by Alvin J. Schmidt

About the author: Alvin J. Schmidt is a professor of sociology at Illinois College in Jacksonville and author of The Menace of Multiculturalism: Trojan Horse in America.

The French philosopher Ernest Renan once observed that “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” and that two things constitute its soul. One is “its common possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the present consensus, the desire to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage that has been received undivided. . . . To have shared glories in the past, a common will in the present, to have done great things together, to want to do them still.”

This description has especially been true of the United States for at least 200 years. To Renan’s definition I...