Writing in Maine’s Bangor Daily News, Nationhood Lab’s director argues the U.S. is already a hybrid regime and that its people need to stand up for the American Experiment
In an opinion essay in Maine’s Bangor Daily News, Nationhood Lab director Colin warned the United States was already a hybrid regime — no longer a democracy, not yet an authoritarian state — and that this is enormously unpopular.
“The vast majority of Americans are against all of this,” Woodard argued in the essay published October 3. “Americans believe in the American Experiment, the effort to create a society where everyone can exercise these rights. Now they need to defend it.”
Woodard shared the findings of Nationhood Lab’s polling and research on Americans’ feelings about national purpose, ethnonationalism, and the liberal democratic values in the Declaration of Independence, which reveal a transpartisan, cross-regional supermajority embrace the latter. Those findings are expanded upon in Nationhood Lab’s report, The Story of America: A Rebooted Civic National Narrative for the United States, first released in March 2025.
The Bangor Daily News is the newspaper of record of the Eastern two-thirds of Maine and competes for statewide coverage with the Portland Press Herald. It’s the second largest print circulation newspaper in the state and claims to have the largest digital audience. It’s been owned and operated by the same family since it was founded in 1889.