You can't just download an American identity

Why Vivek's thin creedalism isn't enough

This past week, Vivek Ramaswamy published a New York Times op-ed calling on Republicans to reject the rise of “Groyperism,” the far-right subculture known for its online provocations and racialist politics, thereby sparking a debate about something much larger.¹ In the piece, Vivek frames the Right as split between blood-and-soil nationalism and a creedal conception of American identity. He forcefully — and rightly — rejects the former, echoing this message at a Turning Point USA event.

It’s a worthy fight. Vivek’s call for moral clarity in the face of vile bigotry is necessary, and I respect him for taking it on. As others have pointed out, he’s doing more to defend JD Vance’s wife, Usha, against anti-Indian slurs than Vance himself.² And he’s right to say that some of his critics, especially those who dismiss the Constitution as “just a piece of paper,” are anti-American.

But he’s making a mistake in the way he defines American identity. By defaulting to a thin, purely creedal definition while sidestepping harder questions about culture and assimilation, Vivek offers an answer that is neat on paper but weak in practice. The problem isn’t so much that his definition is wrong as that it is incomplete, leaving a conceptual vacuum that cedes ground to the very forces he wants to isolate. Worse, his approach shuts down conversation rather than inviting honest discussion of one of our most unsettled national questions: What does it mean to be an American?

Here’s his core argument:

Americanness isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It’s binary: Either you’re an American or you’re not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.

There are three problems with this framework.

First, Vivek conflates citizenship with identity. Citizenship is binary — we’re all equal under the law, and that matters. But American identity isn’t binary in the same way. America is open to newcomers, but openness doesn’t mean identity arrives fully formed. Americanness isn’t something you can just download. It isn’t a skin-suit you can slip into overnight. It develops over time through language, memory, and participation.

Vivek himself is an example. Isn’t it fair to say that his sense of American identity — as a guy born and raised here — is more rooted and developed than that of his immigrant parents? Most people, including Vivek and his family, would likely say yes. You don’t have to buy into the narrow logic of blood-and-soil nationalism to see that identity deepens over time. Most of us know this intuitively, even if we hesitate to say it out loud.

Even by Vivek’s own logic, some would be considered “more American” based on their beliefs. And that brings us to the second flaw in Vivek’s conception of Americanness: a purely creedal definition leads to conceptual dead ends. It’s too thin. It means that someone with centuries of family history in America is less American, by his definition, than a person newly naturalized from Afghanistan who professes to “subscribe to the creed.”

Or consider “colorblind meritocracy,” which is part of Vivek’s definition of Americanness. I also believe it is part of the American way. But what about the millions of Democrats who support DEI and affirmative action, often with decent arguments? Are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suddenly less American? Is a guy in Hyderabad more American than these Democrats because he supports colorblind meritocracy creed more cleanly? Of course not. This is where creedalism, untethered from culture and place, stops being coherent.

The third and deepest issue with Vivek’s conception of Americanness is that it treats the hardest questions as already settled instead of seriously engaging them. For example, part of his definition is swearing “exclusive allegiance to our nation.” Sure, that sounds nice. But is Vivek truly prepared to follow the logic of that and ban dual citizenship? How would his Jewish donors and supporters feel about that? My mom has dual citizenship with Mexico, which she acquired as an adult. Should she be deported? I would hope not.

I agree with the principle that allegiance matters — that Americanness means putting America first. But Vivek’s treatment of these questions feels designed to appease Reagan-era conservatives rather than address the genuine intellectual issues others — especially younger generations — are wrestling with. His framework treats identity as settled and thereby avoids the hard work of answering how assimilation actually happens or what it even means in today’s America.

Similarly, Vivek writes “if you wait your turn and obtain your citizenship, you are just as American as a Mayflower descendent.” Part of me wants to nod at this, because I believe in an inclusive and expansive American identity. But on reflection, it defies common sense. I don’t buy into the language of “heritage Americans,” but rootedness still counts for something, even in an open society. Rather than navigating the tension between inclusiveness and rootedness, Vivek tries to dissolve it altogether.

Consider two hypothetical black men in Minneapolis: One was born and raised in the U.S. His ancestors were dragged to America as slaves, lived through Jim Crow, migrated north, served in World Wars, and actively participated in church and local civic life. The other guy is a newly naturalized citizen from Somalia who just arrived, barely speaks English, and is a good person and hard worker who “believes in the creed.” They’re both equal as citizens. But can we honestly say their Americanness is equal? Common sense says no. Pretending otherwise might feel enlightened, but it just makes the whole conversation feel fake.

Recognizing that distinction isn’t meant to insult the new citizen. It’s the starting point for the real work of assimilation — how inclusiveness becomes rooted over time; how immigrants become American. By waving away that distinction, Vivek validates the arguments of “Groyperism” rather than isolating them intellectually. It’s a major mistake.

Toward a Multi-Layered Conception of American Identity

Here’s the reality Vivek misses: American identity has always existed in a dynamic tension between openness and rootedness. We’re open enough to absorb newcomers and reinvent ourselves, yet rooted enough to pass down language, norms, memory, and civic habits across generations. That tension isn’t a bug. It’s the engine of our nation.

I don’t claim to have the perfect conception of American identity, but one place to look for deeper insight is in Samuel Huntington’s book, Who Are We? Huntington argues that American citizenship cannot be reduced to citizenship or abstract ideals alone. While America is a creedal nation, that creed emerged from — and still depends on — a shared Anglo-Protestant cultural inheritance: language, habits, values, story. His concern is not with racial or religious purity but cultural continuity. Without those foundations, the creed becomes rhetorical and hand-wavy, as it often seems to be today.

Huntington’s framework is useful because it synthesizes the creedal conception Vivek believes in with other, indispensable elements of American identity: shared history and memory, civic participation and loyalty, linguistic unity, and some sense of cultural continuity across generations. At the same time, he explicitly rejects ethnic or blood-and-soil nationalism. American identity, in this view, is open — but not instantaneous.

I believe this multi-layered approach to American identity is more honest and more useful than a purely creedal one. And I don’t offer it as a foregone conclusion, but as the beginning of a conversation we’ve been avoiding.

And that reflects the deeper issue Vivek’s commentary circles but never confronts: Americans no longer share a consensus on what American identity even is. Over the last half-century, that consensus has eroded. American identity became “problematic,” especially among elites. Multiculturalism hardened into ideology. Immigration accelerated — from all parts of the world — without clear expectations of assimilation. The result is a vacuum where a shared sense of belonging once existed. Shopping at Costco sometimes feels like the last thing we all have in common.

When there is no shared answer to “what does it mean to be American?”, people reach for bad ones. The answer to rising ethnonationalism on the right is not to pretend identity doesn’t exist, but to speak about it honestly — to sit within the tension rather than collapsing it. Citizenship makes us equal, but identity is what binds us. Owning this distinction is how we build a shared American future, rather than splintering into a modern Tower of Babel.

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1. See NYT oped.

2. ht @ Richard Hanania