American Nationalism

American nationalism is the nationalism of Americans – as in the people of the United States of America – and American culture. American scholars such as Hans Kohn have claimed that the US government institutionalized a civic nationalism based on legal and rational concepts of citizenship, and based on a common language and cultural traditions, rather than ethnic nationalism. The founders of the United States founded the country upon classical liberal individualist principles rather than ethnic nationalist principles. American nationalism since World War I and particularly since the 1960s has largely been based upon the civic nationalist culture of the country's founders. However prior to 1914, American nationalism in practice had strong ethnic nationalist elements – including nativism and efforts to exclude immigrants, African Americans, and others from receiving political power as citizens. American nativist ethnic nationalism found a basis in early leaders of the United States – such as George Washington who believed that immigration could have a deleterious affect on the country's national character, as well as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who opposed immigration from absolute monarchies because they believed that such immigrants would bring the antidemocratic beliefs of their countries to the United States. Discriminatory immigration policies by the US government continued until 1965 with the Amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act that abolished the existing ethnic quota system and replaced it with an ethnic-blind system. The civil rights movement of the 1950s to 1960s resulted in American civic nationalism prevailing over ethnic nationalism, as legal barriers preventing African Americans from attaining the full citizenship were removed, officially enfranchising African Americans as equal citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.