Noah Webster created the idea of being "American". On the one level, he is celebrated as an educator. On another level, he took it upon himself to create a system to essentially re-educate the children of immigrants to no longer think of the lands in which they were born, but only to think of themselves as America. English at the time did not have a standardised spelling. Samuel Johnson published his dictionary in 1755, attempting to standardise English. Webster was teaching in the 1780s, and decided the new Republic must reject its British heritage, and adopt so-called American spelling, not for any reason, but to differentiate itself. He believed in using education to forge a unified, patriotic American identity rather than simply for academic instruction. This would mean that the children were taught to reject the moralities of their parents, who might come from all sorts of backgrounds, and accept the virtues and beliefs of the New Republic. One one level, little different from Mao and his revolution, in getting children to renounce and reject previous Chinese civilisations and values. Even 250 years later, many Americans think their history began in 1776, even the ones descended from people who immigrated 100 years later. Of course, its utterly ridiculous. Americans have as long a heritage as me, its just their identity had enforced change. Americans might feel they have a natural bond with other Americans, but in truth, they have been conditioned to think like that. What is left of the folk memory of the old country tends to be fairly superficial, and many Americans are fairly ignorant about where they came from; many in later life try and find out about that story that was denied to them, through studying their geneology, and attempting to connect to long lost distant cousins. The history of England, up until 1776, is also the history of the United States England went a 1000 years before anyone attempted to standardise the education system, and even then, there was resistance, that ripples to the present day. And you see that in people's attitudes to flags, which are not the same as in the US. And yet, there is a power sense of being English, despite lack of a written constitution, suggesting its a natural connection that runs deep. The same would said for the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish. To an extent, the British Identity is also a relatively modern political construct, woven after the Act of Union, but it didn't go so far as to completely suppress, or attempt to suppress prior identities.
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