Colin Woodard's Argument On What It Means To Be An American?

“Because the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away. And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.” The touching and moving lyrics that come from the mouth of Lee Greenwood every 4th of July are a constant reminder of the hardships our nation has endured solely to give us the right to be individuals. The right to express our opinions freely and practice the religion of our choice. But why do we, as Americans, still struggle to agree on what these basic types of freedom’s look like? What does it truly mean to be an American? Does this view change based on our religion? Many different historians have weighed in on this topic over the years, but award winning journalist, Colin Woodard, lays out an argument

Woodard talks about all of these “Old-cultures” that are still with us today, still in our society at our very core. Not only has this division sprouted from these cultures, but the increased amount of immigrants to our country has allowed for even more culture-based differences to form. Woodard uses a quote; “There isn’t and has never been one America, but rather several Americas.” I would most certainly agree and almost argue that there are even more “Americas” now than in the past. Not only did these different Americas become prevalent, they all grew isolated from each other. So basically, these different cultures within America grew until they were so large in size they had no choice but to begin to run into the others. While these cultures clashed, debating on whose ideas were right, America was born. Woodard categorizes the different parts of the country into eleven “nations” of America ranging from Yankeedom all the way to the Far West. And with all of these individual nations, as Woodard alludes to, we obviously get a wide array of cultures, but there is also a large variety of religions as well. For example, the Spanish plundered the Native Americans in the El Norte region, instilling Catholicism to justify it. The Spanish considered the Native Americans “Uncivilized Heathens” and figured the only way to control them or justify their conquering was to have all of them

Woodard explains to his readers about this “cultural Cold War” and clash of cultures that is occurring internally throughout the nations. He labels it as an “internal civil war” that led people as far as physical violence. So now, not only do we, as a nation, still struggle as a whole with these essential freedoms, our individual pockets of people are also starting to crumble and fall apart. Historically, this was a low moment, culturally, for the United States. Our identity became much foggier. The few parts of our culture we might have thought to be solid or concrete, now collapsed from the inside