Assimilation is Not Amnesia
21 December 2025
Knowing very little of politics myself I sometimes wonder what the role of a political commentator is exactly. I suppose they are in the vibes business, lustful cousins of those who wield real power, as they seek to influence from the sidelines without the responsibility of answering constituents with actions. In this way, most commentary is more of a yelling match of personal preferences rather than a consequentialist debate.
The umbrage over “heritage” Americans the past few days has demonstrated this to the extreme as the right devolves into internecine warfare over the concept of American heritage. On the face of it, this concept is quite simple: the State must be blind to ancestry. This is foundational to America. Upon becoming a citizen, a man is dunked in the lake of equality and arises to be forever judged the same as any other man. I believe Vivek Ramaswamy to be correct about this notion, and have no sympathy for those that would alter our nation to create preferred classes of citizens.
However, some critics push this too far, and seem to believe being an American requires relinquishing your heritage. For Sonny Bunch, caring about your ancestors is "complete loser s**t." Ben Dreyfuss believes “If your ancestors fought in the war of 1812, good for them, but it has nothing to do with YOU.” (An odd assertion as it seems hard to believe the Dreyfus Affair was simply a “Snapple fact”.)
Meanwhile, commentator Richard Hanania suggests the only people interested in American heritage are either not elite enough (they are "aggressively mediocre") or they are Jews or Catholics engaged in self-serving gatekeeping, which is rather an ironic way to trumpet his love of the meritocracy of ideas.
Others, like political analyst Alex Nowrasteh, seem to compress all notions of nationalism as being roughly equivalent: the ethnonationalist Groyper, the economic protectionist, and implicitly anyone interested in heritage, are part and parcel of the same cursed phenomenon. In this condemnation, we logically should infer that Burke’s Eternal Society, or indeed Passover, are but elements of proto-fascism.
I should be honest, I may suffer from the mediocrity Richard detests. I am certainly a bastard who doesn’t carry my father’s last name, and even more damning I am a first-degree mischling, so I may be unworthy of opining on my own family, but fundamentally these critics miss a substantial nuance which is that it is perfectly permissible for ancestry to function as an obligation rather than a credit.
I think about Samuel Butler when he speaks of the Degenerate Noble who
“Is like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is underground; or rhubarb, a contemptible shrub that springs from a noble root. He has no more title to the worth and virtue of his ancestors than the worms that were engendered in their dead bodies…He values himself only upon his title, which being only verbal gives him a wrong account of his natural capacity, for the same words signify more or less, according as they are applied to things, as ordinary and extraordinary do at court; and sometimes the greater sound has the less sense, as in accounts, though four be more than three, yet a third in proportion is more than a fourth.”
It is not that the root is worthless, but rather that it is not sufficient for the mettle of a man to be measured by those who are mixed with the worms and soil. Butler’s observation presupposes a notion of ancestry for the critique to have any meaning. To be told that ancestry has no meaning, and that we are adrift in a sea of ideological purity from the founding fathers, demands a relinquishment of family, and of our past.
My own perspective has been shaped by the history I read as a child, but deepened and fractured when I found ancestors of mine fighting a bitter court case related to slaves left in a will. I certainly felt a deeper obligation to wrestle with the nature of slavery when it was not just “slaves”, but Gabriel (valued at $400), Hampton ($400), Martin & Serena ($500), Lewis ($360), Geo and Lancaster ($500), Armstead & Mary ($535), Peter ($350), and Rachel & Jane ($475). I don’t believe in condemning a child based on the sins of his father, but it is crass and ridiculous not to be moved by this atrocious history.
I would feel morally bereft to pretend these people have no meaning to me. Their descendants are now rightfully equal to all other citizens, and I am honored to live, fight, and die among them along the path to a more perfect union.
It is here that the notion of ancestry as an obligation most clearly contrasts with the perverted view of ethnonationalism: seeing Gabriel and Hampton I feel a greater degree of duty - there is something more to be thought upon when my fellow citizens were enslaved by my ancestors. The Groyper takes the opposite view. He comes to believe he owes less to those not like him. This distinction is critical, yet dismissed or overlooked.
But wrestling with the sins of ancestors is not the only debt we owe, and in contrast, when I see an ancestor of mine who arrived in Jamestown, or fought in the Revolutionary War, or fought in WWII, I do feel pride. Not because their actions have conferred upon me some special grace, but because when the time arose for them to fulfill their obligations to their country they stood and faced it, with risk to life and limb. I would hope to embody the same values should I be called upon. I feel there is a standard to meet, not a perception of superiority over the newly naturalized citizen.
And I am certain that new citizens would risk the same, and in a multitude of ways enter into the debts and obligations that propel, and have made, the United States the greatest country on earth. We ask new citizens not to cut their roots, but rather to bring their past and graft it to our roots. And in any event, our great stew inevitably makes mutts of us all.
I should also mention that it should be obvious that heritage-sentiment has the power to be corrupting, but this is true of every ideology that moves men to action. But is it inherently corrupting? I see the romantic Volk as much more dangerous when contrasting 1820 with 1940, but did Christianity not give us the Sermon on the Mount and the Inquisition? Or the Enlightenment constitutional democracy and the Terror? To read Nowrasteh it hard to not feel that preference, rather than a self evident truth carries the core of the argument: a game of vaunting ideological memory over hereditary memory.
Assimilation is not amnesia, and casting all those with interest in American ancestry as stolen-valor role-players goes too far. This is a pernicious perspective. Our enemies abroad have long mistaken our robust debate and squabbles for a sign of the weakness of our nation, rather than a sigil of our ability for self reflection.
For when Lincoln said:
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
He meant that the heart that beats in me, and in my fellow Americans, unites as a chorus rather than a peerage. When Hanania asks “what are we doing here” the answer is simple: we should be free to look to our past as an obligation to grow, to learn, to build a more perfect union. Ancestry will always matter to most humans as we seek to find how our past, present, and future are linked. It is what to do with the mattering that is important.