Counterpoint | America is both a nation and an idea. Let’s not forget it.

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What is America? Are we a nation or an idea? A recent commentary by author Colin Woodard reprinted by the Minnesota Star Tribune (“There’s still a shared American story,” Nov. 7) contends that we must choose one or the other. More than that, Woodard chooses to make his choice very clear, while also claiming to know the choices of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

America as a nation or America as an idea? Is this really an either-or question? And, if so, does it require an either-or response? Why not both?

Of course we are a nation. And of course we also are a nation founded on an idea. The English writer G.K. Chesterton once defined the United States as the only nation with the “soul of a church.” Why? Because we were — and remain — the only nation founded on a creed. And that creed is the Declaration of Independence.

Of course we haven’t always lived up to the ideal expressed in its main idea that “all men are created equal.” Jefferson certainly didn’t think so. Neither did Chesterton. Nor does Woodard. And nor do I.

So what’s the problem? America as a nation seems to be a problem for Woodard. If that’s not entirely fair, then at least the Trump-Vance understanding of America is a major problem for him. Or at the very least Woodard has a problem with the Trump-Vance understanding as he characterizes it.

Privileges and bloodlines? If so, one would expect a juicy and telling quote from Trump or Vance to clinch such a claim. Instead, Woodard borrows the following from a recent Vance speech: “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place with particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”

There you have it: America as both. What such a statement has to do with privileges and bloodlines escapes me.

Woodard does add that Vance said those people “whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.” In the first place, context matters: Who is saying that who doesn’t belong to what and why? Woodard doesn’t explain. Nor does he let Vance explain. In the second place, both white and Black people, as well as Irish Americans and German Americans among others, fought in that terrible, but not terribly ethnocentric, war.

Nonetheless, Woodard wants to claim that Vance is advancing a “tribal concept of national membership.” Really? Woodard’s main concern ought to be that America itself is dissolving into any number of racial and ethnic tribes. Thinking of one’s country as a nation is not tribalism.

Woodard then roams through American history in search of evidence to support his contention that American ethnocentrism is at once nothing new and highly dangerous. To be sure, such evidence can be found. Once again he zeros in on the Vance speech, a speech that recalled “our ancestors” who sought to “tame a wild continent,” an effort that Woodard defines as beginning with the original English settlements and extending until the closing of the frontier in 1890.

Woodard notes the resurgence of ethnonationalism in the 1920s with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, legislation that “imposed racial quotas to defend the Anglo-Saxon character of the country.” There is some truth in that statement, but what’s also true is that Congress sought to pause immigration so that the assimilation of millions of recent non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants could gradually take place.

For that matter, any hint of the process and importance of assimilation in America and to American ideals and traditions is nowhere to be found in Woodard’s brief history. That said, he claims to have polling evidence that today’s Americans prefer his “civic” version to the Trump-Vance “ethnocentric” version of our American story. By his accounting, two-thirds of Americans agree that we are united by “our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals.” And yet at the same time only one-third of respondents agree that we are united by “shared history, tradition and values.” Here we go again with either-orness, not to mention evidence of problematic internal tribalism.

Not surprisingly, such polling gives Woodard grounds for hope. By his reading, Americans are ready to re-embrace Jeffersonian civic virtue and reject Trumpian ethnonationalism.

Those same polling numbers give me cause to worry instead. To be sure, there is no breakdown of any sort, whether by age, location, ethnicity, financial standing or gender. But the numbers are troubling nonetheless. They may well be primarily an indictment of our public education system more than anything else.

Really, both numbers ought to be quite high, certainly a good deal higher than two-thirds. More than that, they should also be nearly the same. After all, what’s the difference between a sense of unity on the basis of ideals and unity on the basis of traditions? One should reinforce the other. At least that ought to be the case in a country whose citizens think highly of both their homeland and its ideals.