What is it that lies at the core of the identity of the United States? Part of the answer lies in the fact that it is founded on ideas. Most, or even all, previous nation-states were founded on the concept of a dynasty: that the right to rule was the property of a family — one particular family, the royal family — and that like other property, could be handed down through inheritance. The United States is different: It is a nation based on ideas.
In other words, there is a choice in history: either a nation-state is founded on the exclusive hereditary rights of a dynastic family to rule, or it is founded on concepts.
In the case of the United States, the ideas on which the nation is founded include: liberty, freedom, equality, and the rule of law.
Liberty and freedom are slightly different, but those minutiae can be left to philosophers instead of historians. The “rule of law” is worth understanding: This concept speaks about the uniform, neutral, and equal application of laws to any citizen in a nation. The speed limit on a local road, e.g., is the same, even if the driver happens to be a congressman or a senator, even if the driver happens to be wealthy or influential. Anyone caught driving faster than the speed limit is liable to get a ticket and liable to have to pay the fine.
The United States is founded on these ideas, but it has not always implemented them perfectly. American history is a series of steps toward ever-increasing levels of freedom; that path has not always been smooth or direct.
From its earliest beginnings, the United States worked to eliminate slavery. When, e.g., Samuel Sewall published an abolitionist book in 1700, he was already preceded by a 1652 law, passed by the Rhode Island legislature, which outlawed slavery there. The law, encouraged by Roger Williams, was unevenly enforced, but nonetheless manifests the will of the people of Rhode Island.
This same Roger Williams found his motives for opposing slavery to be united with his motives for nudging America away from British rule, revealing the American spirit to be, from its very beginnings, an abolitionist spirit. A majority of the residents of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery.
Despite a strong abolitionist sentiment, it took considerable time to finally abolish slavery. It was not until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War — i.e., until some point in time between 1863 and 1865 — that slavery in the United States was finally ended.
Which leaves us with a painful and perplexing question: Why, then, did slavery persist in other nations around the world? Why did slavery persist in Cuba until 1886 and in Brazil until 1888? In Madagascar until 1896 and in Egypt until 1904? In Thailand until 1905 and in China until 1909?
The answer, in part, lies in the foundation of the United States on the idea of freedom. Other nations were founded one one group — one family — claiming the right to exercise power over everyone else in the nation.
People in various nations around the world looked at the United States and hoped to copy the American pattern — they hoped to gain the same freedoms and rights for themselves in their various nations. As historian Ben Shapiro writes:
European colonists arrived in America in order to establish a country founded on principles of liberty and religious toleration. America is guilty of many sins in its past — but the principles enshrined in the Constitution are eternal and good. The Constitution’s central natural law principles laid forth the notions of individual liberty and rights to one’s own labor — and over time, those rights would be perfected in the United States, not through centralized government, but through good people struggling to bring about change through blood and sacrifice and persuasion.
In the United States, not only was slavery ended, but the right to own property and the right to vote was extended to citizens of all races; in the world today, there are other nations which allow only some people to vote, and not others. In the United States, a person of any race can be a citizen; in other nations, only people of certain races can be citizens.
In the U.S., women as well as men can vote; in other nations in the world today, women are deprived of full suffrage and not allowed to vote as men vote.
In the U.S., a citizen’s vote is counted as equal to the vote of any other citizen, regardless of wealth. In other nations today, only the wealthy are allowed to vote.
In the words of Ben Shapiro, there is a collection of ideas which constitute “the system upon which our freedoms and prosperity is based.” In addition to the ideas mentioned above, there are ideas like popular sovereignty — the idea that the legitimacy of the government is found in the consent of the governed; a government is valid only if those who are governed by it give their consent to be so governed.
Another foundational principle in the United States is the idea of majority rule. Because the U.S. allows citizens to vote equally, regardless of gender, race, religion, or wealth, it is the majority of ordinary people who can decide major questions of government.
Around the world, the U.S. has served as an example of a nation-state governed by freely-elected representatives. Political revolutionaries and political reformers in other countries have studied the U.S. carefully, and worked to replicate its success. “The truth is, America, while certainly not perfect, has long been a beacon of hope,” as Ben Shapiro notes. “America’s founding principles and documents have allowed it to become a model of freedom and democracy for the world.”
Even those nations which are harshly critical of the United States, even those which firmly oppose the United States, still copy the principles which were first articulated and put into action during the American Revolution of 1776.
