It is often said that being an American
means sharing a commitment to a t
of values and ideals.1Writing about the
relationship of ethnicity and American
identity, the historian Philip Gleason put
it this way:
To be or to become an American, a person
did not have to be any particular national,
linguistic, religious, or ethnic background.
All he had to do was to commit himlf to
the political ideology centered on the abstract
ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism.
Thus the universalist ideological
character of American nationality meant
that it was open to anyone who willed to
become an American.2
To take the motto of the Great Seal
of the United States, E pluribus unum–
“From many, one”–in this context suggests
not that manyness should be melted
la rochelle
down into one, as in Israel Zangwill’s
image of the melting pot, but that, as
the Great Seal’s sheaf of arrows suggests,放肆的意思
there should be a coexistence of manyin-
one under a uni?ed citizenship bad
on shared ideals.
Of cour, the story is not so simple, as
Gleason himlf went on to note. America’s
history of racial and ethnic exclusions
has undercut the universalist
stance; for being an American has also
meant sharing a national culture, one
largely de?ned in racial, ethnic, and
religious terms. And while solidarity
can be understood as “an experience
of willed af?liation,” some forms of
American solidarity have been less inclusive
than others, demanding much
more than simply the desire to af?liate.3
In this essay, I explore different ideals
of civic solidarity with an eye toward
what they imply for newcomers who
wish to become American citizens.
Why does civic solidarity matter?
First, it is integral to the pursuit of
distributive justice. The institutions
of the welfare state rve as redistributive
mechanisms that can offt the
inequalities of life chances that a capitalist
economy creates, and they rai
the position of the worst-off members
of society to a level where they are able
to participate as equal citizens. While
lf-interest alone may motivate people
to support social insurance schemes that
protect them against unpredictable circumstances,
solidarity is understood to
be required to support redistribution
from the rich to aid the poor, including
housing subsidies, income supplements,
lockloveand long-term unemployment bene?ts.4
The underlying idea is that people are
D?dalus Spring 2009 31
Sarah Song
What does it mean to be an American?
? 2009 by the American Academy of Arts
& Sciences
32 D?dalus Spring 2009
Sarah
Song
more likely to support redistributive
schemes when they trust one another,
and they are more likely to trust one
another when they regard others as like
themlves in some meaningful n.
Second, genuine democracy demands
solidarity. If democratic activity involves
not just voting, but also deliberation,
then people must make an effort
to listen to and understand one anothe
r.
Moreover, they must be willing to moderate
their claims in the hope of ?nding
common ground on which to ba political
decisions. Such democratic activity
cannot be realized by individuals pursuing
their own interests; it requires some
concern for the common good. A n
of solidarity can help foster mutual sympathy
and respect, which in turn support
citizens’ orientation toward the common
good.
Third, civic solidarity offers more inclusive
alternatives to chauvinist models
that often prevail in political life around
the world. For example, the alternative
to the Nehru-Gandhi cular de?nition
of Indian national identity is the Hindu
chauvinism of the Bharatiya Janata Party,
not a cosmopolitan model of belonging.
“And what in the end can defeat
this chauvinism,” asks Charles Taylor,
“but some reinvention of India as a cular
republic with which people can identify?”
5 It is not enough to articulate accounts
of solidarity and belonging only
at the subnational or transnational levels
while ignoring ns of belonging to the
political community. One might believe
that people have a deep need for belonging
in communities, perhaps grounded
in even deeper human needs for recognition
and freedom, but even tho skeptical
of such claims might recognize the
importance of articulating more inclusive
models of political community as
an alternative to the racial, ethnic, or religious
narratives that have permeated
political life.6 The challenge, then, is to
develop a model of civic solidarity that is
“thick” enough to motivate support for
justice and democracy while also “thin”
enough to accommodate racial, ethnic,
and religious diversity.
We might look ?rst to Habermas’s
idea of constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotismus).
The idea emerged
from a particular national history, to denote
attachment to the liberal democratic
institutions of the postwar Federal Republic
of Germany, but Habermas and
others have taken it to be a generalizable
vision for liberal democratic societies,
as well as for supranational communities
such as the European Union. On
this view, what binds citizens together
is their common allegiance to the ideals
embodied in a shared political culture.
The only “common denominator for a
constitutional patriotism” is that “every
citizen be socialized into a common political
culture.”7
Habermas points to the United States
as a leading example of a multicultural
society where constitutional principles
have taken root in a political culture
without depending on “all citizens’ sharing
the same language or the same ethnic
and cultural origins.”8 The basis of
American solidarity is not any particular
racial or ethnic identity or religious beliefs,
but universal moral ideals embodied
in American political culture and t
forth in such minal texts as the Declaration
of Independence, the U.S. Constitution
and Bill of Rights, Abraha
m
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”
speech. Bad on a minimal commonality
of shared ideals, constitutional patriotism
is attractive for the agnosticism
toward particular moral and religious
outlooks and ethnocultural identities
to which it aspires.
What does constitutional patriotism
suggest for the sort of reception immigrants
should receive? There has been
a general shift in Western Europe and
North America in the standards governing
access to citizenship from cultural
markers to values, and this is a development
that constitutional patriots would
applaud. In the United States tho eking
to become citizens must demonstrate
basic knowledge of U.S. government
and history. A newly revid U.S.
citizenship test was instituted in October
2008 with the hope that it will rve,
in the words of the chief of the Of?ce
of Citizenship, Alfonso Aguilar, as “an
instrument to promote civic learning
and patriotism.”9 The revid test attempts
to move away from civics trivia
to emphasize political ideas and concepts.
(There is still a fair amount of
trivia: “How many amendments does
the Constitution have?” “What is the
capital of your state?”) The new test
asks more open-ended questions about
government powers and political concepts:
“What does the judicial branch
do?” “What stops one branch of government
from becoming too powerful?”
“What is freedom of religion?”
“What is the ‘rule of law’?”10
i will be missing youConstitutional patriots would endor
this focus on values and principles. In
Habermas’s view, legal principles are anchored
in the “political culture,” which
he suggests is parable from “ethicalcultural”
forms of life. Acknowledging
that in many countries the “ethical-cultural”
在线英语发音器form of life of the majority ismobileme
“fud” with the “political culture,” he
argues that the “level of the shared political
culture must be uncoupled from
the level of subcultures and their prepolitical
identities.”11 All that should
be expected of immigrants is that they
embrace the constitutional principles
as interpreted by the political culture,
not that they necessarily embrace the
majority’s ethical-cultural forms.
Yet language is a key aspect of “ethical-
cultural” forms of life, shaping people’s
worldviews and experiences. It is
through language that individuals become
who they are. Since a political
community must conduct its affairs in
at least one language, the ethical-cultural
and political cannot be completely
“uncoupled.” As theorists of multiculturalism
have stresd, complete paration
of state and particularistic identities
is impossible; government decisions
about the language of public institutions,
public holidays, and state symbols
unavoidably involve recognizing
and supporting particular ethnic and religious
groups over others.12 In the United
States, English language ability ha
s
been a statutory quali?cation for naturalization
since 1906, originally as a requirement
of oral ability and later as a
requirement of English literacy. Indeed,
support for the principles of the Constitution
has been interpreted as requiring
English literacy.13 The language requirement
might be justi?ed as a practical
matter (we need some language to be
the common language of schools, government,
and the workplace, so why not
the language of the majority?), but for
a great many citizens, the language requirement
is also viewed as a key marker
of national identity. The continuing centrality
of language in naturalization policy
prevents us from saying that what it
means to be an American is purely a
matter of shared values.
Another misconception about constitutional
patriotism is that it is necessarily
more inclusive of newcomers than
cultural nationalist models of solidarity.
Its inclusiveness depends on which
principles are held up as the polity’s
shared principles, and its normative
substance depends on and must be eval-
D?dalus Spring 2009 33
What does
it mean
to be an
American?
34 D?dalus Spring 2009
Sarah
Song
uated in light of a background theory of
justice, freedom, or democracy; it does
not by itlf provide such a theory. Consider
ideological requirements for naturalization
in U.S. history. The ?rst naturalization
law of 1790 required nothing
more than an oath to support the U.S.
Constitution. The cond naturalization
act added two ideological elements:
the renunciation of titles or orders of
nobility and the requirement that one
be found to have “behaved as a man . . .
attached to the principles of the constitution
of the United States.”14 This attachment
requirement was revid in
1940 from a behavioral quali?cation to a
personal attribute, but this did not help
clarify what attachment to constitutional
principles requires.15 Not surprisingly,
the “attachment to constitutional principles”
requirement has been interpreted
as requiring a belief in reprentative
government, federalism, paration of
powers, and constitutionally guaranteed
individual rights. It has also been interpreted
as disqualifying anarchists, polygamists,
and conscientious objectors for
citizenship. In 1950, support for communism
was added to the list of grounds
for disquali?cation from naturalization
–as well as grounds for exclusion and
deportation.16 The 1990 Immigration
Act retained the McCarthy-era ideological
quali?cations for naturalization; current
law disquali?es tho who advocate
or af?liate with an organization that advocates
communism or opposition to
all organized government.17 Patriotism,
like nationalism, is capable of excess and
pathology, as evidenced by loyalty oaths
and campaigns against “un-American”
activities.
In contrast to constitutional patriots,
liberal nationalists acknowledge that
states cannot be culturally neutral even
if they tried. Stat
es cannot avoid coercing
citizens into prerving a national
culture of some kind becau state institutions
and laws de?ne a political culture,
which in turn shapes the range of
customs and practices of daily life that
constitute a national culture. David Miller,
particularitya leading theorist of liberal nationalism,
de?nes national identity according
to the following elements: a shared belief
among a group of individuals that
they belong together, historical continuity
stretching across generations, connection祖国在我心中演讲稿450字
to a particular territory, and a
shared t of characteristics constituting
a national culture.18 It is not enough
to share a common identity rooted in a
shared history or a shared territory;
a shared national culture is a necessary
feature of national identity. I share a national
culture with someone, even if weyou are not alone歌词
never meet, if each of us has been initiated
into the traditions and customs of a
national culture.
What sort of content makes up a national
culture? Miller says more about
what a national culture does not entail.
It need not be bad on biological descent.
Even if nationalist doctrines have
historically been bad on notions of
biological descent and race, Miller emphasizes
that sharing a national culture
is, in principle, compatible with people
belonging to a diversity of racial and ethnic
groups. In addition, every member
need not have been born in the homeland.
Thus, “immigration need not po
problems, provided only that the immigrants
come to share a common national
identity, to which they may contribute
their own distinctive ingredients.”19
Liberal nationalists focus on the idea
of culture, as oppod to ethnicity or descent,
in order to reconcile nationalism
with liberalism. Thicker than constitutional
patriotism, liberal nationalism,
Miller maintains, is thinner than ethnic
models of belonging. Both nationality
D?dalus Spring 2009 35
What does
it mean
to be an
American?
and ethnicity have cultural components,
but what is said to distinguish “civic”
nations from “ethnic” nations is that
the latter are exclusionary and clod
on grounds of biological descent; the
former are, in principle, open to anyone
willing to adopt the national culture.20
Yet the civic-ethnic distinction is not
so clear-cut in practice. Every nation has
an “ethnic core.” As Anthony Smith obrves:
[M]odern “civic” nations have not in
practice really transcended ethnicity
or ethnic ntiments. This is a Western
mirage, reality-as-wish; clor examination
always reveals the ethnic core of
civic nations, in practice, even in immigrant
societies with their early pioneering
and dominant (English and Spanish)
culture in America, Australia, or Argentina,
a culture that provided the myths英语四级准考证
and language of the would-be nation.21
This blurring of the civic-ethnic distinction
is reflected throughout U.S. history
with the national culture often de?ned
in ethnic, racial, and religi
