Wall Street Journal
Image from article: Sen. John McCain after receiving the 2017 Liberty Medal from former Vice President Joe Biden in Philadelphia, Oct. 16. PHOTO: WILLIAM THOMAS CAIN/GETTY IMAGES
234 COMMENTS
Sen. John McCain’s denunciation of a “spurious, half-baked nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems” has been much quoted since he delivered it last week. But the punch line of his powerful speech at the National Constitution Center actually came in the next sentence: “We live in a land made by ideals, not blood and soil.”
With these lapidary words, Mr. McCain entered a debate as old as the American republic: When we say “we,” what do we mean? As the distinguished political scientist Rogers Smith showed in his 1997 book “Civic Ideals,” Mr. McCain’s proposition, which was also Abraham Lincoln’s , is only one of several answers braided through our history. Race, ethnicity and gender have been part of the story, as has Protestant Christianity. The debate continues today, framed (as it was a century ago) by dueling interpretations of immigration’s impact on our national identity.
Many elements of our national identity today enjoy a broad consensus. According to an AP-NORC survey conducted earlier this year, supermajorities of Americans cite a fair judicial system and the rule of law, individual liberties as defined in the Constitution, and the country’s governing institutions as being essential to the American identity. Strong majorities also include the ability to get a good job, pursue the American dream, and speak English as very important.
When religion and ethnicity enter the picture, however, the consensus vanishes. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say that Christian beliefs are a very important aspect of our national identity, compared with only 29% of Democrats. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to endorse this proposition. Similarly, 46% of Republican but only 25% of Democrats say that the culture of early European immigrants is central to our identity.
In such a large and diverse country, no single religious faith or ethnic origin can define what we mean when we say “we.” Only our shared constitutional and political principles can make our aspirational motto—e pluribus unum—a reality [JB emphasis].
The Constitution prohibits any religious test for public office. The spirit of the Constitution similarly forbids any religious test for citizenship—what Felix Frankfurter called democracy’s highest office. The same is true for family background. “Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists,” Franklin D. Roosevelt once told the Daughters of the American Revolution. He was aiming for a laugh, but he made his point: Ethnic heritage confers no rightful privilege in a constitutional republic.
Toward the end of the 12th century, the famous Jewish philosopher and legal scholar Maimonides received a letter from Obadiah, a troubled convert to Judaism who wondered whether he was allowed to recite the prayers referring to “our God” and “the God of our fathers.” Could he legitimately say, “You who have brought us out of the land of Egypt”? Some Jewish scholars of the time drew a distinction between converts and what might be called “native-born” Jews. A few even embraced the belief that there was an innate, inherited Jewish spirit or essence at the heart of this distinction.
Maimonides had no patience for any such claim. “There is no difference whatever between you and us,” he told Obadiah. You have accepted our laws and principles, and you have joined your fate to the Jewish community. You have come to Judaism the way Abraham brought those around him to Judaism, through reason and consent. “Do not consider your origin as inferior,” Maimonides concluded. Some Jews may trace their ancestry back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But you, Obadiah, derive from “Him through whose word the world was created.”
The Jewish “we” is constituted by belief and action, Maimonides insisted, not ancestry and blood. Membership in this “we” is open in principle to those who are willing to set aside past attachments and accept the obligations of the Jewish faith.
This is the right way to understand Judaism, and it is the right way to understand America. Immigration does not threaten our national identity, nor does religious and ethnic pluralism. We are not a community of blood. We never have been; we cannot be. It does not matter from whom we are descended. It does not matter which religion (if any) we espouse. The obligations of membership in the American community are to endorse its principles and institutions, to accept and obey its laws, to speak its language, to set aside prior political obligations that conflict with those of U.S. citizenship.
Anyone willing to do these things is eligible for first-class membership in the American community, not some secondary status. This is what is means to be a nation dedicated to a proposition.
