2026/07/04 by Dana H. Allin
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Political Theory and Influence
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00396338.2026.2704414
In the Gettysburg Address in 1863, Abraham Lincoln elevated Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence over the constitution – recognised as the United States’ charter since 1789 – in asserting that the ‘new nation’ created in 1776 had been ‘dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’ and that the Civil War was about whether such a nation could endure. Broadly in line with this creedal interpretation of American nationalism, post-war American conservatism, including right-wing varieties represented by Ronald Reagan, came to accept important egalitarian and inclusive changes instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the civil-rights movement and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Against the long-endorsed aspirations of Jefferson and Lincoln, MAGA conservatism espouses a tribal definition of nationalism and holds that the American nation and the West cannot survive the creed-based expansion of nationhood. This has left the country, after 250 years, in a state of cold civil war.