American Identity / Foundation / Americanism — Definition

• Bound by a set of ideals
  • Not ‘blood and soil’
    • Will always be thinner than Japan or Italy
• Exceptional of common ideals
• Ideals
  • Declaration of Independence / Constitution
  • That we can be trusted to govern ourselves, by better or worse
  • Speak mind openly
  • Practice religion, whatever that is
  • Meritocracy
    • Recognizes that everyone doesn’t have the same God given gifts
    • You can maximize your God given potential without government standing in your way
  • Rule of Law
  • Free speech
  • Open debate
  • Free expression
  • People we elect to run the government run the government, not bureaucrats
• Immigration
  • If you will come here, share the American ideals and contribute
  • Civics test? (And high school seniors)
• Civil nationalism > Ethno-nationalism
• Foreign Policy
  • Against the nanny state domestically and against the nanny state internationally
  • Other countries need to pay their fair share
  • Not interventionist
  • U.S. should support allies
  • Promote U.S. self interests
  • NOT isolationist
• Gun Control
  • Regarding gun control, the idea that law abiding people giving their guns, Will that make a difference? If you could snap your fingers and revert the invention of guns, nuclear bombs and chemical weapons—that has a lot of strong positives obviously. A downside would be the inability of a “weaker” person to protect themselves from the stronger without the use of a weapon to equal the playing ground.

What Political Philosopher do I align with?

The closest fit is probably John Locke, with secondary affinities to Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, James Madison, and some strands of classical liberal conservatism.

Your described view sounds like:

Classical liberalism with a conservative temperament.

That means: strong individual rights, capitalism, limited government, rule of law, religious liberty, and separation of church and state — but with a preference for prudence, social stability, moral order, inherited institutions, and avoiding radical experiments.

Best Match: John Locke

Locke fits strongly on:

Locke is not “conservative” in the Burkean sense, but many modern conservatives and libertarians draw from him because he defends property, consent, rights, constitutionalism, and limits on state power.

Best Temperamental Match: Edmund Burke

Burke may match your moderate with conservative moral tilt better than Locke.

Burke believed political change should be:

Burke was not anti-liberty. He supported the American colonists against British overreach, but opposed the French Revolution because he thought abstract ideology had destroyed social order.

The phrase that best captures Burke is: ordered liberty.

Best American Fit: James Madison

Madison fits the institutional version of your view.

He believed freedom requires:

• individual rights,
• separation of powers,
• checks and balances,
• religious liberty,
• representative government,
• constitutional limits,
• competing factions restraining each other.

Madison is especially close to your idea that politics needs tension rather than one side permanently dominating. His system assumes conflict is unavoidable, so the goal is to channel it through institutions.

Best Sociological Fit: Alexis de Tocqueville

Tocqueville is a strong match if you care about the balance between liberty, religion, capitalism, civil society, and democracy.

He supported democracy but warned that it could slide into:

• soft despotism,
• conformism,
• majority tyranny,
• materialism,
• excessive individualism.

He saw religion, family, local associations, and civic life as necessary restraints on democratic excess. That is very close to a moderate-conservative moral liberalism.

Modern Label

The most precise label for your view would be one of these:

Classical liberal conservative

or:

Burkean liberal conservative

or:

fusionist conservative

or:

moderate constitutional conservative

or:

ordered-liberty liberal

If you want the cleanest intellectual lineage, I would put it like this:

Lockean on rights and capitalism, Burkean in temperament, Madisonian in institutional design, and Tocquevillean in moral sociology.

Ranking of Closest Thinkers

The deepest match is probably Burkean classical liberalism: pro-capitalist, pro-rights, pro-limited government, but skeptical of both reactionary authoritarianism and progressive utopianism.