Here’s a question to ponder. We’ve been hearing a lot from the leaders of both political parties that America is based on a set of beliefs, and anybody who shares them is automatically American.
But how do we know anybody’s beliefs? Because they say so? Words are cheap.
Also, what do we do in cases like Zohran Mamdani who gets elected to a position of great power and immediately declares that he’s against American principles and wants the opposite ones?
When words become more important than reality, the results are always bad. Propositional or credal mean “based on words.” A propositional nation means no nation.
Clarissa's Blog 
“A propositional nation”
I like to ask: “Propositional? Okay, what’s the proposition?” and I never get anything coherent as an answer beyond a set of undefined buzzwords and/or word salad and wishful thinking.
The idea did have some merit at one point, it was that rather than being based on narrow ethnic grounds, it was based on language (American English) culture (mainstream American norms) and general political orientation (individualistic, meritocratic, etc) so that those from a number of different European (or neighboring) countries could come, let assimilation work and their children would be American rather than German or Mexican or Greek, the way that Klara is American rather than Ukrainian or russian (or Canadian for that matter)
But that approach requires pretty strong pressure for assimilation which can’t really be enforced at present. It absolutely can’t survive awful ideas like ‘open borders’ or ‘multiculturalism’…
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And we have to be able to name these American norms, which is now impossible because it’s been deemed racist to bring them up.
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Bingo.
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