> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say that values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria.

Note that the value that people who come to America and join the national experiment become American is one of those values! That's unusual, and needs to be pointed out: values aren't more American because they're held by old American stock, causality flows in the other direction.

Not everything is a pure popularity contest. 51% of people supporting strict gun control (for the sake of argument) doesn't make that position more American, it just means more Americans happen to hold to it. That the Constitution makes altering its own text a matter of supermajority, both in passing and ratification, supports the idea that what it is to be American is not intended to simply shift in the winds on the strength of a bare majority.

That all said, the bottom line is that these five counties feel that their values are better represented by the state government of Idaho than by that of Oregon. Federalism is one of those old American values I was droning on about earlier; I don't see why they shouldn't get the chance to secede from a state which isn't serving their needs, and join one which they think would.

> values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria

So, in an Oregon context, this would mean the values of the Chinook peoples?

Not really, no.

For starters, we're talking about Eastern Oregon, so if you wanted to throw a gotcha, you should have gone for the Paiute.

America is a nation, and it took its time getting to Oregon. The Chinook were never particularly numerous, nor influential on the values of that nation. That's just a fact.

The Iroquois League was more influential, the Founding Fathers were very impressed with their system of governance, though how much of that made it into the Constitution is a matter of debate. Painting with a broad brush, centuries of contact with the native peoples of this continent has certainly left its mark. The Western ethos of self-reliance and freedom owes a lot to them.

The Native American people are both their own nations and a part of the American nation. Speaking as one American, I'm inclined to value their contributions, but it seems a bit presumptuous for me to say that Apache or Navajo values are American values.

To continue down the road you've set us upon, the American descendants of slavery went unheard for many years, but starting no later than Frederick Douglass became a key part of shaping the ethos and values of the nation. They insisted that "all men are created equal" meant all men, and put an end to white supremacy, which was certainly an American value and just as surely is no longer such.

Well, then I'm confused.

You started off saying that it makes sense for these people to say that the government of Idaho upholds American values more than the government of Oregon, because values' 'Americanness' isn't determined by the majority, but rather by appeal to ancestry and tradition.

But apparently the Chinook (or, if you wish, the Paiute), who I would say have superior claim on that front, don't get to wield the mystical power of American Values because they were never numerous, nor influential.

But surely the population of Idaho and eastern Oregon is also not particularly numerous, nor influential.

And the population of Western Oregon also, surely, has some claim to be a "significant fraction of the population", "disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations", so surely that means their values are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria?

So I guess I just don't know what gives these people of Eastern Oregon more of a claim to determine whether Idaho or Oregon is 'more aligned' with American Values. Is it because their ancestors have been Americans since the early days of the old West, and they embody the pioneer spirit of the Oregon Territory? So their values are more American.

But it's maybe worth noting that in 1844, while Frederick Douglass was first publishing his slave story, Oregon passed a law that made it illegal for him, or any other freed slave, to set foot in the state. It remained part of the state's constitution through its admission to the US, and long after the 14th amendment made it unconstitutional.

In 1926, thirty years after Frederick Douglass died, a ballot measure to repeal it was finally passed. But 32% of voters voted against it.

Maybe if white supremacy is 'surely' no longer an American value, we shouldn't be looking to the traditional values of Oregonians as a guiding light. They have a bit of a history of being slow to catch on to changes in what are 'surely' American values.

> The Western ethos of self-reliance and freedom owes a lot to them.

So the notion of "self-reliance and freedom" that makes Western ideologies suggests you're referring not to Native Americans but "pioneers"--the people who settled the Western lands without government help. Except, I guess, for the help it provided by clearing the land of its prior inhabitants who somehow didn't know the land wasn't theirs anymore. And providing basic infrastructure like schooling (funded from sales from Township 16). And funding the construction of railroads so that homesteaders could acquire the goods they couldn't make themselves and sell their excess produce to US markets.

Don't be silly, we're not talking about those values.

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

There are two conflicting meanings of the word 'American' that is causing your confusion. American can refer to an individual who is American. It can also refer to things associated with the government currently controlling the land known as the United States of America. The land of the USA has -- in its time -- been held by several government. Firstly there is the current one. Then there is the previous one, the confederated states of America. Some parts of the USA have at times been held by smaller governments, for example, the Southern confederacy (not to be confused with the USA under the articles of confederation).

Anyway, there are American values -- i.e., those held by individuals in America -- and then there are American values -- i.e., those in line with the constitution of the United States of America.

The Oregonians clearly are using the second meaning. They believe that the State of Oregon has failed to uphold values inherent to the Constitution of the United States of America. For example, if tomorrow, 98% of Oregonians decided Monarchy were the best form of government, in this usage, we can unequivocally say that that is not American, because monarchy is fundamentally at odds with the constitution. Thus, even if -- in my hypothetical -- monarchy were an American value in the individual sense, it would not be in the second usage.

As another unrelated example illustrating the difference in the usages, the majority of American Catholics believe contraceptives are okay. If you ask 'what is the opinion of the church on contraception', there are two correct answers. One can say 'Catholics believe contraception is okay' because most Catholics (in this country at least) agree. One can equally say 'Catholics believe contraception is not okay' because the institution of the Catholic church in this country has -- through official channels -- said it's not.

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

There's a very present "last bastion" framing in most of the right-wing media I track. It'll depend on exactly what the foundational beliefs of the community are that drive this framing -- John Birch society derivative folks arrive here via a different path than white supremacist survivalists and them a different path than evangelical fundamentalist Christians -- but it's common enough. It goes hand in hand with the notion that the US has fallen from the ideal set forth by the Founders and that only your in-group really gets it and has a hope of restoring it.

Alex Jones is a good, mainstream-ish example. Dude's a Bircher and has spent decades coaching his audience to believe that Globalists are in league with Satan and intend to destroy humanity, if only they could get the US out of the way. Satan/The Globalists are _this_ close to succeeding. Once they do, Real American Values will disappear from the world, ushering in the post-human era. Jones preaches survivalism (sorta, feeding your neighbors to your daughters will give your daughters prion disease) to his audience and I hope you see how the two strains of thought would fester into a framing like you've called out.

Thanks - as a non-American living there, this is pretty helpful to further my understanding.

I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.

“Evil Geniuses: the unmasking of America” was pretty good at tracking this. Basically politicians are using the framing of the glorified past within “American values” to manufacture dissent and create us/them other-izing between US citizens. The book explains it much more in depth. Get people to stop thinking of their fellow citizens as part of the same group as them in a fundamental way and chaos reigns. Maybe eventually it’s civil war. (It definitely drives that country from thinking of international factors.)

Probably another interesting definition of American values would be the ones held in foreign people. Sort of in the same way there’s who you are and then there’s the person in the minds of everyone who knows you. Except the US is a super power that’s done a lot of steering the world over the last century and that’s instilled some common practices across the world. Like citing CDC guidelines or using the US currency for reserve.

Many American values are fuzzy, hard to make out; how they are applied is only visible if you dig into history. Not the history in textbooks though ... at least until you've innoculated yourself with Howard Zinn's history. Pay particular attention to how those values - say, 'all men are created equal' - apply to minorities.

> I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you asking about examples of people that have been de-radicalized?

To be clearer - given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society? I'm looking to understand perspectives opposite to my own here (as an atheist, non-American, liberal leaning person).

> given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society

Uh, it's not that kind of belief system. The notion that we should order society by measurable things is not necessarily a universal belief, even if it's one I agree with personally. Last bastion apocalyptism like I've described doesn't really do "measurable".

One common example is that religious cultures have a family culture that can propagates through time by having replacement levels of offspring.

So far, to date, every secular and atheistic culture tends towards inverting the demographic pyramid by having about half the required number of offspring to stabilize their culture/viewpoint through time.

This view assumes that there is any meaning to life, of course.

And the counter example on that is that disproportionate taking of POC adult males from the community has a destabilization effect on that community / family.

"What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?"

The US Bill of Rights.

You're being downvoted, but you're correct. Values espoused by the founding documents of the current United States government are also properly called American, even if the majority of americans disagree. There's two possible meanings here that is causing people confusion.

One might argue that technically (akshually?) the Bill of Rights goes against the founding documents of USA, amending them a few years later with values that were not in the original constitution to satisfy anti-federalists criticising the initial design (and its values).

So you're saying that slavery is an American value?

It is, after all, in the Constitution, although its popularity has waned of late.