Citizenship

Citizenship Without Virtue: How America Lost the Art of Self-Rule

For much of our history, American citizenship has been treated not as a privilege but as a prize in a cereal box — handed out freely, casually, thoughtlessly. Today, Americans can scarcely articulate the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen. Our government even extends benefits to undocumented migrants that it withholds from its own people, in what amounts to a perverse invitation to remain here illegally. It is irresponsible, yes — but it is also the predictable result of a nation that has forgotten what citizenship means.

Contrary to myth, the Founders never enshrined automatic citizenship in the Constitution. The early republic assumed a world where citizenship flowed from loyalty, virtue, and participation. It was only after the Civil War, with the passage of the 14th Amendment, that birthright citizenship entered American law — and even then, it was drafted for an entirely different purpose.

A Constitutional Misfire with Catastrophic Consequences

The 14th Amendment was written to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people and to correct the grotesque injustice of Dred Scott. Its authors did not imagine a world where the children of tourists, illegal entrants, and temporary visitors would automatically become Americans by the accident of birth. Senator Jacob Howard — who wrote the citizenship clause — said plainly that the amendment did not cover those who owed allegiance to a foreign power.

Yet through judicial drift and political cowardice, this narrow remedy metastasized into one of the most sweeping and reckless citizenship regimes in the world. Only 14% of nations adopt anything similar. No European democracy does. Neither do Australia or New Zealand. Most countries require parental citizenship, lawful residence, or demonstrable commitment to the nation.

Only America is foolish enough to confuse geography with belonging, accident with allegiance, and birth with worthiness. The best that can be said of this system is that it is naïve. The worst is that it is an abdication — a republic surrendering its standards to avoid the discomfort of asking its people to be responsible. It is cowardice writ large.

The Republic Without Obligations

In mature democracies, citizenship is tied to duty. Military or civil service is expected, even cherished, as the price of membership in a political community. In America, tens of millions enjoy the full freedoms of citizenship while contributing nothing to its maintenance. They pontificate on foreign policy from the safety of their sofas while young men and women carry rifles into deserts and mountains they will never see.

We have had presidents and cabinet secretaries — Bush, Obama, Clinton, Cheney, McNamara — who made life-and-death decisions for soldiers without ever having worn a uniform. A republic where sacrifice is optional becomes a republic where sacrifice disappears.

Women, too, are exempted from service — an artifact of a bygone era when most women were mothers raising children. Yet today, motherhood has collapsed. Marriage has collapsed. Birthrates have collapsed. If women are full participants in public life, then a republic should expect them to share equally in public burdens. Equality without duty is not equality at all; it is license. Young men and women should not only expect to serve in exchange for citizenship; they should understand the nature of that calling.

Citizenship should be revered, not treated like a souvenir. Yet we behave as if civic ignorance is a natural condition, a fog we must simply endure. This is nonsense. These are not mysteries of the universe. These are the consequences of neglect and cowardice.

A Republic of the Ignorant

According to an Annenberg survey:• 1/3 of Americans cannot name the three branches of government.• 13% cannot name even one.• 58% would fail civics.• 86% would fail economics.

That means fewer than one in five voters understands either our government or our economy. Yet every newborn is handed the full privileges of citizenship, as though endowed with civic wisdom from the womb.

This ignorance trickles up through all branches of our government. In many states, one can become a judge without being a lawyer. Citizens who know nothing of the law elect judges who know nothing of the law, who then preside over criminals who break the law — and we wonder why our cities resemble dystopias, places where criminals roam freely and citizens live in fear.

We have no meaningful requirements for public office. No qualifications for mayor, governor, senator, congressman. No term limits. No civic examinations. No demonstration of competence. The only talent required is the ability to fundraise, flatter donors, and return the favor after election.

Even our ballots encourage intellectual laziness — one checkmark, one party line, one tribal gesture. George Washington warned us about partisanship, but we traded the wisdom of our first president for the feuds of Jefferson and Hamilton — and today’s Fox and MSNBC are simply their 21st-century pamphleteers. For anyone who bothers to read history, they understand that cable news is nothing new.

Tocqueville warned that a class of professional politicians would devour democracy from the inside. But Americans no longer read Tocqueville. Know-nothing students are not only unaware of his warnings, they cannot even pronounce his name.

Citizens in Name Only

We are born into the most extraordinary republic the world has ever known, yet possess almost no understanding of its architecture. The American Republic is the most highly evolved and most sophisticated form of government the world has ever known. Voting without understanding the Constitution or the economy is like attempting to build a rocket from scrap metal in the backyard — doomed from the start. We rely on media that manipulates us, schools that mislead us, and politicians who loot the commonwealth while distracting the public with bread and circuses.

People who challenge the mainstream narrative with historical facts and logical arguments are treated like madmen. Challenge the narrative, and our modern crop of Citizens-in-Name-Only react like children whose ice cream cones fell on the pavement. America is not Rome or Athens; it is Babylon.

Yet none of our crises — crime, corruption, civic ignorance, economic illiteracy — are insoluble. Many are not even difficult. But a nation that refuses to educate itself cannot govern itself. Self-rule without self-discipline is a contradiction. A republic is not a self-driving vehicle. It must be piloted.

The True Measure of an American

Being born here does not make one American. Snails are born on American soil, as are rats. Citizenship is not biological; it is moral. Americans are defined by their capacity for self-rule — by their willingness to uphold the dignity of others and the sanctity of the laws that bind us together.

Self-rule requires each of us to participate in the public life of the nation at the highest level. Anything less, and we cede rule to tyranny. Self-rule requires work, character, and sacrifice. It means voting with understanding, knowledge, and wisdom — not emotion. We are not divided into teams; there is only one team. It means solving problems together, dissenting respectfully, not screaming like a street-corner prophet. It means stewarding the republic, preserving it for the next generation, not vandalizing it.

At the Threshold of Decline

There remains a small cadre of Americans — a remnant — who take their civic obligations seriously. They question propaganda. They study issues. They build communities. They oppose corruption. They honor free speech. They embody the republican spirit.

But they are few. And they are surrounded by a population that behaves not like citizens of a modern republic, but like tribesmen from a fractured age — quick to anger, slow to think, enthralled by political idols, unable to tolerate disagreement.

This is why American citizenship must once again carry weight. Privilege without responsibility has hollowed us out. Citizenship that is so blatantly disrespected should not be so freely given. It should be rewarded and cherished as a result of the fulfillment of our responsibilities.

A nation is only as strong as the weakest citizen.And today, the strongest citizens — the ones who care, think, study, sacrifice — grow fewer by the year.

If this republic is to endure, citizenship must once again be earned in spirit, if not in law.Because freedom cannot survive among a people who have forgotten the cost of keeping it.