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American nationalism is a form of civic, ethnic, cultural or economic influences[1] found in the United States.[2] Essentially, it indicates the aspects that characterize and distinguish the United States as an autonomous political community. The term often explains efforts to reinforce its national identity and self-determination within its national and international affairs.[3]
All four forms of nationalism have found expression throughout the United States' history, depending on the historical period. The first Naturalization Act of 1790 passed by Congress and President George Washington defined American identity and citizenship on racial lines, declaring that only "free white men of good character" could become citizens, and denying citizenship to enslaved black people and anyone of non-European stock; thus it was a form of ethnic nationalism. Some American scholars have argued that the United States government institutionalized a civic nationalism founded upon legal and rational concepts of citizenship, being based on common language and cultural traditions,[2] and that the Founding Fathers of the United States established the country upon liberal and individualist principles.
Who Is An American? Native-born and naturalized citizens
But it also expresses a myth of American nationality that remains vital in our political and cultural life: the idealized self-image of a multiethnic, multiracial democracy, hospitable to differences but united by a common sense of national belonging.
In inter-state relations, the American nation state presents its members as a monistic political body-despite ethnic and national groups in the interior.
To be or to become an American, a person did not have to be of any particular national, linguistic, religious, or ethnic background. All he had to do was to commit himself to the political ideology centered on the abstract ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism. Thus the universalist ideological character of American nationality meant that it was open to anyone who willed to become an American.
The first, and central, way involves the view that Americans are all those persons born within the boundaries of the United States or admitted to citizenship by the government.