AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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swimmerbabe11 said:

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I mean.. I don't make the rules, but that is.. how citizenship works...and if he was born in the US, he's literally not foreign. He was born in Dearborn ..so he's not even foreign to that specific location...

He very literally isn't foreign, he is native. His parents were immigrants. You can say he acts foreign.

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I don't make the rules either. That's what's at issue though right? Should foreigners be citizens? Should foreigners from countries and cultures that don't lend themselves to integration into our culture be allowed to be citizens? Being American ought to mean something more than you were born here.

What do you think the guy would say if you asked him if he's Lebanese? If you can be Lebanese and American, what does it mean to be either?

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So you're saying Marco Rubio and Ted cruz are both foreigners as well?

Converse to your point, what makes you think just because your family has been in the US for generations that you're more American than someone who is first generation? Is your definition of being American based on time, behavior, or what? Seems what you're saying is just a bit inconsistent.

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I'm saying true assimilation takes generations under the best of circumstances and is impossible under the worst of circumstances. I don't think antithetical values systems can ever assimilate.

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I still don't follow.

Are you saying that all it takes to be American is to just meld into one homogeneous set of "American values" that likely changes over time?

Do you think that the hundreds of thousands of first and second generation immigrants that have served in the military over the last 100+ years defending this country aren't as American as the random person whose family came on the Mayflower? What about the firefighters and cops from immigrant families that serve their communities versus the individuals that have been here for generations but live off welfare?

To that point I am assuming you have served in the military? Or perhaps you've done some public service for the country? Would be curious to know what it is.

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Kind of? We need to have something in common other than a social security number or something like it. Do you not think so?

Let's say you grow up in the borders of the U.S. in a community of people that's indistinguishable from a community in Afghanistan. Your parents are from Afghanistan. You belong to an Afghan culture and that's all that informs your worldview. Can you be an American? And if yes, then I guess I would just say okay, but him and me have nothing in common. We can't really belong to the same polity. So it just renders the term American meaningless. Can I be Japanese? If not, why not?

I think our heritage is stickier than we like to give it credit for. What do you think of someone who is a citizen and talks about going back to "their" country to visit their family?

I was an RP in the Navy from 04 to 09. I did 1 tour in Iraq in 06 and a Westpac in 08.

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It just doesn't make sense to me.

Like what you're basically saying is we should be one homogenous culture from North to South, East to West. Mexicans that come here should stop making Mexican food and stop speaking Spanish. St Patrick's day shouldn't be a thing, or Cinco De Mayo. The Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, etc should stop selling their ethnic cuisines and assimilate. No one should worry about what race each other are, and there should be plenty of interracial marriages so that all the cultures just blend together and people forget their heritage and adopt "American"?

Interestingly, one of our strengths is that we have a huge population that speaks just about every language in existance. The military needs Chinese or Russian interpreters, we have a huge number to pull from. The CIA is trying to listen in on something they're picking up in the horn of Africa, they can recruit someone for that easily. While other countries need to train someone, who likely won't have a native accent.

But further, who determines what the national identity or culture is? What happens if out of the blue a bunch of Americans start converting to Islam. Are immigrants that move to that area supposed to assimilate into the region that has more and more Muslims that are multigenerational American?

I'm sure Americans from the 40's would have a different view of what Americans today should be like. Do we base the "standard" for assimilation on today? 20 years ago? 100 years ago? Or is there a constant moving target and who decides what that target is?

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Just curious: what do you actually support or think about national identity? What is a country? How is it defined? Are borders important? Values? Why is diversity important if you have a moving target?

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I think national identiy and pride are important. A sense of community and civic pride helps people feel loyalty to their neighbors, their city, state, and country.
I would define a country based on geographic borders, which I do believe to be important.
I think a country should have a framework of laws that are reflective of the values of that country. Obviously values can change over time - we once valued privacy and limited government reach, now we have the Patriot Act because we seem to value security more (just a rudimentary example).
I don't think diversity is important in and of itself. However, diversity can give you a lot of things that you wouldn't have gotten without it. Whether it's different perspectives in a business meeting, different cuisines at restaurants, or access to different languages for national security, you have distinct advantages to diversity (which is a very broad term that can mean a lot).

I'm just saying, who gets to decide what and who is sufficiently American? I think 300 non-citizens died in military service over the past 25 years (not including the children of 1st generation immigrants which I don't think is a number recorded anywhere). Are they less American than the meth heads whose families have been here for generations? Or the trailer park welfare queens?

one MEEN Ag said:

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I actually don't like insulting Sapper.

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Then don't. Who is forcing you?

I'm not sure I'm communicating things clearly.

But I think it's ok and good to have a national identiy and national pride. My issue is with someone telling someone else they aren't American, or American enough, because they have something else they take pride in. Or because you haven't lived here long enough.

You can be a very proud American, willing to fight and die for this country, while still taking pride in another cultural heritage. Or by believing something other than Christianity - whether that is Rastfarianism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, or something else.

Does that explain it better?

Why don't you guys put forth your definition of American since you are the ones claiming citizens aren't American….

See this evergreen post on page one for how that discussion turned out.

https://texags.com/forums/15/topics/3577682/replies/71328152

I don't even know what you are referring to. How bout just answer the question

Start however you like. Layouts whatever foundational principles you'd like. Just answer the question.

Aggrad08 said:

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I don't even know what you are referring to. How bout just answer the question

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There are 12 pages of posts about elements of such things, with zobel even setting forth early on a good criteria. Feel free to re-read it if you forgot.

AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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I'm not sure I'm communicating things clearly.

But I think it's ok and good to have a national identiy and national pride. My issue is with someone telling someone else they aren't American, or American enough, because they have something else they take pride in. Or because you haven't lived here long enough.

You can be a very proud American, willing to fight and die for this country, while still taking pride in another cultural heritage. Or by believing something other than Christianity - whether that is Rastfarianism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, or something else.

Does that explain it better?

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No, you just said the same thing.

What makes someone an American?

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Oh ok, then I misunderstood the question.

If you are born here, or a citizen by naturalization, you are American. Being American doesn't preclude you from having beliefs or partaking in cultural norms from other countries.

Aggrad08 said:

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Start however you like. Layouts whatever foundational principles you'd like. Just answer the question.

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You can't, because the United States is not a nation. Being an American is not a nationality…well, not any more anyway. It is perhaps a "nation of nations" that functions more like a marketplace or a defensive pact. A multiethnic empire. To form a coherent people, you need justice, shared values, and virtue - not just laws, economic interaction, or mutual defense.

Let's turn to Aristotle:

All those on the other hand who are concerned about good government do take civic virtue and vice into their purview. Thus it is also clear that any state that is truly so called and is not a state merely in name must pay attention to virtue; for otherwise the community becomes merely an alliance, differing only in locality from the other alliances, those of allies that live apart. And the law is a covenant or, in the phrase of the sophist Lycophron, "a guarantee of men's just claims on one another," but it is not designed to make the citizens virtuous and just. And that this is how the matter stands is manifest. For if one were actually to bring the sites of two cities together into one, so that the city-walls of Megara and those of Corinth were contiguous, even so they would not be one city; nor would they if they enacted rights of intermarriage with each other, although intermarriage between citizens is one of the elements of community which are characteristic of states. And similarly even if certain people lived in separate places yet not so far apart as not to have intercourse, but had laws to prevent their wronging one another in their interchange of products - for instance, if one man were a carpenter, another a farmer, another a shoemaker and another something else of the kind, - and the whole population numbered ten thousand, but nevertheless they had no mutual dealings in anything else except such things as exchange of commodities and military alliance, even then this would still not be a state…

It is manifest therefore that a state is not merely the sharing of a common locality for the purpose of preventing mutual injury and exchanging goods. These are necessary pre-conditions of a state's existence, yet nevertheless, even if all these conditions are present, that does not therefore make a state, but a state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life. At the same time this will not be realized unless the partners do inhabit one and the same locality and practice intermarriage; this indeed is the reason why family relationships have arisen throughout the states, and brotherhoods and clubs for sacrificial rites and social recreations. But such organization is produced by the feeling of friendship, for friendship is the motive of social life; therefore, while the object of a state is the good life, these things are means to that end. And a state is the partnership of clans and villages in a full and independent life, which in our view constitutes a happy and noble life ; the political fellowship must therefore be deemed to exist for the sake of noble actions, not merely for living in common. Hence those who contribute most to such fellowship have a larger part in the state than those who are their equals or superiors in freedom and birth but not their equals in civic virtue, or than those who surpass them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.

Zobel said:

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Note your definition is descriptive, not prescriptive.

If a half billion Chinese became American citizens, would they be American?

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Not necessarily. Depends on what you mean by "became American citizens." Does it mean they passed certain citizenship requirements and have been granted a piece of paper saying they are citizens? Or do they actually identify as an American with a desire for community and shared values?

He didn't say anything about that. He just said citizenship is what makes an American.

But to you - what shared values? And how are they determined?

bigtruckguy3500 said:

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AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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I'm not sure I'm communicating things clearly.

But I think it's ok and good to have a national identiy and national pride. My issue is with someone telling someone else they aren't American, or American enough, because they have something else they take pride in. Or because you haven't lived here long enough.

You can be a very proud American, willing to fight and die for this country, while still taking pride in another cultural heritage. Or by believing something other than Christianity - whether that is Rastfarianism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, or something else.

Does that explain it better?

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No, you just said the same thing.

What makes someone an American?

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Oh ok, then I misunderstood the question.

If you are born here, or a citizen by naturalization, you are American. Being American doesn't preclude you from having beliefs or partaking in cultural norms from other countries.

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Sure it does. This country has laws and customs. It can only function as a country if those are observed. To allow any and all beliefs and cultural norms is to deny 'American' as a thing can exist; it becomes a meaningless word to say. It necessarily has to be more than citizenship (you can't be a citizen of a country with no laws: that's not a country).

AGC said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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I don't even know what you are referring to. How bout just answer the question

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There are 12 pages of posts about elements of such things, with zobel even setting forth early on a good criteria. Feel free to re-read it if you forgot.

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I really didn't forget. Put together a coherent criteria for why this mayor born and raised here isn't an american. And just exactly who is.

Quote:

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You can't, because the United States is not a nation. Being an American is not a nationality…well, not any more anyway. It is perhaps a "nation of nations" that functions more like a marketplace or a defensive pact. A multiethnic empire. To form a coherent people, you need justice, shared values, and virtue - not just laws, economic interaction, or mutual defense.

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If such is the case what leg do you have to stand on to say that this mayor is not American?

Zobel said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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Start however you like. Layouts whatever foundational principles you'd like. Just answer the question.

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You can't, because the United States is not a nation. Being an American is not a nationality…well, not any more anyway. It is perhaps a "nation of nations" that functions more like a marketplace or a defensive pact. A multiethnic empire. To form a coherent people, you need justice, shared values, and virtue - not just laws, economic interaction, or mutual defense.

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Then assimilation isn't needed because there's nothing to assimilate into. Muslims are welcome. Or at least they're welcome in their own "mini nation" like Dearborn, MI.

kurt vonnegut said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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I actually don't like insulting Sapper.

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Then don't. Who is forcing you?

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Ironically, Sapper. I'm harsh with him about his viewpoints and his worldview. But I don't respond with the equivalent of the 'anti-semite card' for white dudes whenever he has a good point.

What would that even be by the way? There's not even a cultural catchphrase to lean on. I assume whatever I could come up with would land with the same venom as calling me a honky does. Which is to say, mild chuckle.

Probably the most insulting thing I've told sapper was on this thread when I said he is LARPing being jewish. But I stand by that. Because he doesn't actually centrally believe in the jewish religion. I've brought this up previously. Being an Israelite meant certain things about your positioning with respect to God, and it also meant as a bare minimum, that you were circumcised (if a male) and participated in passover. Modern judaism has moved from being an Israelite to being Jewish. And thus you get a million variations about what counts and doesn't count as jewish religion versus jewish ethnicity (which doesn't really exist de jure but de facto).

If he were truly jewish then saying something like, 'you're full of dead mans bones' would be super insulting, but it'll just roll off him like if he called me anti-semite again.

Zobel said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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Start however you like. Layouts whatever foundational principles you'd like. Just answer the question.

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You can't, because the United States is not a nation. Being an American is not a nationality…well, not any more anyway. It is perhaps a "nation of nations" that functions more like a marketplace or a defensive pact. A multiethnic empire. To form a coherent people, you need justice, shared values, and virtue - not just laws, economic interaction, or mutual defense.

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What if we called it a Confederation of Separately United States of America. Looking forward to america's future following the splintering of protestantism.

"Where are you from?"

"Oh I live in Houston, TX, a part of the new Global United Americans"

"What about you?"

"Oh, I I live in Dearborn, Michigan, Wilayat al-Islamiyah America"

"Well I'm just glad we can still trade between these two nations. The Southeastern Confederated States and The Peoples Republic of The Pacitic Coast and Neighboring Exclaves are in a trade dispute right now and are stopping goods at either side of the Global United Americans border"

Aggrad08 said:

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AGC said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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I don't even know what you are referring to. How bout just answer the question

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There are 12 pages of posts about elements of such things, with zobel even setting forth early on a good criteria. Feel free to re-read it if you forgot.

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I really didn't forget. Put together a coherent criteria for why this mayor born and raised here isn't an american. And just exactly who is.

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Then say you don't want to engage with all the posts that have and leave it at that. I don't care to satiate someone who simply takes a contrary position; the argument clinic is comedy and I have no desire to participate in a similar reality.

Legally, Yes. If they want to live in Chinatown and speak Chinese, and not venture through the rest of the country, they still meet the legal definition of American.

As long as they aren't seditious, I'm not going to say they're not American. I might call them Chinese-American, but that's about it.

Conversely, when some of those Chinese join the military and become citizens, would you still consider them not American? Even if they go back to Chinatown and always speak Chinese?

AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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I'm not sure I'm communicating things clearly.

But I think it's ok and good to have a national identiy and national pride. My issue is with someone telling someone else they aren't American, or American enough, because they have something else they take pride in. Or because you haven't lived here long enough.

You can be a very proud American, willing to fight and die for this country, while still taking pride in another cultural heritage. Or by believing something other than Christianity - whether that is Rastfarianism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, or something else.

Does that explain it better?

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No, you just said the same thing.

What makes someone an American?

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Oh ok, then I misunderstood the question.

If you are born here, or a citizen by naturalization, you are American. Being American doesn't preclude you from having beliefs or partaking in cultural norms from other countries.

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Sure it does. This country has laws and customs. It can only function as a country if those are observed. To allow any and all beliefs and cultural norms is to deny 'American' as a thing can exist; it becomes a meaningless word to say. It necessarily has to be more than citizenship (you can't be a citizen of a country with no laws: that's not a country).

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This still doesn't make sense to me.

If someone breaks the law and goes to prison, are they no longer American - even if they've been here for generations? If someone follows the law and does nothing to infringe on someone else's customs, are they not American simply because their family is from another country and they believe another religion or celebrate different holidays?

Yes, we have laws, and no one should break the law. If you want to be able to strip citizenship for breaking the law, then make that the new law. And define what laws warrant stripping of citizenship.

Customs vary from region/state, and vary over time. If you want to create a legal definition of American, then do it. But there is no way to do that without infringing on invididual liberties of everyone. How do you define a single set of customs that everyone must abide by across all 50 states?

This whole debate stemmed from someone saying that the Mayor of Dearborn, a born US citizen, is a foreigner. How does that make sense? What laws has he broken? What customs, which we know aren't legally mandated to follow, is he not following?

bigtruckguy3500 said:

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AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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AGC said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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I'm not sure I'm communicating things clearly.

But I think it's ok and good to have a national identiy and national pride. My issue is with someone telling someone else they aren't American, or American enough, because they have something else they take pride in. Or because you haven't lived here long enough.

You can be a very proud American, willing to fight and die for this country, while still taking pride in another cultural heritage. Or by believing something other than Christianity - whether that is Rastfarianism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, or something else.

Does that explain it better?

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No, you just said the same thing.

What makes someone an American?

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Oh ok, then I misunderstood the question.

If you are born here, or a citizen by naturalization, you are American. Being American doesn't preclude you from having beliefs or partaking in cultural norms from other countries.

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Sure it does. This country has laws and customs. It can only function as a country if those are observed. To allow any and all beliefs and cultural norms is to deny 'American' as a thing can exist; it becomes a meaningless word to say. It necessarily has to be more than citizenship (you can't be a citizen of a country with no laws: that's not a country).

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This still doesn't make sense to me.

If someone breaks the law and goes to prison, are they no longer American - even if they've been here for generations? If someone follows the law and does nothing to infringe on someone else's customs, are they not American simply because their family is from another country and they believe another religion or celebrate different holidays?

Yes, we have laws, and no one should break the law. If you want to be able to strip citizenship for breaking the law, then make that the new law. And define what laws warrant stripping of citizenship.

Customs vary from region/state, and vary over time. If you want to create a legal definition of American, then do it. But there is no way to do that without infringing on invididual liberties of everyone. How do you define a single set of customs that everyone must abide by across all 50 states?

This whole debate stemmed from someone saying that the Mayor of Dearborn, a born US citizen, is a foreigner. How does that make sense? What laws has he broken? What customs, which we know aren't legally mandated to follow, is he not following?

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Have you taken a citizenship test? Being American isn't so nebulously defined as you want it to be.

I don't know where you're going with your questions, since my point is that citizenship alone isn't sufficient.

AGC said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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AGC said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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I don't even know what you are referring to. How bout just answer the question

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There are 12 pages of posts about elements of such things, with zobel even setting forth early on a good criteria. Feel free to re-read it if you forgot.

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I really didn't forget. Put together a coherent criteria for why this mayor born and raised here isn't an american. And just exactly who is.

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Then say you don't want to engage with all the posts that have and leave it at that. I don't care to satiate someone who simply takes a contrary position; the argument clinic is comedy and I have no desire to participate in a similar reality.

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Except they don't. This is a tired and weak argument. You essentially appealed to zobel without realizing that his own position undermines yours.

So try again.

Zobel said:

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I'm fine with him being an American, I don't think I said he wasn't. But being an American in that case is essentially meaningless beyond legal status.

We aren't even a credal nation under such a system. Just a group of people under the same set of laws.

In such a system, especially a democratic one, you have no firebreaks to any change (cultural or political).

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Some here have definitely said he wasn't. I take it you disagree. Why is it meaningless? What about this person makes it meaningless compared to someone else born and raised here?

I'm fine with the argument that being an American carries little in the way of an assumed set of values or beliefs. But that would then be true regardless of which citizens we point at. What is it about this case that makes you say it's essentially meaningless if he's included?

I have not taken a citizenship test. How does that define being American? Or does it?

My questions are to point out that it's a rabbit hole to try and define what it means to be an American without a plethora of conditional statements and circuitous logic to keep from hypocrisy or infringing on individual rights.

bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Legally, Yes. If they want to live in Chinatown and speak Chinese, and not venture through the rest of the country, they still meet the legal definition of American.

As long as they aren't seditious, I'm not going to say they're not American. I might call them Chinese-American, but that's about it.

Conversely, when some of those Chinese join the military and become citizens, would you still consider them not American? Even if they go back to Chinatown and always speak Chinese?

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Who said anything about the legal definition? That's obvious in my question.

In your mind the only requirement to be an American is a legal one? There's zero other aspects that define what America is, and who is an American?

For example:


It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

John Jay, The Federalist Papers No 2

Zobel said:

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Because it hasn't always been true that being an American was just some kind of legal definition, without any kind of unifying value or virtue or kinship involved. That's the entire problem.

You've watered this thing down so far that a guy who will literally tell a man born in a town, who's family has lived there for generations, that he doesn't belong there and isn't welcome because he is labeled an islamophobe after objecting to a street being named after a known terrorist. "Oh but he's an American". Great. Apparently that is completely useless category that means nothing other than a legal distinction. That's even looser than Kurt's requirements for accepting constitutional values. It's zero, nothing.

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I'm not the one who watered anything down. You were the one who said you had no problem with him being an American. But now it seems you do and wish it weren't so. Make up your mind.

The telling of a man that he doesn't belong because of racism, sexism, being too poor, not being republican enough or whatever criteria you can imagine is a red herring. Every manner of American demographic can be shown to have some idiot opinion on something.

I actually do think we should be a credal nation, but I disagree with your basic premise that we were ever as cohesive or resistant to immigration and the variety that's comes with it even early in our history.

"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment."
-George Washington

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular."

Thomas Jefferson

When [immigrants] look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'; and then they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

Abraham Lincoln

"We're a nation composed of people who have come here from every corner of the world, people of all races and creeds … they're every bit as American as those who came here two centuries ago seeking freedom." -Ronald Reagan

Since this is the last speech that I will give as President, I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: ``You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American. - Ronald Reagan.

There are more of course.