America is a liberal nation

On the eve of the election of the most liberal president in half a century, political writers continue to insist that America is a center-right nation. They're looking at the self-identification numbers - more Americans call themselves "conservatives" than "liberals." They're looking at gun ownership or church attendance. But the pundits are wrong; labels aside, this nation is built on a bedrock of liberalism.

If you really love America - if you are, like me, an American nationalist - then you have to love what makes America greater than China, Russia, Japan, and all the rest. Not the people here, but the nation-state itself. What makes this country more powerful, dynamic, and flexible. If you don't love America's advantage, you don't love America.

And our advantage is diversity. In our melting-pot society, people are free to cast aside age-old conventions and the expectations of ossified social groups. They are freed - and forced - to act as individuals. They have no choice but to learn to cooperate with people very different from themselves. And our institutions - companies, media, government - are forced to set themselves up as meritocracies, because there's just no way to find enough people by tribal connections alone.

For all their supposed liberalism, all this is something European countries - founded on the concept of blood-and-soil - have yet to achieve. They are still creatures of the ancient world.

In other words, centuries after its founding, America continues to be a radical liberal social experiment. This nation's existence is a test of the idea that a society can abolish the concept of race and still function effectively.

Obama is a test that the idea of the liberal nation-state is working. It's no coincidence that he's the child of an immigrant. Immigration is the lifeblood of the liberal nation - it's what keeps tribes from crystallizing. If you wave an American flag and denounce immigration, you're not just a hypocrite - you're a looney.

Richard Cohen writes:

Somewhere beyond the gaze of Karl Rove, America was changing. You could see it on TV all the time. Oprah -- not some white, Andy Griffith-type, as the 1957 Elia Kazan movie "A Face in the Crowd" envisioned -- had become the most powerful figure in the medium. Ellen DeGeneres also has a daytime talk show. She's a lesbian -- not reputed to be or reported to be, but proud to be. She's a hit, too.

America is a changed country. Blacks have been the mayors of majority-white cities and the governors of majority-white states (Massachusetts, for instance). The governor of Louisiana is Bobby Jindal, an Indian American, the senatorial contest in Minnesota is between two Jews -- one a former comedian, for crying out loud -- and the governor of California cannot even pronounce the name of the state.

The wedding pages of our newspapers announce the unions -- civil or otherwise -- of gay men and lesbians...

Just as John F. Kennedy was only incidentally a Catholic, so is Obama only incidentally a black man. It is not just that he is post-racial; so is the nation he is generationally primed to lead. This, of course, was the dream of the man who is buried on his beloved ranch -- the unheralded winner of this election. As he would put it: My fellow Americans, we have overcome.

He's right. Barack Obama's election doesn't make America more of a liberal place. It doesn't necessarily demonstrate that America is a more liberal place. It demonstrates that America has always been a liberal place.

THE liberal place.