It varies from group to group, hence the distinctions between civic, ethnic and cultural nationalisms. Americans like to think that nationalism is something that happens to other countries, but they don't recognize that civic identification that forms a cornerstone of American citizenship in itself constitutes a form of nationalism.

What I'm seeing now though, with the rise of American conservatism fuel by the religious right, is the transformation of civic nationalism into something more explicitly cultural. Add to that the component of ethnic nationalism that has always existed in American political thought, and we may be seeing the birth of something profoundly ugly.