In widely quoted speeches delivered over the past couple of years, JD Vance has made the claim that he is more American than you. (Well, unless you happen to be his cousin, or a very distant nephew of James Madison.)
“People whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he said during one of these addresses last July. In another, he described how his family had been buried in an eastern Kentucky cemetery since the 19th century, arguing that this particular ancestry is what undergirds patriotism: “That’s not just a set of principles. … That is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home,” he said.
The vice president remains just a bit slippery in these lectures. Full context sometimes makes the snippets more alarming and sometimes less. In the first quote, for instance, he’s specifically claiming primacy for Americans of Civil War-era descent who also hold views that would cause the Anti-Defamation League to label them domestic extremists. (I’m serious; the transcript is online.) On the other hand, the cemetery quote was part of a sentimental riff about his proposal to his Indian-American wife.
