Sweet Land of Sovereignty
Tomorrow, with food, fireworks and fellowship, Americans everywhere will commemorate the 231st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence in 1776. Nearly a decade after that brazen announcement, when the founders of this republic at last won their freedom from Britain, they set out to construct not merely a new nation, but a wholly new kind of nation. Although they cleaved to ideals that included the natural rights of liberty and self-determination, the revolutionaries pursued American sovereignty as a tool, not as an end in itself. Most were deeply distrustful of states and governments, seeing no advantage in trading a tyrannical sovereign for the sovereignty of statism.
In 2007, after more than two centuries of proud American independence, there are those who claim the mantle of the founders’ values and vision at every corner of the political map. In recent years, a growing chorus of political voices has sought to link American sovereignty and security with the need to reduce our openness to the world in immigration, commerce, and diplomacy. This could hardly be a greater misunderstanding of America’s history or a worse prescription for our critical national interests in the twenty-first century.
Although US citizenship was denied to non-whites and immigration was regulated by racial and ethnic quotas well into the modern era, bigoted, isolationist and economic protectionist rationales have always been at odds with America’s founding ideals. In fact, Thomas Jefferson famously complained in the Declaration of Independence that King George had wronged Americans by restricting free immigration, “for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.” As President, Jefferson raised America’s first navy at the turn of the nineteenth century to secure America’s lifeblood—commerce with Europe—against the predations of North African pirates.
Today, of course, opponents of open immigration cite a litany of important concerns that have little to do with discrimination or protectionism, including the unfortunate reality that a small percentage of those who enter this country legally or illegally each year might wish to do us harm. Likewise, they contend that a flood of immigrants—encouraged, perhaps, by amnesty for illegals already here—would overwhelm our social and political system and bankrupt our economy. But the dangers of unregulated immigration can be reconciled with America’s founding political ideals, and our real economic interests in growth. The moribund Senate immigration bill, while far from an ideal compromise, was an important first step. More can be done to bring Democrats and Republicans together to strengthen regulatory and physical barriers to illegal infiltration, while broadening and simplifying the mechanisms for legal residence in this country.
Solving the immigration impasse is not important just for economic, moral or historical considerations. Our inability to fix immigration is emblematic of our failures in other, closely related policy arenas including national security and public diplomacy. For instance, outdated and xenophobic security clearance guidelines prevent US intelligence and defense agencies from recruiting the most skilled linguists in the most needed languages, such as Arabic, Pashtu and Farsi. It is absurd that while we still hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to exploit their years-old “personal knowledge” of terror networks halfway around the world, we disqualify loyal Americans from government service precisely because their knowledge of states and individuals that might be linked to wanted terrorists is too fresh and personal.
Just as we are skeptical of the loyalty and commitment to “American values” of recent immigrants from unfamiliar parts of the world, we undermine our own interests with excessive skepticism toward international law and international institutions. As a recent Times op-ed noted, at least a dozen treaties on important topics like the laws of war and environmental pollution, which both Democratic and Republican Presidents have signed, now languish in the Senate for lack of sufficient votes. Similarly, the US has refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, even though that body’s governing document reflects quintessentially American procedural protections and this country’s longstanding commitment to the primacy of international law.
America’s porous borders and broken immigration system, our grossly mismanaged intelligence operations, and our growing rift with even close allies over international law are all symptoms of a political system that has elevated the formal sovereignty component of American independence above the substantive values that sovereignty was meant to secure. Let us celebrate 231 years of self-determination by rededicating ourselves to unity, pragmatism and openness as we engage even the greatest challenges to our security, our standing in the world, and our identity as Americans.
In the timeless words of The Simpsons, “Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it.” Indeed, I think one of the best tokens of freedom is that we channel our disagreements in to debates, unlike some countries whose independence was marked with celebratory gunfire that, due to a communication error, is still going on.
In all seriousness, now. I’m reminded of a curious phenomenon observed in professional baseball: It seems to be anathema for contemporary players to challenge or break records set by their predecessors. Cal Ripken was criticised for surpassing Lou Gehrig’s streak of consecutive games; Barry Bonds is under scrutiny now for approaching Hank Aaron’s mark for career home runs. Unlike most other sports, where records are kept so that you know when you’ve broken one, it seems that baseball keeps records more as canon, unchallenged and pure.
Whenever any of countless interest groups strike up a “founders intent…” argument, I get that same feeling. Part of their genius (the founders, that is) was to create a government that, unlike Britain or the other monarchies of Europe, could evolve to follow the interests and needs of its people. Jefferson argued that the people should create a government “laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
The charges he then levels against King George almost entirely ignore the content of royal actions, focussing instead on their methodology: Inhibited due process, interfered with the justice system, dissolved legislatures, maintained a standing army in peacetime… and so on. The most significant immigration-related complaint dealt primarily restrictions on internal immigration (specifically, west of the Appalachians) — and even that, phrased in the form of “he has refused to pass laws…”
Jefferson later declared that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” We can’t look at the founding fathers’ take on specific issues, like immigration, to determine the direction of contemporary public policy — if for no other reason than that, I think we all agree, the shape and scope of the federal government, and of the republic, are so radically different than anything they could have imagined.
This is not to say that I disagree with the substance of your arguments; far from it. The United States tried to stay out of the world for over a century, only occasionally jumping in as it saw fit, then withdrawing again. I would hope that we’d have enough of a collective memory to remember what happened in the 1930s, but policy makers have never failed to outdo themselves in their simplicity and ignorance.
Rules pertaining to security clearances are a most excellent example. There are so many minor disqualifying rules, and yet history is littered with people who had the highest clearances and still betrayed the country’s trust. Our kinetophobia makes us inclined to mistrust the very people we need to get on our side — nationals of hostile civilisations. While there is, admittedly, a proportionately higher chance that they may have some connection to international terrorist organisations, that risk warrants only investigation, not disqualification.
Nevertheless, we allow decades-old unfounded fears to drive our public policy for the same reason that we don’t allow homosexuals in the military: Because we’re scared of what will happen if we touch the status quo. People are unwilling to admit change until it smacks them across the face with a dead fish. Witness George Wallace’s “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Legalised segregation crumbled and became a relic of the past, and there are thousands of homosexuals quietly serving in the military right now. Likewise, there are millions of immigrants in the United States.
People don’t realise this because it’s right under their nose. I know people who immigrated to the United States, and you could meet them today and not have the faintest idea. Americans, like most peoples, feel strongly autonormative. Immigration only becomes a threat when you see difference: You pass people speaking inostranije jazyki and worry that they’re badmouthing you; you walk in to Giant and there’s an entire aisle of strange foods; you want a cheeseburger but can only find gyros.
The Congressional debacle over immigration is certainly that, but it is still democracy to a t. The American people cannot agree on how to deal with immigration, legal or illegal, so neither can Congress. In order to allow the People to gain a better understanding of the role played by immigration, it’s important that they realise just how many of their friends and neighbours are immigrants, or children of immigrants.
I never would have known that the quiet girl who sat in the back of my 10th grade math class immigrated from Latvia if she hadn’t, one day, corrected my grammar when I botched a simple Russian phrase. It’s unfair to ask the very immigrants who want nothing more than to blend in to instead step out and tell their story, but life is not fair; the meek may inherit the earth, but they do not achieve political victory.
Finally, as you note, it is somewhat ironic that we shun the very values we claim to espouse as soon as they run afoul of our perceived “national interest.” International law has fallen by the wayside since we decided that our sovereignty is more important than others’ human rights. Yet as we alienate our allies and drive away potential friends currently on the fence, we do not enhance our security, we weaken it.
We forget that in order to win the war on terror, we need friends, and that sometimes means seconding our immediate interests to theirs. Russia has proposed cooperation with our controversial ABM program, but we remain skeptical — not for any tangible reason, but because the Evil Empire is still fresh in our collective memory. While Putin’s offer should not necessarily be scooped up at face value, it should be seriously considered, not brushed aside as the administration appears intent on doing.
It’s crucial not only that we rededicate ourselves to unity, pragmatism, and openness, but that we take a moment to reconsider what it means to be American. Our collective identity is muddled by geographic spread, but surely we have some values in common. I’ve always maintained that interdependence is crucial to American security, as every attempt at isolation and unilateralism has failed. Hot-button issues like immigration, energy, terrorism, and international law are certainly not excepted.
Quite frankly, I’d hate to think of the state our country would be in without gyros and balkava, and not just because they’re tasty (which they are). When John F. Kennedy proclaimed all free men to be Berliners, he didn’t mean it literally; and so we should note that not all Americans are… American. The values that our founding fathers created and continue to drive our nation are what makes us unique, and in that same sense, billions of people all around the world, living on every habitable nook and cranny, are Americans. Not because they live here, or even have visited, but because they believe in those same values, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.
The fourth of July, strictly speaking, celebrates the relatively minor anniversary of our declaring independence from Britain. Its importance comes from the significance attached to it: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the birthday of freedom, which has and will continue to ring across the world if we let it. So should we remember those words as we decide what “American values” are, and what it means to believe in them: Are we Americans?
Comment on July 4, 2007 @ 12:20 am