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Americans No More
Citizenship in the United States has changed drastically and for the worse. Our desire to acknowledge diversity has evolved into a willingness to value it over the shared goals and vision of the American people, which in turn has led to what Georgie Anne Geyer, a prominent syndicated columnist and one of our first woman foreign correspondents, terms the Balkanization of America. Anchoring her points with exhaustive research, interviews, and the testimony of people on both sides of currently explosive issues, Geyer shows us a nation in turmoil over illegal immigration, non-citizen voting, and bilingualism - and in so doing, she shows us a nation that has become more concerned with individual rights and individual identity than with the common good.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Georgie Anne Geyer
20 books1 followerGeorgie Anne Geyer was an American journalist and author.
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July 14, 2024
AN ARGUMENT FOR THE REVIVAL AND RENEWAL OF CITIZENSHIP
Georgie Anne Geyer is a veteran foreign correspondent.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1996 book, "This is a controversial book, although it deals with questions whose answers were so generally assumed and accepted by the American people for more than two centuries... that many Americans might wonder why they and this volume should be controversial at all. It is a measure of how far we have traveled from a strong sense of our national identity that the old questions that gave form to America---What makes an American citizen? Who belongs to the American polity, and why?---should now need to be posed again."
She notes that noncitizens have already been given the vote in local elections, such as school board elections. (Pg. 59) She points out that 26% of the 76,000 inmates in federal prisons are now aliens. (Pg. 264) She cites statistics that "fully 90 percent of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles were not citizens; only around 30 percent were fluent in English; and only 20 to 25 percent completed high school." (Pg. 292)
She dislikes the fact that "People were beginning to talk soberly about the right to a 'cultural defense' or courtroom attempts to get foreign-born defendants off by invoking the cultural mores of their 'home countries.'" But she adds, "If the United States was not going to insist upon the PRIMACY... of its cultural principles, then it was deliberately leaving a big, yawning space that would naturally be filled by other folks with other strokes." (Pg. 176) She argues that Multiculturalism becomes "nothing less than an alternative to citizenship, the ... grounding for the breakdown of American citizenship." (Pg. 211)
She concludes the book on the note, "There is no alternative to the individual citizen of a liberalized but still-coherent nation-state, from which he or she can engage the world. There is no alternative to civic loyalty... Time is growing short. The revival of citizenship has to be done soon, it has to be done seriously, it has to be done, period." (Pg. 338-339)
Whether one agrees with everything Geyer says or not, this is a thought-provoking discussion of such issues, and well worth reading.
Georgie Anne Geyer is a veteran foreign correspondent.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1996 book, "This is a controversial book, although it deals with questions whose answers were so generally assumed and accepted by the American people for more than two centuries... that many Americans might wonder why they and this volume should be controversial at all. It is a measure of how far we have traveled from a strong sense of our national identity that the old questions that gave form to America---What makes an American citizen? Who belongs to the American polity, and why?---should now need to be posed again."
She notes that noncitizens have already been given the vote in local elections, such as school board elections. (Pg. 59) She points out that 26% of the 76,000 inmates in federal prisons are now aliens. (Pg. 264) She cites statistics that "fully 90 percent of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles were not citizens; only around 30 percent were fluent in English; and only 20 to 25 percent completed high school." (Pg. 292)
She dislikes the fact that "People were beginning to talk soberly about the right to a 'cultural defense' or courtroom attempts to get foreign-born defendants off by invoking the cultural mores of their 'home countries.'" But she adds, "If the United States was not going to insist upon the PRIMACY... of its cultural principles, then it was deliberately leaving a big, yawning space that would naturally be filled by other folks with other strokes." (Pg. 176) She argues that Multiculturalism becomes "nothing less than an alternative to citizenship, the ... grounding for the breakdown of American citizenship." (Pg. 211)
She concludes the book on the note, "There is no alternative to the individual citizen of a liberalized but still-coherent nation-state, from which he or she can engage the world. There is no alternative to civic loyalty... Time is growing short. The revival of citizenship has to be done soon, it has to be done seriously, it has to be done, period." (Pg. 338-339)
Whether one agrees with everything Geyer says or not, this is a thought-provoking discussion of such issues, and well worth reading.
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