outfits for a night on the town. C.S. Lewis, commenting on how colorful Elizabethan English used to be, said that this was a gift that England had bequeathed to “our American cousins.” Whether it is slang, or overstatement and hyperbole, or the tall tale,

America is a land that honors hustle.

We have been a land that has excelled in the “technological sublime.” The devices we enjoy, and the tools that we use without even reflecting anymore, are an example of this. What I can do with this post is an example. When I am done, in about half an hour from now, I will click “publish,” and seconds later people in New Zealand and South Africa will be reading it.

There are other side benefits as well. Some might lament the eruption of the sort of vitriol we have seen on the dank right over the last month or so, but even this has a true bright spot. Thanks to the fact that the Internet is forever, and because of Wayback Machines and such like, just think of how many men have burned down any possibility of them serving in positions of influence and authority, for at least the next twenty years. Calling people Jew-pigs online is not the way into a staff position in a Vance administration. Silver linings.

All such things, and many others just like them, have resulted in a very recognizable type of person. The last few years have left it pretty battered, but it is still identifiable. Foreigners can identify it right off. It is a type that is the owner of countless blessings. And one of the things that envy loves to do with anyone who possess blessings like this is to do whatever it can to scratch out his eyes.

And so the virulent anti-Americanism of the left is a proxy attack on Western civilization, which in its turn is a proxy attack on the Christian faith.

Grace, Gratitude, Gospel

Speaking of the Christian faith, I need to conclude this with an invitation to repent and believe.

Think of the way of ungodliness as a wall on the right side of the room, and the way of Christ is a wall on the other side. All of us, born in Adam, are by nature those who face and serve the wall of sin. This sin is most clearly manifested when it gives way to hatred and spite. This is the watermark that testifies to the presence of an unregenerate heart. “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). This is a remarkable testimony to the prescience of the apostle Paul. He wrote those words—”living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another”—centuries before the invention of Twitter and YouTube comment threads.

In Adam, we all are facing that wall. We are given over to malice, lust, covetousness, envy, and greed. When an evangelist summons us to repent and believe, he is telling us to turn away from that wall. This is conversion, a word that comes from the Latin converto, which means “I turn around.”

To repent is to turn away from that wall of sin. But notice that this same motion can be described as faith. To turn away from that which is not Christ is the same thing as turned toward that which is Christ. The turning away is repentance and the turning toward is faith.

Why am I concluding with gospel? If the explosion of malice online over the last few weeks is any indication, there are a number of defenders of Christian civilization who need to stop for a minute, in order to become Christians.

I can hear the snarls, and so let me step into their assumptions for a moment. “Jews are our enemies.” Okay, and do you love them the way Christ required? “Jews are persecutors.” And do you pray for those who persecute you, as the way of Christ demands? “Jews are deceitfully manipulative.” I see. And do you ask God to bless them (Matt. 5:44)?

Why on earth do you accuse Jews for not following Christ when you refuse to follow Christ? You are the one disobeying? Are you not validating all other forms of disobedience, including that of the Jews?

But the good news is found in this. Not only does Christ stand ready to forgive a Jew who turns away from his unbelief, He also offers forgiveness to you—even though spite and animosity currently has you by the throat. Christ came to overthrow sin, and He can certainly overthrow yours. He overthrew the blaspheming malice of Saul of Tarsus so that he could walk in a new way, which means He can also overthrow the bitterness of a widow who lost her husband because of Saul’s mauling of the church. In Christ, God saves sinners.

I spoke a moment ago about turning away from one wall, and urged you to turn toward the other. But when you make a move to do this, you then discover the extent of your inabilities. You cannot move. The wall you were born staring at has you transfixed, and you discover that you cannot turn around. Your conversion is not within your power. It is not up to you, but it is nevertheless obligatory for you. You must turn away from your malice. It is eating out your insides. You must turn or die, but you can’t turn because you find you are already dead.

You cannot turn on your own. You must be turned. And God Himself could not turn you toward His holiness unless a full and complete atonement had been made. This is why He, in His grace, sent His Son to die on the cross, in accordance with the Scriptures, to be buried in the tomb, and then to be raised from the dead. Because of this glorious and sacrificial act, God can be just and the one who justifies. If He were merely just, we would all be in Hell. If He simply justified, apart from a vicarious atonement, He would cease to be just, which is absurd. Because He of necessity must be altogether holy, and because He resolved to save sinners, Christ had to die.

So the provision is made. Christ died and rose. As a minister of this gospel, I would invite you to pray the following two petitions.

He will receive. He will forgive all of it—the slander, the lies, the hatred, the envy, the lot. He turns no one away.

Our Book Giveaways

Our new title today (free Nov. 25-29) is Adorable Fallacies. Check it out here. This is a logic text addressing numerous informal fallacies, and written in a way that will appeal greatly to those in your household with an adolescent sense of humor.

And the new free book from Canon today is Leadership and Emotional Sabotage by Joe Rigney.

And in my Mablog shoppe, I am now giving away:
21 Prayers for Pastors on the Lord’s Day.
Letters of Marital Counsel, found here.
Proof as Moral Obligation
No Artificial Tweeteners
Some Adventures of Fun Dad
Jokes I Like to Tell
And new today . . .
A Parliament of Pots