A New Americanism

March 17, 2025

I’m currently reading Allan Carlson’s The “American Way”, a history of 20th Century American political thought regarding the American family and its relationship to national identity. Carlson’s main thesis is that the “American Way” predominantly revolves not around propositional or ethnic identity, but family life. Maybe I’ll do a book review on it sometime.

What strikes me about the book’s account of early 20th century American politics is how concerned politicians used to be with the good of the American people as people. It was the chief concern of men like Theodore Roosevelt. Even issues such as feminism and immigration were contextualized against the backdrop of collective national good.

I appreciate this posture. Though I don’t agree with all of the conclusions of the key players (especially the later Progressives), I do agree that the civil government ought to promote the good of national life, and that this chiefly involves promoting the good of individual family life. Contrasted with today, this posture is utterly foreign to American domestic policy. For example, family life and attendant topics, such as birth rates, childhood education, inheritance, etc. are no longer elements of the national conversation. The political implications of family life are no longer discussed with regards to their effect on the collective national good. Collective national good? What’s that?

Before Trump’s inauguration, no one even seemed to care how American families were doing, let alone what that meant for our collective national future, or that we even had a vision for our collective national future. Trump’s administration appears to be signaling a return to an older politics, one which considers national collective good in relation to the good of its individual citizens. This, I hope, will be a suitable foundation for a new Americanism.

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