Citizenship is Not a Birthright: Part II

President Trump is right to challenge this ahistorical interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Defeating the disingenuous attempts to thwart Trump’s repeal of birthright citizenship in the courts does not, however, address a broader cultural problem: that the mythology of America being “a nation of immigrants”, invented by John F. Kennedy and the Anti-Defamation League the 1960s, is so deeply ingrained by the modern education system, that any limits on who gets citizenship or how will be seen as racist. This is what Margaret Brennan regurgitated to Vice President Vance on Face the Nation. After the Vice President justified the repeal of birthright citizenship, Brennan said, “Well, this country was founded by immigrants.”

With that conflation of all immigrants — regardless of quality, origin, or legality of entry — into one category (or class) of “immigrant”, Brennan abolishes any meaningful distinction between Americans and anyone else. The narrative that “America is a nation of immigrants” seems to render the believer incapable of distinguishing between immigrants as individuals, on the basis of their virtues, their contributions to America’s economy and culture, and their respect for the law. In doing so, Brennan devalues the citizenship that the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali was given by the American people in her time of need, by handing it to anyone who crosses the Southern Border. Can Brennan really not see the difference between Ayaan, and the thousands of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 criminals let in by the Biden administration? Is the whole world simply Americans-in-waiting?

Brennan’s common belief also implies that America could be anywhere else, invented by anyone else. But the truth is, it could not. Somalia, for example, is incapable of recreating the greatness of America, with its current clannish family structures, recent history of corrupt socialist government, and seventh century Sharia legal system. The people have not been properly habituated over generations to be receptive to a system of government, based on truths that Americans hold to be self-evident. This is why the Bush doctrine of toppling dictators to install democracies in the Middle East resulted in Islamist groups rushing in to fill the power vacuum. America’s particular mix of English civic associations, grace-through-works Protestantism, and fertile farmland produced its frontier spirit, Great Awakening, and constitutional republicanism. 

America, as Samuel Huntington writes, is not a nation of immigrants, but was founded by Puritan settlers from England, who imported their faith, common law legal system, and social fabric. 

“Settlers leave an existing society, usually in a group, in order to create a new community, a city on a hill, in a new and often distant territory. They are imbued with a sense of collective purpose. […] 

Immigrants, in contrast, do not create a new society. They move from one society to a different society. Migration is usually a personal process, involving individuals and families, who individually define their relation to their old and new countries. […]

Before immigrants could come to America, settlers had to found America.”

Without the traditions of this tribe, the relative peace and prosperity of America’s limited government enjoyed today would not be possible. To radically change the culture and character of this country, with the blind belief that all immigrants are indistinguishable, would make America unrecognisable, and the American Dream inaccessible to all immigrants and those of Founding stock alike. 

This qualitative difference between immigrants is what Ayaan explained in her Oakeshott Lectures address last year. The city states of the ancient world bound up many moral obligations in their version of citizenship. They were collections of families who intermarried to form tribes, and who worshipped the same gods. Homes were temples to patrilineal ancestors, buried in the foundations of the city state. Offerings were made to them at mealtimes; and tribes came together to worship common heroes, or gods of common places or principles, which united their families. The definition of a citizen was “a man who had the religion of the city.’’ Your identity was not your race, or sexuality, or what made you different from others; but rather the ties of blood and belief that you shared with those around you.

It is this unified sense of self — as a people, with a shared faith, in a particular place — which gives a nation the courage to defend itself. As Larry Sidentop wrote, in Inventing the Individual,

“There was nothing self- serving, abstract or sentimental about ancient patriotism.

The ancient citizen saw himself as defending the land of his ancestors, who were also his gods. His ancestors were inseparable from the ground of the city. To lose that ground was to lose the gods of the family. Indeed, the loss of the city meant that the gods had already abandoned it.”

This same version of citizenship persists in a place like Israel today: where its young people enlist in the IDF, because they feel they are defending the land of their ancestors, as given to them by God, from an existential threat. It is these factors — family, faith, familiarity, duty — which make a nation a home. A reversion to this understanding of citizenship, with centuries of historical precedent, and consistent with our intuitions, would be healthier than basing border policy on an anachronistic, optimistic blank-slate version of human nature. 

This is why the Vice President is right to say that the Christian thing to do is for Americans to extend love out as far as concentric circles of familiarity allow (ordo amoris). We can pray and make sacrifices for members of our family, our friends, our local community, and our church congregation. We can do a service to our nation — but even the extent of that good is limited. You might enlist in the military to protect your country, as Vice President Vance did — but there is no guarantee you will be deployed in a just war. You might think paying your taxes to be spent on overseas aid is helping those less fortunate than your countrymen — but as USAID shows, you don’t know where that money is going, and if it’s doing any good. When you try to do good beyond your borders, the likelihood that you will be effective begins to decline. 

How can we love our neighbors if we do not know them?  As Vance’s mentor, James Orr observes, even in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Greek word for neighbor is plēsion, from plēsios, meaning “near” or “close by.” The further we extend beyond our bounds of consideration, the greater the likelihood that our virtue becomes just a vain signal. As I quoted in response to Vance’s critics, C.S. Lewis’ demon Screwtape said: “The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know.” Our capacity for evil increases the further we get from those to whom we will the good. We have to take care of our own, and trust that others will do the same. 

So, the loyalty of nations must be to their citizens; and the loyalty of citizens to their families, friends, congregation, community, and nation. This relationship implies the same set of obligations as in the ancient world. It does not, however, mean the relationship between the nation, and someone who inherits American citizenship from their parents, versus someone who is granted citizenship as an immigrant, is the same. This is a mistake that Vivek Ramaswamy has made, in his pursuit of wanting everyone to become as patriotic and knowledgeable about American history as he is. For a newcomer, love of a foreign country is necessarily a rational decision; whereas for a natural-born citizen, it is a feeling, strong in direct proportion to one’s love of family. 

Immigrants bring with them the baggage of their homelands. Because of that additional barrier to entry, additional duties are required of newcomers to ensure they pass the tests of friendship to belong to their new tribe. The obligations for an American born into citizenship are to pass on their love of family, faith, and place to the next generation. The obligations to the nation imposed upon immigrants are to be grateful to the people who have welcomed you as one of their own, and defer to your adopted culture to ensure its survival. This is especially important when raising children in your new home, because second-and-third-generation immigrants can feel torn between two cultures, and become less patriotic than their parents. Immigrants should raise their sons and daughters as members of their nation, with an aspiration to marry into the national tribe (if its members are so inclined). It also helps to convert to America and Europe’s religion: with their traditions not reducible to, but inseparable from, Christianity. The immigrants who want to be American citizens, and benefit from its unique bounty, are obliged to do the same.

Citizenship is, then, not an arbitrary legal designation, or a tool of racist oppression. It is a relationship between a nation and its people, in the same way members of a family are supposed to care for one another and their home. This imposes on citizens a duty to, as Edmund Burke wrote, maintain a continuity between the living, the dead, and unborn generations, to ensure all the sacrifices of those who built your country were not for nothing. To issue citizenship to those who broke this “clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society” by ignoring the law of the land is to devalue it — which is exactly what the Marxist revolutionaries want.

America is not a nation of undifferentiated immigrants. It was founded by Puritan settlers. Its constitution was written by Christian revolutionaries. Its frontier was explored by European pelt-traders. Its promises were fulfilled by black slaves who fought for their freedom. For those of us who aren’t WASPs, we should want to conserve the American identity and spirit, because we rely on it remaining in place to visit the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world. The meaning of citizenship is found in expressing gratitude for all you have inherited, and taking up the calling to be a custodian of your culture, for the sake of future generations. I can think of few higher honors.