Vivek Ramaswamy and Negative Identity: Why Civic Nationalism Doesn't Suffice

Vivek Ramaswamy rightly diagnoses America’s loss of national identity as the cause of its decline, yet he wrongly characterizes it by civic commitments. In his book Woke, Inc., he writes, "The real divide in America is not between left and right, but between those who believe in American ideals and those who want to rewrite them.”

Ramaswamy's thesis is that America’s identity has been supplanted by a politics rooted in personal identity over civic fidelity. According to him, as long as anyone waves the star-spangled banner and can recite the Bill of Rights, they are as American as the descendants of the Plymouth Pilgrims. On Twitter, he has dismissed the view that Americanism has anything to do with ethnic heritage, writing, “Being American isn’t about tracing your ancestry to this land. It’s about whether you are dedicated to our nation and its fundamental ideals.”

Civic Identity

The civic nationalism that Vivek Ramaswamy advocates as a fix for America’s growing polarization overlooks the substance of American identity, both in continuity and particularity. It is worth examining the substance of American identity, notably in race and religion, not only to demonstrate that Ramaswamy's empty civics has never constituted American identity, but that, by definition, it never can.

The Founders’ Vision of America

America was not conceived as an ideological experiment nor as a "melting pot" of far-flung cultures—a term coined only in 1908 by Israel Zangwill to accommodate immigrants like himself. Rather, America was intended for a particular people, Europeans, who adhered to a distinctly Christian faith. One may cite the explicit words of the founding documents to misconstrue America as characterless, but in doing so, overlook the tacit perspectives of the very authors who wrote them.

It may be assumed that the founders intended for America to be a multiracial melee where everyone, from Mumbai to Berlin, could participate, yet this could not be further from the truth. They never foresaw an American identity detached from its European heritage. Under George Washington’s presidency, 14 years after America’s constitution was ratified, the Naturalization Act of 1790—supported by all the Founding Fathers in Congress, from Hamilton to Adams—explicitly limited citizenship, and by extension voting, to "free white persons." It was only in 1952, with the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act, that racial restrictions on naturalization were removed. The writings of the founders outline a vision of America indebted to the people who founded it, a vision quite contrary to today’s revision. The modern interpretation of America as a colorblind republic, populated by Lockean individualists so enlightened as to cast off the primeval bonds of kinship and tribal loyalty that defined earlier man, is utterly removed from the framers' intent.

While influenced by the universal ideals of the nascent liberal revolution, the founders harbored no illusions that the principles of fragile self-governance could endure within a populace as ethnically heterogeneous as the one we see today. In Jefferson’s 1781 Notes on the State of Virginia, he stressed a homogeneous populace as a requisite for political cooperation: "It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Intermixed with us, as citizens, among others, would produce a heterogeneous, incoherent mass." James Madison famously echoed these concerns in a letter to Robert Evans in 1819, writing, "It is impossible to contemplate the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States if the population remains a heterogeneous mixture of different races." The Founding Fathers did not just view pluralism as a burden to the Republic but as a fatal threat to its survival.

The homogeneous electorate the founders envisioned was of particular European stock—descendants of the settlers and pioneers who shaped the state from untamed wilderness. One might object to the assertion of America’s homogeneous founding by gesturing to Black Americans, who have a storied history in the country dating back to the earliest colonies. However, the slaves brought here from West Africa possess a claim to that shared history that New Americans do not, having arrived on the shores of North America 400 years ago. For the bulk of America’s past, a minority of Blacks and a majority of Whites were present on the continent, but that cannot be said of modern arrivals. The cosmopolitan vision of America espoused by today’s liberals—as a democratic laboratory intended for the mixture of peoples absent any common memory or experience—contravenes this long standing precedent.

Undoubtedly, the framers did not conceive of America as a nation suited to any people, but as a project pregnant with the intellectual patrimony of Western thought. They believed that the revolutionary notions of freedom and civic participation were especially suited to European peoples. The high-minded ideals borne of Europe, they argued, were only applicable to those who had conceived them.

While it is true, unlike Europe, America has never been racially purist, it is undeniable that its existence could not have come about without the arrival of Europeans in the New World—beginning with Columbus’s voyages in 1492, Vespucci’s recognition of a "New World" in the early 1500s, and the later establishment of British colonies in the 17th century. From its inception, the racial character of America has been defined by a European majority. While the composition of first-generation immigrants may be altered—whether drawn from the Far East or the Global South—America’s European nucleus cannot be swapped out and its character still maintained.

Christianity as the Implicit Ethos of the Nation

The roots of America as an intrinsically Christian project, the religious milieu of its authors, served as the implicit ethos for the outgrowth of its laws. The Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and the equality of men under it were inspired by a uniquely Christian notion of human dignity and equality, derived from the moral teachings of the Church in the preceding millennia. The unprecedented freedom and responsibility afforded to America’s citizenry were termed only fitting for a “moral and religious people,” as John Adams famously wrote, who could expend such freedom to virtuous ends. Yet, the framers did not motion to a nebulous sense of morality or generic piety as a precondition for self-governance, but Christianity in particular.

While no particular faith was established at the federal level, the nation's Christian character was reflected in the laws of numerous individual states. For example, Connecticut mandated the support of the Congregational Church through taxes until the early 19th century, Massachusetts required attendance at the Congregational Church until 1833, South Carolina kept the Church of England as the established state church until 1790, and Virginia continued to impose taxes to support Christian churches until the late 18th century. Maryland, founded as a refuge for Catholics, enforced blasphemy laws up until the 19th century. Tennessee and North Carolina required Christian oaths for public officials. Given the diverse Christian fabric—to which 95% of the founding population fit belonged—it only came naturally that state legislation reflected the Christian commitments shared across sects and demographics. America can only be described as a Christian, if predominantly Protestant, project.

The fathers of the country did not conceal their Christian persuasions either. President George Washington himself, a lifelong Anglican, emphasized the importance of Christian morality to the nation’s survival in his farewell address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion, and morality are indispensable supports.” John Adams similarly saw the principles of the Revolution as inextricably rooted in Christianity, stating in a 1798 letter to the Massachusetts militia, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite... and these principles were the general principles of Christianity.” Benjamin Franklin, while a personal deist, acknowledged America as an intractably Christian nation in his autobiography from 1791, writing, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more I am convinced that this is a good Christian nation.” A purely idealistic interpretation fails to acknowledge that America’s founding was shaped by Christianity—a particular faith, non transferable with Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, or Islam. The 70% of Americans who still identify as Christian do not revere the God of the Talmud, Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita, but the God of the Bible.

The Misidentification of American Identity

Ramaswamy, while proclaiming an originalist reading of America’s founding documents—documents that make no explicit mention of Christian faith or European stock—neglects the unspoken spirit of the Founding. The thesis that adhering to vague principles of freedom—principles to which any individual may spuriously assent—constitutes American identity, overlooks the historical, religious, and ethnic context essential for its emergence. One could argue that the events which contributed to the American project have outlived their necessity, and like a dead branch the ethnic and religious makeup of the founding population no longer holds aloft its modern body politic. However, a broader proof of what makes nationhood, not just in the past but within the present, requires a more enduring definition.

When one abstracts from America and contemplates the basis of nationhood, civic consensus proves to be a flimsy basis for unifying identity. Nations, to the extent that they can be distinguished, cannot be sustained by rational principles alone. Liberalism, as the progenitor of civic identity, lacks the tangible features—shared history, common bonds, and cultural continuity—that lay the foundations of nationhood.

The creed of liberalism—the strict social contract, which submits mutual respect for individuality—offers a negative conception of American identity. It defines itself not by what Americans are, but by what they are not. Rather than affirmative, it is purely prohibitive and defensive. Consider, for example, the Free Exercise Clause in the Constitution, originally designed to accommodate sectarian differences within the Christian faith. It protects the individual's right to practice religion without interference, yet outlines no particular faith. Similarly, the First Amendment grants Americans the liberty to disagree and express divergent opinions, but it does not prescribe any singular viewpoint. Where civics is devoid of any particular viewpoint, the character of any individual group, it is utterly un-identifiable. It is evident that abstract rights, no matter how dearly championed by the liberal status quo, omits the positive substance required for identification.

From an abstract notion of toleration, some argue, a shared national identity might emerge. However, this perspective assumes that a unified national character can be forged from mere negation. Negative identity is the toleration of any belief, and so it can put forth no actual belief. Where Ramaswamy contends that this negative identity, grounded solely in adherence to the written principles of the founding documents, is sufficient to revive amity among its citizens, he is sorely mistaken. While empty identity accommodates the few immigrants like himself—a Hindu son of East Asian immigrants with little direct connection to America’s founding stock—it forfeits the belonging of the many.

By heralding an immediate civics as the substance of national identity, rather than the complement of a more permanent substance, Vivek abandons both people and principle. Trust between citizens—a precondition for liberty—cannot be conjured out of abstract ideas or manufactured by institutional fiat. It arises organically from shared bonds of particularity: those inherited ties of religion, culture, and race that transcend mere intellectual consensus. A truly cohesive national identity, therefore, must be grounded in common substance rather than abstract construction. The true content of identity, which the founders saw as indispensable to their fledgling nation, must be found beneath the superficiality of law—in the shared nature of a people. If identity is defined by common bonds, then it cannot be conflated with its negative counterpart. Beguiled by civic aspirations, citizens may believe that tolerating others’ beliefs, as long as their own are not infringed upon, is sufficient. Yet this outlook overlooks the necessity of common commitment, where individuals must be united by their duties to another. Yet there are no more evident duties than those which are beget by the filial bonds of kin and race, whereas all others—in ideology and civic affiliation—may be debated. Below the fray of liberal contention, must exist an unquestioned premise of belonging immune from the breaches of ideological and partisan division.

Christianity forms the dominant self-chosen element of American identity—a faith that individuals may embrace or renounce. In contrast, ethnicity, like family and lineage, forms the predominant unchosen aspect. It is inherited, not chosen. Ethnicities, after all, are tied to specific nations, whereas chosen qualities—such as religion or ideology—are not exclusive to any one nation. Beyond the individual, however, both unchosen and self-chosen qualities find their union in nationhood. The effect of both Christianity and ethnicity can be observed within a collective continuity: the norms of Western morality and its distinctly European governance. These qualities of religion and race are not as ephemeral as rational ideology, encompassing both the spiritual and the natural. Their permanence can be readily observed. A self-proclaimed “New Atheist” westerner can reject Christianity, but still carries with them a religious insistence on human rights and an instinctual aversion to injustice. A guilty White liberal may grovel at the feet of minorities in contrition for the sins of his ancestors, but he cannot shed his skin.

The inheritance of particularities, both in race and religion, has shaped the country from its very inception. Driven by religious conviction, Europeans settled the American continent, and from their religious commonalities, they were drawn together in a shared purpose. Yet had the Puritans, for example, not hailed from England in the 17th century, speaking the same language and sharing the same practices, there would have been no common clay for the sculpting hand of religious conviction to draw upon. Unchosen and chosen aspects of positive identity are not discrete, as they combine to create the substance of nationhood. Likewise, without its affirmative character, negative civic identity cannot find its expression.

Negative identity, which permits freedom, carves out a space for the activity of its positive counterpart. Where government is limited, it allows for the organic development of speech, beliefs, and behavior. The negative space permitted by civic identity exists in potentiality—it does not, in itself, bring about actual development. In this realm, people are free to choose, express, and act according to their interests. However, freedom alone is insufficient; it must be exercised through an affirmative identity to transition from mere potentiality into action. The promise of liberty, as permitted by negative identity, can only unfold among a people bound by mutual recognition and a shared purpose. A pluralistic society without coherence cannot achieve this. Absent a unifying accord, it fractures under the weight of competing interests.

This principle of competition is evident on the global stage, where nations are distinguished by their differences and only united in their ambitions. Yet, no person would desire for their own nation to descend into a competition of diverse factions. It is reasonable, then, that natural commonality would serve as the unifying basis of the nation. As individuals differ, a collective, or national selfhood can only be realized through a shared identity that aligns their actions toward a collective end. The nature of a people’s self-determination requires not only the absence of alien oppression but also the presence of a common people.

Vivek’s unbounded conception of American identity, which omits all particularities, expands it into something so open and vacuous that no one and nothing can belong to it. In attempting to save a people lost in difference, he casts a net so loose it can’t capture a single soul. Although he may recognize the peril of these adrift Americans, he offers them no help. By his logic, Americans whose lineage traces back to the original colonists would have no more legitimate claim to their heritage than the waves of Venezuelans asylees who may receive amnesty in the coming decade, provided they pass a citizenship test. However, if American identity may be dispensed out at the swipe of a pen, rather than something rooted through time and place, it means nothing.

The Answer to America’s Crisis of Identity

The answer to America’s crisis of identity is not blind adherence to its founding texts, as some originalists have suggested, but a contextual interpretation of them that acknowledges the particular setting of their universal proclamations. Proponents of civic identity, like Vivek Ramaswamy for all his best intentions, fail to recognize that civics, the toleration of differences in ideas and principles, can only take place upon the foundation of particular commonality. Insofar as America abandons any recognizable ethnic and historical substance in favor of a purely civic interpretation, it will cede that precondition for civic discourse and tolerance. The disputes of democratic contention, as to how the common good ought to be carried out, are only possible when citizens view the good as common amongst themselves.

Affirmative Identity and Its Role in Governance

Affirmative identity, rooted in both the innate traits individuals inherit—such as family, ethnicity, and heritage—and their self-chosen attributes—such as faith, ideology, and affiliation—forms the substantive essence of one's identity. These collective components, defined in their distinctiveness and particularity, provide individual identity with its collective substance. In their intersection, they produce a coherent, substantive identity that reflects both the conditions of birth and the agency of personal choice. Yet these affirmative identities contravene negative identity insofar as they may be defined and distinguished, prescribing conduct and behavior.

Where individuals share affirmative identity with each other, their obligations to each other do not present externally, like in civics, but internal to them. The faithful Christian feels compelled to concern for his fellow churchgoers, but the citizen is only compelled by the force of government not to tread on the toes of his fellow countrymen. If he does feel kinship with his countryman, it is only conferred by a common quality which familiarizes them: be it in language, custom, or culture, or nature. These obligations preexist construction, and like the internal obligations shared between members of a family, need not be imposed by the state.

From the early history of the United States, the absence of any pre-existing positive identity made way for the emergence of a distinct European-American identity. The Western frontier carved out a space for the organic emergence of something else. Europeans, fleeing religious persecution or monarchic oppression in the old world, sought self-determination in the new. With the arrival of what were initially sparse communities saw the gradual emergence of a cohesive nation. English settlers, who first arrived in America during the 1600s, were later joined by waves of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the mid-19th century. Italian immigrants, who came in significant numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Scots and Scots-Irish had already played a pivotal role in the colonial era, with substantial migrations occurring in the 1700s. The frontier’s untapped liberties facilitated the nation’s ethnogenesis, producing a new, distinctly American people. Today, it is rare to find an American whose ancestry traces back exclusively to a single European ethnicity.

The negative freedom promised by the New World made this identity possible, yet it could not have been formed without the positive substance of European heritage. From the bond between land and people arose a new Republic, accommodated to integrate the relative diversity of its people, albeit one limited to Christian sects and predominantly European ethnicities.

The relation between negative identity and its positive counterpart is complementary, and neither can be held independent of the other. Civic frameworks grant individuals the liberty to express themselves freely; in the absence of coercion from each other and the state. Standing armies safeguard the sovereignty of nations, just as courts safeguard the autonomy of individuals, who may only act authentically given license to do so. Yet, self-governance is tenable only when rooted in mutuality; a mutuality embedded in positive identity.

On Distinction

An affirmative American identity, composed by both chosen and chosen components, is characterized not only by its values, traits, and affiliations but also its perimeter- that which it excludes. Identity relies on distinction—what something is can only be understood in contrast to what it is not. Therefore to define what is American, we must also recognize there are those who cannot be. The recognition of the foreign is essential for understanding the native. Just as a singular event obliterates innumerable possibilities in the passage of time, belonging demands that inclusive possibility give way to exclusive identity. In the family the cost of belonging is recognized, even if seldom extended to the collective. Yet, for one to love their family, they must feel a certain indifference to those beyond their household.

While the development of a people is measured in eons and not centuries, it still must account for a collective past, that which tethers a people to the experience that they share. If it is reduced to immediacy and unmoored to inheritance, then the warmth of belonging shared between its members is exchanged for a cold interchangeability.

The very term identity implies that which can be identified—the substance of commonality that people share, not their negative freedom to differ. Yet, for American identity to confer a sense of belonging necessary to unify its people, America’s ever-inclusive notion of identity must perish. No bundle of sacred texts nor any number of optimistic platitudes may satisfy this end, but rather a return to the commitments of exclusivity and grounded particularity that have traditionally defined what it means to be American.

From the Individual to the Nation

If American identity continues to be stripped of its real character in the pursuit of an amorphous civic ideal, the nation shall descend into little more than a sprawling bazaar dominated by street vendors who share nothing in common beyond self-interest. Yet along with this erasure of any positive identity, the civic aspirations of a negative identity will be forgone too. The decline in civic participation and patriotism over the past half-century is no mere happenstance; it is the inevitable consequence of a revisionist civic nationalism that seeks to replace a salutary identity, grounded in European heritage and Christian faith, with empty ideals.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s prescription to return to the founding principles, absent the culture that breathed life into them, does not merely misinterpret America’s identity but the nature of nationhood writ large. The misconception of identity as something devoid of particularity, abstract rather than concrete, violates its own tautology. The relation between self-chosen and unchosen elements becomes clear on the individual register. Individuals have the ability to choose between choices, but do not choose their choices. The circumstances of their birth antecede their individual agency. They have no say as to what sex they are born as, whether they are born bright or dull, short or tall. Yet, the deepest of all unchosen qualities that individuals inherit proceed from their relation to others. The collective factors of family and ethnicity take precedence over all other genetic qualities, because all other genetic traits are contingent upon them. Tall parents produce tall children, smart parents produce smart children and so on. By this unchosen inheritance, individuals are thrown into the identities of their birth, their belonging to families, or peoples, and cannot exchange them on a whim. The fixedness of ancestry confers an immovable belonging upon which civics may build.

Restoring Identity

If America is to restore its identity, the particularities of ethnic background and faith, both distinctly formative, must be enshrined in the law, not dismissed as secondary to civics. While toleration for differences that do not undermine this true character may endure, European heritage and Christian faith cannot be sacrificed at the altar of inclusivity. Americans should remember that the founders envisioned the Republic’s negative liberties as workable only among committed citizens, members of a national family with mutual heroes and forefathers, not any medley of strangers. Where American identity has been modified to exalt civics at the expense of its citizenry, it has abandoned both.