All Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof [if you are born here or legally immigrate, you're in the club]
are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; [so Alabama, Mississippi cannot refuse to let colored folk vote or run for office just because it's not what we do hereabouts]
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;
[So you cannot just round people up and throw them into vans, or send them to concentration camps for being Japanese born in America, or break into their houses, or stop them while walking or driving while looking foreign or not white, or for Speaking Spanish or looking like an "illegal alien." ]
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
[So, guys gobbled up in vans cannot be sent to Alligator Alcatraz, without having been convicted in a court of law.]
--Fourteenth Amendment of the United States of America Constitution
Before the First World War, as Mark Mazower points out, if you lived in Europe, you were a subject or citizen of an empire, whether it was German, Russian, Austrian, Hungarian, French, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish or Swedish. So, you could be a person raised in a home where French was your native tongue, and still rise to be an official or a businessman in Russia or Germany, as long as you owed your allegiance (and your position) to the emperor.
Getty Images: Japanese off to Concentration Camp
But, after the war, and the Treaty of Paris, what mattered was what nation state you belonged to. A German speaking person living within the borders of Austria, was not German but Austrian. A German speaker living in Poland was Polish, or Latvian if he lived within the borders of Lativa, or French if he lived in Alsace-Lorraine.
As Donald Trump observed after the Brexit vote, "They want borders." The English were sick and tired of looking around their streets in London and seeing men dressed in long Thobs wearing Kufi's on their heads, drinking coffee at outdoor cafes, as if they were in Bagdad. They did not like the fact that the women behind the counters in the convenience stores spoke Polish first and English as a second language. And they did not like seeing Bobbies walking the street whose faces were black as night. They wanted their "England" back. They wanted the rosy red checks of little children. They wanted those Bobbies on bicycles two by two to be White, to look like Roger Miller's Englishmen right out of "England Swings."
So, World War One did not make the world safe for democracy; it made the world safe for nationalism and democracies melted away, collapsed, unable to provide solutions to wealth disparities, inflation, economic Depression, and a capitalistic system which kept the masses down and the only alternative seemed to be either communism, which was totalitarian, or a system of cult leaders which went under the name "fascism."
As Mazower notes, there were different types of fascism: The type in Italy, Spain and Hungary allowed other centers of authority, like the church, the judiciary to continue (as long as they behaved) and there was Germany where Hitler and his mob were hostile or, at most, barely tolerant of religious institutions, demanding that all that mattered was the enthusiastic embrace by the populace of Der Fuhrer.
The judiciary under Hitler embraced the idea that law, which is a process involving consistency and rules should support the goals laid down by Der Fuhrer, especially when it came to protecting the "racial hygiene" of the nation. Hitler's judiciary served the idea of supporting the state, i.e. Der Fuhrer, not protecting individual rights.
Trump is different from Hitler in that he has no underlying driving philosophy of racial purity or anything else. He just wants to be loved, obeyed and enriched. He is more like Louis XV than he is like Hitler. Just kiss my ring, give me money, never criticize me and you're fine, no matter your color or your religion, which are matters of indifference to him, as long as you pay him.
Citizenship in other countries looks different.
In Israel a major rift has developed because 14% of the population is now "Haredim," or "ultraorthodox," and as many of 18% of men of draft age are Haredi. This group poses a problem for a nation which perceives itself as being surrounded by hostile neighbors and beset by groups within its borders bent on its destruction, e.g., Hamas. Facing an existential threat, the Israelis perceive themselves in a position of needing "all hands on deck."
But the Haredi do not buy in to this. For the Haredi, ideally, many young men should spend all day indoors reading and studying and arguing about the Torah. Their wives can go out and work and support the family, but these men live in God. They are often quoted as saying that the continued existence of the state of Israel is of no concern to them. They are concerned only with God. Serving in the military exposes them to a secular, and often sacrilegious culture, where they would have to violate the Sabbath, live in sinful proximity and style with women and simply be unable to devote their lives to God. So for them, being good citizens is not the idea; being good Haredim is the idea.
This has provoked much ire among Israelis who are not Haredi, who are secular or who simply ask, "Why should I send my sons and daughters to fight and die for our country while you are protected in your yeshivas?"
Citizenship, it seems, in democracies can be a problem.
One reason Trump is able to claim the loyalty of men whose parents were Born in Mexico or Cuba or Guatemala is that these men were born in the United States and thus have played by the rules and are law abiding full fledged "Americans." Even if one or two of them are swept up and thrown into a van and sent to Sudan or Gitmo or Alligator Alcatraz, these men feel Donald Trump embraces them as real Americans. Plus, they embrace "machismo," and Trump has plenty of that.
Democrats used to taunt Republicans for being "country club Republicans," emphasizing that Republicans looked down their noses at the hoi polloi, and separated themselves in clubs and gated communities. But Trump has performed the neat trick of saying that it's the Democrats who look down their noses at the common man, with their Ivy League institutions forming a club the common man cannot breach, and if you are a born in America, legal American you are in the club that matters.
Except, of course, for some people who are born here by "gaming the system," i.e. those folks who crossed the border either illegally or legally, popped out their babies in American hospitals, got their legal papers and became birthright citizens so they could live off the generous welfare state of America which they do not really deserve.
So, they should be denied membership in the club, Trump says, which makes those Hispanics who "really belong" feel like members of an exclusive club and they can feel superior to the "illegals," who are actually legal, under our Constitution, but, you know, not really.
So, where does that leave those White Nationalists, who believe, as Hitler did, that this is a White nation and that's who should be what makes somebody an American?
Trump's theme song has been Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA."
Not an American, But Beloved Not raised in a Camp
Greenwood tells us he's proud to be an American.
Now, pride, is an interesting thing. For Mad Dog, pride must involve some effort, suffering even, overcoming adversity--but being an American is really an accident of birth. You are proud because your parents happened to live in Kansas?
"And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me," he sings. And he avers he too would fight for that flag.
But Trump says you've got to be a sap, a fool to join the army, so fighting for the country can't be the virtue.
And, in fact, under Trump, men who were not citizens, who fought in the American army have not been granted citizenship--they are not members of the club.
Greenwood sings of the pride of being a member of the club which includes Detroit, Houston, New York and LA, which Trump decries as dens of iniquity which have descended into chaos and have to be rescued by National Guard troops from Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi.
So what is an American? What have you done to be an American that you can be proud of?
