It can be summed up in one word: Immigration.
Immigration works in America in a way that it does not in most other nations. The reason it works is because of our Constitution. Not because of the exact words, but because the bedrock, the foundation, of this nation is the Constitution. A immigrant comes to this country, works hard, becomes a citizen. He or she may forever struggle with the language, but their children won't. Their grandchildren may have some passing familiarity with their grandparents' language, but their own children will not be raised with it. They will be Americans to their very marrow.
Many nations do not tolerate immigrants. You could move to Japan, become fluent in the language and become a Japanese citizen. But you will never *be* Japanese, nor will your children or their children. They won't intermarry a "true Japanese". You could move to Russia, but if you do not look Russian, you run the risk of being killed by a skinhead. In most countries in Europe, your family could live there for five generations and the old Vermonter saw of "just because the cat gave birth in the oven, doesn't mean that the babies are biscuits" applies. If you think that I am making any of this up, go look at the Jewish experience from the rise of the nation-state in Europe until well after 1945. Look at the experience of Koreans who were brought to Japan as laborers in the first half of the last century. Look at Serbia, which has fought a series of civil wars and ethnic atrocities over who had what patch of dirt in the Middle Ages.
Most nations tie their identity to their geography. But not Americans. Being American is allegiance to a set of principles, a set of ideals. You don't swear to defend the homeland or the greater Atlanta metro area or any of that, you swear to uphold the Constitution.
If you took the population of the Earth and you were able to move everyone instantly to a planet of a star system in NCG 4603, most nations would fall apart as they would have lost their home geography, their identity. America would not, for as long as there is our Constitution, there is an America and we are Americans.
(This is one of the reasons why I was so outraged at the blatant distain for the Constitution evident in the Bush Administration.)
Immigrants bring fresh blood, fresh perspectives and new cultures to our nation. When we stop welcoming them, then we will turn into a nation of inbred bigots. And, like Russia, Japan, Italy and many other nations, we will run the risk of demographic collapse and eventual cultural extinction.
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Whenever people bring up the demographic collapse of Europe as proof that "socialism doesn't work", I respond "no, racism doesn't work." Because that's what it is: racism. You have North Africans who've been living in France for four generations, ever since the collapse of the Algerian war effort. They were the poor sods who fought on the side of the French against the Islamist rebels who were intent upon independence. They can't go back even today -- they'd be killed instantly as "tainted blood". Yet their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, none of them are French citizens. They have residency cards, job cards, but they cannot vote in French elections, they don't have full rights to participate in the French welfare system, it's legal to discriminate against them in job hiring (indeed, *mandatory* -- if a French citizen and a non-citizen apply for the both job and both are qualified, the French citizen gets the job), and so on and so forth.
That's Europe. And that's what the USA is in danger of becoming if current anti-immigrant policies continue. Of the Americans who shared this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine, only one was born in the USA. 'Nuff said.
- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin
Acceptance.
I accept the rights that "our" constitution dictates.
I accept the laws that it says must be upheld.
I am an American citizen.
I live here in America for a reason, I did not like where I was living before I came here.
Our ideals and what I have just said draw those motivated to leave the geography of their birth.
Our constitution grants us rights in exchange for responsibility.
Sounds heavy but it's granted to everyone
and for the exchange you get the rights that many elsewhere do not.
Discrimination is irresponsible and by doing so one cannot claim the rights granted. It's unfortunate that many do.
Then again the rights conferred allow for being wrongheaded.
Citizenship is the acknowledgment we
confer on those who come here and take the first responsibility of becoming American.
Even though members of government have abdicated that responsibility we have a constitution and law that will.
Consider what responsible is in America.
Eck!
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