Increasingly over the past quarter-century, more and more Americans have come to wonder if American citizenship really means anything anymore. They have watched new immigrants pour in illegally, with virtually no “Americanization” process to greet them. They have seen civic education disappear, and pride in country too often seems to be almost an embarrassment to many.
But if this 4th of July has found you wondering what is happening to American citizenship, do not give up. The danger for America–the greatest inspiration for the world, yet itself falling into civic and political disintegration–remains poignantly real. Still, we are finally attaining some insight into this crucial drama of our times.
First, ponder a commencement speech given by President Clinton at Portland State University early in June.
In one part of the speech, he addressed Americans’ fears of the runaway levels of immigration today. The Great Empathizer actually said: “When (Americans) hear new accents or see new faces, they feel unsettled. They worry that new immigrants come not to work hard, but to live off our largesse. They’re afraid the America they know and love is becoming a foreign land.”
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But he insisted that this reaction, while “understandable,” is “wrong” and that Americans now just have to accept that. “There is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City,” he said. “. . . In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time.”
The president of the United States did not try in any way to clear up the multicultural demographic demagoguery behind these statements: that racial categorizations are themselves obnoxious and un-American, and that they are also false. In at least one major ethnic category, the multiculturally created one of “Hispanics,” most of its “members” are actually white.
But he did tell the American people that these changes–ones his administration has overtly encouraged and implicitly allowed to happen–were now inexorable. Take it or leave it, America!
A few weeks after the president’s stunning speech, a conference in Wheaton on a closely related subject, “Who Belongs? Citizenship in Conflict in the 21st Century,” brought together 40 experts on citizenship.
Essentially, the group broke down into two modes of thinking about American citizenship. The first group essentially believes that America is, as it has been, a nation whose modern philosophy of equality before the law, freedom of opportunity for all, and balance of power (to cite only a few elements) constitutes its own ideology.
Yet, today, polls show that 30 percent of Americans don’t believe the United States will exist as a nation in 100 years. Twice as many Americans over 65 said there is a common American civil culture as those under 18. “There are no terms of commonality,” said professor Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, “so even things like coalition politics become impossible. This means that immigration presents nearly insuperable obstacles. Assimilation and acculturization to what?”
The second group clearly explained the fissure between the traditional, Founding Fathers-based citizenship and the new multiculturalist “citizenship,” which in truth means membership only in ethnic, racial or gender groups and which actually means, at heart, that there is no American nation.
The multiculturalists at the meeting could not have been clearer about this. “I think it is very difficult to find a definition of Americanization that we can all accept,” said Sanford Ungar, dean of the journalism school at American University. “What is America except for the groups who came herey? Immigrants are the story of America.”
At one point, Benjamin Barber, professor of political science at Rutgers University, was asked: “To what `American story’ would you pledge allegiance?” He answered, with stark honesty: “Our story? I don’t know what you mean. There are many stories.”
It is still hard for traditional citizenship proponents like me to be overly sanguine this 4th oyf July. Multiculturalism, which developed out of Marxist thought in American universities from the ’30s on, remains in force in most institutions in the country.
Yet, at the same time, I am somewhat comforted by the growing clarity in the differences between the two definitions of citizenship that was not there before. We know what is behind the confusion we feel over the growing loss of our civic ideals. It is a first and necessary step that should, if enough Americans still care, goad us to act to preserve what is left of citizenship.