"Heritage American" -- Does the phrase have meaning?

Musing for Memorial Day, 2026

I recently purchased a tee-shirt with the following info emblazoned on it: “Descendant of a Patriot: Daniel Langdon (1728-1812), Captain, Connecticut Volunteers.”

Daniel was an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side. As you can see from the info after his name, he was nearly 50 years old at the outset of the American Revolution and an officer in his state’s militia, not in Washington’s Continental Army. Even so, he apparently participated in the fortification of Hartford, and his service qualifies me as a “Son of the American Revolution.” It also makes me a “Heritage American,” to use a phrase recently coined to describe Americans whose ancestry goes back to the nation’s earliest days.

And so what, you may say. After all, I did not personally take up the bayonet against Redcoats and Hessians. That was done by someone two and a half centuries ago to whom I am distantly related. That’s true. And yet, I harbor a small but glowing pride in knowing that my great-great-great-grandfather (there may be another “great” in there) hand a small hand in founding this nation. I allow pride in very little, but in this, I feel okay.

The important thing — and it is critical — is that I am no more or less an American than the most recent immigrants. And by immigrants, I mean legal immigrants who have become naturalized citizens, like the family on my father’s side, French fur traders who came down from Quebec. In some ways, in fact, I feel I have less right to claim American identity than do naturalized citizens. The naturalized citizen has chosen to become an American, whereas I have merely won the lottery by being born here.

Naturalized citizens often know more about the Constitution and American history than we so-called “Heritage Americans.” I had a dear friend, who passed recently, Venezuelan by birth and American by choice. He could quote articles of the Constitution I didn't even know existed. And like many immigrants from lands where firearms were rare, he exercised his Second Amendment rights with zeal. At the time of his passing, I understand he had collected the equivalent of a small town’s public arsenal. He was an American. I am an American. How we became Americans differed, but made no real difference.

That’s because the United States of America is “the only nation in the world founded on a creed” rather than on a common population. So G.K. Chesterton observed, and he was right. It’s what an American believes that makes him an American. Belief in the principles put forth in the Declaration of Independence means knowing that freedom underpins all just society, and that equality — to the extent that the word has any meaning — flows from the primacy of freedom, and not the other way round. Belief in the authority of the U.S. Constitution means respecting the results of fair elections and obeying the laws of the land. These beliefs are the American creed, and all who hold them are Americans, either actual or potential.

Those who do not share these beliefs, but who nonetheless live in our land illegally, draining the energy and resources of American citizens, are at best frauds and at worst invaders. They are not in any sense Americans. No reasonable person treats them with the same regard as one should treat, for example, people like my late friend from Venezuela.

I don’t need the label “Heritage American,” It sounds fussy and irrelevant. I am an American whose ancestor once, long ago, took up arms against a king. My friend was an American whose family had the intelligence and courage to come to this country. The word “American” points to both of us, and to all who share the creed of freedom.

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