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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23267 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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There's an older understanding of citizenship that is more akin to being bound in a sacred pact – like adoption.

Except Hasan was not a naturalised citizen. He never took an oath of loyalty or was willingly adopted into the country. There was no 'ritual' at all. The model of citizenship you describe is clearly incompatible with birthright citizenship, which involves handing out citizenship to babies of (both legal and illegal) immigrants.

This is precisely what I think we should all deny. "Citizenship is just a piece of paper" commodifies and cheapens citizenship

I would say that giving out citizenship like candy is what cheapens and commodifies it. Describing it as just a piece of paper is simply being honest about the world.

The model of citizenship you describe is clearly incompatible with birthright citizenship, which involves handing out citizenship to babies of (both legal and illegal) immigrants.

Hasan's parents were, as far as I can tell, legal immigrants and became naturalized citizens (a bit unclear to me if that happened before or after he was born), so opposing birthright citizenship for illegal aliens doesn't really "solve" here. Giving birthright citizenship to the children of citizens is not much, if it all, different than the model you seem to think would be preferable, of being born into an ethnic group.

However, I don't disagree with the criticism. If I was King Of The World, citizenship (and adulthood, for that matter) would likely be earned by deed, not birth.

Describing it as just a piece of paper is simply being honest about the world.

I don't want to live in such a world, nor do I agree that that is an honest description of what citizenship has long been understand to entail in the American tradition, so I decline to follow your lead here.

Hasan's parents were, as far as I can tell, legal immigrants and became naturalized citizens (a bit unclear to me if that happened before or after he was born), so opposing birthright citizenship for illegal aliens doesn't really "solve" here.

I was responding to your model of citizenship as an oath of loyalty. Citizenship can be inherited, but loyalty can't. Hasan is a perfect example of one way the 'pinky swear that you'll consider yourself as an American' doesn't work. The other is that there is nothing stopping a counterfactual immigrant Hasan saying he's a loyal American and then becoming a jihadi anyway. Words are wind. Even if America didn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegals, the problem would still exist, as it does everywhere.

I don't want to live in such a world, nor do I agree that that is an honest description of what citizenship has long been understand to entail in the American tradition.

I think it's pretty hard to argue that 'the American tradition' doesn't treat citizenship as a mere piece of paper when it literally gives it to the children of foreign criminals, allows its citizens to hold an unlimited number of other citizenships and doesn't have any substantial requirements to give it out other than 'you've lived here a while'. And that's without getting into the fact that for most of the country's history, it was illegal for citizens of one race to marry citizens (or chattel) of another race. That racialised understanding of the nation is the American tradition. And it is declining at the very same time that the number of Americans who even like America is also declining. I don't think that's unrelated. I think the term 'multi-ethnic nation' is a contradiction in terms.

Words are wind.

And to this point, Hasan did take a specific loyalty oath by virtue of being an officer. But at a certain point this is just a generalized argument against citizenship and even ethnic or kinship bonds. The traditional way of dealing with traitors (ethnic or civic) is to hold them contemptible, not to simply be built different and never have that problem.

I think it's pretty hard to argue that 'the American tradition' doesn't treat citizenship as a mere piece of paper when it literally gives it to the children of foreign criminals, allows its citizens to hold an unlimited number of other citizenships and doesn't have any substantial requirements to give it out other than 'you've lived here a while'.

And if you say citizenship is just a piece of paper, it's hard to argue against this state of affairs.

And that's without getting into the fact that for most of the country's history, it was illegal for citizens of one race to marry citizens (or chattel) of another race. That racialised understanding of the nation is the American tradition.

This is not really true, as a blanket statement; anti-miscegenation laws were never universal throughout the United States.

And it is declining at the very same time that the number of Americans who even like America is also declining.

This isn't true either – if you're going to lecture me about my own history and tradition, please try to get it right.

To speak in very broad terms:

  • Each state had their own peculiarities in terms of how they dealt with Native Americans and blacks. It's certainly true that ethnic feeling was commonplace, but there was never some sort of universal understanding that was codified uniformly into law throughout American history, and (obviously) anti-slavery and, yes, what we might today call anti-racist sentiment was not uncommon in the United States even before it attained nationhood.
  • I think it is wrong to model the halcyon days of Jim Crow racial restrictions as a continuation of unbroken American tradition from time immemorial. It can better be understood as a shifting attempt to control the black (and Native American) population – and in the specific post-Civil-War context of Southern Jim Crow laws, as resentment against the Yankee conquerers. This might seem like splitting hairs, but my point is that there was not (for instance) some a prior first principles deduction that blacks were inferior and so should not be educated; rather there would be a slave rebellion or a perceived problem with runaway slaves forging passes that would lead to bans on slave education. Or (to illustrate with a non-Southern example) black freeman could vote in Pennsylvania until 1838, when the Constitution was revised to specify "white" as the black population in the state and racial tension increased. Thus, from my understanding, it is best to model American racial restrictions as being reactionary instead of foundational. [Edit to add: I would say "often best to model..." – because, to my point, there's not really a one-size-fits-all American tradition here.]
  • To the extent that there is an American tradition of a racialized understanding of citizenship and civic belonging, it has always been contentious, and it went into decline, not now, but rather during the Cold War. I agree that it's not unrelated – the Civil Rights era and Vietnam were a very divisive era in American society in part due to racial issues – but that was decades ago, not some recent development. What America is experiencing now more greatly resembles post-Reconstruction backlash (sentiment towards diversity is cooling, not increasing!) than some sort of terminal decline of ethnic sentiment, although things are different this time around.

I think the term 'multi-ethnic nation' is a contradiction in terms.

Then America, Russia, China, the United Kingdom etc. have never been a "real" nation (and to a large degree, at least in the case of the United States, which I know best, I actually agree with this statement, albeit for somewhat subtler reasons).

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