This is a great approach to thinking about immigration.
How do you see the relationship between an immigrant's old and new national family after their adoption as Americans? Does an Italian who becomes American become an Italian American, maintaining piety to both Italian tradition and American tradition, or do they leave the Italian family in their adoption as Americans?
Good question, and I would say that they do leave the latter family for legal and moral purposes, although of course it remains part of their own personal history. “Italian” is the adjective, “American” is the substantive.
Thank you for such an insightful and interesting approach to immigration and citizenship. I would love to hear ideas on integrating the concept of “thick citizenship” via adoption with civic friendship as a basis for common good governance.
Illuminating as always, and hard to reasonably disagree with when it comes to those who naturalize. But it seems like much of the dispute between the creedalists and the heritage party concerns people who were born in the US to immigrants (or whose ancestors immigrated closer to our own time). I see lots of debates about whether those people are less authentically American, or ought to be deferential to those whose ancestors came over during the Puritan Great Migration, or whether they need to take special efforts to prove their Americanness. Does Roman law have any analogies to offer there?
Well, can’t address everything in one post, but I’m not sure I agree anyway - I think the paradigm case for the heritage view is, to put it bluntly, Ilhan Omar. Cheers -
Definitely not a defect in the original post! I was just curious, as I’ve seen a lot of these discussions focus on so-called second-generation immigrants like Vivek Ramaswamy instead of people like Omar. Thanks again for the post.
So far in America we're rather blessed with immigrant communities that integrate quite fully by the grandchildren of the original immigrants. If recent immigrants' children since the '60s have not exactly been well-educated into what America means, they at least are no more opposed to it than any child of longer standing rising through the same resistance-oriented schools and secularized, hedonistic families. If we do start to see clearly non-integrating populations (like some European countries are dealing with), we'll have to figure that out, but it's already evidence of their parents not having immigrated fully in the sense of this post, so ideally should never happen.
Very well put. I was chipping away at a draft on this topic yesterday and similarly wound up on family as an effective analogy for national identity and citizenship, and I really enjoyed your bolstering the argument with the Roman tradition. It's a rock-solid take.
I think the concepts laid out here will resonate strongly with an American public that struggles to articulate its own common sense. We all (hyperbole) know that both the creedal and the blood-and-soil conceptions are absurd on their own, but we've struggled to thoroughly define the middle ground, both theoretically and rhetorically. This essay was desperately needed.
"Common Sense Americanism" has a good ring to it, don't you think?
Great article on immigration. The difficulty in the USA is the way that the two primary pillars of national identity (religion and language) can no longer said to be defining. English is a world language. And Americans sense that religion is a strictly private matter. So all religions are welcome. Add to that a bourgeois culture that generally eschews ritual and tradition, save a few holidays throughout the year. And we are backed into something that sounds like creedalism whether we like it or not.
I don’t really agree with a lot of that as a matter of fact, or at least interpretation of the facts. I think you’ve described a worldview that exists only in basically elite enclaves and that is increasingly precarious.
This is a good piece and I appreciate it. I think a follow-up article describing in more detail what the American family and heritage is, and what is required of adopted immigrants, would be helpful.
This will be controversial, but I'll ask anyway. In his 2004 book Who Are We? Samuel Huntington asserts that the American heritage and tradition is Anglo-Protestantism: America's "origins as an Anglo-Protestant settler society have, more than anything else, profoundly and lastingly shaped American culture, institutions, historical development, and identity" (p. 39). Does this mean that immigrants must learn English and be Protestant?
You say that the adopted immigrant ought to "maintain the substantive traditions and ancestral cult" of the existing family, and "celebrate the particular heritage, political and civil and religious, of the American family." Does this mean that Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists cannot be Americans on your adoption model? If they can be, then how can members of religions opposed to Protestantism (or Christianity generally) genuinely be adopted into the national family? This is a sincere question, not trolling.
Social norms are an outcome of human evolution. There are normative expectations of citizenship; like a sense of fairness, and respect for private property rights which are reinforced by potential social sanctions when they aren't respected. The mechanisms of enforcement include criticism, finning, shunning, and expulsion. This preserves behavioral standards for the greater good of a community if such norms are to prevail.
It is naïve to suppose that the liberal and secular arrangements which Americans subscribe to are universal and irresistible. Immigrants do come seeking a better life, but some newcomers hold deep seated grievances concerning U.S. policy in their home countries. Others arrive from cultures with values and beliefs which are hostile to the West.
Are any Catholics, Mormons, Hindus, or Atheists today so opposed to Protestantism that they find it intolerable? But you mention Muslims, too. We can't say that the following applies to all Muslims, but the holy Quran is a book that for devout Muslims is eternal and uncreated. Thus, every word is valid for all time. Its most literal reading makes slavery as admissible today as it was in the days of Mohamed. And by extension Allah, through the prophet instructs the faithful to convert or kill the cursed infidel for the ultimate implantation of sharīʿah law worldwide. This is a duty.
George W. Bush claimed, "Islam is peace." This may have been appropriate at the time, but it was historically challenged. True peace in Islam enters only after one has fully submitted to the "Path of God" and the" House of Islam". This is an unceasing struggle of some 14 centuries. Honesty on this topic is hard to come by. And difficult to face.
I would imagine the answer to such a question is similar to that of a judge tasked with determining a piece of legislation: it's safe to assume that the intent is to uphold the common good in accordance with the natural law. That is, an immigrant can safely assume that his adoptive country's culture and heritage is in furtherance of the common good and in accordance with the natural law.
To the extent he discovers otherwise, he would be in a hard, but not impossible, situation. His context would demand conformity to the cultural practices and traditions of the host to so long as they do not command him to do evil. The extent to which he tries to positively shape the host culture to the affirmative goods of the true religion or morality will depend on many factors -- his position and rank, his standing in the community, the receptiveness of the host, etc.
Guiding an adoptive nation's culture toward the good in this sense is ultimately a blessing to the host and not an attempted annihilation of their heritage, culture, or tradition. It's simply the cross atop the obelisk.
I get that, but this just seems to be a rejection of the "immigration as adoption" model put forward in the article. The filial piety the immigrant shows to the host culture contains nothing about conquering false religions with the true religion (i.e., in this example Catholic triumph over Protestantism), since the host culture of course believes it has the true religion and the immigrant is in no position as adoptee to overthrow the gods of the family he's being grafted into.
This is why I pressed the question the way I did, as the adoption model simply doesn't work with competing religions or traditions/sects within a religion. This is because while people may relent and learn another language different than their native tongue, or eat new foods or celebrate new holidays, they will refuse to worship a God they do not believe in or allow their own religious tradition and practice to be suppressed or wiped out. Allowing in immigrants of other religions in tension or outright contradiction to the religion of the host culture is thus inviting religious strife, if not civil war. The host culture therefore must either have strict religious filters on immigrants or be prepared to completely subjugate and rule over religious non-conformists.
This is not a rejection of the adoption model. Through *immigration*, the conflict would not be a case of conquering, but of gradually revealing. It's the same dynamic as when a child disagrees with his father, and the child is in the right. The obligations to the father do not cease to exist, the position of father is not degraded, and the actions of the child are constrained by his subservient position. But the child may, and sometimes must, respectfully disobey unlawful commands.
One may question the prudence of both the immigrant and of the adoptive family if they foresaw such a conflict, but I don't see how this situation undermines the adoptive model presented in the article. It just highlights the tensions of familial life.
Yes, this is a real problem for Vermeulian Catholics. Just after World War II there was a brief and serious efforts to establish a tradition of "Tri-Faith America" (see Kevin Schultz's history of that title), a time of which the current trend of highlighting the supposedly "Judeo-Christian" foundation of American culture is a fossil. Of course Jews and Catholics had no hand whatsoever in the founding of America (nor evangelical Protestantism, Unitarianism, Methodism, etc, etc, for that matter) and were barely tolerated even by around 1900; and if we can accept "Judeo-Christian", surely we can accept "Abrahamic"? But clearly as Will Whitman says below, the only real problem in your list of creeds that might hypothetically not be capable of being American is Islam. Presuambly we are not going to go all the way to the recognition that the United States were founded by a profoundly uneasy coalition of Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Quakers, and Presbyterians, churches which have decayed to varying but profound degrees over the past 200 years in any case, and who agreed on nothing at all religiously except the divinity of Jesus. So it's really quite unclear what respect for the "ancestral cult" can substantively mean, except perhaps tolerance for public Nativity scenes (though of course the New England Puritans would roll over in their graves to see such a travesty) and other such trivialities, other than the general commitment to freedom of conscience that is a part of abstract liberalism.
True. If one has lived abroad, it can be noted that many kinds of critique are frowned upon culturally. And not infrequently all but forbidden, too. Our incessant tendency for critique are useful by comparison.
I had no idea that Romans weren't allowed to sue their parents and that filial piety was a Roman term. I thought the idea that you had to cover for your dad and your dad had to cover for you (in terms of crime) was a wholly Chinese idea.
Great essay as always - our version of being grafted onto the American Olive tree.
A follow up question: How would the nature of citizenship for an adopted person affect the nation after multiple generations? Their offspring can vote, they honor their adopted parents and country, they are loyal, they are patriotic in every sense, they are American now, by this definition. Does this not ultimately devolve back into Creedal Americanism if there is no blood attached to being American? Is this the exception that proves the rule?
Basically they asked how long you’ve been in the system and what could you do for Rome. And whether you would rebel if you don’t get it and whether that was a problem or not.
There was no ideology to it. Should the Latins have the right to vote or not? Current Roman voters will decide. Their will is law and all that matters.
Steve sailer proposed something like “citizenship” which is kind of like that. But he kind of kicked the can on what criteria citizens should use in deciding. Then again his main issue was elites choosing for them and over them.
Therefore, meritocracy can be an American ideal despite not being spelled out in the text of its Constitution. But I don't see that you argue in good faith in any of your comments.
This is a great approach to thinking about immigration.
How do you see the relationship between an immigrant's old and new national family after their adoption as Americans? Does an Italian who becomes American become an Italian American, maintaining piety to both Italian tradition and American tradition, or do they leave the Italian family in their adoption as Americans?
Good question, and I would say that they do leave the latter family for legal and moral purposes, although of course it remains part of their own personal history. “Italian” is the adjective, “American” is the substantive.
Thank you for such an insightful and interesting approach to immigration and citizenship. I would love to hear ideas on integrating the concept of “thick citizenship” via adoption with civic friendship as a basis for common good governance.
Thank you! Much to think through indeed
Illuminating as always, and hard to reasonably disagree with when it comes to those who naturalize. But it seems like much of the dispute between the creedalists and the heritage party concerns people who were born in the US to immigrants (or whose ancestors immigrated closer to our own time). I see lots of debates about whether those people are less authentically American, or ought to be deferential to those whose ancestors came over during the Puritan Great Migration, or whether they need to take special efforts to prove their Americanness. Does Roman law have any analogies to offer there?
Well, can’t address everything in one post, but I’m not sure I agree anyway - I think the paradigm case for the heritage view is, to put it bluntly, Ilhan Omar. Cheers -
Definitely not a defect in the original post! I was just curious, as I’ve seen a lot of these discussions focus on so-called second-generation immigrants like Vivek Ramaswamy instead of people like Omar. Thanks again for the post.
So far in America we're rather blessed with immigrant communities that integrate quite fully by the grandchildren of the original immigrants. If recent immigrants' children since the '60s have not exactly been well-educated into what America means, they at least are no more opposed to it than any child of longer standing rising through the same resistance-oriented schools and secularized, hedonistic families. If we do start to see clearly non-integrating populations (like some European countries are dealing with), we'll have to figure that out, but it's already evidence of their parents not having immigrated fully in the sense of this post, so ideally should never happen.
Very well put. I was chipping away at a draft on this topic yesterday and similarly wound up on family as an effective analogy for national identity and citizenship, and I really enjoyed your bolstering the argument with the Roman tradition. It's a rock-solid take.
I think the concepts laid out here will resonate strongly with an American public that struggles to articulate its own common sense. We all (hyperbole) know that both the creedal and the blood-and-soil conceptions are absurd on their own, but we've struggled to thoroughly define the middle ground, both theoretically and rhetorically. This essay was desperately needed.
"Common Sense Americanism" has a good ring to it, don't you think?
Thanks for writing, Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you, and thanks! Much appreciated.
Fascinating, informative and fair - as always. A clarifying analogy! Thanks…and happy holidays.
Thank you, and the same! Cheers —
Great article on immigration. The difficulty in the USA is the way that the two primary pillars of national identity (religion and language) can no longer said to be defining. English is a world language. And Americans sense that religion is a strictly private matter. So all religions are welcome. Add to that a bourgeois culture that generally eschews ritual and tradition, save a few holidays throughout the year. And we are backed into something that sounds like creedalism whether we like it or not.
I don’t really agree with a lot of that as a matter of fact, or at least interpretation of the facts. I think you’ve described a worldview that exists only in basically elite enclaves and that is increasingly precarious.
This is a good piece and I appreciate it. I think a follow-up article describing in more detail what the American family and heritage is, and what is required of adopted immigrants, would be helpful.
This will be controversial, but I'll ask anyway. In his 2004 book Who Are We? Samuel Huntington asserts that the American heritage and tradition is Anglo-Protestantism: America's "origins as an Anglo-Protestant settler society have, more than anything else, profoundly and lastingly shaped American culture, institutions, historical development, and identity" (p. 39). Does this mean that immigrants must learn English and be Protestant?
You say that the adopted immigrant ought to "maintain the substantive traditions and ancestral cult" of the existing family, and "celebrate the particular heritage, political and civil and religious, of the American family." Does this mean that Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists cannot be Americans on your adoption model? If they can be, then how can members of religions opposed to Protestantism (or Christianity generally) genuinely be adopted into the national family? This is a sincere question, not trolling.
Social norms are an outcome of human evolution. There are normative expectations of citizenship; like a sense of fairness, and respect for private property rights which are reinforced by potential social sanctions when they aren't respected. The mechanisms of enforcement include criticism, finning, shunning, and expulsion. This preserves behavioral standards for the greater good of a community if such norms are to prevail.
It is naïve to suppose that the liberal and secular arrangements which Americans subscribe to are universal and irresistible. Immigrants do come seeking a better life, but some newcomers hold deep seated grievances concerning U.S. policy in their home countries. Others arrive from cultures with values and beliefs which are hostile to the West.
Are any Catholics, Mormons, Hindus, or Atheists today so opposed to Protestantism that they find it intolerable? But you mention Muslims, too. We can't say that the following applies to all Muslims, but the holy Quran is a book that for devout Muslims is eternal and uncreated. Thus, every word is valid for all time. Its most literal reading makes slavery as admissible today as it was in the days of Mohamed. And by extension Allah, through the prophet instructs the faithful to convert or kill the cursed infidel for the ultimate implantation of sharīʿah law worldwide. This is a duty.
George W. Bush claimed, "Islam is peace." This may have been appropriate at the time, but it was historically challenged. True peace in Islam enters only after one has fully submitted to the "Path of God" and the" House of Islam". This is an unceasing struggle of some 14 centuries. Honesty on this topic is hard to come by. And difficult to face.
I would imagine the answer to such a question is similar to that of a judge tasked with determining a piece of legislation: it's safe to assume that the intent is to uphold the common good in accordance with the natural law. That is, an immigrant can safely assume that his adoptive country's culture and heritage is in furtherance of the common good and in accordance with the natural law.
To the extent he discovers otherwise, he would be in a hard, but not impossible, situation. His context would demand conformity to the cultural practices and traditions of the host to so long as they do not command him to do evil. The extent to which he tries to positively shape the host culture to the affirmative goods of the true religion or morality will depend on many factors -- his position and rank, his standing in the community, the receptiveness of the host, etc.
Guiding an adoptive nation's culture toward the good in this sense is ultimately a blessing to the host and not an attempted annihilation of their heritage, culture, or tradition. It's simply the cross atop the obelisk.
I get that, but this just seems to be a rejection of the "immigration as adoption" model put forward in the article. The filial piety the immigrant shows to the host culture contains nothing about conquering false religions with the true religion (i.e., in this example Catholic triumph over Protestantism), since the host culture of course believes it has the true religion and the immigrant is in no position as adoptee to overthrow the gods of the family he's being grafted into.
This is why I pressed the question the way I did, as the adoption model simply doesn't work with competing religions or traditions/sects within a religion. This is because while people may relent and learn another language different than their native tongue, or eat new foods or celebrate new holidays, they will refuse to worship a God they do not believe in or allow their own religious tradition and practice to be suppressed or wiped out. Allowing in immigrants of other religions in tension or outright contradiction to the religion of the host culture is thus inviting religious strife, if not civil war. The host culture therefore must either have strict religious filters on immigrants or be prepared to completely subjugate and rule over religious non-conformists.
This is not a rejection of the adoption model. Through *immigration*, the conflict would not be a case of conquering, but of gradually revealing. It's the same dynamic as when a child disagrees with his father, and the child is in the right. The obligations to the father do not cease to exist, the position of father is not degraded, and the actions of the child are constrained by his subservient position. But the child may, and sometimes must, respectfully disobey unlawful commands.
One may question the prudence of both the immigrant and of the adoptive family if they foresaw such a conflict, but I don't see how this situation undermines the adoptive model presented in the article. It just highlights the tensions of familial life.
Not to belabor the point, but anyway...on peace and religion, four 1/2 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINsAM0vzaE
Mark Durie has written on this at length.
Yes, this is a real problem for Vermeulian Catholics. Just after World War II there was a brief and serious efforts to establish a tradition of "Tri-Faith America" (see Kevin Schultz's history of that title), a time of which the current trend of highlighting the supposedly "Judeo-Christian" foundation of American culture is a fossil. Of course Jews and Catholics had no hand whatsoever in the founding of America (nor evangelical Protestantism, Unitarianism, Methodism, etc, etc, for that matter) and were barely tolerated even by around 1900; and if we can accept "Judeo-Christian", surely we can accept "Abrahamic"? But clearly as Will Whitman says below, the only real problem in your list of creeds that might hypothetically not be capable of being American is Islam. Presuambly we are not going to go all the way to the recognition that the United States were founded by a profoundly uneasy coalition of Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Quakers, and Presbyterians, churches which have decayed to varying but profound degrees over the past 200 years in any case, and who agreed on nothing at all religiously except the divinity of Jesus. So it's really quite unclear what respect for the "ancestral cult" can substantively mean, except perhaps tolerance for public Nativity scenes (though of course the New England Puritans would roll over in their graves to see such a travesty) and other such trivialities, other than the general commitment to freedom of conscience that is a part of abstract liberalism.
I think it’s fair to say that critiquing the American tradition (especially against its ideals) is also a venerable part of our tradition.
True. If one has lived abroad, it can be noted that many kinds of critique are frowned upon culturally. And not infrequently all but forbidden, too. Our incessant tendency for critique are useful by comparison.
I had no idea that Romans weren't allowed to sue their parents and that filial piety was a Roman term. I thought the idea that you had to cover for your dad and your dad had to cover for you (in terms of crime) was a wholly Chinese idea.
Great essay as always - our version of being grafted onto the American Olive tree.
A follow up question: How would the nature of citizenship for an adopted person affect the nation after multiple generations? Their offspring can vote, they honor their adopted parents and country, they are loyal, they are patriotic in every sense, they are American now, by this definition. Does this not ultimately devolve back into Creedal Americanism if there is no blood attached to being American? Is this the exception that proves the rule?
How did Romans admit new citizens?
Basically they asked how long you’ve been in the system and what could you do for Rome. And whether you would rebel if you don’t get it and whether that was a problem or not.
There was no ideology to it. Should the Latins have the right to vote or not? Current Roman voters will decide. Their will is law and all that matters.
Steve sailer proposed something like “citizenship” which is kind of like that. But he kind of kicked the can on what criteria citizens should use in deciding. Then again his main issue was elites choosing for them and over them.
There is no meritocracy in the constitution! How did this become a measure of Americaness.
Baseball appears nowhere in the Constitution either.
And you don’t have to like it to be American.
Well which is it, the Constitution defines Americanness, or the Constitution is one single component of Americanness?
It is an added commitment we did not agree on
Therefore, meritocracy can be an American ideal despite not being spelled out in the text of its Constitution. But I don't see that you argue in good faith in any of your comments.
On what basis is it added to the list of a universal American value like religious freedom?