E Pluribus Unum
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The Bradley Project, July 3, 2008
Press Release: The Bradley Project
Releases its Report, “E Pluribus Unum.”
Calls for National Dialogue on America’s National Identity.
Contact: Steven Hofman
301-520-1306 or 970-871-4551
press@bradleyproject.org
Report Finds that America is Facing an Identity Crisis and is in Danger of Becoming not “From Many, One” – E Pluribus Unum – But its Opposite, “From One, Many.”
Sixty-Three Percent of Americans Believe our National Identity is Weakening, and One in Four Believe the Nation is So Divided That a Common National Identity is Not Possible.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Washington, D.C.: The Bradley Project on America’s National Identity today released its Report, “E Pluribus Unum,”the product of a two-year study involving a number of our nation’s leading academics, public figures, journalists, educators and policy experts. The report examines four aspects of American life crucial to American identity: historical memory, civic education, assimilation, and national security.
The report finds that America is facing an identity crisis and calls for a national dialogue on America’s national identity. According to James Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a participant in the project, America’s understanding and appreciation of diversity is important but must be balanced by an emphasis on what we share. “In selecting the title E Pluribus Unum, the Project embraces the conviction that plurality and unity are not necessarily in tension with one another, but are supporting ideas of the same national experiment,” Ceaser said. “Plurality is only made safe when it when it is grounded in a deeper commitment to national unity. Unity is the precondition for healthy diversity.”
To inform its work, the Bradley Project asked HarrisInteractive to conduct a study on Americans’ views on national identity. The good news is that most U.S. citizens believe there is a unique national identity that defines what it means to be an American. The troubling news is that over six in ten believe our national identity is getting weaker. And “even more troubling is that younger Americans – on whom our continued national identity depends – are less likely than older Americans to believe in a unique national identity or in a unique American culture.” Indeed only 45 percent of 18-34 year old Americans believe that the U.S. Constitution
should trump international law in instances where there is a conflict.
According to Professor Ceaser, “The weight of all this evidence suggests mounting confusion about the meaning of American national identity and a loss of commitment to its promotion.”
“The findings from the report are sobering and significant. They raise subjects that are vital to our future, transcend partisanship, and clearly resonate with the American people,” said Rick O’Donnell, Executive Director of the Bradley Project. O’Donnell continued: “Our intention is that the report be the starting point for a national conversation on these important issues. Silent Spring in 1962 started a conversation that brought about significant changes in our environment. A Nation at Risk in 1983 launched an ongoing national conversation that continues to reshape American education. It is in that tradition that we release E Pluribus Unum.”
A number of notable scholars have already joined this conversation and commented on the Bradley Project report.
Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer-prize winning historian and professor at the University of Pennsylvania calls the report: “An eloquent defense of America’s intellectual, civic, and moral identity that deserves wide circulation, especially among American youth.”
Harry Lewis, former Dean at Harvard College, says of the report: “A stirring reminder that America is more than the union of our differences, and a rational program for preserving the nation by passing American ideals on to the next generation of citizens.”
Amy A. Kass, of the University of Chicago, writes: “The Bradley Project’s report addresses the urgent problem of American identity in our global and multicultural age, and its wise recommendations for promoting civic consciousness and civic understanding couldn’t be more timely or more fitting.”
James C. Rees, Executive Director of Mount Vernon, said: “This report confirms what we experience at Mount Vernon every day – that most Americans know precious little about their own history. George Washington’s face is still familiar to most Americans, because we see it each day on the dollar bill. But when asked about Washington’s character and leadership, which made all the difference in the world to the founding of our nation, the average citizen is rendered speechless.”
The report makes clear that we didn’t get to this point overnight, and that addressing our challenges is a long-term imperative. In addition to its call for an immediate and comprehensive national dialogue on America’s national identity, it recommends:
* a renewed focus on the teaching of American history,
* embracing America’s heroes and historic landmarks,
* affirming the benefits of diversity, but not adopting policies that perpetuate divisions or compromise our national identity,
* inaugurating an initiative to ensure immigrants learn English, understand democratic institutions, and participate fully in the American way of life,
* and creating an annual Presidential Award for American Citizenship for students and new citizens who demonstrate exemplary understanding of and commitment to American ideals and institutions.
Professor Ceaser concludes: “The report speaks of a nation ‘founded not on a common ethnicity,’ but ‘on an idea.’ And it argues that ‘a nation founded on an idea starts anew with each generation and with each new group of immigrants.’” “Knowing what America stands for is not a genetic inheritance,” said Ceaser. “It must be learned, both by the next generation and by those who come to this country. From this premise follow many of the recommendations to strengthen the serious study of American principles and the American founding at all levels of education, including college.”
[Editor’s Note: “E Pluribus Unum,” the Bradley Report, can be read or downloaded here.]
(Posted on July 7, 2008)
Comments
Sixty-Three Percent of Americans Believe our National Identity is Weakening, and One in Four Believe the Nation is So Divided That a Common National Identity is Not Possible…………..Divide and conquer.This explains why we have two such poor candidates for president.
Posted by Tony Soprano. at 6:13 PM on July 7
This project is doomed to failure because it ignores race. By definition, a nation is founded on a common genetic or ethnic interest, NOT on a mere idea. The US, in marginalising and suppressing its historic ethnic identity in favour of ideology, is being transformed into a totalitarian state like the USSR or Communist China. The idea that countless generations of children need to be brainwashed into learning “American principles” (= multiculturalism, immigration, Holocaust studies, etc.) is alarming.
Posted by William of OC at 6:22 PM on July 7
“E Pluribus Unum”.
“From many into one”.
By one of the ironic coincidences with which history is sadly replete, the official motto of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was “Viribus Unitis”.
“With common effort”.
Posted by at 6:26 PM on July 7
Hopeless. All of this is flimflam because races cannot coexist, never have, and never will. There is no education that can bring races together since they are instinctively averse to each other and furthermore have completely different looks, personalities and intelligence, making them completely alien to each other.
America cannot have an identity because it’s a horrendous mishmash of four different races all of which have nothing to do with each other. Our only shared purpose is that we all came here to make money, which America is extremely good at. If the economy ever went broke, ‘America’ would end at that exact same moment, since nobody cares about it for any other reason.
Posted by at 6:39 PM on July 7
The only thing that’s held our country together for the past two hundred years is our common European ancestry and this guy thinks the country can be held together by an idea?
“a renewed focus on the teaching of American history”
” embracing America’s heroes and historic landmarks”
Whose history will we be teaching? The standard one or the revisionist view? How is Ling-Ling Chung, Latrina Jones, and Javier Montoya going to relate to a history that revolves around dead White heroes?
“affirming the benefits of diversity, but not adopting policies that perpetuate divisions or compromise our national identity”
No one has ever explained what the benefits of diversity are, if in fact there are any.
Posted by at 7:36 PM on July 7
These silly gentlemen and women are bringing toenail clippers to a knife fight. If there is to be an American identity worth having, it will be drawn from the experiences of White Americans today. George Washington and Andrew Jackson have been made irrelevant to most people by decades of Marxist propaganda. How many young Americans could walk the field at Gettysburg today without being overcome…by the need to answer a text message? Our young people will need to undergo their own trial by fire, and develop new heroes, if they are to survive. Only then will they have the mental and moral understanding to appreciate the old patriots.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:42 PM on July 7
The company I work for handed out free American Flag T-shirts last year to all of our employees so they could show their patriotism for the July 4th holiday. They instructed us managers to ask the employees to wear them the day before they took off for the holiday. Six people showed up wearing them. Six White people (including myself) out of 40 plus employees and one hispanic with the nerve to wear a Mexican flag on his back. How could we possibly be united? I look at America as my country with my culture and my language. Hispanics and Asians aren’t part of the national consciousness. I look at these people and I don’t see Americans, I see aliens. Blacks barely register and they’ve been here almost as long as we have.
Posted by Tazer at 8:38 PM on July 7
National identity revolves around a common culture. We’ve lost that. At least the deep tap root of it we once had.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 9:25 PM on July 7
“Plurality is only made safe when it when it is grounded in a deeper commitment to national unity. Unity is the precondition for healthy diversity.”
The two stuations are exclusibve of each other. It isn’t possible to have a plurality of races and cultures and be unified. The only people who could possibly believe we could are those who are out of touch with the real world and are naive to the point of near imbecility, which describes the people responsible for it all better than anything else used to explain the situation.
Multicults have caused the degeneration of America more effectively than an invading military, and the condition is self perpetuating. There’s no turning back. The only direction we can go right now is forward and downwared until the the melting pot boils over, which it is sure to do.
“Sixty-Three Percent of Americans Believe our National Identity is Weakening, and One in Four Believe the Nation is So Divided That a Common National Identity is Not Possible.”
If only one in four believe the nation is divided and can’t ever unite again, then that tells us that not enough people are aware of how far society has degenerated.
As the days pass, with more examples of division, it will be increasingly clearer to more and more people that we have already reached a point of no return.
Sorry to have to point that out to those who do not agree, but looking at the situation in totality with an honest appraisal, I don’t see how anybody could conclude otherwise.
Posted by Ranger at 9:36 PM on July 7
This is an example of liberals running around in circles. Even as they sense that something is wrong, they still cling to the need to “affirm the benefits of diversity.”
It is precisely this claptrap about diversity that has eroded the sense of national identity they are talking about.
Try this on for size: “Americans are white people with European roots who speak English, and who invented their own country out of ideas born in Europe.”
Posted by Reader-1 at 11:15 PM on July 7
When a civilization loses confidence in itself, it’s in decline. America, in my opinion, started losing confidence in itself in the 1960s. It has now fallen, like the Roman Empire. And it can’t be put back together again.
Posted by at 1:00 AM on July 8
America is, at best, an emulsion instead of a mixture. We only remain mixed because of constant stirring and agitating, but if left alone, we will seperate into our original ingredients.
Posted by Skip at 1:44 AM on July 8
IF ONLY our elected officials over the centuries had remembered the 1790 Naturalization Act. We could have been THE superpower for eternity.
Posted by at 1:47 AM on July 8
Fact:
There are more people in China that speak English, than there are English speakers in the United States.
Posted by Wally at 3:45 AM on July 8
So 63% of Americans are worried about the loss of traditional American identity.
hmmmm…
What’s the percentage (according to the US census) of White people in American again?
Oh yea, about 63%.
It seems that White people haven’t been as brainwashed as our multi-CULT overlords would like to think…
Posted by the Narrator... at 5:13 AM on July 8
6:39 PM — You’re exactly right. It’s like a marriage in which all love is gone (or never existed in the first place) but the two decide to stay together because they’ve had financial success together and don’t want to break up their little empire.
I despise the times we live in, with our dumbing down of society and our public discourse so that the lowest common denominators in our country can feel good about themselves. I think a lot of people — white people — are getting fed up with it. Just the other night, while in a restaurant, I said to the people at my table, “I’m so sick of political correctness!” and continued to elaborate. A few minutes later, two women leaving from a nearby table stopped by and said, “We wish we could have been sitting at your table tonight. We couldn’t agree more!”
I think — hope? — that there is an undercurrent of anger among whites in this country that is going to begin surfacing more and more. It’s a matter of people becoming more confident that they’re not somehow bad for thinking the way they do and realizing that there are millions out there who feel like they do. We need to start taking more chances and becoming more vocal, while keeping our arguments completely and scrupulously logical and honorable (no ad hominem attacks — just facts). No defensiveness, either. It is what it is.
Posted by at 6:44 AM on July 8
I said in a previous post that “diversity” didn’t work out to well for the Roman Empire, and we all know where that “diversity” led to.
Posted by Skip at 7:14 AM on July 8
“There is no white America. There is no black America. There is no Latino America. There is no Asian America. There is only the United States of America.” Obama, 2004
Obama is piping crack if he really believes this. The reality in America is that what’s good for blacks and Latinos are bad for whites: most social programs benefit blacks and Latinos but cost white taxpayers. The U.S. today is more of a confedration than a federation, with each group jockeying for more power to itself. Obama makes comments like above, knowing full well that the “united” America would rob the whites to give to blacks and Latinos.
Posted by AsianMan at 8:00 AM on July 8
The Mexicans simply do not have the mental capacity to understand the concept of “one Nation, indivisible.” Mexicans streaming over the border like roaches in the night are the literal dregs of that country’s humanity. Unskilled. Uneducated. Uncivilized. Not even able to grasp the rudiments of what is socially acceptable.
To illustrate their mentality, look at it this way. Mexico’s upper crust… it’s ruling elite keep the general population, the brown Mestizos down. Denying them help, education, job opportunities. While actively encouraging them to head to El Norte Americano. Still these peasants are so abysmally ignorant they still worship the country driving them into exile. Does THAT make sense to a rational human being? Blind, stupid, unwavering loyalty to a country that did not want your lower class types in the first place?
Making matters worse, the Mexicans are too unmotivated, too ignorant, too lazy or unwilling to even learn English! Never mind learning our social mores — public urination, defecation NOT being socially acceptable. That rape, while winked at in Mexico, is considered a felony crime here. As is child molestation, pedophilia. (Mexican family values don’t stop at the border, right?)
Yet our liberal fools, just like our Mexican parasites living off the American economy and the taxes paid by American workers… cannot understand WHY we feel as we do about the illegal (or legal) Hispanic immigrants.
Posted by Fed Up at 8:14 AM on July 8
See Federalist No. 2, excerpted below, for the answer to the Bradley pamplet. These words, from 230 years ago, remain entirely appropriate.
John Jay’s commentary from Federalist No. 2:
WHEN the people of America reflect that they are now called upon to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propriety of their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view of it, will be evident.
Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers. It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, or that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national government.
It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties. However extraordinary this new doctrine may appear, it nevertheless has its advocates; and certain characters who were much opposed to it formerly, are at present of the number. Whatever may be the arguments or inducements which have wrought this change in the sentiments and declarations of these gentlemen, it certainly would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new political tenets without being fully convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.
It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.
Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.
Posted by JP Straley at 8:38 AM on July 8
This smacks of the old saw about closing the barndoor after the horses are long down the paddock. America, by and large, is a country but is no longer a nation at all - how could it be? The only thing that unites Americans is, in one way or the other, money - economic and material prosperity. We are a land of consumers and workers…and little else. Ask yourself, do you really wish to part of a national identity that unavoidably conjurs Hip Hip gangsta culture, girls-gone-wild videos, white guilt-mongering and self-loathing, military adventurism, rabid consumerism and pointless drudgery to keep up with the joneses??
Posted by HH at 8:40 AM on July 8
“America cannot have an identity because it’s a horrendous mishmash of four different races all of which have nothing to do with each other. Our only shared purpose is that we all came here to make money, which America is extremely good at. If the economy ever went broke, ‘America’ would end at that exact same moment, since nobody cares about it for any other reason.”
Posted by at 6:39 PM on July 7
WELL STATED! Sad but so true. It’s kind of like some marriages of convenience.
Posted by at 9:19 AM on July 8
E Pluribus Nihil.
Posted by at 9:20 AM on July 8
We don’t have a national identity. If we did, liberals who denigrated it would draw prison time. That is exactly what was standard operating procedure around both world wars, when we DID have a national identity. Acts of sedition drew draconian prison time, IF you were lucky enough to actually be arrested. Many weren’t. Those people were beaten badly enough to spend months and months in the hospital. Many were simply shot. Back then, the fact that we were Americans was serious business and no one was allowed to disrespect that in any way.
Those days are long gone. Until that attitude among whites returns, we won’t have a national identity again.
Posted by at 9:54 AM on July 8
“America, in my opinion, started losing confidence in itself in the 1960s.”
It wasn’t a question of losing it. America started having the confidence beaten out of it in the 1960s due to a massive campagin by the parasites who took over the media and school system.
Posted by at 10:52 AM on July 8
Maybe, just maybe we can still avert this disaster but it’s a long shot. If they deport every single illegal alien in this country and put a moratorium on all legal immigration from the third world coupled with payments to legal immigrants to leave, the country might survive.
Posted by at 4:40 PM on July 8
a country is people of the same race, on a piece of land, nothing more. minorities are aliens that are allowed to exist. if all the white people left this country it would become a wasteland. white people should withhold all of our services to minorities, and liberals. stop them by any means necessary.
Posted by danjack at 11:11 PM on July 8
Follow this link and read today’s propaganda piece on MSN News entitled “What if all Illegals went home” or something like that
Go to the second part of the tale and respond using the link near the bottom right of the page
investor@microsoft.com
Let these people hear from you WHAT IS WRONG with our keeping the Illegals here. Tell them about the endless crime. The staggering COST to taxpayers. The endless problems by illegal immigrants. Let them HEAR OUR VIEWS for a change… instead of some claimed poll that probably not more than six people actually participated in.
Posted by Fed Up at 11:44 AM on July 9
“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
“This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.”
Words of wisdom everyone should remember.
Posted by Aware at 12:45 PM on July 9
“white people should withhold all of our services to minorities, and liberals”
Good idea for an 1100 page book. 1776 m,ust be done again, with the anti-federalists views in mind. They said this was going to happen…
Posted by clawed slagenhop at 1:57 PM on July 9