An outsider view: when you have a state that is explicitly not an ethno-cultural nation-state, and was not made it not being one in the last 50 years like most European ones but really it was never so, not even when it was a colony (NY was Dutch, Louisana French, Florida Spanish etc. you cannot really reduce America to British ethnicity or culture), then the usual vaguely ethnic-cultural form maintaining tribal loyalty / patriotism / nationalism obviously doesn’t work.
What can you have in that case? A tribe of values. And this is how a constitution can get extremely important. This is basically the rallying flag, this is basically what forms the community, the tribe, the loyalty, the patriotism.
France could go from a throne-and-altar monarchy to a radical, revolutionary republic while still being France because it was understood that a common cultural heritage—not so strictly ethnic, but cultural, ethno-cultural—defines its identity. Whatever it is, it can be defined as the place for the culturally French. (Even if they are brown, they navigated that kind of issue rather skillfully.) But America was never so because this sense of ethno-cultural American identity never really existed—sure, sure, there was an attempt to see it as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture but I think everybody from Catholics in Boston to Dutch in New Amsterdam / York to the Spanish in Florida or French in Louisiana laughed at that. I think WASP-ism was never really a serious attempt, or was it?
So the issue is, without the constitution you basically don’t really have a clearly defined “mission statement”. And that opens up a question what exactly will create loyalty, patriotism, or the lack of “faction” (in the Madison - The Federalist No. 10 sense) in a nation that lacks a unifying culture to be loyal to.
Why does that matter? Wouldn’t it be better to live in a cosmopolitan world lacking any tribal loyalties? Sure it would, but it is far more likely that when nation-states lose loyalty, tribal (political, religious) groups inside the nations gain it. In other words, that leads to civil-waresque situations and arguably that is worse than nationalism. If people need to be loyal to some tribe, it is probably useful if that tribe is an independent, sovereign political unit.
It would be better if people could be cosmopolitan and non-tribal, but if they cannot be so, then let tribes be independent and sovereign so that they don’t mess with each other much, not at peacetime at least, (i.e. being nation-states or other states), and tribes will naturally be formed around something—blood relations, religion, culture, or values. If it is values, and it seems you guys in the US really only have the option of values, why not write them down clearly?
If SSC is to be believed, I mean this post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ the US is not simply politically but also culturally polarized into red-blue, i.e. does not resemble “usual” nations at all that are held together by a shared sense of culture. Quite possibly that old piece of paper is the only thing keeping you guys from seceding / splitting up / becoming multiple nations and that kind of process is really rarely peaceful and painless.
An outsider view: when you have a state that is explicitly not an ethno-cultural nation-state, and was not made it not being one in the last 50 years like most European ones but really it was never so, not even when it was a colony (NY was Dutch, Louisana French, Florida Spanish etc. you cannot really reduce America to British ethnicity or culture), then the usual vaguely ethnic-cultural form maintaining tribal loyalty / patriotism / nationalism obviously doesn’t work.
What can you have in that case? A tribe of values. And this is how a constitution can get extremely important. This is basically the rallying flag, this is basically what forms the community, the tribe, the loyalty, the patriotism.
France could go from a throne-and-altar monarchy to a radical, revolutionary republic while still being France because it was understood that a common cultural heritage—not so strictly ethnic, but cultural, ethno-cultural—defines its identity. Whatever it is, it can be defined as the place for the culturally French. (Even if they are brown, they navigated that kind of issue rather skillfully.) But America was never so because this sense of ethno-cultural American identity never really existed—sure, sure, there was an attempt to see it as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture but I think everybody from Catholics in Boston to Dutch in New Amsterdam / York to the Spanish in Florida or French in Louisiana laughed at that. I think WASP-ism was never really a serious attempt, or was it?
So the issue is, without the constitution you basically don’t really have a clearly defined “mission statement”. And that opens up a question what exactly will create loyalty, patriotism, or the lack of “faction” (in the Madison - The Federalist No. 10 sense) in a nation that lacks a unifying culture to be loyal to.
Why does that matter? Wouldn’t it be better to live in a cosmopolitan world lacking any tribal loyalties? Sure it would, but it is far more likely that when nation-states lose loyalty, tribal (political, religious) groups inside the nations gain it. In other words, that leads to civil-waresque situations and arguably that is worse than nationalism. If people need to be loyal to some tribe, it is probably useful if that tribe is an independent, sovereign political unit.
It would be better if people could be cosmopolitan and non-tribal, but if they cannot be so, then let tribes be independent and sovereign so that they don’t mess with each other much, not at peacetime at least, (i.e. being nation-states or other states), and tribes will naturally be formed around something—blood relations, religion, culture, or values. If it is values, and it seems you guys in the US really only have the option of values, why not write them down clearly?
If SSC is to be believed, I mean this post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ the US is not simply politically but also culturally polarized into red-blue, i.e. does not resemble “usual” nations at all that are held together by a shared sense of culture. Quite possibly that old piece of paper is the only thing keeping you guys from seceding / splitting up / becoming multiple nations and that kind of process is really rarely peaceful and painless.