Ramblings

by Allan C. Brownfeld

Allan C. Brownfeld is our correspondent covering issues in Washington D. C.

Finally, a Rediscovery of the Founding Fathers, America's Real "Greatest Generation"

Suddenly, Americans are expressing a new interest in the Founding Fathers and in the early days of the Republic. David McCullough's new biography of John Adams went straight to number one on the Best-seller list and historian Joseph Ellis' Founding Fathers has been a top seller for many months.

Asked why this is taking place, McCullough says that, "Partly, it's a desire for authenticity." In an era of political consultants and public relations advisers, pollsters and speechwriters, there is growing nostalgia for an era of real statesmen-who thought for themselves, wrote their own speeches and books, and were clearly the "best and brightest" of their society. Who would make that claim about today's political leaders-of either party?

Discussing this phenomenon, and referring to Tom Brokaw's thoughtful book about the men and women of the World War II era, The Greatest Generation, Evan Thomas, Washington editor of Newsweek, notes that,

Adams, Jefferson, Washington and all the rest were the real thing. . . . They were an Even Greater Generation. While the World War II veterans deserve honor for preserving freedom in the world, in a real sense the Founders not only won freedom-they created it. The United States may seem inevitable today-a quasi divine inspiration, schoolchildren were long told-but its genesis was painful and harrowing, and the nation was very nearly stillborn.

The population of colonial Virginia, historian Joseph Eillis points out, was approximately the same as that of contemporary Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. To those who argue that the colonial generation was not genuinely unique, he asks if the equivalent of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Monroe, James Madison, Patrick Henry, George Mason, George Wythe and John Marshall could be found in Wilkes Barre today.

Hopefully, the renewed interest in the colonial era will produce a careful look at the political philosophy that motivated the Founders.

They understood very well that freedom was not man's natural state. Their entire political philosophy was based on a fear of government power and the need to limit and control that power very strictly. At the present time, too many Americans do not share that philosophy. Instead of being suspicious of government power, they believe that government is, in fact, the means to be used to solve a variety of social, political, economic and other problems. Unfortunately, many in present-day America are not even familiar with the hopes and fears of the Founding Fathers.

It was their fear of total government that initially caused them to rebel against the arbitrary rule of King George III. In the Constitution they tried their best to construct a form of government that, through a series of checks and balances and a clear division of powers, would protect the individual. They believed that government was a necessary evil, not a positive good. They would shudder at popular assumptions that regard government as a force for the enhancement of individual freedom.

Yet, the Founding Fathers would not be surprised to see the many limitations on individual freedom that have come into existence. In a letter to Edward Carrington, Thomas Jefferson wrote that, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." He noted that,

One of the most profound preferences in human nature is for satisfying one's own labor . . . the stronger and more centralized the government, the safer would be the guarantee of such monopolies; in other words, the stronger the government, the weaker the producer, the less consideration need be given him and the more might be taken away from him.

That government should be clearly limited and that power is a corrupting force was the essential perception held by the men who made the nation. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison declared:

It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The Founding Fathers were not utopians. They understood man's nature. They attempted to form a government that was consistent with-not contrary to-that nature. Alexander Hamilton pointed out that,

Here we have already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape. Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?

Rather than viewing man and government in positive terms, the framers of the Constitution had almost precisely the opposite view. John Adams expressed the view that,

Whoever would found a state and make proper laws for the government of it must presume that all men are bad by nature.

As if speaking to those who place ultimate faith in egalitarian democracy, Adams attempted to learn something from the pages of history:

We may appeal to every page of history we have hitherto turned over, for proofs irrefragable, that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. . . . All projects of government, formed upon a supposition of continued vigilance, sagacity, and virtue, firmness of the people when possessed of the exercise of supreme power, are cheats and delusions. . . . The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally bloody, arbitrary, cruel, and in every respect diabolical.

For too long, we have believed that freedom would be taken away from us by demagogues at home, or tyrants abroad. These dangers do, of course, exist. The core pressing problem, however, may be the willingness of the majority of citizens to give their freedom away for something they want even more. In On Power, the French political philosopher Betrand de Jouvenal points out that we frequently say, "Liberty is the most precious of all goods" without noticing what this concept implies. He writes:

A good thing which is of great price is not one of the primary necessities. Water costs nothing at all, and bread very little. What costs much is something like a Rembrandt, which though its price is above rubies, is wanted by very few people and by none who have not, as it happens, a sufficiency of bread and water. Precious things, therefore, are really desired by but few human beings and not even by them until their primary needs have been amply provided. It is from this point of view that liberty needs to be looked at-the will to be free is in time of danger extinguished and revives again when once the need for security has received satisfaction. Liberty is in fact only a secondary need; the primary need is security.

From the beginning of history, the great philosophers predicted that democratic government would produce this result-that men would give away their freedom voluntarily for what they perceived as greater security. De Jouvenal concludes:

The state, when once it is made the giver of protection and security, has but to urge the necessities and its protectorate and overlordship to justify its encroachments.

Today, more and more Americans depend upon government for their means of support. This includes not only the recipients of welfare but also those many groups that are subsidized by government-farmers, teachers, businessmen, corporations, and labor unions to name only several important categories.

Voters say they are against big government, and oppose inflation and deficit spending, but when it comes to their own particular share, they act in a different manner entirely.

We have, many have noted, the best government money can buy. Our elections are paid for by huge infusions of money from a variety of special interest groups with business before the Congress-big business, trial lawyers, labor unions, health maintenance organizations-the list is a long one. These groups do not contribute their funds without expecting-and getting-something in return. That something is usually one or another form of subsidization and protection for their particular enterprise. Whether Republicans or Democrats have been in power, government continues to grow as does the percentage of the GNP disposed of by the state. Different groups may benefit when different parties are victorious, but very little is ever cut back.

If each group curbed its demands upon government, it would be easy to balance the budget, keep inflation in check, and maintain a healthy economy. Human nature, however, leads to the unfortunate situation in which, under representative government, people have learned that through political pressure they can vote funds for themselves that have, in fact, been earned by the hard work of others.

The Founding Fathers would be disappointed with recent trends, but they would not be surprised. They knew that self-government was difficult and arduous. Benjamin Franklin said that the Founders were bestowing to future generations, "A Republic, if you can keep it." Their handiwork was so well crafted that ours is the oldest continuous form of government in the world. No people anyplace in the world lives in 2001 under the same system of government they did in 1789.

Hopefully, the current interest in the framers of the constitution will cause more and more Americans to study and understand their political philosophy and what they sought to achieve-to understand how fragile a free society is, in the end, entirely up to us and those who follow, as they well understood.

Dual Citizenship: A threat to U.S. National Integrity

America's foreign-born population is growing at a rate four times faster than the country's population as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In California, one person in four is a native of a country other than the U.S. About half of today's foreign-born population-roughly 13 million people-were born in Central and South America. The largest single group-more than eight million people-are natives of Mexico.

Of particular concern is the growing legitimacy of the concept of "dual nationality" and citizenship.

Under a recently enacted provision of Mexico's citizenship laws, any person born in Mexico or born to a Mexican national who has become a citizen elsewhere may now officially claim dual nationality. Thus, such individuals can have both American and Mexican

Mexican politicians regularly campaign for office in the United States. Mexican President Vicente Fox has addressed huge crowds of immigrants from Mexico in a dozen U.S. cities since he was elected last year. In July, in Chicago, he promised to get them something they have long sought: the right to vote in the next Mexican presidential race without leaving the United States. If that happens, which seems almost certain, Mexicans north of the border could become pivotal in presidential elections in two nations.

Mark Krikorian, who heads the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization favoring tighter controls on immigration, states:

In 1970, there were 800,000 Mexicans here and in 2000 there were 8 million. Any politician is going to go hunting where the ducks are.

At the present time, Mexican citizens abroad have the right to vote, but must return to Mexico to cast their ballots. During last year's presidential election, special booths were set up on the Mexican side of the border to accommodate thousands of immigrants who returned to vote. But that trip is expensive. And for the estimated 3 million to 4.5 million undocumented Mexicans in the U.S., returning home to vote means another dangerous and costly border crossing.

All Mexican political parties support making it easier for Mexican citizens living abroad to vote. By allowing U.S.-based Mexicans to cast their ballots without crossing the border, a powerful new expatriate voting bloc would be created.

Andres Bermudez, a successful California tomato farmer for three decades, was elected mayor in July of his hometown of Jerez in Zacatecas state, defeating an opponent who also lived in the U.S.

The idea of the same person being politically active in two nations, particularly voting in both places, challenges the very idea of citizenship.

"It's a terrible idea. It divides one's loyalty if you are able to vote in Mexico and the U.S.," states George W. Grayson, a Mexico specialist at the College of William and Mary.

The U.S. has always opposed dual citizenship. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that voting in a foreign election justified the revocation of citizenship, even for native-born Americans. In the 1960s, however, the Court began to rule differently. In a 1967 case, it essentially made it impossible to lose U.S. citizenship except through an explicit act of renunciation.

John J. Miller, author of the book The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has Undermined America's Assimilation Ethic, notes that,

The rise of dual nationality poses a significant challenge to the old idea that American citizenship is exclusive. . . . Since 1795, naturalization in the U.S. has required immigrants to recite an oath in which they abandon their foreign entanglements. . . . Many countries, however, do not consider this statement legally binding. And some naturalized Americans evidently don't take it very seriously. As many as 1,800 of them voted in Colombia's senate elections in 1998. One U.S. citizen, Jesus R. Galvis, a city councilman in Hackensack, New Jersey, actually ran for a Colombian senate seat and proposed to represent constituents in both countries at the same time. (He lost.)

In 1996, the Dominican Republic started allowing Dominicans living abroad to vote in its elections. Ireland's law, passed in 1956, even allows the grandchildren of people born in Ireland to obtain dual citizenship.

In a widely publicized case, Samuel Scheinbein, a native-born U.S. citizen accused of murder in Maryland, fled to Israel, claiming Israeli citizenship through his father. He invoked an Israeli law that protects its citizens from being sent abroad to stand trial. His father had not even been born in Israel, but in pre-state Palestine in 1944. The U.S. attempted to extradite Scheinbein-but failed.

John Fante, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, addressed the question of immigration at a conference entitled: "'Thy People Shall Be My People': Immigration and Citizenship in America." He asked:

Are they joining us? Are they becoming our people? Or are we becoming a transnational nation where people maintain their old loyalties while living here?

Today, said Fonte, a respected social philosopher,

...the traditional patriotic view of America is under attack. We are told that Americans themselves should alter their values because of the demographic compulsion of immigration. We are told that the dominant culture should be changed and that it should now be based on migrants linked to transnational entities.

What Fonte referred to as "post-patriotic elites" are now promoting a "post-assimilationist age" in which there is essentially no American culture, only "transnationality" in which people can belong to two or even many nations.

In a study from the mid-1990s of 5,000 children of immigrants by the Russell Sage Foundation, researchers found that, after four years of American high school, the children of Mexican and Filipino immigrants were fifty per cent more likely to self-identify themselves as Mexicans and as Filipinos than even as Mexican-Americans or Filipino-Americans-much less as unhyphenated Americans.

Commentator Georgie Anne Geyer provides this assessment:

Presented with the vacuum of philosophy and principle that the U.S. offers them today (no instruction in U.S. history, a multicultural curriculum that generally disdains things American, no inspirational civic training), these youngsters have to look somewhere for context, for a sense of belonging and for inspiration. So, hardly unnaturally, they look back. Interestingly, this is not what the parents want. In a recent survey by Public Agenda, the social-science research firm, 87 percent of foreign-born parents and 88 percent of all parents said they believed "schools should make a special effort to teach new immigrants about American values." And by 79 percent to 18 percent, parents of all races and ethnicities favored emphasis on "pride in and learning about America" over "focusing on pride in their own ethnic group's identity and heritage."

The problem, in Geyer's view, is not the immigrants but

...an America devitalized by lack of belief. . . . The changes in immigration policy and citizenship training were conceived and implemented by people who believe in altering the traditional pattern of patriotic assimilation, against even the will of most newcomers themselves.

From the very beginning, the American society was viewed as something new and unique, made up of men and women of diverse backgrounds but committed to a common belief in liberty. In his Letters from an American Farmer written in 1782, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, asked "What then is the American, this new man?" And he answered:

He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he had embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson prophesied that

The asylum of all nations . . . the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles and Cossacks, and all the European tribes, of the Africans and of the Polynesians, will construct a new race . . . as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting pot of the Dark Ages.

Expressing an older American idea, President Woodrow Wilson addressed American citizens of foreign birth:

This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. . . . I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin-these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts-but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. . . . You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. . . . You have come into this great nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give. . . . that is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.

It is high time that Congress confronts the question of dual nationality and dual citizenship, something it has thus far failed to do. Author John Miller points out that,

Congress could impose civil or criminal sanctions on people who hold dual citizenship. Running for office or even voting in a foreign election, serving as a military officer or holding a high government position in a foreign country, or even owning more than one passport can lead to fines or prison. Congress might also want to pursue treaties in which other countries would agree to bar American Citizens-or simply people living in the U.S.-from voting in their election.

Dual nationality is a bad idea for America. It changes the very nature of citizenship and sows seeds of discord and division, the kind which we have seen come to fruition in the Balkans, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and too many other places. We would do well to remember Theodore Rossevelt's warning:

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.