JD Vance's dangerous vision of American citizenship

When ancestry trumps ideals

In his remarks, the fake hillbilly Vice President articulated a vision of citizenship that fundamentally rejects the principle that America is defined by its ideals rather than by blood and soil.

Vance explicitly criticized what he called "the logic of America as a purely creedal nation"—the idea that American citizenship is defined by commitment to the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. He argued this approach is both "over-inclusive" and "under-inclusive."

Over-inclusive, he claimed, because it "would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree" with Declaration principles. Under-inclusive because it would "reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War."

A Telling Choice of Words

Vance's reference to the Anti-Defamation League is particularly troubling. As critics have noted, the ADL – founded to combat antisemitism—tracks groups like neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and Klansmen. Vance's implicit argument seems to be that ancestral American roots should grant citizenship privileges regardless of one's commitment to democratic values or even basic human equality.

In other words, his slip is showing if you know what I mean.

The Irony of Location

There's a bitter irony in Vance delivering this speech at the Claremont Institute, founded by students of Harry Jaffa—one of conservatism's most powerful defenders of Lincoln's interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. Jaffa's life's work centered on defending the proposition that "all men are created equal" means exactly what it says. His famous work on the Lincoln-Douglas debates argued precisely the opposite of Vance's position.

Spitting on Civil War Graves

Perhaps most disturbing is how Vance invokes Civil War soldiers while simultaneously repudiating everything they died for. His speech represents an exact rejection of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address—the greatest consecration of those war dead in American history. While claiming to honor Union soldiers, Vance advocates for a vision of citizenship that would negate the "new birth of freedom" they sacrificed their lives to secure.

Remember, he claims Kentucky and Ohio as homes. Just down the street to me is a monument to a real American hero, James McPherson, the highest ranking U.S. Army officer to be killed in battle (the Battle of Atlanta).

The Larger Pattern

This isn't just rhetorical positioning. Vance's speech provides the ideological framework for concrete policy actions—from pardoning January 6th insurrectionists to attempts at nullifying the 14th Amendment through executive order. These aren't separate issues but parts of a coherent worldview that rejects equal citizenship under law.

We've seen them go after the 14th Amendment already.

What's at Stake

America has never perfectly lived up to its founding ideals, but those ideals – that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights—have served as the "electric cord" linking us across generations and backgrounds. Vance wants to sever that cord, replacing it with a vision of citizenship based on ancestry and heritage rather than shared commitment to democratic values.

This represents nothing less than an attack on the constitutional order established by the Civil War Amendments. Maybe they should check the copy of the constitution they purport to have in their pockets. It's a lot more than the fucking 2nd Amendment.

It's a vision that would make some Americans more equal than others based on how long their families have been here and what their ancestors believed—a fundamental betrayal of everything America aspires to be. All the while forgetting that we white Europeans were the original invaders

The stakes couldn't be higher. What we're witnessing an attempt to redefine American citizenship in ways that would exclude the principles that make America exceptional among nations. That's not conservative—it's revolutionary, and not in a good way because it is fascist. Read some history and it's as obvious as the nose on your face..