Andrew Beck makes a cogent case at the American Mind for why the United States, like other countries, requires cultural and moral cohesion to protect its nationhood and to act with a unified will on behalf of the common good. Beck correctly notes that the U.S. started out as a country with a well-defined collective identity. If we look back at America’s beginnings, we discover John Jay in Federalist 2 defining this original American identity in a memorable observation:

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion , attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, an

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