My country 'tis of thee

At the end of a year, it is customary to remember the past and look forward to the future. I will look back a bit on the country in which I grew up and then forward to where it may be headed.

As an elementary school student, I learned to love the proud history of this nation, and to admire such great figures in American history as Capt. John Smith, George Washington, Nathan Hale, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Geronimo, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and many others. My history textbooks taught me that this was the greatest nation on earth and I came to understand how blessed I was to be born in this land of opportunity, which our ancestors carved out of the wilderness. I was taught that for those who take advantage of education and work hard, opportunities await in "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

I grew up understanding that America is a definite geographical place with defined borders ending with Canada on the north and Mexico on the south. I could look at a map and point out the familiar outline of these United States. There is presently a move toward a North American Union where not only commerce will pass without regard to borders between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico; but also the free and unimpeded travel of Canadian, American and Mexican citizens through borders, or basically the removal of national borders.

Unlike the time of my growing up when everyone accepted the same opinion of what constitutes a nation, we find ourselves early in the 21st century faced with two philosophies of nationhood at odds with each other. Eventually one will win out for we must answer the questions: "What is a nation? What is America? Who are we?"

America is an ideal

There is one view of "nation" whose adherents insist that America is a "creedal nation, united by a common commitment of all her citizens to a set of ideas and ideals." Cokie Roberts of ABC agreed: "We have nothing binding us together as a nation- no common ethnicity, history, religion, or even language- except the Constitution and the institutions it created."

Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, also subscribed to the view that "America was the implementation of a rational plan for 'freedom and equality.'" To Bloom, it is our common ideological beliefs that makes us brothers. Another writer has likened America to a great stage on which theories are acted out, insisting that abstract ideas not historical personalities built the United States.

FDR seemed to agree, asserting that "Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart. Americanism is not, and never was a matter of race and ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and our creed of liberty and democracy." To be one nation said Bill Clinton, all we need do is define ourselves by "our primary allegiance to the values that America stands for and values we really live by."

In his first inaugural, George W. Bush endorsed the creedal nation concept: "America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens."

America is a land and a people

There is a second school of thought: "Patriotism is the soul of a nation. It is what keeps a nation alive. When patriotism dies, when a nation loses the love and loyalty of its people, the nation dies and begins to decompose. Patriotism is a passionate attachment to one's own country- its land, its people, its past, its heroes, literature, language, traditions, culture and customs."

In his 1967 visit to Canada, Charles de Gaulle ignited a storm by declaring from the balcony of Montreal's City Hall. "Viv le Quebec libre!"- the defiant cry of the Quebecois, who yet dream of secession and nationhood. Quebec remains a province of Canada, but the nation, Quebec, lives in the hearts of millions of French Canadians.

A nation is much more than a "division of labor" or a "market" that may encompass the nation. An economic union like the European Union is not a nation. An economy is not a country. A nation is organic; a nation is alive; a nation has a beating heart.

Americans are an identifiable people. When traveling abroad, they are recognizable by their speech and mannerisms, not because they have been interrogated on their beliefs in democracy and free markets.

When FDR readily agreed to incarcerate 110,00 Japanese because he did not trust Japanese- Americans in a war with Japan, he exposed the fraudulence of his peacetime declaration that "Americanism never was a matter of race and ancestry." For what he feared was that the first allegiance of Japanese-Americans' might just be their native land and their people.

When President Bush declared in his first inaugural that America has never been united by blood or birth or soil, he not only ignored history, but he denied much of what it has meant to be an American. He denied that indefinable attachment to "place" about which we sing in ".....land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride."

Woodrow Wilson, speaking to naturalized citizens in Philadelphia in 1915 said, "You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American."

As we enter 2008, the "philosophical" battle lines are drawn, and by mid-century or earlier, the war will be over and one side will have won. At the end of 2005, communist China held $820 billion in U.S. assets behind Japan with $830 billion because of the imbalance in trade. Either America will have been transformed into an abstract free-market, free-trade, out-sourcing, economic system which has redistributed much of the wealth of "traditional America" across a globe governed by global agreements and a World Court; or we will remain a traditional nation whose national interests will be the traditional defense of our land and the preservation of the lives and liberty of our people; for it is language, faith, culture and history- and yes, blood, and soul- that produce a people, not an ideology.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, college students stood beside sharecropper' sons to enlist. These men were not volunteering to defend abstract ideas nor an ideology nor a creed. Many had likely never read Jefferson, Hamilton, or Madison and some would die never having read them. For democracy was not attacked. Equality was not attacked. An economic system was not attacked. America their homeland was attacked. They were enlisting to fight Japanese for what they had done to their country and countrymen. They were not enlisting to defend the ideals and principles George Bush spoke of in his first inaugural address. They were patriots united by nationality.

Arnold Toynbee, British historian who wrote a twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations said, "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

Note: (All direct quotes and much of the information for this column came from State of Emergency, by Patrick Buchanan.)

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