Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Americanism (ideology)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. There is next to nothing refuting the claim that this is a notable topic in light of the sources presented, which take it beyond a dictionary term. Also, no-one has established that the stub is problematic, as opposed to merely inadequate. Those arguing for a redirect or a merge have not established that "Americanism" is the same as the proposed target (eg "American nationalism"). The consensus is to keep. Mkativerata (talk) 05:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Americanism (ideology)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This is barely an article and it lacks any references or sources. If there's anything of substance in the two or three sentences it contains they can be added to American Nationalism. HazelGHC (talk) 16:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Feh ... I don't know. The Washington Times has used the term, but I don't believe that's a reliable source.  John Pilger in the New Statesman also wrote about it. All of the other news articles I've found online about it refer to anti-Americanism.  Your results may differ. Bearian (talk) 17:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Anything of value can easily be incorporated into another article rather than leaving it as a stub which, quite frankly, lacks in substance. I've never heard or read this word used in this manner. Americanism generally refers to a word or phrase originating in the U.S. Or this article could be incorporated into the Americentrism article. I'm just saying, there seem to be several articles saying the same thing under different names. HazelGHC (talk) 17:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - I've noticed that this basic concept has been missing from WP for a while but haven't taken it on yet due to the difficulty of writing the piece without engaging in so-called "original research," quote unquote. This is a correct title for the piece. This is an encyclopedic topic. It's a bad early effort here. A simple Google search for the term will demonstrate the pervasiveness of the concept. When I eventually go after it, I'll probably start with the concept of "100% Americanism" and contrast Americanism with Bolshevism, which was a common published juxtaposition of ideological concepts when the term launched in the early 20th Century. Like I say, this is a tough piece and it has been obviously missing from WP for quite some time; keep and improve through the normal editing process. Carrite (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You know, you are right; there are lots of possible sources under "100 % Americanism", but I'm not sure they're reliable. Anyone who wants to take a crack at rescuing or incubating this, go right ahead. Bearian (talk) 00:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * As for myself, I'm not gonna do work on this one under the gun, this is probably a three day writing project to get it more or less right. This is not the Article Improvement Workshop in any event. The term apparently was popularized by Teddy Roosevelt in a book by the same name, published in 1915 — if someone wants to start digging, that's the era to start looking. The term went out of vogue at the end of the 1950s; Billy Graham wrote a work on the topic in 1956. For a recent book, see David Galernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (Doubleday) or Michael Kazin and Joseph Anthony McCartin, Americanism : new perspectives on the history of an ideal (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). If I'm starting to work, I've got those in front of me from the get-go. Here's a few more: David Jayne Hill, Americanism: What It Is (1916), John Spargo, Americanism and Social Democracy (1918), Warren G. Harding, Americanism (1920), Ole Hanson, Americanism and Bolshevism (1920), Woodrow Wilson et al. Americanism (n.d., circa 1919). And so on. There is a huge radical literature and a huge patriotic literature dealing with the ideological concept. A WorldCat search of "Americanism" in book titles returns 3,402 books — obviously some duplicates, but there are probably about 1500 books and pamphlets, conservatively, using the word in the title. And yes, many or most of them are dealing with more or less the same ideological concept. Carrite (talk) 04:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge With what, I'm not sure exactly. This just seems to be a rephrase of "American Patriotism".  --Harizotoh9 (talk) 12:10, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If it can actually be improved and sourced, that would be great. The point I'm trying to make though is that it seems to be a three sentence rehash of information available in several other articles. It's possible for an idea to exist under different names. Is this concept unique enough from American nationalism and Americentrism to merit its own entry? Could it be merged with American exceptionalism? This splintering of different aspects of the same topic makes it difficult for searchers to find all the information on these closely related topics when one or two pages and several redirects could solve the problem. (I say this as a librarian. This is partially a problem of needing controlled vocabulary.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by HazelGHC (talk • contribs) 13:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a legitimate encyclopedic subject in its own right. It should probably, in final form, be a subpage of American nationalism. However, it is not a synonym for this, nor should it be a simple redirect to this. It is a concrete ideology with a vast published literature that should be seven miles over General Notability Guidelines, which call for multiple, independent, reliable, published sources. Somehow the emphasis here is on how crappy and unnecessary and duplicative this piece is. That's neither here nor there. The title is right, the subject is encyclopedic — as even a cursory search of published literature will indicate — and this should be closed a keep for now. I gay-ron-tee that this piece will not stay this way for very long, it has been one that I've been thinking about for quite some time but there are some big research needs that need to be fulfilled before it can be done right, as opposed to as an original essay. Carrite (talk) 18:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If it can be turned into a legitimate article, that's fine. As it stands it's next to worthless. Maybe the Americentrism article, which is little more than a dictionary entry, can be merged into this one instead because I stand by the idea that there are too many articles on different facets of the same subject. The point of an encyclopedia is to provide useful and easily locatable information to interested searchers. Going beyond that it should also be easy to browse through relevant, related information. That's why consolidation of information (where applicable) and controlled vocabulary are so important. HazelGHC (talk) 19:34, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Carrite, I'm going with your argument; I would favor a merge of Americentrism into this one, and I'll add the usual suspect tags to see if someone wants to fix it. Otherwise, incubation may be in order. Bearian (talk) 21:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. The word has been used, but with many disparate meanings. I don't believe it is possible to write an article on the wordl, because essentially that's all it is (a word with many definitions, WP:DICDEF), and not an actual ideology. Neutralitytalk 18:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep as the basis for an article. As usual, Carrite has the right approach: use an inadequate stub as a basis for building. The more complicated the meaning, the greater the potential for an article explaining the ramifications and the usages, To throw articles out as inadequate would have doomed Wikipedia from the beginning. There is no policy basis for deletion. What we remove are only those inadequate articles which are unexpandable because there is shown to be an absence of information for expanding them--and this is far from it.  DGG ( talk ) 00:29, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not a dictionary.  The fact that the term has been used to refer to different things does not justify an article.  TFD (talk) 01:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - The topic appears to have been addressed in several sources. I've added these two to the article:
 * Kazin, Michael; McCartin, Joseph A. (2006.) "Americanism: new perspectives on the history of an ideal." The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3010-9
 * Yerkes, Andrew C. (2005.) "Twentieth-century Americanism: identity and ideology in Depression-era leftist fiction." Routledge. ISBN 0415975387, ISBN 9780415975384
 * Northamerica1000 (talk) 02:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirect to American nationalism. Stuartyeates (talk) 06:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep This might be a small article,but a major edit to this article can make it better.Remember,it is always better to improve a article rather than deleting it for not being good enough.Dipankan001 (talk) 15:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep if the concept can be established to be distinct from American nationalism using reliable sources. If it cannot, redirect there. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 18:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Conditional Keep. Just provide some good references, and worry about expansion later. A stub is fine. Kiefer .Wolfowitz 16:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Redirect/merge to American nationalism. It is really a manifestation of nationalism or actually a portmanteau of American nationalism! Moreover this ideology is far from unique to America. You can substitute "America" with many other countries, so what's so special about this? -- P 1 9 9 • TALK 12:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.