Below, Sanjay summarizes his understanding of the views that challenge the Principles described in his article:

Far Left Perspective

The fabrication of a heroic struggle against a foreign tyrant to build America’s national mythos and unifying narrative is an underhanded attempt to apply social pressure, preventing dissent against entrenched social elitism, economic suppression of the historically impoverished, systemic injustices concretized in public policy, and a political system that forces the populace to choose the lesser of two evils.

Despite being idealistic and claiming to be inspired by God given rights, the men who founded this country were hypocrites. They owned slaves, excluded women and people of color from participation in government, and worked to build their own wealth and social stature. The Constitution codified these beliefs into federal law, and had to be amended to even grant the right to vote to women and people of color. Further, the Constitution is fundamentally undemocratic, and limits the will of the majority from being implemented.

Creating and maintaining culture is the work of elites. The prominent Founders owned vast tracts of land, were heirs of wealthy estates, and had the resources and social networks to win elections. The privileged colonial elite pursued university education, invested in businesses, and read and debated philosophy and history for leisure. By contrast, poor farmers were far away from being literate (much less reading Locke in their time away from hard labor to feed themselves and their family).

The Founders may have been ideological hypocrites, but they nonetheless tried to create a nation which rejected European-style aristocratic elitism and advocated for basic rights for every person.

Therefore, an American is that person who perpetuates this radical struggle for equality and rights that America’s founders claimed to be engaging in.

As a whole, this country has failed in creating equality and liberation among its own citizenry.

All of the wealth generated from exploitation of the working classes could be justified if it was used for advancing the cause of equity and upliftment of the downtrodden.

The federal government should serve as a redistribution mechanism which promotes social welfare of the socioeconomically oppressed by seizing profits from the exploiters. This justice must be implemented among those residing in the continental USA, but also be incentivized abroad through various government initiatives. 

Far Right Perspective

The primary inheritors of the American identity are the descendants of the original colonists who came to this nation from England and seized the lands of the original colonies. They are the ’heritage Americans’. These people, their beliefs and practices, and their subsequent efforts transformed a loosely knit group of colonies into a powerful nation built on conquered land. America is the homeland of the heritage Americans, and all others are their guests. 

Subsequent European immigrants have a reduced claim to the title, but are American adjacent by virtue of shared European ancestry and cultural heritage of that continent.

The further away from European descent an American is, the less claim he has to the American identity. Europeans cultivated ideas of democracy and republicanism, formulated advanced government systems, their work ethic and ingenuity industrialized the world, and waged campaigns to abolish slavery and eradicate disease.

America is a continuation of European cultural heritage: it is what Europe should have matured into. By extension, the identity of the American should reflect this heritage as well. America was established as a refuge for white Protestant Europeans to live together. By definition, this excludes anyone not Protestant Christian or not white.

The Founders relied on philosophy and ideologies primarily deriving from religious text in their justification for creation of the United States. Those values have become secondary because ethnically non-white people have conflicting worldviews which hinder their acceptance of any belief system that isn’t their own. As such, non-whites shouldn’t be forced to mold their belief system to one that is foreign to them.

Immigration should be limited to the well credentialed foreigner. The rights of liberty are only perpetuated by a populace that is well versed in the issues at hand, and is capable of envisioning solutions.

Even though only European immigrants should be offered an achievable path from immigration to citizenship, they must be well credentialed and willing to adopt American principles. Not only are well credentialed immigrants better capable of understanding the intricacies of American culture, but they are more likely to be productive members of society.

Author’s Reflection

While I broadly disavow extremist views from anywhere in the political spectrum, those arguments are sometimes based on valid ideas.

In this case, the far left’s criticism of the Founder’s ideological hypocrisy is a legitimate grievance. I believe they were flawed human beings, with severe limitations on how they could best proceed to ensure survival of a fledgling nation. The idea that the Founders declared independence for the sole sake of pursuing equality and rights is misleading: their grievances were against the unfair imposition of power, which led to violations of certain fundamental principles that are already inherent to all humans.

The far right’s idea of heritage Americans is so exclusionary that it’s laughable; it invokes a purity spiral that slides into something radically exclusive. The conception of heritage Americans easily devolves from Americans of European descent, to Americans of British descent, and then further to only include descendants of the original Plymouth colonists. Surely such a definition cannot benefit American society.

However, the conservative idea that American values must be based in morals derived from religious ideologies is a valuable one to explore. America was envisioned to be a nation of moral people after all, and morality is easily framed by religious tradition. This isn’t a call for all Americans to convert to one religion or another, I myself have no plans to pledge fealty to any faith but the one I already abide by. Religion gives a moral clarity, definitive rights and wrongs, on which we can base our daily life. Without which, any thoughts or actions can be justified as being “right.”

Good discourse, finding consensus, can only happen if all parties involved have a common foundation.

So when we can’t even agree on the definition of “violence,” (i.e., “words are violence”) then discourse is bound to fail.

The increasingly divisive atmosphere in which we seem to live can only be reversed if American society as a whole adopts values that we all agree on.

Without this, our nation continues to fragment and devolve into increasingly atomized groups whose instinctual reactions are to lay blame at the feet of everyone else and eschew any sort of attempt at discourse. Reorienting ourselves on non-negotiable principles is the time tested way of reinvigorating the American psyche, and ensuring that we get back on the path to a stable and prosperous nation.