Pramila Jayapal Doesn’t Think Americans Built America

My eleventh-great grandfather Thomas Rogers arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower. He signed the Mayflower Compact, which affirmed the right of free men to establish a government they would all be subject to.

John Quincy Adams later called it “perhaps the only instance, in human history, of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.”

My tenth great-grandfather Richard Lyman arrived on the Lyon in 1631. Five years later, he and roughly 100 other settlers — including more of my ancestors — would make a trek that would result in the founding of Hartford, Connecticut. It was there in Hartford in 1638 that the General Court “adopted the Fundamental Orders, often described as America’s first written constitution and the reason why Connecticut’s official nickname is the Constitution State.” The Orders were inspired by Rev. Thomas Hooker’s sermon that stated “the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.” Hooker led the settlers years prior to Hartford.

My seventh great-grandfather Elias Lyman served in the Third Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1775 alongside Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren.

When Paul Revere took his famous Midnight Ride that fateful April 19, 1775 night, it was two of my sixth-great granduncles, Capt. Caleb Brooks and John Brooks, who answered the call and served in Captain Isaac Hall’s minutemen company during Lexington and Concord. Notably, Isaac Hall is the first cousin of one of my other sixth-great grandfathers.

In fact, Revere reportedly rode to Hall’s house (which has now been converted into a Mosque) upon which Hall “triggered the town’s alarm system” to rally the Medford minutemen.

But on Thursday, Indian-born Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., informed me that it wasn’t ancestors like mine who built this nation. No, it was Somalians, Indians, and immigrants from Latin America and Africa.

“The majority of Americans across the country, regardless of political party, know that immigrants from all over the world — Somalia, India, wherever they’re from, Latin America, Africa — that immigrants have built this country and make this country what it is today,” Jayapal said on MS Now.

But if Somalians, Indians, or immigrants from “wherever they’re from” “built America,” why didn’t they just “build” their own version of America in their native country?

Because immigrants from Somalia, India, Latin America, Africa or “wherever they’re from” did not and could not have built this country.

To pull from Jayapal, Somalians and Indians quite literally could not have built America because the entire premise of this nation — that all men are created equal — is an inherently Christian claim that requires a Christian faith. Not Islamic, not Hindu, not Buddhist, but Christian.

As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson wrote in these pages, the very premise of the entire American legal and civic culture emerged from the specifically Christian claim that “All men are created equal,” and such conviction “arrived in America by way of settlers and pioneers who came here specifically to establish a nation where they could practice their Christian faith as they saw fit.”

“The only people who ever took that self-evident truth [that all men are created equal] and used it as a foundation on which to forge a new nation were the English colonists in America,” Davidson pointed out. Not Somalians, not Indians, not people from Latin America, but English colonists who created America and thus became the first Americans.

John Adams explained why this Christian foundation was so crucial: “One great Advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great Principle of the Law of Nature and Nations … to the Knowledge, Belief and Veneration of the whole People.”

But when Jayapal insists that Somalians, Indians, or immigrants from “wherever they’re from” built this country, she’s not only historically wrong — she’s describing people who have a cultural and religious framework fundamentally incompatible with the one that produced our republic.

Minnesota gives us a test case, in part. Somalians there just defrauded taxpayers of one billion dollars in a massive welfare scheme. But Somalians in Minnesota “pay about $67 million in state and local taxes,” according to KSTP.

According to MPR News, there are approximately 80,000 Somalis in Minnesota. That means the average Somali adult in Minnesota pays about $837.50 in taxes. But let’s pretend that half of those Somalis are children, and just 40,000 are adults. Still, that means Somalians are paying only roughly $1,675 in taxes.

But perhaps such reality is unsurprising given, as I previously wrote, that according to CIVICUS, “Weak public institutions mean civic freedoms are not enforced as they should be” in Somalia.

Somalia’s “Civil society also struggles with funding, a common problem for civic institutions worldwide, as they rely on domestic and international financial support rather than profits,” the report finds. Meanwhile, the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law reported in October that “civic freedoms are fragile” in Somalia.”

In the Third World, government and civil society function like patronage systems. These spoils-based arrangements are often divided along ethnic or religious lines, are are used to further inter-group conflicts, which they bring with them to America. This mindset contrasts with the American tradition of ordered liberty.

Such reality is incompatible with the United States, where government is intended to be limited while civic responsibility is a heightened priority. Those who grow up under such different regimes are — and have proven to be — unlikely to adopt western ideals of civic and self responsibility.

So, no. America was not built by Somalians, Indians, immigrants from Latin America, Africa, or “wherever they’re from.”

It was built by a specific people with a specific faith that created a specific framework for society. It was built by people like my ancestors. Jayapal’s historically illiterate revisionism is an attempt to cut the ties Americans have to the culture and convictions that made this country possible. But if we pretend that America was built by people and cultures that quite literally could not have built America (and have never been able to replicate it either) then we aren’t just misremembering our past, we are losing the future that our actual ancestors secured for us.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2