With America’s 250th birthday as an independent nation coming up in 2026, the big debate on the right this season about what it means to be an American couldn’t be timelier. 

Vice-President JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy — the 2024 presidential aspirant who hopes to be elected Ohio governor next year — have both weighed in. 

The two extremes in the debate are the “creedal nationalists,” who emphasize America as an idea, and those who boast of being “heritage Americans” with lineages in this country stretching back generations or centuries. 

Aren’t long-established families — whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or fought in the Revolutionary War — more American than relative newcomers? 

Absolutely not, according to those who insist America is about values, not bloodlines. 

For creedal nationalists, an American is defined by belief “in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colour-blind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream,” as Ramaswamy wrote in the New York Times Dec. 17. 

Ramaswamy’s forebears came from India: Does that make him less American than the descendants of 17th-century English........

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