Citizenship and the Nation-State
This brilliant essay is adapted and expanded from The United States in Crisis, (The Claremont Institute $12.99). Excerpts from the essay are included below.
As prominent immigration scholar, David Jacobson, writes that “[t]ransnational migration is steadily eroding the traditional basis of nation-state membership, namely citizenship.... The goal of the Progressive Left is to abolish the classifications of citizens and aliens in favor of what is now known as “universal personhood” for those who might otherwise be called “citizens of the world” if that phrase was not an utter contradiction. A policy of open borders—the abolition of the nation-state—would usher in the era of the universal person; but it would also usher in the era of universal tyranny, or what has been called the “universal homogeneous state,” the European Union on a global scale....
Is Diversity Our Strength?
For many years progressive liberalism has asked us to believe something incredible: that the most important and admirable aspect of the American character is defined only by its openness and unlimited acceptance of diversity.... The universal homogeneous state only recognizes openness, and devotion to diversity and acceptance as virtues....
But how does diversity strengthen us? Is it a force for unity and cohesiveness? Or is it a source of division and contention? Does it promote the common good and the friendship that rests at the heart of citizenship?...
Greater diversity inevitably means that we have less in common, and the more we encourage diversity, the less we honor the common good. Any honest observer can see that diversity is the solvent that dissolves the unity and cohesiveness of a nation...
Diversity and Political Correctness
... Today, any Republican charged or implicated with racism—however tendentious, outrageous, implausible, exaggerated, or false the charge or implication may be—will quickly surrender, often preemptively. This applies equally to other violations of political correctness... Only Trump seems undeterred in his determination to resist the tyrannical threat that rests at the core of political correctness....
The Great Society, Identity Politics, and Tribalism
Today’s abandonment of the principles of the Declaration have opened the door to racial and identity politics, where the first concern of the law is the racial, ethnic, and gender class with which one happens to identify.... The concept behind the Declaration, the equal protection of equal rights of individuals regardless of class or caste, has given way to a rebirth of the caste and tribal system of the past where rights are conditioned by claims of tribal privilege instead of the privileges and immunities of citizenship....
The Immigration Act of 1965
... The stated purpose of the Immigration Act, according to President Johnson, was to “correct a cruel and enduring wrong” in United States immigration policies; the unstated purposes of the act was to change the racial and ethnic mix of the population of the United States....
The welfare bureaucracy—and its allies in the “civil rights community”—were eager to perpetuate the dependence of new immigrants, whether legal or illegal....
Character, Citizenship, and Immigration
... Today, the Declaration is denounced as a document of white supremacy by ignorant ideologues and Abraham Lincoln who restored its principles against the sustained attack of the slaveocracy is denounced as a “racist.” The inmates are truly running the asylum....
In retrospect, it is easy to see what a mistake the Immigration Act of 1965 was. It put an emphasis on immigration from third world countries, those countries whose people would have the greatest difficulty assimilating.... The country was on its way to multiculturalism without any principles to serve as a guide, to say nothing of a “moral principle.”.... Multiculturalism dissolves and dissipates a nation’s strength....
No one has a right to emigrate to the United States.
... The nation-state is the last refuge of freedom and constitutional government. It requires not only wise choices, but difficult choices.
Notes
The comments section of the article indlude some infightful observations: "That precedent [of electing Obama, our first post-American president] is now enabling another and less eligible pretender to the Oval Office, Kamala Harris, whom one may reasonably debate as ineligible for citizenship at all, let alone possessing the constitutional requirement that the President of the United States (or the next in line, Vice President) be “natural born”. She clearly is not “natural born” by any stretch of logic, and yet both Democrats and Republicans... fail to grasp the danger of such people occupying high office."