“America is not just an idea or a constitution, it is our home,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said during the opening speeches at the Republican National Convention.
“Americans don’t settle. We advance. We don’t live in basements. We explore the frontier, the horizon, and the stars,” said Gaetz, adding, “America is the greatest country that has ever existed. Don’t let any celebrity, athlete, or politician tell you otherwise.”
Gaetz’s August 24 claim is a direct rebuke of the Democrats’ post-1960s claim that the United States is a Nation of Immigrants.
The claim, and the resulting inflow of immigrants, illegal migrants, and diversity, has shaped the Democrats’ rhetoric. For example, on August, 20, Joe Biden declared in his acceptance speech:
Sen. Kamala Harris, she’s a powerful voice for this nation. Her story is the American story. She knows about all the obstacles thrown in the way of so many in our country, women, black women, black Americans, South Asian-Americans, immigrants, the left out, and the left behind. But she’s overcome every obstacle she’s ever faced. No one’s been tougher on the big banks and the gun lobby.
…
I said we were in a battle for the soul of this nation, and we are. You know, one of the most important conversations I’ve had this entire campaign, it was with someone who was much too young to vote. I met with six-year-old Gianna Floyd the day before her daddy, George Floyd, was laid to rest. She’s an incredible little girl.
And I’ll never forget it. When I leaned down to speak to her, she looked in my eyes and she said, and I quote, “Daddy changed the world. Daddy, changed the world.” Her words burrowed deep into my heart. Maybe George Floyd’s murder was a breaking point. Maybe John Lewis’s passing the inspiration, but however it’s come to be, however it’s happened, America’s ready, in John’s words, to lay down, quote, “the heavy burden of hate at last,” and then the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.
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