Becoming an American

Fire of Liberty
Robert P. George, who is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, has posted a pretty good argument over at First Things magazine's blog On the Square on how immigrants who come to this country go about becoming Americans. While Professor George makes a good point that most people who enter this country become Americans clearly out of the mere gratitude of just being able to enter and live in this nation in the first place, I think he makes an even bigger point by noting that the immigrants accept their new home and become fully immersed in the American culture and our way of life because they dig the whole concept of this nation being "of the people, by the people, for the people." Here's a brief sample of George's wonderful argument:

I want immigrants to become Americans. I want them to believe in American ideals and institutions. I want them to "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I want them to believe, as I believe, in limited government, republican democracy, equality of opportunity, morally ordered liberty, private property, economic freedom, and the rule of law. I want them to believe in these ideals and principles not because they are ours, but because they are noble and good and true. They honor the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of all human beings. They call forth from us the best that we are capable of. They ennoble us.

Our efforts to live up to these truths, despite our failures and imperfections, have made us a great people, a force for freedom and justice in the world, an astonishingly prosperous nation. It is little wonder that America is, as it always has been, a magnet for people from every land who seek a better life.

But the transmission of American ideals to immigrants and, indeed, to anyone, including new generations of native born Americans, depends on the maintenance of a culture in which these ideals flourish. The maintenance of such a culture is a complicated business—one with many dimensions. I have already talked about how social welfare and other policies, if unsound, can undermine these ideals. I have also mentioned the emergence of ideologies, flourishing in elite sectors of American culture, which weaken them. These ideologies must be taken seriously and confronted. This is the great intellectual and pedagogical mission before us.

The task is thrust upon us by what can only be described as a massive loss of faith in the goodness of America and her traditional beliefs among opinion-leaders in key positions of influence. Not everything that does business under the label "multiculturalism" is bad, but much of it is. Much of it functions to discourage patriotism and national unity. Much of it fosters attitude and impedes the gratitude that we have always relied on to put immigrants on the path to becoming Americans.

I just hope people are willing to ensure that our culture remains strong so it will continue to draw more and more legal immigrants who are dying to get here to embrace everything that is special about this country. You only have to look at how the Middle East has been a literal "hell in a handbasket" since its culture fell apart or the current chaos that is emerging in Europe as its culture is slowly crumbles at its base due to a lack of its immigrants assimilating into their new nation. So in the long run, culture definitely counts for a lot in this world.

To learn more, check out Samuel Huntington's Who Are We, Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong, Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia, George Weigel's The Cube and the Cathedral