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The book you cite and more generally the arguments traced in the Deep Roots literature are not very strong and often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views.

I'm not persuaded we could recreate America even if we took any 1000 people, even people who can trace their apple pie eating back to the Mayflower, because you know, America is a country and more generally complex arrangement of stuff that involves and entangles hundreds of millions of people (if not the entire planet).

> often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views.

So what? Immigration is optional. The people supporting large-scale migration from countries without functional democracies should have the burden of proving that cultural attitudes salient to democracy are not durable.

Even in the U.S., I'm not persuaded that the Anglo-American republic as originally conceived survived the mass immigration of continental Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

> 'm not persuaded we could recreate America even if we took any 1000 people,

We have a real-world experiment of this! America, Canada, and Australia are all oddly similar countries, demonstrating strong alignments along many dimensions.

Immigration is core to American identity and America's success.

It's one of our core defining values

The American that was originally convinced was imperfect and much worse then the America we have today. We literally had slavery and most adults couldn't vote.

Find my anywhere in the federalist papers (or the anti-federalist papers) that says anything about immigration.

What you’re talking about is a 20th century creation. We never tried to be an “immigrant nation”—we were a big open country with no welfare state, and it was favorable for us to allow extensive immigration to populate the continent and displace the native americans.

In the 20th century we accidentally found ourselves with British Americans being a minority then created this idea of an “immigrant nation” to assimilate all the Germans, Italians, etc. But it’s a retcon.

It doesn't matter what the federalist papers say, as no one is going to argue that your deep-nativist view aren't also espoused by Publius.

You're being informed as to actually, as messy as it might be, what the US is and was. This isn't going to be neatly described in any papers or appeal to core enduring features, however much that might suit your ends

America has changed significantly since that time for the better much better.

The fourteenth amendment in particular changed the US in fundamental ways (one of which was birthright citizenship).

> we were a big open country with no welfare state

One of the countless ways we are better country today then in the past. No social security, no Medicare

> But it’s a retcon.

It's an evolution and a vast improvement

The US, Canada and Australia were all formed at times where the origin countries where not liberal democracies, so where did that "democratic seed" come from, and why should people fleeing totalitarian regimes not have it?

This argument really does not make sense, and lest we forget those "enlightened democratic western cultures" created some pretty gruesome dictatorships in the intermittent years.

The modern Bangladesh constitution, created in the 1970s, has concepts like “due process.” That phrase comes from a 1354 English law implementing the Magna Carta: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5-5-2/ALD.... If you study British history, you’ll see that foundation for what became America, Canada, and Australia has being built for 900 years, even when British society was ruled by a king.

Turning to Western europe more generally, there are cultural traits arising from Christianity and the historical development of the Catholic Church: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric....

Protestantism also played a significant role. Puritanism in New England heavily influenced what became American political culture: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/37/our-puritan-heritag...

This isn't a good argument as the importance of "due process" in British and American systems differs and diverges significantly both currently and historically.

Actually if you study British history you'll find that what is most striking is that the United States is a departure from rather than a continuation of British legal or governance norms.

I’ve extensively studied British history and British legal history specifically. What’s striking is that America, for all the influences on it, has displayed such remarkable continuity with British tradition.

Obviously there’s differences in application of those concepts after hundreds of years. But the point is that when Bangladesh drafted a modern constitution, it reached for concepts dating back to 13th century England. Democracy as we understand it was a long time in the making. They didn’t reach back to the Mughals or the Nawabs of Bengal. This was no indigenous foundation for law-based democratic society. And experience has proven that you can’t transmit such a system from one society to another with ideas or words on paper. It’s the organic result of mother teaching child over generations.

Remember, the american revolutionaries were fighting to vindicate what they saw as the ancient rights of Englishmen, unlike say the french revolutionaries who sought to institute a new regime.

You haven't studied well enough as due process being largely secondary to both royal prerogative and parliamentary sovereignty, with there being (even to this day) a scepticism and sometimes outright hostility to the role and scope of the judiciary, is something you missed.

> So what?

The point is you have a view and the after that fact have found an argument (not a particularly compelling one).

Unfortunately (for you) the burden of proof at the very minimum (or maybe more properly on everyone in this domain) is on you as immigration from non-democracies is as older than the United States itself, you are the one advocating for a departure from this historical fact.

The countries you list are actually not as similar as you might like to believe, in so far as they are similar not for the reasons you believe, but it might be your own inability to see the differences here, nor do they prove your proposition that somehow there is some determinism by deep roots (or lack thereof) of people.

Tocqueville was a colonialist who wanted to apply a racial segregation system in Algeria. He also wanted to indemnify slave-owners and traders if the slave went free. In France, we see Tocqueville as an "egalitarian but for the bourgeoisie". That's what the French Revolution was about : abolishing nobility so nobles and bourgeois are equals.

I believe your personal experience may be narrowing your view.

I have a similar family experience with drastically different outcome. Including ties to your idealize Iowan people (born to Iowan w/ Iowan grandparents, great grand parents and so on back to Jamestown for a couple), who are simply that, just people. Most Iowans come from late 1800 immigrants, many from East Europe. Some of my Iowan family lines are outliers in terms of origin (first families), but there is at least one from 1800 East Europe that I know of. If you moved on from British history to American History, you would better understand the real mixing of immigrants/cultures, and that is distinctly American. They did not all stick to their kind, as it were.

Some recent family has integrated with Asian immigrants and they are more "American" than some of my Iowan families in-laws that have been radicalized into anti-American values, much to my Iowan families horror. That has nothing to do with "cultural attitudes" etc, and everything to do with living in internet bubbles.

Iowan's I know and come from are blue through and through--Union loving gun toting Democrats. Most of them have kept their values, some have let Fox "news" take that thinking over for them.

I think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes. Even differing opinions on the functioning of democracy, though I personally think some opinions denigrating democracy are a bit out of bounds and "unamerican" -- though that's obviously a "no true Scotsman" argument, I'm sticking to it.

I guess I'm just arguing for a more expansive view of what constitutes an American. If it was some precious fragile thing that gets diluted by immigration and threatened by cultural mixing and new ideas, well...

Oh... darnit.

> I think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes.

In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance. In every multicultural society, the democratic rapport that people have with each other ends up being replaced with relationships mediated by an increasingly large and bureaucratic government that can reconcile the conflicting cultures and interests. Democracy is reduced to mere voting.

> In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance.

You sound very Jeffersonian, but methinks you're idealizing Iowa — have you ever spent time there?

Anecdata: My dad's family is from Iowa — his people were small-holding farmers and village shopkeepers whose immigrant ancestors had come to Iowa from Germany. My dad and his siblings each left the state as soon as they reached adulthood and never once returned to live. Neither I, nor any of my siblings, nor any of our first cousins have ever lived there, nor have many of our second cousins (although we used to go back regularly to visit relatives). Feel free to conjecture why that might be.

> If you took 1,000 people like my wife and put them on an island, you'd recreate America--including the parts of America I find perplexing and frustrating. I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.

That depends on the constituents of your sample. I doubt a city girl from New York and a farm boy from East Tennessee would have the same approach to life in this hypothetical thousand-person colony. They'll likely work and trade together as needed, but they would otherwise form and primarily associate with their own sociopolitical milieu, thus forming cultural enclaves.

In short, I don't think you could really create another USA without the historical happenstances, upheavals, and transformations that changed country from a collection of colonies primarily divided on religious grounds to a unified secular republic.

after jan6 we can pretty much put all asian democracies (minus pakistan) above the US in terms of democracy. SK recently had a similar coup-lite situation, not tolerated there.

accepting loss is a core tenet of democracy

“Americans have had democracy for so long they now take it for granted.” - an EU friend of mine.

The peaceful transfer of power is not common in human history. It’s a miracle it’s gone on as long as it has in the US.

I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.'

A rare moment of strong agreement.