JD Vance: Some Americans Are More American Than Others VP tries to redefine citizenship in speech to friendly think tank [View all]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jd-vance-some-americans-are-more-american-than-others

What Vance expressed to the friendly Claremont audience was a dramatically reduced vision of American citizenship. It’s one in which having ancestors who have lived here for generations entitles you to more; a vision of citizenship that’s long existed around the world, with a notable and aspirational exception in the United States.

“Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence — that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,” Vance said.

He explained that such a definition “would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it “the logic of America as a purely creedal nation.”

By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship “purely as an idea” would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups.

“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he concluded.