Apparently Democrats use this phrase far more often that Republicans. I agree with Stoller that its usage in Demspeak is pretty odd. In most cases, they either could say "people" (as when Clinton says "The American people know where I stand") or "Americans" (as when Edwards says "the illegal spying on the American people that this president has been engaged in") or "America" (as when Obama says "But what the American people are looking for right now is straight answers to tough questions"). Meanwhile, I don't think anyone other than grandiloquent pols and columnists ever use the phrase.
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"The American People"
17 Nov 2007 10:54 am
Comments (22)
It's a cultural thing and a product of old conflicts with socialism. We don't say "the masses" for similar reasons.
Meanwhile, I don't think anyone other than grandiloquent pols and columnists ever use the phrase.
Well, no one outside of columnists and reporters says "gubernatorial," either, but the word persists.
I think this usage is fine.
Distinctions:
"America supports Musharraf" is true, because here "America" means the government. "America supports free speech" even if Americans do not.
"Americans support X" is an odd formulation because it vaguely implies that people who do not support X are not Americans.
"The American people support X" is not a statement about all persons, but about the "people" as a group. "The American people voted for Bush in 2004."
"The people" is fine, but appealing to national pride is a pretty basic part of political speech.
Huh. Well, as a speechwriter for a Democratic Congressman, I use this all the time, for much the same reasons that Misplaced Patriot mentions. It also has a nice cadence in a sentence. And, my boss hates talking about "we" all the time, because he doesn't want the focus to be on him--he wants it to be on "the American people".
I think the phrase makes in clear you're not talking about the American government, or laws, or land, or foreign policy, or corporations--you're specifically talking about the people in America.
I'll keep an eye out for it in my writing, but I refuse to go cold turkey!
Sheesh. It's just better politically, like having flags draped over the podium. It's the kinnd of thing Dems should do more. Helps a little, doesn't hurt.
You are thinking about this too much, Matt.
The comparison to "masses" is apt and would probably turn into smears of Dems for saying merely "the people". I say that having lived in the People's Republic of Santa Monica as well as the People's Republic of Berkeley. (Both are just about the finest places on the planet to live....)
I haven't done any research into this, but I would suspect that consevatives tend to talk about America, while liberals tend to talk about the American people. Why? Because for conservatives America seems to be something different than the people that make up the American nation. "America" has a existence independent of the people that constitute it. How else can one explain the idea that anyone who wants to pull out of Iraq pronto-quick is unpatriotic, or even a traitor? Since the majority of Americans [i]do[/i] want out, that would mean the majority are traitors. Yet logically it would seem that what the majority wants should define the will of the nation and cannot be opposed to the national interest. Conservatives, in other words, tend to be illiberal nationalists.
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to favor the idea of liberal nationalism in which majority rule and the consent of the governed are paramount. In this view, the nation is made up of the people and what they desire determines the natinoal interest; the national interest can never be something other than what the majority wants.
At any rate, I have noticed this tendency of conservative nationalism to latch onto a notion of the nation that seem strangely devoid of the people that make up the nation.
'We the people of the United States...' Today these people are regularly called the American people. So what's this whole discussion about? Big deal.
P.S. That is the opening sentence of the preamble of the U.S. Constition = the American Constitution.
I prefer the far simpler "the Americans", as in "Nancy Pelosi and I told the Americans that we're going to raise their taxes", or "Howard Dean, in a speech to the Americans, told them to stop scapegoating people". Why not just be honest about it?
???
I use that expression from time to time in conversation, and so do other people I've talked to.
Perhaps its a kind of freudian slip by republicans that they don't use it? Perhaps some of them simply do not identify with "the american people" or feel like they need represent those interests?
"American people" implies a broad spectrum of people, and addressing that kind of diversity isn't a republican virtue. I would argue that with republicans you are more likely to get vocabulary that speaks about "America" so that the compartmentalized that constituents that they represent can fill in the blank how they see fit. Its code-speak way of saying "the way america used to be".
'We the people of the United States...' Today these people are regularly called the American people. So what's this whole discussion about? Big deal.
P.S. That is the opening sentence of the preamble of the U.S. Constition = the American Constitution.
Posted by Quentin
It IS a big deal in the sense that Democrats habitually refer to the collective rights of The People as being shared between illegal immigrants, Americans, innocent brown Iraqi babies, and Islamic terrorists.
As the Parties have diverged, good poly sci teachers have noted the divergence of language. Dems have embraced the language of PC - where they all are required to refer to illegal aliens without permission to be here as undcumented workers, but a person walking the street with a handgun w/o permit not as a undocumented security enforcer or undocumented wealth transfer agent - but as a felon.
So by saying "American People" Dems are just being concise in talking about one subset of people they champion.
Dems are also fond of the old Marxist language, pomo language, and the new Cult of Victimhood language where clout and worthiness for Gov't consideration, entitlements, and goodies is considered a direct function of how oppressed or suffering they can whine they are.
Republicans have their own curious language, where fatcats using their wealth to lobby to suck up taxpayer money as corporate of plutocrat
welfare are called "entrepreneurs & Visionaries". The Republicans also have recently adopted the fascistic creed that any person in uniform and paid by the Government is a Hero cops, park rangers, DEA agents, Army Rangers, firefighters - but all other government employees sans uniforms - are "excess civilian bureaucrats".
"America" properly means the New World: North America, South America, Central America. The name United States of America crucially contains the word OF. Personally, I endorse the term "Usanians" for citizens of the U.S.A.
"The people", American or otherwise, used to be a singular noun denoting a large group of "persons" with a common (usually national) characteristic. I suppose that usage went out of fashion around the time monarchy did. That's too bad, in a way. It would be amusing to hear one Hollywood executive say to another: "My persons will call your persons."
In any case, we're stuck with the modern usage of "the American people": a muddled amalgam of the singular and the plural. The will of "the people" is what 50% plus one person say it is. Politicians can invoke "the people" whenever it would be inconvenient to acknowledge that many persons DON'T want something.
Cap_and_Gown nails the difference in attitude between the parties, by the way. The GOP's idea of "defending America" for instance does not emphasize such things as defending Americans from epidemic diseases, dangerous toys, or global warming. American persons are not what America is all about, to the GOP.
-- TP
Chris Ford:
"a person walking the street with a handgun w/o permit" as an "undocumented wealth transfer agent"
That's a really good one, which I'd never heard before...
The word "Americans" can be exclusionary, while the term "the American people" is inclusive. Puts the accent on the "people", if nothing else.
"Americans support the Iraq war," works for the GOP, because (to them) those that don't support the war aren't really American. Plus, some Americans still do support the war, strangely. So it also has the benefit of being a true (if also misleading) statement.
If one were to say "the American people support the Iraq war," well... that's a donkey of a different color. There are polls, after all. Facts -- however inconvenient for the 24%ers they might be.
When Clinton or Obama include the word "people" in speeches, they're saying that they are speaking for or to or about everybody. All the people.
But when Bush or Cheney talk about "Americans", don't we kind of know they're only talking to their own well-defined and exclusive posse?
Cap and Gown - Liberals, on the other hand, tend to favor the idea of liberal nationalism in which majority rule and the consent of the governed are paramount.
Hardly. Liberal's idea of governance is elitist bureaucracies creating regulation the public never had a say in. Or judges foisting laws on the masses they have no vote on, in reversing. Liberals know what is best for Joe Public.
TonyP - GOP's idea of "defending America" for instance does not emphasize such things as defending Americans from epidemic diseases, dangerous toys, or global warming.
1. GOP is always a strong advocate of public health to stop epidemic diseases. They are also happy to tell people to stop spreading diseases by filthy habits like IV drug use, and letting each other get buggered bareback by 100 strangers.
2. Ooooo! Mommy! Lets have a Ministry of Defense Against Dangerous Toys! Since the Iranians, NORKs, radical Muslims are basically peaceful people - lets focus on toys instead!
3. Agree Bush did nothing about global warming, or about the same as the Clinton Administration did. Plus the efforts of Detroit Democrats to gut CAFE standards...
Democrats, who focus more on humanities than hard sciences, have incoherency on fixes...thinking exotic energies the hippies were groovin' about in the 60s, that were less than 1% of energy use then and now - are the answer. While wanting to block nuclear power, tear down dams. And maintain Open Borders for immigrants - which wiped out all conservation savings of the last 30 years and made us even more dependent on foreign energy - and with population projected to be 363 million by 2030 acc to US Census - we will go from 108 Quadrillion BTUs used today to 122-128 Quads in 2030. (Almost all coal and nat gas for the new demand unless nukes are allowed). And 140 Quads in 2050 when we will have 420 million Americans, illegals, and descendents of illegals.
Muttonheads...Even as they mumble excitedly about "new biodiesel from chicken and turkey guts!!!".
for conservatives America seems to be something different than the people that make up the American nation.
That may be because they're referring to the culture, which is distinct from the actual people, kind of similar to the way a corporation is a strictly imaginary individual. Liberals talk about society which is actual people.
Chris Ford seems to have many peculiar ideas, but his best one has got to be the notion that Dems tend to be historians and theologians, say, rather than physicists and chemists. It would be fun to ask him whether biology, from evolution to stem-cell research, is a "hard science", but I would rather see Victor Davis Hansen and Mike Huckabee debate that one.
-- TP
"Meanwhile, I don't think anyone other than grandiloquent pols and columnists ever use the phrase."
Really? But just a couple posts down you quote Tyler Cowen saying "the American public." Is that any different?
I cringe whenever I hear a politician use the phrase "the American people". Why? Because it is terribly overused. Also, because it is a reference to a massive collection of individuals within the United States, it has very little meaning to the average person who lives outside the Washington beltway. In other words, an individual cannot always relate to the term because it is so broad and not at all individualized and brought down to a local level, which is more easily digestible. Its popular use reflects the top-down mentality of Washington politicians who claim to act on behalf of "the American people". I would much rather hear politicians use the term "community" or "collective good" or even "the American public" rather than "the American people".
Comments closed December 01, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Like most rhetoric with populist roots, it is sentimental dreck.
Posted by Will Allen | November 17, 2007 11:14 AM