{"id":2041,"date":"2024-07-29T21:10:24","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T21:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/?p=2041"},"modified":"2026-05-19T02:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T02:48:28","slug":"to-us-and-our-posterity-the-ethnogenesis-of-the-american-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/?p=2041","title":{"rendered":"To Ourselves and Our Posterity: The Ethnogenesis of the American Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain, Union Station, Washington, D.C., 1912. (edited from source).<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


In a time where the United States is constantly denigrated as a \u201cnation of ideas\u201d by both the Left and Right, there is a need to return to the record of history to uncover the truth. The preamble of the constitution reads:<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


They make apparent then, the general purposes of this constitution; but who<\/em> is it meant for? It is meant for those to whom it is addressed\u2014\u201dto ourselves and our Posterity\u201d. \u201cOurselves\u201d indicates the authors of this document, who were all of European blood. Whether these men<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> were first-generation immigrants from the Old World or descended from settlers in the New World, whether they were English (which most of them were) or Irishmen, Scots-Irish, etc. they were all united by this common tie of White ancestry and civilization. Thus the second part of this phrase becomes ever more evident, for posterity means, according to the American Heritage Dictionary<\/em>, \u201cfuture generations\u201d or \u201call of a person\u2019s descendants\u201d.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Therefore this document is intended for the White settlers whom were represented by these signatories and their descendants\u2014hence the usage of \u201cWe the People\u201d for the first three words of its preamble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without these White settlers, there would not have been a United States of America. Preceding 1776, there was a rich and diverse history of European settlement in North America. As is well-known, the English, Spanish, and French were the most prominent nations involved in the colonization of the vast space which would one day encompass the nascent American Republic. There were also, however, other European nations involved in this effort: the Dutch and the Swedish; the former settled in the Hudson valley, while the latter opted for the Delaware valley. Highlighting the hidden importance of these more or less forgotten colonies, an article entitled \u201cDutch and Swedish Culture\u201d by Rogers W. Young found in the January-February 1941 edition of The<\/em> Regional Review<\/em> (a publication of the National Park Service) informs the reader that:<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n


No definitive commemoration of every important phase of our colonial development could afford to ignore the national influence of a Dutch and Swedish colonial culture from which has sprung such figures as Pierre Van Cortlandt, Frederick Philipse, II, Philip Schuyler, Martin Van Buren, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Morton and John Ericsson.<\/p>\n(Young, “Dutch and Swedish Culture”)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Young elaborates upon this point throughout this concise yet elucidating article, but sums it up well when he states that:<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n


The Dutch in the Hudson Valley and the Swedish in the Delaware valley with their pioneer trading posts and later plantation settlements overcame the physical and human hardships of the wilderness and laid the colonial foundation upon which the permanent English settlement of these regions was established in due course. While the actual period of Dutch and Swedish colonial sovereignty were comparatively brief, the influence of the culture and economy of these sturdy European elements continued dominant in both regions until the Revolution, despite their political control by the English. The penetration of the Dutch into New York and northern New Jersey, and of the Swedes into Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey provided these areas with a fundamental European culture which strongly influenced their subsequent development as English colonies and American states, and of which remains are observable even today.<\/p>\n(Ibid)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Among his more specific examples of the contributions of the Swedes and Dutch to colonial America, these two are particularly intriguing:<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n


In constructing domestic dwellings and farm buildings the Swedes adapted their European log dwellings to colonial conditions and introduced into America the log cabin or house, which appears to have become the prototype of all such structures throughout the American colonies.<\/p>\n(Ibid)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n


A notable contribution from Dutch colonial culture was an architectural form, reputed to be one of the earliest true indigenous designs evolved during the development of American architecture. This is the so-called Dutch colonial type, which was an adaptation of European Dutch design to meet colonial living conditions.<\/p>\n(Ibid)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the realm of architecture alone, an art which is far more enduring to future generations than that of manners or clothing, one finds that the Swedes have given to America the iconic log cabin typically associated with the settlement of the Western lands, while the Dutch bequeathed a style of house popular to the Northeast. Even from this glimpse into the past, it can thus be ascertained that well before America became a nation in the political sense of the term, it had already become a nation distinct from Britain by virtue of the common culture which was forming among the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies. For the term \u201cnation\u201d originates from the \u201cLatin n\u0101ti\u014d<\/em>, n\u0101ti\u014dn<\/em>-, from n\u0101tus<\/em>, past participle of n\u0101sc\u012b<\/em>, to be born.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people that constitute any nation must therefore be \u201cborn from\u201d the same people before the possibility of a political entity can truly be entertained. Though it this may happen from the birth of a common culture than a common race, more often than not in history it has been a racial formation which precedes the founding of a new state. In the Colonial period, the Englishmen, Scots-Irish, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Germans, and even Frenchmen were coming together to form the people that would one day be referred to as Americans<\/em>.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a term did not originate from the Continental Congress, which in 1776 adopted in the name \u201cThe United States of America\u201d for the new nation,<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> as Samuel Johnson, a prominent English author used the term \u201cAmerican\u201d to describe the European settlers of the Thirteen Colonies in his 1775 pamphlet \u201cTaxation No Tyranny\u201d. For instance, in one place within this text he writes that:<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n


The Americans have this resemblance to Europeans, that they do not always know when they are well.<\/p>\n(Johnson, “Taxation No Tyranny”)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The fact that this man was an ardent supporter of his British fatherland should give one pause upon reading this; that Paine would brandish such a term is unsurprising, but that a supporter of the \u201cloyalist\u201d cause would do the same? Why not simply refer to these people as English subjects or English colonists\u2014why this distinct name? The answer is evident: the Americans had become their own people without the authority of the Continental Congress. The revolutionaries simply recognized what Johnson had before them\u2014and probably without even reading him\u2014but differed from him in their approach. Johnson wished for a reconciliation, an end to the revolution\u2014for this new people to rejoin the Empire which had lawfully laid the foundations down for their existence. The revolutionaries, on the other hand, sought to establish political independence for this new people, this new nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the founding fathers who were involved with this Congress not, then, the true founders of this nation, who was?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One must search well beyond the year 1776 to uncover this, to the one who inaugurated the heroic effort of European colonization in this part of the world. Ultimately, one must return to that famous year of 1492 to discover the origins of America. To discover the true founder of America, one must therefore look to the saintly Italian discoverer of the New World, Christopher Columbus. Though he did not found a single state, for he acted on the authority of the Spanish crown, he founded many new nations in both the North and South of this hemisphere. The posterity of the White settlers of North America and the Latinos of the various castes of Latin America alike can look to him as their Aeneas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the founding fathers of the United States did not found a people, for the settlers were already there, but they founded a great state. But such a view is not novel at all, for even those men and their posterity have viewed Columbus in a similar light, with their endearing usage of the name \u201cColumbia\u201d to denote the American nation. The existence of the hymn \u201cHail Columbia, Happy Land!\u201d is proof of this, for it was composed shortly after the War of Independence and played at the inauguration of President George Washington in 1789; and until 1931, it was considered an unofficial American anthem.<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And of course, there is the more evident example of Washington D.C., the name of the nation\u2019s capital. The name Washington is included in honor of the first president, while D.C. is an abbreviation for \u201cDistrict of Columbia\u201d. This honoring of Columbus as the progenitor of the American nation, which was present in the new country from its beginning and would later be expanded in the form of the commemoration of Columbus Day, was not a mere poetic attachment. It was the acknowledgment of a deep historical truth which the founders themselves did not fully realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Columbus did not only bring European civilization to the New World, but he also brought the Faith which regenerated that civilization after the collapse of the Western Empire\u2014the Catholic Faith. Religion and civilization are inseparable, and this is a common trend throughout history, especially the history of the New World. One cannot understand Christopher Columbus without an appreciation for the profound faith which guided his quest; nor can one understand the various European peoples who settled North America without an appreciation for the Christian values which nutured and strengthened them in the vast and harsh wilderness. Long has the American soul suffered under the tyranny of religious indifferentism and philosophical uncertainty; in fact, these ills which were celebrated as goods under the founders, who venerated the secularist values of the \u201cEnlightenment\u201d. These same values were the necessary predecessor to the more rigorous and intolerant worldview of Liberal-Marxism which usurped the nominally Christian America of the 1950s. Alongside its attacks on Christian values and belief, has not this worldview simultaneously launched a war of extermination against the American heritage? Has it not sought to villainize the Whites, who are, as aforementioned, the founding stock of the United States, as intrinsically evil while also sophistically labeling their racial group a \u201csocial construct\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind this war effort the bourgeois stands tall and proud, having brought this worldview into existence. Since the beginning of the Republic, he has taken advantage of the \u201cliberty\u201d granted to his forefathers on these shores to enslave others while cloaking himself far better than he could in Europe. He started with purchasing Blacks from their tribal cousins off the Gold Coast, and has ended in poisoning the minds of Whites to go against their instinct of self-preservation. Classical Liberalism and its vaunted \u201cfree market of ideas\u201d will never sniff him out; but the resurgence of that Faith, which has understood him from its origin will check his domination. The necessary intolerance of Catholicism is the antidote to the bourgeois intolerance of Liberal-Marxism. Only the Faith as it has been handed down from generation to generation can achieve this; Modernist \u201cCatholicism\u201d is an absurd forgery, and there is no use in appealing to the contradictions of the Protestant and Eastern schismatic sects. These were not the Catholic Faith of Columbus, and they will not be the Faith of Columbus\u2019 children, if the American is to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America is neither a nation of ideas nor of immigrants; it is a nation of European settlers. It began well before 1776, for in 1492 began the effort of European colonization and evangelization which brought about that people in North America which can truly be called the Americans. This is only confirmed when examining the 1790 Naturalization Act, which proscribed that only free White persons of good character could become citizens of the nation.<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Moreover, the subsequent immigration laws of the land held this same standard\u2014albeit with some exceptions\u2014until the perfidious Immigration Act of 1965.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America is not only a nation, it is also a civilization; for a state of barbarians could not have produced the astounding achievements this nation had in the realms of art, architecture, technology and the sciences well before the Satanic Sixties. Thus as in other civilizations, there are minority groups which while not part of the racial basis of the state, still are attached to it to some degree. Hence the status of Blacks, Indians, Latinos, and other non-White peoples as minorities<\/em>. They may be called \u201cAmericans\u201d, but only in a peripheral sense. Evidently America is not unique in this aspect, as history will swiftly relate to anyone who consults it. The Eastern Roman Empire for instance, while possessing a dominant Greek character, had Slavs and Arabs living within its boundaries which were influenced by the Hellenistic culture, Roman law, and Christian faith of that great nation. And much like that Empire, if the American state collapses (a fate which seems inevitable for it) as long as the racial character of the American survives, the basis for a national revival will lie within them, dormant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“God is my first love’s duty,
\nTo whose eternal Name
\nBe praise for all thy beauty,
\nThy grandeur and thy fame;
\nBut ever have I reckoned
\nThine, native flag, my second.” <\/p>\n

– Fr. Charles Constantine Pise, S.J.,
\n“The American Flag”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[28,37,43,8,22,32,36],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-america","tag-culture","tag-europe","tag-faith","tag-history","tag-nation","tag-politics"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44952,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions\/44952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}