Masked federal officers have now killed two U.S. citizens in the streets of Minneapolis. In both cases, the Trump administration stood by the officers, claiming that the Americans they shot to death were interfering with law enforcement, which has never been a capital offense. These events have set a dark precedent. Americans can no longer assume that they can exercise their established rights to protest and observe public law enforcement without punishment, which raises questions about the exercise of other historically attested rights. If we are not as safe from state violence as we thought we were, then the very foundations of the country seem shaky, and we may be witnessing a breakdown of the American idea.
The United States was founded as an experiment in propositional citizenship, the idea that a nation could be bound not by race, ethnicity, or language but by fidelity to a set of principles—liberty, equality, self-governance, and inalienable rights. In an address in 1858, Abraham Lincoln reminded his audience that although many Americans had been in the country for only a short time, having arrived from Germany, Ireland, France, Scandinavian countries, and elsewhere in Europe, they still found “themselves our equals in all things.” These new citizens might not have been able to trace their roots to the country’s early history, Lincoln said, but they were fully American thanks to their belief in the moral sentiments embedded in “that old Declaration of Independence.” That, Lincoln said, is the “electric cord” that binds “the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together”—a bind that should last “as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
[Quinta Jurecic: ICE’s No. 1 ally]
The very fact that Americanness is transmissible via principles and ideas is a problem for those who prefer the simple profundity of the bonds that Lincoln called “blood of the blood” and “flesh of the flesh.” Such tangible essentialism can give groups a concentrated sense of purpose and meaning—and may be coupled with a powerful urge to persecute members of out-groups. Some on the right prefer to see the country in thinly veiled racial terms, as if white people—or “heritage Americans,” as some on the right have lately classified Americans with familial links to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars—are somehow more American than members of other races. Recent immigrants are naturally inferior Americans, if they are considered American at all. This is a silly gesture at indigeneity. Its absurdity was recently underscored by ICE’s confusing capture of five Native Americans in Minneapolis. But it also demonstrates an urgent desire for a mystical, blood-and-soil connection to the country that is both more concrete and more exclusive than some intellectual “cord.”
A fundamental weakness of the American idea is that, as with any idea, if people stop believing in it, its power evaporates. This has happened before, as in the secession of the Confederacy, and it may be happening now, with the rise of a political movement that sees cherished American rights and premises as nuisances. Demagogues gain power in democracies precisely because they can harness and exploit popular feelings of anger and discontent, and then flout checks on their power by dismissing any precedent born of principles they reject.
But an essential lesson of the backlash against Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security’s paramilitary campaign in Minnesota, is that the American idea is durable—precisely because it belongs to all Americans equally, and because it has inspired Americans to fight to defend it, even if this means resisting the government.
[Adam Serwer: Minnesota proved MAGA wrong]
As ICE and Border Patrol agents descended on Minnesota, volunteers from the community banded together in remarkably short order to exercise their right to track and observe agents as they traveled the streets and snatched people from cars and homes. Volunteers have also organized grocery deliveries and court escorts for neighbors facing the threat of capture and deportation. Federal agents have attempted to frustrate these efforts, but their targets have proved too resourceful, too careful—too determined—to be deterred.
The Declaration of Independence was meant to signal the rejection of tyranny and the empowerment of the individual to resist undue coercion. That principle, so essential to the American idea, may soon end the occupation of Minnesota, but not before two brave individuals lost their lives.
In a clear sign of the operation’s failure, Donald Trump has ordered the Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino out of the state and back to his prior post, where he is expected to retire soon. Perhaps this is a turning point, a moment that forces the Trump administration to lead more cautiously, less aggressively—and perhaps not. America was born from a collection of ideas about who we are and what we believe, but the practical results are still playing out. These principles will survive only if they persist in the American imagination, and only if Americans remain willing to fight for them. It’s too soon to say whether we can salvage every beautiful thing imagined by America’s Founders from every weakness they bequeathed.
