In the Minnesota Star Tribune, Nationhood Lab’s director writes on how, for the Declaration’s birthday, Trump accelerated a frontal attack on its vision and ideals
Donald Trump and his allies are marking the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence by attacking what it stands for, Nationhood Lab Director Colin Woodard wrote in an opinion essay in the Minnesota Star Tribune published July 14.
“President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and presidential aides and allies like Stephen Miller and US Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri have been disparaging the Declaration’s assertions in favor of a narrow, darker definition of America, one based on being the homeland of people of right bloodlines, ethnicity, or religion,” Woodard wrote in the essay, “Trump’s blood-and-soil 250th.”
“Their ethnonational worldview explains why they oppose the constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship (so they would get to decide who’s an American); why they’ve been purging the senior ranks of our military of women and minorities; why they’ve barred all asylum seekers save for white South Africans; and why they sent sending federal paramilitary forces into Minneapolis and other cities to terrorize immigrants and anyone who protested,” he added. “It’s what prompts Trump to claim Somalis are “all crooks” that he doesn’t want in “our country” while lamenting the shortage of immigrants from Norway.
The essay revealed how unpopular Trump’s vision is — and the overwhelming support for the Declaration’s civic version — via extensive polling work conducted by Nationhood Lab. Polls show Americans — including Republicans — reject Trump’s assertion that the U.S. was built on the “Anglo-Saxon” characteristics of its early settlers, rather than the Declaration’s ideals by a ratio of 9-to-1.
The Minnesota Star Tribune, founded in Minneapolis in 1867, is the seventh largest print daily in the United States and is distributed across the Upper Midwest.
Nationhood Lab, a project at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, delivers more effective tools with which to describe and defend the American liberal democratic tradition and better understand the forces undermining it.