Sharing what I wrote yesterday. Today on the 250th anniversary of our country I had planned to write a hopeful message about the unity of this country. How we live up the national motto E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many One.) From what I have been hearing and seeing lately I am a having a hard time coming up with that message. Instead we are seeing many say this isn’t a country of many becoming one but a country that should only belong to a few. That having many different people of different backgrounds is “obliterating the nation” or in Latin “E Pluribus Fit Deletio”. The struggle to define who can be an American is not new. For about the first hundred years anyone could be an American just by showing up on US soil and declaring yourself one. Provided of course you were white. It wasn’t until in the wake of the Civil War that the Constitution defined who could be a citizen in the 14th Amendment that all people naturalized or born under the jurisdiction of the US was a US citizen. Even then there were still laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Acts that kept many groups from being granted citizenship. It wasn’t until 20 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment that the Wong Kim Ark case said birthright applied to everyone regardless of parentage and ethnicity. At the same time the Exclusion Acts still prevented many Asians from getting citizenship through naturalization or even immigrating here. It took World War II to end those Acts and the Civil Rights movement to enforce those rights to all. We’ve recently seen attempts to say that birth citizenship shouldn’t apply to everyone, naturalization made much harder, and calls to strip citizenship from naturalized immigrants. Along with increased deportation, stripping of legal status of many immigrants who came here legally, and even calls to end all immigration. The claim is this is necessary to protect the nation from an invasion of people from “shithole countries” in Africa and Latin America, or “Communist countries” in Asia. Many political leaders stating openly that we are in a war of cultures to defend Western civilization and to prevent the replacement of white people. It doesn’t take massive cerebral firepower to realize when they say “America only for Americans!” The Americans they are referring to are from one race. The founders of this country were indistinguishable from the British they fought against. Yet they understood that this wasn’t a rebellion of blood and soil but a revolution of ideas. In the words of the Declaration of Independence “All men are created equal.” Not “European Men” but “ALL MEN”. While the founders engaged in some of the worst practices of their time and were very flawed they had ideals that went beyond the base prejudices of their time. That is why our founding documents aren’t about America as land, religion, language or ethnicity but ideas. Those ideas aren’t self enforcing. Even after the signing of the Declaration of Independence there was seven more years of war before the country could truly be independent. Since then many more conflicts were fought over what this country stood for including a devastating Civil War. Later those ideas were fought for by the Freedom Riders, the 442nd Nisei Regiment fighting for their country while their families were held in internment camps, a woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus, a Chinese American named Wong Kim Ark telling the Supreme Court he was an American, and many more. While Jefferson wrote all men are endowed with inalienable rights by their creator it took humans to fight for and enforce those rights. That struggle still continues. As we commemorate our 250 year anniversary I still love this country and am proud to be an American. That isn’t just some words spouted by an old country singer. That means my place in this country is not to be taken for granted and is worth struggling for. The ideals spoken 250 years ago mean more than just a country of narrow ethnic and ideological purity that has to close itself off but a nation of many that become one. E PLURIBUS UNUM
