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David French on Native-Born Ingrates
David French has a new article on immigrants.
Immigrant citizens don’t owe a special debt of gratitude of to this nation — a debt over and above the gratitude that native-born citizens should feel for their home country. To be crystal clear, I believe Ilhan Omar and every citizen immigrant should be grateful for their place in this country. What I reject is the notion that native-born citizens like myself can demand a level of gratitude from immigrants beyond what we demand from native-born citizens.
In fact, to the extent that we should parse gratitude at all, I assert a simple proposition — the people who did exactly nothing to become citizens of the greatest nation in the history of the earth should be among the most grateful people on this planet. We should be grateful to God that we weren’t born elsewhere. We should be grateful to those who gave their “last full measure of devotion” to defend our nation and our Constitution. We should be grateful for those who endure great hardship to defend our liberty, safety, and prosperity.
Against the backdrop of this immense American gift, native-born Americans by the countless millions don’t trouble themselves to be educated enough about their own country to pass the basic citizenship test that we give to prospective citizen immigrants. All too many native-born citizens forsake the moral obligations of citizenship and instead focus only on reaping its considerable legal and constitutional benefits.
I think French is wrong. I think my native birth is worth more, because my parents sacrificed a lot to make this country better. My father and his brothers and fought in WWII. My brothers-in-law fought in Vietnam. I have been signed up for selective service for 35 years. Together we have paid about a hundred years of taxes to build the $100 trillion of infrastructure the USA has. Isn’t that worth something? David French seems to say “no”.
My story is actually very common. People fight and work and die to make the country better. It seems to me that those sacrifices build up an inheritable equity and when we choose to share that equity with outsiders, the newcomers should be extra thankful to get a share. I don’t care about civics tests, because I think that being American takes more know-how than can be summarized on a 3×5 card. A lifetime of living American counts for a lot, even if somebody cannot summarize the first three articles of the Constitution.
I am not saying that immigrants can’t be great Americans. I know many that are. I am saying that great Americans are always thankful for the opportunity to be American and appreciate the efforts of those that built and sustained the greatest country ever.
Published in Immigration
My first response to this statement of “fact” is that it’s not factual at all. So I said I better check it out further. This was from Ayanna Pressley’s site. I don’t do twitter, so I do not have a direct connection. I think the tweet finishes with something to the effect, then come back and show us how you made things better…or how we can make things better. In either case, other than misspeaking about inferring an immigrant status to all four Congresswomen, where is the racism?
No wonder they holler about the census question…
Interesting how our last president harped on about inequality but did little to help lift the quality of life for African-Americans – he did not invest in the inner cities, infrastructure, create jobs or bring manufacturing back, didn’t fight the drug war but advocated open borders, and in fact, his minister was clearly a terrible racist. During that presidency, words like white privilege, safe space, gender-neutral, gender fluid, became common place, victims everywhere. And here we are.
That is why he won such a resounding victory over Kerry because Hitler is so popular in America?
No I don’t
This is a good criticism, Brian. I was projecting onto French a bit. He does tend to go along with what I generally view as contrived Left-wing hysteria over the President’s provocative and trolling tweets.
Here is a quote from a 2018 column (full text here) that expresses a bit of the weakness that bothers me about French,
He makes a good point, but he is also wishy-washy, which concedes too much to the other side, in my estimation. For example, saying that “not every material limitation on immigration is xenophobic” necessarily implies that some material limitations on immigration are xenophobic. It allows xenophobia to be a legitimate argument — in fact, an epithet — in the debate, which concedes the linguistic high ground to the enemy.
We need a stronger response. It is perfectly legitimate to oppose immigration — even all immigration — on the grounds that immigrants tend to undermine and change our culture, and we don’t particularly want that kind of change. It is fair to disagree, but I think that it is insulting to use the epithet “xenophobic” in the argument.
Ditto, almost always, with the other epithets — racist, sexist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, whatever. In particular, our Conservative leaders need to stop using these terms, which stifle legitimate debate.
This is really good. It responds to the globalist movement that is dominated by political collectivism that, turned loose in America, will destroy any chance for us to recover our market economy and protect individual freedom. Now that we have Trump as President we will be forced to fight the battle you have described here because those are the words the commies will use to described his policies.
“-phobic” has been rendered meaningless.
Where it once meant actual fear, it now means noticing that someone from a different [X] might be meaningfully different from you.
I get what you are saying here. David French is arguing for immigration restrictions but he grants too much cover to the other side. I understand that but he is also trying to be truthful.
So like your line “It is perfectly legitimate to oppose immigration– even all immigration– on the grounds that immigrants tend to undermine and change culture…”
This of course is not true or its truth is dependent on context. American has a long, long tradition of assimilation where our culture is not undermined but enhanced, changed true but for the better by immigration. The baleful effect of immigration happen when the home country is close by and easily accessed, migrants group together in enclaves they dominate and their numbers are replenished regularly by new arrivals. Even under just two of those conditions by effects can take place to at least some extent.
In some strongly nationalistic countries founded on one ethnic group assimilation is more difficult and immigration must take place in a context very different from America and America can’t learn many useful things from comparing the American apple to a Hungarian orange.
Arguing for immigration restrictions now, in the American context, are perfectly defensible and right David French is trying to persuade readers that perhaps don’t share his pro-restriction view by being as truth as he can be and acknowledging his side is not perfect. This is a very common form of persuasion and effective one.
I understand a desire for only full throttle defenses of one’s position that brooks no compromise but that kind of defense rarely persuades, in politics.