The Trump Administration is promoting the idea of "heritage Americans," who can trace their ancestry to colonial times, as the only real Americans and true citizens--even though many GOPers, like Donald Trump, don't qualify.
Quote:The Online Right’s Favorite Nativist Slogan Is Gaining Traction in the Real World
It’s not a term that the average social media user has likely encountered, let alone heard in casual conversation. But among a certain cohort of young and well-connected conservatives, “heritage American” — used to describe people who trace their roots to the founding generations of the United States — is gaining traction as a kind of slogan of the new nativist right that’s coalesced behind Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
The term is popping up with more and more frequency among the online right: “Who are Heritage Americans?” reads the headline of a recent Substack post that made the rounds on social media; “Heritage America — Who are they? Why does it matter?” was the title of a recent live-streamed discussion on X. The borders of heritage America, however, are extending beyond the conservative internet. As the Trump administration doubles down on its immigration crackdown and seeks to close long-established pathways to U.S. citizenship, the idea embedded in the slogan — that American identity is defined by ancestry rather than by adherence to universal principles — is finding real-world expression in the politics and policies of Trump’s GOP.
While the specific worldview surrounding “heritage America” may have been incubated online, it is increasingly finding its way into the policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration. In a speech at the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute in July, Vice President JD Vance urged conservatives to reject the view that America is founded exclusively on a common creed, reviving a theme from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last year. “America is not just an idea — we’re a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life,” said Vance, pointing to the frontier mentality that allowed “our ancestors … to tame a wild continent.” If the subtext wasn’t clear enough, he added: “That is our heritage as Americans.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2...e-00481724
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
