When I arrived in America I spoke no English, knew nothing of its history, understood no civics. I’d never heard of George Washington, Honest Abe or the 4th of July. Baseball and apple pie might have been tossing the caber or haggis for all I knew or cared. I would not have saluted the flag or stood for the anthem, recognizing the significance of neither. Nonetheless, passing no test, swearing no oath, I became a citizen on the spot. Like my parents before me, I was grandfathered in. I was an American but not yet American.
Becoming American is not automatic. It’s a process requiring education and thought. Theoretically, our schools are supposed to implement this process but are apparently not up to the task as America is stuffed with self-described “real Americans” who are anything but, who, while citizens, do not understand what it takes to be American. And yet, like the Golden Rule, it’s very simple. It’s really nothing more than a level playing field.
When Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” he was deliberately vague, having to pussyfoot around the 800 lb gorilla called slavery. Hardly one to talk himself, he made promises for later generations to keep. The bill came due some four score years later when a certain personage addressing a gathering at a certain battlefield rededicated the nation to that founding proposition and the ensuing 14th Amendment clarified once and for all that it meant “all persons, equal before the law”. Still later, a sufficient number of us managed to crawl out of our caves long enough to concede that women might also be “persons”, though we’re still working on that equal with us men part. And, as if our tiny brains weren’t already overloaded, it seems we now have to consider the case of gay people. Odd how often we need to hear that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment actually does apply as worded. Makes a fella wonder why so many people are so keen to deny others their civil rights. You’d think we feared that level playing field.
Speaking of fear, it bears mentioning that those who do not fear equality, those brave men (and women) living and dead, who have, from the beginning, enlarged our civil rights are called “liberals”, and those who have always, from the beginning, resisted the granting of said rights, those who apparently fear equality are called “conservatives”. Just sayin’.
Some are eager to remind us, when it suits them, that we are a nation of laws. I disagree. Though laws may be the skeleton of our body politic the heart and soul is our ideals. We are the “land of opportunity”, “a nation of immigrants”, bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, we are the “melting pot”. We hold certain “truths to be self-evident”. We have highly resolved that our dead shall not have died in vain, that we will complete the work begun by the Founders and rededicated by our fallen, a work that is yet unfinished. We fear nothing but fear itself, we ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country, we have a dream. We are Huck Finn, Atticus Finch, Mr Tibbs. We are not about who your grandfather was or the plot of ground you grew up on; we are not about blood and soil. We are about an idea, a philosophy of how a free people can live together, work together, thrive together, all the while having differing opinions, prejudices and beliefs. We are about tolerance. When a mere citizen denigrates immigrants or so much as cares about another’s race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, ethnic background, that is un-American. That person may be an American but that person is not being American.
In fact, I go further. To be American is to be generous and not mean-spirited, to be fair-minded and not petty, to understand how ridiculously lucky we are to be American citizens and therefore willing to help those less fortunate. To be American is to think kindly of others whenever possible and to extend the benefit of the doubt, to defend the weak and not bully them, to be brave and not panic in the face of a few lunatics, to have the gumption to overcome our prejudices. In short, to be American is to honor the words of our greatest American and allow ourselves to be touched by the better angels of our nature.
That, and nothing else, is what makes America great.