being an american citizen essay

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What Does It Mean to “Be American?”

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In 2014, New York Times reporter Damien Cave traveled the length of highway I-35, which runs south to north through the middle of the United States, for his “The Way North” project. Along the way, he asked 35 people, “What does it mean to be American?” These are some of their answers. 1

Becoming American means following the rules. It means respecting your  neighbors, in your own neighborhood. —Francine Sharp, 73, retired teacher in Kansas (born in Kansas) If you work hard, you get good things in life. —José, college student/roofer; immigrant without legal status in Tulsa, Oklahoma (born in Mexico) Being American is making a change, and making good changes. Being American is being welcoming, being caring about other people, being proud of the country. And it’s forgiveness. It’s not holding grudges on anything—I mean, where’s that going to get you? —Natalie Villafranca, 14, in Texas (born in Dallas) Being American means protection by the law. Anyone can say whatever they want and, even if I don’t agree with them, they’re still protected by the law it’s my job to enforce. That’s their freedom. That’s their right. —Sean Larkin, 40, sergeant with Tulsa Police Department’s gang unit in Tulsa, Oklahoma (born in Virginia) Being American is red, white and blue and being free. It doesn’t matter what language you speak; if you’re born in America, you’re still American. No matter what you look like, no matter what. —Sebastien de la Cruz, 12, student who gained attention, and backlash, when he sang the national anthem during the 2013 NBA finals in a mariachi outfit (born and lives in San Antonio) I want all girls, especially girls of color, to know that they can be a part of science. And more than that, they can be leaders in science. I want them to know that, because I know that I am America. That I am science. I’m just the part that people refuse to recognize. 2 —Taylor R., 13, speaking about her ambitions at the March for Science in April 2017 The following excerpts are from other Americans discussing what they think it means to “be American.” Among these voices are historians and writers who think about this topic a lot, as well as individuals from other walks of life who participated in a discussion for the documentary film A More Perfect Union . 3 Precisely because we are not a people held together by blood, no one knows who an American is except by what they believe. It's important that we do know our history, because our history is the source of our Americanness. —Historian Gordon Wood When people wrote "All men are created equal," they really meant men; but they didn't mean any other men except white men who owned land. That's what they meant. But because the ideas are powerful, there's no way that they could get away with holding to that. It's not possible when you have an idea that's as powerful and as revolutionary as a country founded on the idea that just because you're in the world, just because you're here, you have a right to certain things that are common to all humanity. That's really what we say in those documents. The idea that we begin the Constitution with, "We, the People" . . . even though they didn't mean me! They had no idea I'd ever want to make a claim on that. And they'd have been horrified if they'd known that any of us would. But you can't let that powerful an idea out into the world without consequences. —Writer Rosemary Bray The American Dream has no meaning for me. What it was founded on, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in many ways I feel are used as billy clubs against minorities and cultural minorities, whether they be gay, or different in any way from the norm in this country. I, for example, don't think I'd like to go to California because of what I look like. I could be pulled over and carded, and I would have to prove my ancestry. And look how long my family has been in northern New Mexico. Ten to twelve generations! —Vicente Martinez

• 1 All quotes except the last one (by Taylor R.) are from “ Day 39: On Being American ” (The Way North), New York Times , May 17, 2014.
• 2 “ March for Science Earth Day 2017 Speaker - Taylor Richardson ", YouTube video, 1:15, posted by EARTHDAYORG, Apr 24, 2017.
• 3 All quotes are from the online companion materials to the documentary A More Perfect Union (Arcadia Pictures, 1997), available at PBS website .

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Facing History & Ourselves, “ What Does It Mean to “Be American?” ”, last updated June 17, 2017.

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The Complicated Truth About What U.S. Citizenship Means Today

T he first time I saw the Statue of Liberty was 25 years ago, from a noisy ferry that brought me and hundreds of other eager tourists across New York Harbor. Back then I was a foreign student, in Manhattan for three days to attend an academic conference on linguistics. I had only one afternoon to devote to sightseeing, and faced with the choice of which landmark to visit, I settled immediately on Ellis Island. The site loomed large in my imagination, likely because of its romantic portrayal in the American movies I had grown up watching. I ambled through the stately inspection room, where original chandeliers cast their pale light, sat for a few minutes on the wooden benches, then went inside the exhibit rooms, filled with artifacts documenting the arrival of immigrants.

I still remember the jolt of surprise I felt when I came across a portrait of three Moroccan men and a little boy, all clad in national dress–cloak, djellaba, cross-body bag, leather slippers. It was a trace of a history I didn’t know existed. After the surprise wore off, I began to wonder about their names, their pasts, their families, their reasons for emigrating. Years later, researching this picture online, I discovered that the photographer, an employee of the Executive Division of Immigration, had scribbled “Arab jugglers” on the back of the print. These were performers, then, seeking fame or fortune here. They forged new identities and became Americans, just like the other 12 million immigrants and refugees who passed through Ellis Island from 1882 to 1954. Or at least, that is how the story goes: America was formed from huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

As I walked around the exhibit rooms at the Ellis Island immigration museum, it never occurred to me that someday I would become an immigrant too, and eventually a citizen. At the time, my goal had been to complete a graduate degree in linguistics and return to Morocco. But my life took an unexpected turn when I met and fell in love with an American. I said yes to him, and yes to staying here. Years passed, during which I learned more about the country I now called home: its charms and foibles, its culture and history, its claims to being a “nation of immigrants.” And I came to understand that, like any origin story, this one leaves out inconvenient details.

The boundaries of Americanness, which seem so elastic in the myth of a “nation of immigrants,” have in fact been very rigid–and always, always contested. At the founding of the United States, American citizenship was available exclusively to “free white persons.” It took decades of struggle, and a bloody civil war, before citizenship was extended to formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Indigenous people, who were members of sovereign nations, did not have full access to citizenship until 1924. And for much of this country’s history, a slew of race-based immigration laws, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, prevented most immigrants from outside Western Europe from coming to the U.S. or claiming U.S. citizenship.

It is tempting to think that this ugly history is behind us. Yet even a glance at current headlines makes it clear how deeply entrenched white-supremacist ideas about Americanness remain. The Trump Administration announced in 2019 that it would cut the number of refugees the U.S. will resettle in 2020 to no more than 18,000, the lowest number since the program was created 40 years ago. These refugees come principally from Asia, Africa and Latin America, which is to say they often come from countries the President has frequently disparaged. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has long been an opponent of birthright citizenship and last fall told reporters that he doesn’t believe a constitutional amendment would be needed to end it. And Stephen Miller, the White House aide who has long echoed white-nationalist talking points and who is widely credited with being the architect of the Muslim ban, has pushed for sweeping changes to immigration laws that would favor people who speak English.

There are also rhetorical clues from this Administration and its supporters about who gets to be a “real” American. Last summer, Donald Trump called on Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib to “go back” to the “crime-infested places” from which they came. (All but Omar were born in the U.S.) More recently, conservative cable hosts like Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade insinuated that Alexander Vindman–an official at the National Security Council who testified that the President had asked the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival in exchange for military aid–might not be entirely loyal to the U.S. because he was an immigrant. It didn’t matter that Vindman was an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army; his allegiance was called into question.

Being American isn’t just a state of being, whether native or acquired. It’s a relationship between an individual and the nation-state. To be an American means, among other things, to have the right to vote in state and federal elections, to have protection from unreasonable searches, to be free to speak or worship or assemble without government interference. In the past, these rights, protections and liberties were not granted equally to all, and they still aren’t today. For instance, millions of formerly incarcerated people in states like Alabama, Kentucky, Florida and Mississippi have lost the right to vote and are therefore shut out of the democratic process. This has vastly disproportionate effects on black men. By comparison, Vermont and Maine, the two whitest states in the union, allow both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to vote. Citizenship is supposed to be an equalizer, yet in many ways it still functions as a tiered system that mirrors past racial hierarchies.

Four years ago, while I was visiting New York for a literary event, I took my daughter and niece to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a cloudy day in June, but the air was thick with humid heat. Both girls were excited about seeing the national landmarks; both undertook ancestry searches at the interactive exhibits. Although neither site was new to me any longer, I felt just as moved as the first time I’d seen them. There is something deeply seductive about these symbols. Even with the awareness of America’s history of colonial expansion and white supremacy, the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is still a potent lure.

I live with this contradiction every day, with the knowledge that the bleak past and the better future meet in the present moment. Citizenship is both an idea and an ideal, the journey from one to the other a measure of the nation’s progress. I wish this journey could be taken in a giant leap, even as I fear it will be walked slowly, fearfully, and with many steps back along the way. Yet I keep the faith. Perhaps it’s because I’m a novelist, whose work involves constant use of the imagination. Or perhaps it’s because I’m an immigrant, whose vantage point grants the privilege to look at the country from the inside and the outside. Either way, I know that promise is the best catalyst for progress.

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• American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences

What does it mean to be an American?

Sarah Song, a Visiting Scholar at the Academy in 2005–2006, is an assistant professor of law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (2007). She is at work on a book about immigration and citizenship in the United States.

It is often said that being an American means sharing a commitment to a set of values and ideals. 1 Writing about the relationship of ethnicity and American identity, the historian Philip Gleason put it this way:

To be or to become an American, a person did not have to be any particular national, linguistic, religious, or ethnic background. All he had to do was to commit himself to the political ideology centered on the abstract ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism. Thus the universalist ideological character of American nationality meant that it was open to anyone who willed to become an American. 2

To take the motto of the Great Seal of the United States, E pluribus unum – "From many, one" – in this context suggests not that manyness should be melted down into one, as in Israel Zangwill's image of the melting pot, but that, as the Great Seal's sheaf of arrows suggests, there should be a coexistence of many-in-one under a unified citizenship based on shared ideals.

Of course, the story is not so simple, as Gleason himself went on to note. America's history of racial and ethnic exclusions has undercut the universalist stance; for being an American has also meant sharing a national culture, one largely defined in racial, ethnic, and religious terms. And while solidarity can be understood as "an experience of willed affiliation," some forms of American solidarity have been less inclusive than others, demanding much more than simply the desire to affiliate. 3 In this essay, I explore different ideals of civic solidarity with an eye toward what they imply for newcomers who wish to become American citizens.

Why does civic solidarity matter? First, it is integral to the pursuit of distributive justice. The institutions of the welfare state serve as redistributive mechanisms that can offset the inequalities of life chances that a capitalist economy creates, and they raise the position of the worst-off members of society to a level where they are able to participate as equal citizens. While self-interest alone may motivate people to support social insurance schemes that protect them against unpredictable circumstances, solidarity is understood to be required to support redistribution from the rich to aid the poor, including housing subsidies, income supplements, and long-term unemployment benefits. 4 The underlying idea is that people are more likely to support redistributive schemes when they trust one another, and they are more likely to trust one another when they regard others as like themselves in some meaningful sense.

Second, genuine democracy demands solidarity. If democratic activity involves not just voting, but also deliberation, then people must make an effort to listen to and understand one another. Moreover, they must be willing to moderate their claims in the hope of finding common ground on which to base political decisions. Such democratic activity cannot be realized by individuals pursuing their own interests; it requires some concern for the common good. A sense of solidarity can help foster mutual sympathy and respect, which in turn support citizens' orientation toward the common good.

Third, civic solidarity offers more inclusive alternatives to chauvinist models that often prevail in political life around the world. For example, the alternative to the Nehru-Gandhi secular definition of Indian national identity is the Hindu chauvinism of the Bharatiya Janata Party, not a cosmopolitan model of belonging. "And what in the end can defeat this chauvinism," asks Charles Taylor, "but some reinvention of India as a secular republic with which people can identify?" 5 It is not enough to articulate accounts of solidarity and belonging only at the subnational or transnational levels while ignoring senses of belonging to the political community. One might believe that people have a deep need for belonging in communities, perhaps grounded in even deeper human needs for recognition and freedom, but even those skeptical of such claims might recognize the importance of articulating more inclusive models of political community as an alternative to the racial, ethnic, or religious narratives that have permeated political life. 6  The challenge, then, is to develop a model of civic solidarity that is "thick" enough to motivate support for justice and democracy while also "thin" enough to accommodate racial, ethnic, and religious diversity.

We might look first to Habermas's idea of constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotismus). The idea emerged from a particular national history, to denote attachment to the liberal democratic institutions of the postwar Federal Republic of Germany, but Habermas and others have taken it to be a generalizable vision for liberal democratic societies, as well as for supranational communities such as the European Union. On this view, what binds citizens together is their common allegiance to the ideals embodied in a shared political culture. The only "common denominator for a constitutional patriotism" is that "every citizen be socialized into a common political culture." 7

Habermas points to the United States as a leading example of a multicultural society where constitutional principles have taken root in a political culture without depending on "all citizens' sharing the same language or the same ethnic and cultural origins." 8  The basis of American solidarity is not any particular racial or ethnic identity or religious beliefs, but universal moral ideals embodied in American political culture and set forth in such seminal texts as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Based on a minimal commonality of shared ideals, constitutional patriotism is attractive for the agnosticism toward particular moral and religious outlooks and ethnocultural identities to which it aspires.

What does constitutional patriotism suggest for the sort of reception immigrants should receive? There has been a general shift in Western Europe and North America in the standards governing access to citizenship from cultural markers to values, and this is a development that constitutional patriots would applaud. In the United States those seeking to become citizens must demonstrate basic knowledge of U.S. government and history. A newly revised U.S. citizenship test was instituted in October 2008 with the hope that it will serve, in the words of the chief of the Office of Citizenship, Alfonso Aguilar, as "an instrument to promote civic learning and patriotism." 9 The revised test attempts to move away from civics trivia to emphasize political ideas and concepts. (There is still a fair amount of trivia: "How many amendments does the Constitution have?" "What is the capital of your state?") The new test asks more open-ended questions about government powers and political concepts: "What does the judicial branch do?" "What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?" "What is freedom of religion?" "What is the 'rule of law'?" 10

Constitutional patriots would endorse this focus on values and principles. In Habermas's view, legal principles are anchored in the "political culture," which he suggests is separable from "ethical-cultural" forms of life. Acknowledging that in many countries the "ethical-cultural" form of life of the majority is "fused" with the "political culture," he argues that the "level of the shared political culture must be uncoupled from the level of subcultures and their prepolitical identities." 11  All that should be expected of immigrants is that they embrace the constitutional principles as interpreted by the political culture, not that they necessarily embrace the majority's ethical-cultural forms.

Yet language is a key aspect of "ethical-cultural" forms of life, shaping people's worldviews and experiences. It is through language that individuals become who they are. Since a political community must conduct its affairs in at least one language, the ethical-cultural and political cannot be completely "uncoupled." As theorists of multiculturalism have stressed, complete separation of state and particularistic identities is impossible; government decisions about the language of public institutions, public holidays, and state symbols unavoidably involve recognizing and supporting particular ethnic and religious groups over others. 12 In the United States, English language ability has been a statutory qualification for naturalization since 1906, originally as a requirement of oral ability and later as a requirement of English literacy. Indeed, support for the principles of the Constitution has been interpreted as requiring English literacy. 13 The language requirement might be justified as a practical matter (we need some language to be the common language of schools, government, and the workplace, so why not the language of the majority?), but for a great many citizens, the language requirement is also viewed as a key marker of national identity. The continuing centrality of language in naturalization policy prevents us from saying that what it means to be an American is purely a matter of shared values.

Another misconception about constitutional patriotism is that it is necessarily more inclusive of newcomers than cultural nationalist models of solidarity. Its inclusiveness depends on which principles are held up as the polity's shared principles, and its normative substance depends on and must be evaluated in light of a background theory of justice, freedom, or democracy; it does not by itself provide such a theory. Consider ideological requirements for naturalization in U.S. history. The first naturalization law of 1790 required nothing more than an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. The second naturalization act added two ideological elements: the renunciation of titles or orders of nobility and the requirement that one be found to have "behaved as a man . . . attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States." 14  This attachment requirement was revised in 1940 from a behavioral qualification to a personal attribute, but this did not help clarify what attachment to constitutional principles requires. 15 Not surprisingly, the "attachment to constitutional principles" requirement has been interpreted as requiring a belief in representative government, federalism, separation of powers, and constitutionally guaranteed individual rights. It has also been interpreted as disqualifying anarchists, polygamists, and conscientious objectors for citizenship. In 1950, support for communism was added to the list of grounds for disqualification from naturalization – as well as grounds for exclusion and deportation. 16 The 1990 Immigration Act retained the McCarthy-era ideological qualifications for naturalization; current law disqualifies those who advocate or affiliate with an organization that advocates communism or opposition to all organized government. 17 Patriotism, like nationalism, is capable of excess and pathology, as evidenced by loyalty oaths and campaigns against "un-American" activities.

In contrast to constitutional patriots, liberal nationalists acknowledge that states cannot be culturally neutral even if they tried. States cannot avoid coercing citizens into preserving a national culture of some kind because state institutions and laws define a political culture, which in turn shapes the range of customs and practices of daily life that constitute a national culture. David Miller, a leading theorist of liberal nationalism, defines national identity according to the following elements: a shared belief among a group of individuals that they belong together, historical continuity stretching across generations, connection to a particular territory, and a shared set of characteristics constituting a national culture. 18  It is not enough to share a common identity rooted in a shared history or a shared territory; a shared national culture is a necessary feature of national identity. I share a national culture with someone, even if we never meet, if each of us has been initiated into the traditions and customs of a national culture.

What sort of content makes up a national culture? Miller says more about what a national culture does not entail. It need not be based on biological descent. Even if nationalist doctrines have historically been based on notions of biological descent and race, Miller emphasizes that sharing a national culture is, in principle, compatible with people belonging to a diversity of racial and ethnic groups. In addition, every member need not have been born in the homeland. Thus, "immigration need not pose problems, provided only that the immigrants come to share a common national identity, to which they may contribute their own distinctive ingredients." 19

Liberal nationalists focus on the idea of culture, as opposed to ethnicity or descent, in order to reconcile nationalism with liberalism. Thicker than constitutional patriotism, liberal nationalism, Miller maintains, is thinner than ethnic models of belonging. Both nationality and ethnicity have cultural components, but what is said to distinguish "civic" nations from "ethnic" nations is that the latter are exclusionary and closed on grounds of biological descent; the former are, in principle, open to anyone willing to adopt the national culture. 20

Yet the civic-ethnic distinction is not so clear-cut in practice. Every nation has an "ethnic core." As Anthony Smith observes

[M]odern "civic" nations have not in practice really transcended ethnicity or ethnic sentiments. This is a Western mirage, reality-as-wish; closer examination always reveals the ethnic core of civic nations, in practice, even in immigrant societies with their early pioneering and dominant (English and Spanish) culture in America, Australia, or Argentina, a culture that provided the myths and language of the would-be nation. 21

This blurring of the civic-ethnic distinction is reflected throughout U.S. history with the national culture often defined in ethnic, racial, and religious terms. 22

Why, then, if all national cultures have ethnic cores, should those outside this core embrace the national culture? Miller acknowledges that national cultures have typically been formed around the ethnic group that is dominant in a particular territory and therefore bear "the hallmarks of that group: language, religion, cultural identity." Muslim identity in contemporary Britain becomes politicized when British national identity is conceived as containing "an Anglo-Saxon bias which discriminates against Muslims (and other ethnic minorities)." But he maintains that his idea of nationality can be made "democratic in so far as it insists that everyone should take part in this debate [about what constitutes the national identity] on an equal footing, and sees the formal arenas of politics as the main (though not the only) place where the debate occurs." 23

The major difficulty here is that national cultures are not typically the product of collective deliberation in which all have the opportunity to participate. The challenge is to ensure that historically marginalized groups, as well as new groups of immigrants, have genuine opportunities to contribute "on an equal footing" to shaping the national culture. Without such opportunities, liberal nationalism collapses into conservative nationalism of the kind defended by Samuel Huntington. He calls for immigrants to assimilate into America's "Anglo- Protestant culture." Like Miller, Huntington views ideology as "a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking in racial, ethnic, or cultural sources of community," and he rejects race and ethnicity as constituent elements of national identity. 24 Instead, he calls on Americans of all races and ethnicities to "reinvigorate their core culture." Yet his "cultural" vision of America is pervaded by ethnic and religious elements: it is not only of a country "committed to the principles of the Creed," but also of "a deeply religious and primarily Christian country, encompassing several religious minorities, adhering to Anglo- Protestant values, speaking English, maintaining its European cultural heritage." 25 That the cultural core of the United States is the culture of its historically dominant groups is a point that Huntington unabashedly accepts.

Cultural nationalist visions of solidarity would lend support to immigration and immigrant policies that give weight to linguistic and ethnic preferences and impose special requirements on individuals from groups deemed to be outside the nation's "core culture." One example is the practice in postwar Germany of giving priority in immigration and naturalization policy to ethnic Germans; they were the only foreign nationals who were accepted as permanent residents set on the path toward citizenship. They were treated not as immigrants but "resettlers" (Aussiedler) who acted on their constitutional right to return to their country of origin. In contrast, non-ethnically German guestworkers (Gastarbeiter) were designated as "aliens" (Auslander) under the 1965 German Alien Law and excluded from German citizenship. 26 Another example is the Japanese naturalization policy that, until the late 1980s, required naturalized citizens to adopt a Japanese family name. The language requirement in contemporary naturalization policies in the West is the leading remaining example of a cultural nationalist integration policy; it reflects not only a concern with the economic and political integration of immigrants but also a nationalist concern with preserving a distinctive national culture.

Constitutional patriotism and liberal nationalism are accounts of civic solidarity that deal with what one might call first-level diversity. Individuals have different group identities and hold divergent moral and religious outlooks, yet they are expected to share the same idea of what it means to be American: either patriots committed to the same set of ideals or co-nationals sharing the relevant cultural attributes. Charles Taylor suggests an alternative approach, the idea of "deep diversity." Rather than trying to fix some minimal content as the basis of solidarity, Taylor acknowledges not only the fact of a diversity of group identities and outlooks (first-level diversity), but also the fact of a diversity of ways of belonging to the political community (second-level or deep diversity). Taylor introduces the idea of deep diversity in the context of discussing what it means to be Canadian:

Someone of, say, Italian extraction in Toronto or Ukrainian extraction in Edmonton might indeed feel Canadian as a bearer of individual rights in a multicultural mosaic. . . . But this person might nevertheless accept that a Québécois or a Cree or a Déné might belong in a very different way, that these persons were Canadian through being members of their national communities. Reciprocally, the Québécois, Cree, or Déné would accept the perfect legitimacy of the "mosaic" identity.

Civic solidarity or political identity is not "defined according to a concrete content," but, rather, "by the fact that everybody is attached to that identity in his or her own fashion, that everybody wants to continue that history and proposes to make that community progress." 27 What leads people to support second-level diversity is both the desire to be a member of the political community and the recognition of disagreement about what it means to be a member. In our world, membership in a political community provides goods we cannot do without; this, above all, may be the source of our desire for political community.

Even though Taylor contrasts Canada with the United States, accepting the myth of America as a nation of immigrants, the United States also has a need for acknowledgment of diverse modes of belonging based on the distinctive histories of different groups. Native Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and Mexican Americans: across these communities of people, we can find not only distinctive group identities, but also distinctive ways of belonging to the political community.

Deep diversity is not a recapitulation of the idea of cultural pluralism first developed in the United States by Horace Kallen, who argued for assimilation "in matters economic and political" and preservation of differences "in cultural consciousness." 28  In Kallen's view, hyphenated Americans lived their spiritual lives in private, on the left side of the hyphen, while being culturally anonymous on the right side of the hyphen. The ethnic-political distinction maps onto a private-public dichotomy; the two spheres are to be kept separate, such that Irish Americans, for example, are culturally Irish and politically American. In contrast, the idea of deep diversity recognizes that Irish Americans are culturally Irish American and politically Irish American. As Michael Walzer put it in his discussion of American identity almost twenty years ago, the culture of hyphenated Americans has been shaped by American culture, and their politics is significantly ethnic in style and substance. 29  The idea of deep or second-level diversity is not just about immigrant ethnics, which is the focus of both Kallen's and Walzer's analyses, but also racial minorities, who, based on their distinctive experiences of exclusion and struggles toward inclusion, have distinctive ways of belonging to America.

While attractive for its inclusiveness, the deep diversity model may be too thin a basis for civic solidarity in a democratic society. Can there be civic solidarity without citizens already sharing a set of values or a culture in the first place? In writing elsewhere about how different groups within democracy might "share identity space," Taylor himself suggests that the "basic principles of republican constitutions – democracy itself and human rights, among them" constitute a "non-negotiable" minimum. Yet, what distinguishes Taylor's deep diversity model of solidarity from Habermas's constitutional patriotism is the recognition that "historic identities cannot be just abstracted from." The minimal commonality of shared principles is "accompanied by a recognition that these principles can be realized in a number of different ways, and can never be applied neutrally without some confronting of the substantive religious ethnic-cultural differences in societies." 30 And in contrast to liberal nationalism, deep diversity does not aim at specifying a common national culture that must be shared by all. What matters is not so much the content of solidarity, but the ethos generated by making the effort at mutual understanding and respect.

Canada's approach to the integration of immigrants may be the closest thing there is to "deep diversity." Canadian naturalization policy is not so different from that of the United States: a short required residency period, relatively low application fees, a test of history and civics knowledge, and a language exam. 31 Where the United States and Canada diverge is in their public commitment to diversity. Through its official multiculturalism policies, Canada expresses a commitment to the value of diversity among immigrant communities through funding for ethnic associations and supporting heritage language schools. 32 Constitutional patriots and liberal nationalists say that immigrant integration should be a two-way process, that immigrants should shape the host society's dominant culture just as they are shaped by it. Multicultural accommodations actually provide the conditions under which immigrant integration might genuinely become a two-way process. Such policies send a strong message that immigrants are a welcome part of the political community and should play an active role in shaping its future evolution.

The question of solidarity may not be the most urgent task Americans face today; war and economic crisis loom larger. But the question of solidarity remains important in the face of ongoing large-scale immigration and its effects on intergroup relations, which in turn affect our ability to deal with issues of economic inequality and democracy. I hope to have shown that patriotism is not easily separated from nationalism, that nationalism needs to be evaluated in light of shared principles, and that respect for deep diversity presupposes a commitment to some shared values, including perhaps diversity itself. Rather than viewing the three models of civic solidarity I have discussed as mutually exclusive – as the proponents of each sometimes seem to suggest – we should think about how they might be made to work together with each model tempering the excesses of the others.

What is now formally required of immigrants seeking to become American citizens most clearly reflects the first two models of solidarity: professed allegiance to the principles of the Constitution (constitutional patriotism) and adoption of a shared culture by demonstrating the ability to read, write, and speak English (liberal nationalism). The revised citizenship test makes gestures toward respect for first-level diversity and inclusion of historically marginalized groups with questions such as, "Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?" "What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?" "What did Susan B. Anthony do?" "What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?" The election of the first African American president of the United States is a significant step forward. A more inclusive American solidarity requires the recognition not only of the fact that Americans are a diverse people, but also that they have distinctive ways of belonging to America.

• 1 For comments on earlier versions of this essay, I am grateful to participants in the Kadish Center Workshop on Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory at Berkeley Law School; the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism; and the UCLA Legal Theory Workshop. I am especially grateful to Christopher Kutz, Sarah Paoletti, Eric Rakowski, Samuel Scheffler, Seana Shiffrin, and Rogers Smith.
• 2 Philip Gleason, "American Identity and Americanization," in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups , ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1980), 31–32, 56–57.
• 3 David Hollinger, "From Identity to Solidarity," Dædalus 135 (4) (Fall 2006): 24.
• 4 David Miller, "Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Theoretical Reflections," in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies , ed. Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 328, 334.
• 5 Charles Taylor, "Why Democracy Needs Patriotism," in For Love of Country? ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 121.
• 6 On the purpose and varieties of narratives of collective identity and membership that have been and should be articulated not only for subnational and transnational, but also for national communities, see Rogers M. Smith, Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
• 7 Jürgen Habermas, "Citizenship and National Identity," in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy , trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1996), 500.
• 9 Edward Rothstein, "Connections: Refining the Tests That Confer Citizenship," The New York Times , January 23, 2006.
• 10 See http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/100q.pdf (accessed November 28, 2008).
• 11 Habermas, "The European Nation-State," in Between Facts and Norms , trans. Rehg, 118.
• 12 Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition , ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
• 13 8 U.S.C., section 1423 (1988); In re Katz , 21 F.2d 867 (E.D. Mich. 1927) (attachment to principles of Constitution implies English literacy requirement).
• 14 Act of Mar. 26, 1790, ch. 3, 1 Stat., 103 and Act of Jan. 29, 1795, ch. 20, section 1, 1 Stat., 414. See James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship , 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 239–243. James Madison opposed the second requirement: "It was hard to make a man swear that he preferred the Constitution of the United States, or to give any general opinion, because he may, in his own private judgment, think Monarchy or Aristocracy better, and yet be honestly determined to support his Government as he finds it"; Annals of Cong. 1, 1022–1023.
• 15 8 U.S.C., section 1427(a)(3). See also Schneiderman v. United States , 320 U.S. 118, 133 n.12 (1943), which notes the change from behaving as a person attached to constitutional principles to being a person attached to constitutional principles.
• 16 Internal Security Act of 1950, ch. 1024, sections 22, 25, 64 Stat. 987, 1006–1010, 1013–1015. The Internal Security Act provisions were included in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, ch. 477, sections 212(a)(28), 241(a)(6), 313, 66 Stat. 163, 184–186, 205–206, 240–241.
• 17 Gerald L. Neuman, "Justifying U.S. Naturalization Policies," Virginia Journal of International Law 35 (1994): 255.
• 18 David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 25.
• 19 Ibid., 25–26.
• 20 On the civic-ethnic distinction, see W. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); David Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995); Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
• 21 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 216.
• 22 See Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
• 23 Miller, On Nationality , 122–123, 153–154.
• 24 Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 12. In his earlier book, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1981), Huntington defended a "civic" view of American identity based on the "political ideas of the American creed," which include liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, and private property (46). His change in view seems to have been motivated in part by his belief that principles and ideology are too weak to unite a political community, and also by his fears about immigrants maintaining transnational identities and loyalties – in particular, Mexican immigrants whom he sees as creating bilingual, bicultural, and potentially separatist regions; Who Are We? 205.
• 25 Huntington, Who Are We? 31, 20.
• 26 Christian Joppke, "The Evolution of Alien Rights in the United States, Germany, and the European Union," Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices , ed. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), 44. In 2000, the German government moved from a strictly jus sanguinis rule toward one that combines jus sanguinis and jus soli , which opens up access to citizenship to non-ethnically German migrants, including Turkish migrant workers and their descendants. A minimum length of residency of eight (down from ten) years is also required, and dual citizenship is not formally recognized. While more inclusive than before, German citizenship laws remain the least inclusive among Western European and North American countries, with inclusiveness measured by the following criteria: whether citizenship is granted by jus soli (whether children of non-citizens who are born in a country's territory can acquire citizenship), the length of residency required for naturalization, and whether naturalized immigrants are permitted to hold dual citizenship. See Marc Morjé Howard, "Comparative Citizenship: An Agenda for Cross-National Research," Perspectives on Politics 4 (2006): 443–455.
• 27 Charles Taylor, "Shared and Divergent Values," in Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism , ed. Guy Laforest (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), 183, 130.
• 28 Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924), 114–115.
• 29 Michael Walzer, "What Does It Mean to Be an 'American'?" (1974); reprinted in What It Means to Be an American: Essays on the American Experience (New York: Marsilio, 1990), 46.
• 30 Charles Taylor, "Democratic Exclusion (and Its Remedies?)," in Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy , ed. Rajeev Bhargava et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 163.
• 31 The differences in naturalization policy are a slightly longer residency requirement in the United States (five years in contrast to Canada's three) and Canada's official acceptance of dual citizenship.
• 32 See Irene Bloemraad, Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

What Does it Mean to be an American? Reexamining the Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship

What Does it Mean to be American?

To me, being American is much more than just being an American citizen or living in American.

To me, being American is much more than just being an American citizen or living in American. It seems people in America have a responsibility, and an obligation to be the best person they can be. It’s part of being an American, and another part is doing your part to keep society running properly. One of the best things about this place we call home, is that the country is basically run completely by the people inside it. Another great thing about being an American is the ability to have the American dream. In an American Creed article by Forbes, the American dream is described as “anyone, through gumption and hard work, can achieve any degree of financial success.” But, a survey ran by Erik Sherman of Forbes magazine said that only 23% of people thought it was common for someone to start poor, and get rich, even though that is categorized by many people as the American dream. A different study by Pew Research center, said that 36% of U.S. adults say their family has achieved the American dream, while another 46% say they are “on their way” to achieving it. This study defined the American dream as “freedom of choice in how to live, having a good family life and retiring comfortably.” Part of the reason Americans feel they haven’t achieved the American Dream and don’t have a chance to, is because our country has gotten so far from its ideals.

In Tribe, Sebastian Junger says, “For humans to be happy, they need autonomy, competence, and community.” People need to feel competent at what they do, authentic in their lives, and they need to be connected to others. Right now, in America people don’t live in tight knit communities, and most people don’t like what they do for a living. This leads to depression, and makes it almost impossible to achieve the American dream. Junger says, “It’s also why when people come back from war they suffer from PTSD and depression.” In order for everyone to get the American Dream, America needs to go back to it’s ideals, that every man is created equal. Another problem is that our prison systems are dominated by minorities. The Federal Bureau of Prisons shows, around 50% of people in prison are minorities. That statistic alone proves to me that the American dream is far from where it needs to be. Right now, everyone doesn’t have the same opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

America was built on the idea that all men are created equal, and that there shall be liberty and justice for all. However, today our country is split into multiple sections, from our politics, races, and lifestyles. In the past, we still had close to the same diversity, but we were closer as a nation, and didn’t let problems split us apart, rather bring us closer together. Junger, in Tribe, also says, “intact communities are more likely to survive than fragmented ones.” Our nation needs to get back to how people lived community wise, at the beginning of time, where there was tight knit communities.

Being American means to be free and have equal opportunity. Also to have the ability to do what you want, how you want, and where you want. The amendments are what give us those freedoms, like the freedom of speech, and the freedom of religion. We’ve strayed from our ideals created by the founding fathers, and became more individualistic, and selfish. America needs to get back to the idea that everyone is created equal.

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Columbus High School What It Means To Be American

This group is comprised of Columbus High School students in Columbus, Montana. They have written arguments with the National Writing Project's C3WP materials to answer the question "What does it mean to be American?" posed by Mark Meckler in the documentary film American Creed.

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The Meaning of American Citizenship

Key takeaways.

American citizenship is a responsibility and a privilege based on shared values like individual rights and equality under the law.

Regrettably, the meaning of American citizenship has become distorted by political interests.

Americans must be called upon to love their country, defend its particular interests, and cherish its unique historical identity.

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What does it mean to be an American citizen? A clear answer to this question is necessary to the great work confronted by every generation of Americans: the protection, preservation, and transmission of the American regime. Most Americans rightly think of their country and its way of life as a precious inheritance that they are bound to hand on to their children and grandchildren. We cannot perform this duty successfully, however, unless we have an accurate conception of the meaning of citizenship and of the virtues of the good citizen.

Today, regrettably, the meaning of American citizenship is distorted by ideology. Ideas sound in themselves have been pushed beyond reasonable limits. Principles have degenerated into slogans. We live in an age that venerates equality and is preoccupied with individual rights. Accordingly, we tend to think of citizenship purely in terms of the equal sharing in individual rights. We live in an age that celebrates diversity and inclusion. We accordingly think that citizenship should be extended to practically anybody without any limitations.

As a result, it has become commonplace for Americans to treat citizenship and its prerogatives more carelessly—or to guard them less jealously—than they ought. Some, insisting on a strict equality of rights, claim that it is a serious injustice to withhold the right to vote even from those who have been convicted of serious crimes. Others, demanding openness and inclusivity, hold that anyone who comes to America should be welcomed and placed on the path to citizenship—regardless, perhaps, of whether they arrived legally in the first place.

Indeed, some Americans go so far as to think of citizenship not as means of preserving our regime but instead as a tool with which to change it. There are those on the left who proudly proclaim their desire to transform American society and its politics. And many of them openly admit that they view the admission of recent immigrants to citizenship as a key means to this end.

Recurrence to the American founding can help correct such distortions. Our key founding documents emphasize not only a fundamental equality in relation to certain individual rights but also remind us that citizenship involves the exercise of power or authority and is therefore properly understood not only as a right but also as a privilege and a responsibility. Moreover, while the American regime is based on principles that permit and even encourage a certain diversity among its citizens, attention to the thought of the Founders reminds us that citizenship also demands a kind of unity among citizens—unity in commitment to the principles and in capacity for the habits that will preserve our political way of life. Finally, the Founders remind us that America is not only a regime but also a country. Thus, as American citizens we are called not only to support the regime, which is based on universal principles, but also to love our country, to defend its particular interests, and to cherish its unique historical identity.

Rights, Citizenship, and the Power to Rule

The contemporary tendency to think of citizenship exclusively in terms of the equal possession of rights is supported, it would seem, by a recurrence to America’s own fundamental principles. If we ask what it means to be an American citizen, our minds are naturally drawn to the American Founding, and especially to our great founding documents. Among these, the Declaration of Independence holds pride of place as the public statement, made in the name of the whole people, of the foundational “truths” on which America is based. The Declaration, moreover, instructs us in its celebrated language that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and “that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Perhaps, then, being an American citizen means acknowledging and sharing equally in these fundamental rights.

There is some truth in this view. As long as America remains faithful to its founding principles, its citizens will affirm, and therefore will equally enjoy, these rights. Nevertheless, this is not the whole truth of the matter, as we can see if we reflect further on the Declaration and its teaching.

The “unalienable rights” articulated by the Declaration of Independence are indeed of fundamental importance, but they are not the rights of citizens as such. Influenced by the teaching of the English political philosopher John Locke, the Founders understood the rights announced in the Declaration to be natural rights. That is, they belong to the natural moral order that exists always and everywhere. They rest, as the Declaration says, upon the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and therefore belong to “all men.” All human beings, as human beings, are equally endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are in force at all times and in all places, under any government and even where there is no government.

The unalienable rights of the Declaration, then, are natural and universal. Citizenship, in contrast, implies participation in a particular government. As the Declaration itself teaches us, however, governments do not exist by nature. Rather, they “are instituted among Men” by “the consent of the governed.” Accordingly, the rights of citizenship are not conferred by nature but are settled by the agreement of the people who constitute the political community.

It would therefore be misleading to think of the natural, unalienable rights announced by the Declaration of Independence as the rights of citizens . To be sure, these natural rights are bound up with our citizenship, to the extent that we are members of a regime properly dedicated to the protection of natural rights.

Nevertheless, the natural rights of human beings and the political rights of citizens are distinct. Even a government dedicated to the protection of natural rights has no natural moral obligation to confer the rights of citizenship on any particular person. At the same time, however, such a government always has a natural moral obligation to respect the natural rights of both citizens and non-citizens. A government may properly deny a non-citizen admission to citizenship, just as it may deny a foreigner entry into the country. Yet a government that permits non-citizens to live in the country under its protection cannot deprive them of their natural rights by arbitrarily taking their lives, liberty, or property.

If the Declaration of Independence does not reveal the full meaning of American citizenship, perhaps that meaning can be found in the Constitution of the United States. Citizenship, once again, depends on the existence of a particular political community’s government. The Constitution is the document that establishes America’s governing institutions. The Constitution, in contrast to the Declaration, is not a statement of natural law and natural rights. It is rather the expression of America’s fundamental positive or conventional law. Its provisions are not in force at all times and in all places and in relation to all men, but instead were ordained by the people of the United States when they ratified it and the subsequent amendments to it. Perhaps, then, the meaning of American citizenship is to be found in sharing in the individual rights and liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

Once again, this is true but not the whole truth. On the one hand, a citizen of the United States will enjoy these rights by virtue of living under the Constitution’s authority and will, to the extent that he is a good citizen, be committed to upholding them, since they are part of the fundamental law of the community of which he is a member. On the other hand, if we attend to the text of the Constitution, we find that the individual rights it protects are not the rights of citizens as such. Rather, the Constitution extends these protections even to non-citizens.

The Constitution’s protections for individual liberties are found in Article I (Sections 9 and 10), Article III (Sections 2 and 3), and, most famously, in the Bill of Rights (Amendments I through X). For the most part, these protections are not limited to citizens but instead extend to everyone living in the United States—either because they are stated in general, and therefore comprehensive, terms, or because they are said to belong to “persons” or to “the people.” For example, Article I provides that “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it,” and that “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” REF Later in the same article these prohibitions are also applied to the state governments, which are additionally forbidden to “pass any…Law impairing the Obligations of Contracts.” REF Similarly, Article III requires trial “by Jury” in the case of “all Crimes,” without distinguishing whether the crime was committed by a citizen or a non-citizen. REF

Many of the protections afforded in the Bill of Rights are expressed in equally comprehensive terms. The First Amendment simply protects the “free exercise” of “religion” and “the freedom of speech” without reference to any distinction between citizens and non-citizens. The Third Amendment forbids the quartering of soldiers “in any house, without the consent of the owner.” Similarly, the Sixth Amendment secures the right to a “speedy and public trial” to “the accused,” just as the Eighth Amendment forbids that “Excessive bail,” “excessive fines,” and “cruel and unusual punishments” be imposed on anybody.

In other key provisions, the Bill of Rights extends its protections beyond citizens by speaking of the rights in question as belonging to “persons” or to “the people.” The Fourth Amendment establishes “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” REF The Fifth Amendment provides that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury” and “nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The aforementioned provisions include some of the most important conceivable protections for the liberty of the individual. None of them depend upon citizenship. All of them extend to anyone who lives under the authority of the United States. REF

The individual rights noted in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, then, are not the same thing as the rights of the citizen. Sharing in them, as important as they are, is nevertheless not the same thing as holding the status of a citizen. This conclusion is supported not only by the preceding discussion but also by our common experience of political life. That experience teaches us that the rights of the Declaration and the Constitution are somehow more fundamental and more unshakable than the rights of the citizen. Citizenship can be bestowed on non-citizens when they demonstrate that they merit being admitted to full membership in our political community. Conversely, citizenship can be taken away from Americans who renounce their allegiance to the United States.

In contrast, the natural rights noted in the Declaration, insofar as they are “unalienable,” can never be taken away from any human being. The rights ensured by the Constitution are permanent not by nature but by the Constitution’s status as a fundamental law. Even a person convicted of a serious crime still enjoys all the protections bestowed by the Constitution. Having been found guilty and sent to prison, the government cannot prevent his religious practice there or search his house without a warrant or make him provide evidence against himself in relation to some other suspected crime.

If being an American citizen is not merely sharing in the individual rights identified in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then what is it? Here, our search may be assisted by a more fitting choice of terms. In truth, citizenship is less a matter of holding and exercising individual rights than of sharing in collective responsibility . Although the Constitution does not explicitly define the meaning of citizenship, it points toward this understanding both in its original text and in its subsequent amendments.

The Constitution of 1789 provides that one must be a citizen of the United States to serve as a senator, a representative, or as president. REF In a similar spirit, the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments limit the conditions under which “citizens” can be denied the “right” to “vote,” and therefore generally associate voting with citizenship. This understanding is further fleshed out in American law, which provides that one must be a citizen to vote in a federal election or to serve on a federal jury. REF Generally speaking, citizens—and only citizens—share in government and therefore exercise power over the political community.

For this reason, although we commonly speak of the “rights” of citizens, we no less commonly, and perhaps more appropriately, speak of the “privileges” of citizenship. All human beings have rights—founded both in nature and in a wisely constituted fundamental law—to be secure against the exercise of arbitrary power. Nobody, however, has a right in the same sense to exercise power over others and over the whole community. Such power is rather a responsibility and a privilege. This understanding is expressed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84, where he speaks not of the rights of citizens, but instead of “the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government.” REF

Having come this far, we are in a position to correct a common error in our contemporary thinking about citizenship. Some Americans talk as if it would be obviously advantageous and just to extend all of the rights or privileges of citizenship to as many individuals as possible. After all, they say, anyone affected by a decision should have a say in the decision.

Common practice, however, and the common sense on which it is based, say otherwise. Foreigners, both here and abroad, are every day affected by the decisions of the government of the United States. Yet they are accorded no power in our political system because they are not members of our community and cannot reasonably be expected to act only with a view to its well-being. In a criminal proceeding, the accused and his family, and the victim and his family, will be affected more than anybody by the outcome. Yet they are not permitted to serve on the jury, because their circumstances give us good grounds to expect that they will not be able to impartially exercise the power entrusted to them. Minors are excluded from voting on the very reasonable grounds that they have not yet developed the qualities of mind and character to vote responsibly. Why should someone who cannot legally dispose of his own personal interests by entering into a contract be permitted to dispose of the whole country’s interests by voting? Some jurisdictions in America deny felons the right to vote on the understanding that someone who has already chosen to do serious harm to the community ought not to be entrusted with power over it.

When people exercise their rights as individuals, the consequences of their choices commonly fall only upon themselves and those who are closely connected to them. But when people act as citizens—when they vote or hand down a verdict in a trial or exercise the functions of elective office—they exercise authority over others and over the whole community, and the consequences of their choices may bear upon the well-being of the whole community for years to come. We commonly speak of the exercise of our citizenship as a form of liberty. Nevertheless, as Edmund Burke observed, “liberty, when men act in bodies, is power .” REF This is sufficient justification for a proper jealousy of the privileges of citizenship, even in a democracy.

Citizenship, Diversity, and the American Regime

In recent years, diversity has become an almost sacred concept for some Americans. The claim that “diversity is our strength” often functions as a kind of slogan, expressing not so much an empirical claim that may be tested against the evidence as a moral claim that all decent citizens are expected to affirm. Unsurprisingly, this kind of thinking has come to influence our understanding of American citizenship.

Thus, many Americans emphasize—and celebrate—the diversity of America’s body of citizens. On this view, America’s great glory is found in the fact that its citizens represent so many different cultures, so many different systems of belief, and come from so many different parts of the world. This existing diversity is to be praised, and development in the direction of greater diversity is to be welcomed.

For those who take this position, “inclusivity” and “openness” are treated as concepts allied to diversity. Affirming diversity is held to be good, because it makes possible the virtues of inclusivity and openness: America is open and welcoming to all kinds of people from all over the world. In contrast, a desire for unity or homogeneity among citizens implies exclusivity: To the extent that Americans have to be somehow the same, it may not be possible to welcome everyone without distinction. Unity is therefore to be rejected as questionable or bad.

Those who promote this cult of diversity sometimes contend that they are merely defending America’s traditional identity. After all, America’s own founding principles make it open to a greater diversity of citizens than any other country. There is some truth in this view. Nevertheless, if we examine the work of the American Founders, we find that such claims exaggerate and distort the role of diversity in their thought.

America, according to its most important founding document, is established on universal principles. To be sure, the government of America was erected to protect the rights of Americans—and not the rights of all people everywhere. Nevertheless, to the extent that these rights are understood as belonging to human beings as human beings, as resting on a human nature that is the same everywhere and not on some uniquely American culture, then in principle any human being of any background can become an American citizen—can become a participant in the regime dedicated to the protection of natural rights. To this extent, American citizenship is open to a kind of diversity not available to other kinds of nations—nations, for example, whose identity is founded on an ancient sharing in the same “blood and soil.”

American citizenship involves other kinds of diversity as well, ones arising not from the universality of the principles of the Declaration but instead from the institutional structures the Founders chose when devising the Constitution. America is in some respects a nation of states. The Founders accepted as an unavoidable reality the attachment of citizens to their states as distinct communities, each with a political life of its own, not entirely dependent on the nation or its government. More than that, they to some extent accommodated and even encouraged this attachment by incorporating the states in the workings of the federal government.

Most famously, the states are represented in the Senate as states. There each state is accorded two Senators, regardless of population, on the understanding that the states are all equal as distinct political communities within the larger national community. Even the House of Representatives, which is intended to represent the people of the nation itself, is constructed in a way that acknowledges the existence of the states and encourages attachment to them. The Constitution requires that Representatives be apportioned among the states, with the result that every House district exists within a given state. REF No district is formed out of more than one state. Similarly, the Constitution requires that every Representative be, when elected, “an inhabitant of the State in which he shall be chosen.” REF As a result, it is now customary for even members of the House to think of themselves as part of a congressional “delegation” representing a particular state.

The Founders understood America’s system of federalism—or the existence of the states as distinct communities with their own governments—as essential to one of the most important aims of the Constitution: the protection of liberty. As James Madison observed in Federalist 51, the division of authority between the federal government and the states works with the principle of separation of powers to prevent “usurpations” of government against the rights of the people. “In the compound republic of America,” Madison observed, “the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments [state and federal] and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments”—legislative, executive, and judicial. “Hence,” Madison concluded, “a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” REF

The ability of the federal government and the states to check each other, however, depends ultimately on the citizens’ energetic attachment to and support for both levels of government. Here, then, the Constitution itself both fosters and depends upon a certain diversity of citizenship. Being an American citizen does not require giving unqualified support to the government of the United States in every situation. It requires instead unqualified support for the Constitution and the system of federalism it establishes. This calls upon the citizen to uphold the legitimate prerogatives of both the federal government and the states. It may require supporting one government over the other in a particular contest of power in order to preserve the proper constitutional balance between the two and to preserve the liberty that that balance is intended to safeguard.

America’s constitutional system also fosters another kind of useful diversity among its citizens. When the Americans of the founding generation chose to unite the states into one union under a central government, they were choosing to create what James Madison, writing in the Federalist , famously called an “extended republic.” REF The advantage of republican government on a large scale, Madison contended, was precisely the diversity of interests and opinions that it permitted among its citizens, for this diversity was the key to a large republic’s ability to “break and control the violence of faction”—or the tendency of citizens to use the government to advance their own interests at the expense of the rights of others or of the public interest. REF

In a republican regime like America’s, Madison taught, the main problem was posed by majority faction. After all, political minorities whose aims threatened the rights of others would usually be defeated by the ordinary workings of the political process: They would lack the votes to prevail. Under that same process, however, a majority faction would necessarily possess the power to “carry into effect” its “schemes of oppression.” REF This danger could not be averted by removing the causes of faction, Madison held, because the causes were rooted in human nature itself. The natural “diversity” of human talents and minds would necessarily result in citizens having different and even conflicting interests, opinions, and passions. REF

Madison found the solution to this problem, paradoxically, in actually multiplying the grounds of faction in the community. In a small society, he observed, the danger of majority faction was great because the simplicity of such a society made it more likely that it would divide into only two groups, each with opposed interests. In a large society, however, the larger number of distinct factions would permit them all to check each other, with the effect that any national majority would likely be not factious but instead decent and moderate. As Madison put it: “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.” REF

Certain kinds of diversity with regard to citizenship, then, did play a role in the Founders’ project. Nevertheless, the preceding discussion also highlights how the Founders’ thinking about diversity differs from contemporary celebrations of diversity. America’s founders did not treat diversity as a sacred concept. For the Founders, it was not so much to be celebrated as a fundamental good as it was to be recognized as related to other things that are fundamental goods. The Declaration of Independence does not teach that the purpose of government is to establish a diverse community or that a diverse community is necessarily a good community. It teaches rather that the purpose of government is to secure the natural rights of the citizens who comprise it (and incidentally, of the non-citizens who reside there or who happen to be visiting).

This understanding of the purpose of government makes a certain diversity among the citizens possible, but the rights of citizens—not diversity—is the object of good government. Similarly, in the constitutional structures chosen by the Founders, diversity operates as a useful instrument, not as a fundamental good. Diversity of commitments among American citizens—to state and federal governments and to the various factions to which they belong—operate to moderate the courses of government and to protect liberty. Here, diversity is not so much an end as a means.

Citizenship, Unity, and the American Regime

Additional reflection on the Founding, moreover, sheds further light on the limits of diversity and, indeed, brings to light America’s need for a real unity of principle and purpose among its citizens. In the first place, while it is true that the teaching of the Declaration of Independence permits a certain diversity and openness with regard to citizenship, it is also true that this teaching does not in fact require such diversity and openness.

As we have seen, the universal principles of the Declaration open the door for any human being to become an American in a way that would not be possible for a country whose identity is based on ethnic affinity or on “blood and soil.” Nevertheless, the principles of the Declaration do not require America to admit foreigners to membership in its political community. Universal natural rights, after all, do not themselves confer membership in any particular regime.

Indeed, the idea that non-Americans might have a natural right to become Americans would actually undermine the teaching of the Declaration of Independence. That teaching includes not only the doctrine of natural rights but also the doctrine of consent—the idea that political communities are established by the agreement of their own members. This idea was no less fundamental to the Founders than the idea of natural rights. Yet to hold that a political community is properly established on the basis of voluntary consent necessarily implies that such a community possesses the freedom to decide for itself whether or not to admit new members and, if it chooses to admit them, which particular ones it will accept and on what basis. This understanding is embodied in the Constitution, which authorizes the Congress of the United States “to establish an uniform rule of Naturalization.” REF Thus the citizens of the United States, acting through their elected representatives, are free to determine whether and to what extent non-Americans should be admitted to citizenship.

In addition, the aforementioned kinds of citizenship diversity that are fostered by America’s constitutional structures are subject to certain necessary limits. Put another way, these legitimate forms of diversity do not preclude a certain unity of citizenship—a unity that is in fact necessary for the country to function. Federalism, again, entails a certain tension between the loyalties that citizens owe to the federal government and to their states. These tensions are nevertheless perfectly compatible with a unified sense of loyalty to the United States and its constitutional system and to one’s fellow Americans as common citizens in a single political community comprised of both the nation and its member states.

Thus, besides taking certain steps to foster attachment to the states, the Constitution also includes provisions seeking to encourage the sense that all Americans are together members of a single political community. Article IV, for example, demands that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” REF The purpose of this provision is to encourage the free movement of Americans among the states by prohibiting the states from treating visitors or new residents as outsiders with rights inferior to those of their own citizens. As a result of this clause, a New Yorker, say, and a Georgian are already potentially fellow citizens. Merely by taking up residence in Georgia the New Yorker can become a Georgian. A similar intention animates Article VI’s requirement that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” REF This sense of common American citizenship is further strengthened by the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” REF

Indeed, the political crisis from which the Fourteenth Amendment emerged, the Civil War, reminds us of the dangers of federalism if it is not sufficiently leavened by a sense of common national citizenship—the opposite of diversity. Federalism can only work to protect liberty if citizens possess a sense of loyalty to the state governments and are willing to oppose the federal government if it abuses its powers or usurps powers to which it has no constitutional title. At the same time, however, the Civil War—the temporary dissolution of America as a political community—was caused in part by an excessive loyalty to the states that led many Americans to support the secession of their states from the Union. The successful functioning of the American regime therefore requires not only the diversity of citizen loyalties to their particular states but also a unifying sense of membership in a single, national, permanent political community and an accompanying sense of common citizenship with all of one’s fellow Americans.

Again, our extended republic uses factional diversity to protect liberty. Nevertheless, factious political competition, if carried too far, would undermine the spirit of amity and patriotism necessary for cooperation in pursuit of the common good. Accordingly, the Founders emphasized not only the constructive uses of factional conflict, but also the need to moderate such conflict.

This point was made perhaps nowhere so famously as in George Washington’s celebrated Farewell Address of 1796. Like Madison, Washington noted that the spirit of “faction” or of “party” is “inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.” Washington also echoed the Madisonian argument that faction could be used for the “salutary purpose” of restraining the government and preventing tyranny. “There is,” the President admitted, “an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true.”

Nevertheless, Washington immediately added that while these good uses of the natural spirit of faction or party are not to be overlooked, neither should that spirit be actively encouraged. On the contrary, “there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage” the spirit of faction. Factionalism or party conflict, Washington warned, “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.” Accordingly, he concluded, it is “the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain” the spirit of party or faction. REF

Thomas Jefferson made a similar point in his First Inaugural Address. The recently concluded national election, he suggested, was inevitably and appropriately a forum for spirited factional competition—a “contest of opinion” notable for the “animation of discussions and of exertions” among the contending parties. Nevertheless, he continued, successful governing of the country would require that this spirit of conflict give way to a spirit of cooperation. The election having concluded, Jefferson expressed his expectation that “all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.” REF

This turn to unity, Jefferson hinted, was necessary to sustaining our commitment to republican self-government. Presumably, people will not exert themselves to uphold a system that they find unpalatable. Yet Jefferson noted that without a certain unity of “heart” and “mind” among the citizens, without the “harmony and affection” of “social intercourse” that such unity makes possible, “liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.” Accordingly, Jefferson emphasized the unity of principles that must leaven the political competitions inseparable from self-government. “[E]very difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” REF

Finally, we must acknowledge that while America’s fundamental principles permit a certain diversity, openness, and inclusivity with regard to citizenship, there is another sense in which those very principles demand a certain unity and exclusivity with regard to citizenship. Simply put, our fundamental principles require that we foster citizens who support those principles and will preserve and transmit them. The idea of the citizen or of citizenship is inseparable from a kind of conservatism. As Aristotle teaches, who is a citizen depends upon the character of the regime. The citizen is, by definition, a member of a particular kind of regime. Therefore, a good citizen is one who seeks the “preservation” of the regime of which he is a member. REF A person who seeks to transform the regime is not so much a citizen as a revolutionary.

Accordingly, America must look to preservation and not transformation when creating citizens. This principle applies both to the process of admitting foreigners to citizenship and to the process of educating Americans themselves in the full meaning of citizenship.

America is a free, self-governing republic. The constitutional principles that sustain this way of life can, in principle, be learned by anyone. At the same time, those principles are the product of a long history during which Americans learned what practices are most conducive to freedom and self-government. Nobody—not even a native-born American—has natural or intuitive knowledge of specific constitutional forms such as separation of powers or federalism, to say nothing of a right to a trial by jury of one’s peers or the government’s obligation to establish probable cause before executing a search. America should only admit to citizenship those foreigners who have undergone the arduous process of learning all of these principles. And it should at the same time ensure that all of its native citizens have undergone the arduous process of learning these principles in their own education.

Even the universal principles of the Declaration of Independence point to the need for a certain exclusivity regarding citizenship. The truths announced by the Declaration are presented as applicable to all people everywhere. This is not the same, however, as contending that these truths are in fact understood and espoused by all people everywhere. “We hold these truths to be self-evident”—but it does not follow that others necessarily so hold them.

The Founders were well aware of this problem, having before their very eyes many examples of traditional despotism from which the new American regime was a welcome departure. Now, as then, there are not a few people in the world who reject the elementary moral and political principles on which America is founded. The modern world has given birth to Nazism, Communism, and other mass ideological movements hostile to the idea of natural rights. America would be foolish to admit the adherents of such ideologies to American citizenship—and could not look with indifference on the indoctrination of its own citizens in such principles.

Finally, the preservation of America’s regime requires attention not only to the ideas of citizens but to their habits as well. Notional support for, or intellectual affirmation of, America’s founding principles is necessary but not in itself sufficient for good citizenship. In addition, citizens must possess the virtues necessary to the preservation and perpetuation of a free, self-governing people. America’s fundamental political principles are known—and treated as objects of aspiration—the world over. Thus, the vast majority of countries in the world include the word “republic” in their formal names. REF Yet it is a sobering fact that for many countries a “republic” exists in name only, that only a few have been able to create and sustain a free republic on the model of the United States.

The importance of the habits of citizens was emphasized by some of our greatest Founders. In early 1802, Alexander Hamilton penned The Examination , his last important series of articles for the public press. In this series Hamilton took issue with the principles expressed in President Thomas Jefferson’s first Message to Congress. Among the objects of his censure, Hamilton included Jefferson’s call for a rapid admission of large numbers of immigrants to American citizenship. Such a move was not safe for America’s newly created republic, Hamilton insisted, because it was not clear that these new citizens, having been born and educated in Europe, would share America’s republican political principles. But, he added, even if such immigrants came to the United States out of a “preference” for our form of government, it was “extremely unlikely” that they would “bring with them that temperate love of liberty so essential to real republicanism.” REF In other words, for Hamilton it was necessary that new citizens not only affirm republicanism but that they also possess the habits to sustain it.

In making this point, Hamilton was able to summon Thomas Jefferson himself as a supporting witness. As Hamilton observed, Jefferson had warned, in his celebrated Notes on Virginia , about the dangers of too quickly admitting foreigners to American citizenship. Moreover, in this work Jefferson had, like Hamilton, emphasized the importance of not only the beliefs but also the habits of citizens. Jefferson had feared that new arrivals would “bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing as usual from one extreme to another.” “It would,” Jefferson concluded emphatically, “be a miracle” were such new arrivals “to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.” REF

Both Jefferson and, following him, Hamilton emphasized the importance of temperance or moderation in the character of those suitable for republican citizenship. Such citizenship does not merely require, as we might at first thoughtlessly assume, a love of liberty. It requires a temperate or moderate love of liberty that strikes the proper mean between, on the one hand, the abject servility of the subject, and, on the other hand, the unruly self-assertiveness of the ungovernable individual. Those habituated to despotic government cannot be good citizens of a republic like America because they are too deferential to the government, too submissive to exercise the spirit of vigilance necessary to hold government within its lawful powers.

As Jefferson observed, however, for those who succeed in freeing themselves from such a spirit of subjection, nothing is more natural than that they should go to the opposite extreme and prove themselves unwilling to submit to any actions of government with which they happen to disagree. They move naturally from slavery, not to freedom but to licentiousness. What is required is the temperate love of liberty that will rouse itself against the unlawful actions of the government and that will with equal ardor lend its support to the lawful actions of the government.

Jefferson and Hamilton evidently regarded this temperate love of liberty as difficult to learn. In holding this view, they surely had the evidence of history on their side. After all, up to the time of the American Founding, much of the story of the human race had been characterized by despotism and chaos, in contrast to which ordered liberty appeared as a rare and hard-won achievement. Accordingly, when they thought about naturalizing new citizens, they were not so much interested in the diversity those citizens would bring as in ensuring their assimilation to the requirements of republican citizenship. They thought of the admission of new members to the political community not as a means to that community’s transformation, but, on the contrary, as needing to be managed in such a way as to be compatible with the preservation of the community’s existing character.

These considerations are as relevant today as they were in Hamilton and Jefferson’s time. Many political cultures in the world still foster an excessive submission to public authority, where people make no clear distinction between law and whatever the government happens to command or where submitting to the necessity of bribing public officials is taken as a matter of course. There are also cultures in which individuals are well-nigh ungovernable because they are not accustomed to submitting their disputes to public resolution—where, for example, it is routine to respond with violence to insult to one’s person, family, clan, or religion. Again, those who take seriously the preservation of America’s regime of self-government and liberty could not look with indifference on the rise of such habits, whether through admission of new citizens or through the gradual loss of true republican virtue among the native citizens of the United States.

Citizenship, Unity, and America as a Country

“America is not just a country; it’s an idea.” This expression is often used by those who wish to emphasize what has been called America’s “creedal identity,” its exceptional status as a nation founded on universal moral and political truths. It is a noble sentiment and one with a genuine root in America’s Founding.

At the same time, however, one could with equal truth say the opposite, that “America is not just an idea; it’s a country.” That is, Americans must not lose sight of the fact that America, apart from its political creed, is a country like any other, with its own particular interests, history, and culture. America may be, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” REF Nevertheless, the identity of the nation is not exhausted by its dedication to that abstract proposition, but it is also bound up with the concrete needs, experiences, relationships, and beliefs of the specific people who inhabit the country.

Accordingly, a full understanding of American citizenship must embrace not only the citizen’s commitment to America’s political regime but also the citizen’s commitment to the country itself. After all, we would hardly call someone a good citizen who is dedicated to upholding the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but who is hostile to America’s national security, indifferent to the fate of his fellow citizens, and scornful of his country’s history and traditions. We would surely say that the good citizen is a patriot. Patriotism, however, involves not just commitment to regime principles but also affection for the country and solicitude for its entire well-being. A good, patriotic citizen would be willing to fight in the nation’s wars. But not all wars involve a threat to regime principles. They are sometimes waged over more ordinary interests that a good citizen is nonetheless bound to try to protect.

The importance of this kind of good citizenship—protectiveness towards the country’s interests—was also acknowledged by the Founders in the Constitution and in their commentary on it. The Constitution restricts some of the rights of the citizen in order to make it more likely that those entrusted with the country’s interests will in fact be attached to those interests. Under the Constitution, not every citizen is permitted to hold office as a member of the House of Representatives, as a Senator, or as President of the United States. To be elected to the House, one must have been a citizen for seven years. REF To be elected to the Senate, one must have been a citizen for nine years. REF And only a “natural born citizen” can aspire to the presidency. REF

In Federalist 62, James Madison revealed the thinking that led the Constitutional Convention to adopt these various restrictions. Madison noted that the constitutional qualifications for Senators were different in that they required “a longer period of citizenship” than was required for House Members. The reason for this, Madison argued, lay in the different character of the “senatorial trust”—or in the different and greater powers wielded by the Senate. The Senate, unlike the House, is empowered to ratify the treaties of the United States. By thus “participating immediately in transactions with foreign nations,” the Senate’s power “ought to be exercised by none who are not thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education. The term of nine years appears a prudent mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.” REF

Madison did not comment on the even more strict requirement that the President be a natural-born citizen, but the considerations he noted in Federalist 62 obviously apply with even more force to the presidency. The President is the leading actor in the negotiation of treaties with foreign nations and is also, more than any other actor, generally responsible for the conduct of the nation’s foreign policy. Hence, it is even more important to ensure that any person who occupies the presidency is not attached to the interests of any foreign country.

Moreover, these considerations, which urge a certain caution in admitting new citizens immediately to the privilege of holding elective office, also urge a similar caution in admitting newcomers to American citizenship in the first place. This conclusion was drawn by Alexander Hamilton in his aforementioned critique of Thomas Jefferson’s call for an immediate admission of new immigrants to American citizenship. Writing in The Examination , Hamilton held that “the safety of a republic” depends in part “on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.” REF In a representative republic like America, government policy is ultimately decided by the wishes of the voters. The security of the country’s interests therefore depends not only on the immunity of elected officials to undue attachments to foreign nations but also on the immunity of ordinary citizens to such attachments. After all, the requisite safety is not achieved if, say, a Senator feels personally free to weigh a treaty only in light of America’s interests but at the same time feels pressured by some group of voters to weigh it also in light of the competing interests of another country.

Here again the Founders’ thinking about good citizenship points to a prudent balance between openness and exclusivity. Even the need for attachment to the country’s interests does not argue for excluding immigrants from citizenship. Madison’s argument in Federalist 62 implies that “adopted citizens” can develop sufficient attachment to American interests to serve safely in the Senate. REF Similarly, Hamilton’s argument in The Examination cautioned against a too hasty admission of immigrants to citizenship—but at the same time held that a permanent exclusion of them would be unreasonable. REF

Nevertheless, both Madison and Hamilton suggested that human beings tend to feel a powerful affection and solicitude for the country in which they were born and raised. As Hamilton noted in another context, “Man is very much a creature of habit,” and as a result his “affections” tend to center on what has been familiar to him. REF Thus, a proper realism about human nature counsels that new arrivals should not be admitted to citizenship too quickly but only after a period of time sufficient for them to become habituated to caring first and foremost for America’s national interests and not those of their country of birth.

Finally, good citizenship as patriotic love of country implies not only support for America’s regime principles and its national interests but also a sympathetic attachment to one’s fellow citizens and hence a simple affection for the country’s concrete historic identity. Here again, the disposition of the good citizen will be conservative, inclined to preserve and not to transform. We would hesitate to call someone a good citizen who, for example, supports the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and who upholds America’s foreign policy interests but who nonetheless thinks Americans are on the whole crass and unenlightened and that America’s traditional culture ought to be replaced with something like the culture of contemporary Europe. Simply put, disdain for one’s fellow citizens and their traditional historical identity does not seem to be the part of the good citizen.

The American Founders also affirmed this love of the country’s historic cultural identity and welcomed it as a principle of unity among citizens. Perhaps the most famous expression of this view is found in John Jay’s Federalist 2 essay. Jay argued that America’s common culture and shared historical experiences were strong reasons why it should continue as one country and not divide itself into several smaller confederacies. Jay reported that he had often reflected with “pleasure” that

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsel, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence. REF

Jay, to be sure, somewhat exaggerates this picture of unity. There were noteworthy differences of “manners and customs” between the American North and South. America at this time was overwhelmingly but not entirely Christian, and there were differences between Protestants and Catholics and even among the various Protestant sects. Because of the presence of non-English and even non-British settlers, the Americans of this time were not entirely “descended from the same ancestors” or entirely speakers of “the same language.” Nevertheless, the point to be emphasized here is that Jay understood a shared culture and history to be an important part of the basis for the country’s existence—and he evidently assumed that most of his contemporary readers would agree.

James Madison took a similar line in Federalist 14. Like Jay, Madison was responding to those who thought that America was too big to be governed as a single country and that it therefore ought to be divided into several smaller confederacies of states. Madison urged his fellow “countrymen” to “shut” their “ears against this unhallowed language” and to “shut” their “hearts against the poison which it conveys. The kindred blood which flows in the veins of Americans, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.” REF

It is noteworthy that here Jay and Madison are not yet arguing that it would be advantageous for Americans to live under a regime dedicated to natural rights and enjoying the wise institutional arrangements and legal provisions of the Constitution. Jay and Madison would certainly make those arguments in other contexts, but here they are merely contending that America’s shared culture and history is itself a very important reason for Americans to unite as one people .

In these passages, both Jay and Madison present the country’s concrete historic identity—apart from its commitment to the regime principles in the Declaration and the Constitution—as good in itself and as an independent reason for Americans to decide to continue to live as one people under one government. Jay and Madison thus teach us that experience of a common culture and history is one of the reasons that people do and should consent to live together under a common government. Therefore, a good citizen will seek to preserve this basis of unity—both out of sheer affection for the country as it is, and from a prudent realization that such unity contributes to the nation’s political stability.

This is not, of course, to say that Americans today should try to reestablish the kind of cultural unity that the country could claim at the time of the Founding. It is, however, to remind us of the wisdom of the Founders in noting that citizens are held together in a community not only by shared political principles but also by all the other things they have in common. Therefore, today’s good citizen will want to preserve the shared culture that Americans today have inherited and will therefore realize that diversity for its own sake cannot be treated as a reasonable goal.

Simplicity of principle possesses an understandable charm. It is easy to grasp, and it wears the aspect of consistency and integrity. It is therefore not surprising that so many today should be so attracted to simple conceptions of American citizenship—as the sharing of equal rights, as openness to diversity, as commitment to a regime based on universal principles.

America’s strength, however, has always depended not on the simplicity but the complexity of its principles. Thanks to our Founders, America is an ingenious and (so far) successful attempt to combine various important but often competing goods. Thus America is both a nation but also a union of states, affirms both rule by the majority but also the rights of the minority, seeks both energetic government but also limited government.

Such appreciation for complexity should inform our understanding of citizenship as well. To be an American citizen is to share in a regime based on equality of natural rights, but it is also an exercise of political authority and therefore a responsibility and a privilege. American citizenship is open to certain kinds of diversity, but it also depends on a certain kind of unity. A good American will be committed to the universal principles on which our republic is based but will also safeguard and cherish the particular interests and identity of our country. Understanding these complexities is necessary to living out the full meaning of American citizenship and to preserving and passing on to the next generation the nation we have been blessed to inherit.

Carson Holloway, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska–Omaha and Visiting Scholar in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Hamilton Versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and the co-editor of The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Vols. I and II.

Visiting Scholar, 2014-15 Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought

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What it means to be an American citizen

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“The essence of America – that which really unites us — is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea — and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.” -Condoleezza Rice, the former US Secretary of State.

To me, being an American citizen is a great privilege, pride and a limitless promise of liberty. America is a land of opportunity, a country of hope, equality and freedom. However, one should not take the freedom for granted. It comes with a responsibility of each one of us to defend our constitution, democratic principles and most importantly, protect the diversity, strength and spirit of America.

Being an American means that I have the determination like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, I can dream of equality and of an inclusive nation built by men and women of all races, religions, ethnicities and languages. It means that I can think of changing the world like Einstein, the Wright brothers, Steve Jobs or Neil Armstrong did. It means that I beat all odds to stand tall on the Olympic podium for my nation like Wilma Rudolph and Michael Phelps did. Being an American also teaches me to be empathetic to less fortunate fellow Americans and to work for the uplifting of mankind. It means that I have the brave NYFD firefighter in me who put duty before self to save several 9/11 lives or one of the countless veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for protecting our freedom. Every American should strive to live life worthy of their sacrifices.

Being an American is holding the legacy of heroes and our noble traditions; to celebrate our history and embrace every fellow American regardless of their backgrounds; and to move forward as a stronger nation together.

It is my responsibility to protect the American values and uphold the promise of our founding fathers. Being an American is my obligation to do my part and forever keep this great nation “ the land of the free and the home of the brave. “

God Bless America

Mihika Joshi

First Place

Timothy Edwards Middle School, Grade 6

Being a citizen of the United States–it’s a dream of many. It brings immense opportunities and freedom of choice. It means something different to everyone and the priorities could be different to each individual, which is why the term ‘US Citizen’ can never be fully or quickly defined.

To be a citizen of the US means to not just be born or naturalized in the US, live here and enjoy the resources of this vast country, but to also be loyal and faithful to this nation. In exchange for the wonderful blessing to be a part of this magnificent land, and also to receive the many opportunities that wouldn’t be available to non-citizens, every US citizen also has a responsibility to uphold. People who are born or choose to be citizens must defend the laws and pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. The US has a rightful reputation as one of the most developed countries in the world and needs its citizens to benefit its society and uphold that name. These expectations, if met, only make us stronger as a country and allow us to enjoy all the great opportunities that come along with it.

US Citizens have the right to vote and to be involved in decision making which gives us an active role in how our country is run. Additionally, citizens serve in jury duty, which allows us to assist in community decisions, and overall be more involved with the society around us. These are major responsibilities upon wielding, wisely, each of us can make this great country reach even greater heights. The collective voice of Americans can guide decisions of great impact all across the planet, whether it’s related to economic growth of a small struggling country or bringing peace to a war-ravaged zone. The citizens of the US have a great responsibility- not only to this country, but to the human race and the world as a whole. As the saying goes, “With great power, comes great responsibilities,” and being a US citizen is a matter of immense power and pride.

Bhaavni Krishna

Timothy Edwards Middle School, Grade 7

As an American citizen, you’re part of a movement. One that’s been seen by others for centuries and that’s inspired and changed the world as we know it. It’s the movement that started with the Founding Fathers, and the one that lies within each of us–the movement to be free.

Thomas Jefferson expressed in 1776 the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” against an oppressive Great Britain. He expressed such in the Declaration of Independence, freeing America from tyranny with the ideals to be free. America was founded on preserving civil liberties, without intrusion from an authoritarian government. In an era where few nations were a democracy, America stood out for its perseverance to a free people, with its Constitution. It provides a structure for a democratically-elected government while protecting the freedoms and rights of Americans. By being a US citizen, we display our freedoms daily, by using our rights to speak, praise, and so on. Thus, the movement about freedom persists in all of us.

The ideals of freedom and civil liberties have continued to be a hope to those globally. Before, few nations would allow their people to vote and have such freedom. Yet, with the progress and continuity of America, the world has grown around the movement to be free. Today, democracy has spread to many countries all over the world. The Constitution stands as an inspiration to nations around the world, to protect their people’s freedoms. Today, signs of oppression are met with revolt and the ideals of America. In Hong Kong, when oppression threatened their democracy, a revolt was displayed, with American flags at their side, to remember the ideals America beholds. The movement to be free unites us, as Americans.

As we go about our lives, we display our freedoms by using them. As such, we continue to be the movement of freedom. The movement that’s been changing the world for centuries and has inspired so many across the globe. Yes this movement is what it means to be a United States citizen.

Timothy Edwards Middle School, Grade 8

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — American Values — Understanding Of What It Means To Be An American

Understanding of What It Means to Be an American

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Published: Jul 30, 2019

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Citizen Queen Singer Cora Isabel Suffers ‘Life-Threatening’ Injuries From Car Accident

Citizen Queen singer Cora Isabel is recovering from “life-threatening” injuries sustained in a car accident.

Isabel, 23, confirmed the accident in a Thursday, September 26, statement on the band’s Instagram page.

“I am reaching out with a heavy heart to share some difficult news. Recently I was involved in a serious car accident that left me with significant injuries, including multiple broken bones and fractures,” she wrote. “It was a harrowing experience, as I was pinned down by a guard rail and it took firefighters over 30 minutes to safely extract me from the vehicle.”

Isabel — a member of the girl group Citizen Queen alongside Kaedi Dalley and Nina Ann Nelson , which was formed in 2018 — was subsequently taken to a local hospital, where she stayed for two weeks.

Related: Celebrity Injuries

“I have now moved to a rehabilitation center, where I am beginning my recovery journey,” she explained. “Currently, I am wheelchair-bound and will need approximately eight weeks before I can walk again .”

She continued, “This has been a life-threatening situation, and I am incredibly grateful to have survived. The doctors and I firmly believe I will make a full recovery.”

Isabel, on behalf of her family, also asked for “continued healing prayers and thoughts” from fans.

“Your encouragement means everything to me as I take this journey toward healing,” she concluded. “Thank you for your understanding, support and for keeping me in your thoughts.”

In Isabel’s Thursday statement, she teased the band’s next projects.

Related: Destiny's Child! Blackpink! The Supremes! The Best Girl Groups of All Time

“Before my accident, we have been hard at work on new music, our next single and more which we are excited to share with you when the time comes,” Isabel hinted.

Dalley, 23, and Nelson, 23, reacted to the harrowing accident via the band’s official page.

“Sending all our thoughts and well wishes to Cora for a quick recovery ❤️ ,” a caption on the Thursday post read, which was signed, “Love, CQ.”

Other performers offered Isabel well-wishes for her continued recovery.

“Oh my goodness @coraisabel,” Joanna “JoJo” Levesque wrote via Instagram comment. “I’m so glad you are OK and making it through. ❤️ ”

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Supergirl alum Nicole Maines added, “So thankful that you made it through. I love you SO MUCH.”

Carissa Rae Martin , for her part, noted that she was “so sorry to hear” the news. “Sending you love and prayers,” the Us the Duo singer, 33, added. “So glad you’re OK and healing!”

Social media stars Remi Ashtin, Grace Kinstler, Mila Jam, Steve Mackey and more also offered their best wishes.

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Haiti key port closed to land access after gang attacks

A general view of buildings in Port-au-Prince, is seen from the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti October 4, 2020. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares/File Photo

Land access to a vital supply port in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince is being closed off after attacks by armed gangs, operator Caribbean Port Services (CPS) said on Thursday.

"CPS will shut its barriers to all types of land-based traffic from Sept. 26 to Sept. 29," it said in a statement, saying that the suspension should allow the army and national police to secure the area.

A shipping official told Reuters this week that ships were being shot at, preventing them from docking and unloading containers, while authorities have reported the kidnapping of two Filipino crew members from a cargo vessel in the port.

Haitian leaders speaking at the United Nations General Assembly this week have warned of worsening insecurity in the Caribbean country despite the partial deployment of a U.N.-backed security force, whose initial mandate expires in less than a week.

Powerful gangs, armed with weapons largely trafficked from the United States, have united in the capital under a common alliance and now control most of the city and are expanding to nearby areas.

Over 700,000 people have been internally displaced - nearly double the figure from six months ago - many residing in makeshift camps in schools and without a fixed source of income as food becomes increasingly expensive and hunger rates soar.

"This situation is not just a humanitarian emergency but it is a threat to the stability of our nation," Haiti's transition council president Edgard Leblanc Fils told the U.N. general assembly earlier on Thursday. "It's never too late to act."

Food prices in Haiti rose 42% in July from a year earlier according to the World Food Programme.

Leblanc also urged the Security Council to consider converting the under-funded and under-staffed Kenyan-led security force into a formal peacekeeping mission to secure more stable funding, troops and equipment from U.N. member states.

Haiti's main seaports and international airport closed for nearly three months earlier this year when violence peaked at the end of February, thousands broke out of prison and the last prime minister resigned.

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