The concept of citizenship emerged in ancient Greece as membership in a sovereign body of free men that deliberates, promulgates, and enforces the laws governing their polity. Citizens were active participants in the demos that ruled the community and were jealous of that right. In Athens, isonomia, legal equality; isegoria, freedom of speech; and koinonia, community and identity, were the core values in a system that resolutely excluded aliens. The latter could be, and were, subjected to Athenian imperial tyranny or worse, such as in the case of the Melians, as described by Thucydides.

Some three to four centuries later, Roman law gradually codified civitas, citizenship, as a set of personal rights and protections clearly defined and guaranteed. Civitas was famously and very effectively invoked by St. Paul to Porcius Festus (Acts: 25:12). It was prized by those who had it and coveted by those who did not. The phrase “Civis Romanus sum!” (“I am a citizen of Rome!”) was not merely an affirmation of intensely felt pride but also an assertion that the speaker had special status among other men and was a recipient of unique rights and privileges.

In medieval times, it was in the cities of central and northern Europe where the maxim was coined, “The air of the city makes you free.” The novelty of the late-medieval city was its structure as a community to which the individual was attached—often by oath—and separately from his links with his professional corporation, guild, or tribe. Modern citizenship, however, was codified only with the emergence of the Westphalian state system after 1648. This process was characterized by the territorialization of sovereignty, with each state striving to identify a group of people as “its” members. The community of citizens generally coincided with the state’s permanent resident population, but citizenship was not a simple reflection of residence: it was a permanent personal status irrespective of temporary or prolonged absence from the territory of the state.

The Westphalian nation-state has sought to instill in its citizens the primacy of loyalty to itself, to the detriment of traditional local, religious, or ethnic allegiances. This was achieved to a considerable extent in the early American Republic and spectacularly so in France after the Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, in much of Europe west of Russia, the most significant aspect of citizenship—just as in ancient Greece—became the right to participate in the exercise of political power: the right to belong to a body invested with political authority, or to vote for the members of such body.

In the United States before the Civil War, despite the formal elevation of civic identity over ethnicity, the latter was always the assumed, if not explicitly acknowledged, substrate of the former. Hence, regarding the citizenship of children born to Americans abroad, America accepted the jus sanguinis principle, meaning that a child’s citizenship is determined by its parents’ citizenship. For approximately the first third of the history of the Republic, this would have applied almost exclusively to persons belonging to the founding Anglo-Saxon stock. 

The competing principle of jus soli, which grants citizenship based on the place of birth rather than the citizenship of the parents, gained constitutional sanction in 1868 with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even that ill-drafted amendment—intended at the time solely to extend citizenship to freed slaves—might not have proved fatal to the concept of American citizenship were it not for disastrous and unwarranted extrapolations of the 1898 Supreme Court case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The majority opinion in a 6-to-2 decision ruled that 

Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.

In that case, constitutional language regarding the “jurisdiction” of the United States (which earlier had denied citizenship to Indians in tribal communities) had not yet been stretched to the breaking point. It did scuttle the ethnic principle, however, on the paradoxical grounds that failing to do so would “deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.” 

In due course, without an explicit judicial or legislative warrant, the question of jurisdiction fell out of so-called birthright citizenship entirely, so that a child born to any woman from any point on the globe having illegally encroached into U.S. territory is deemed to be just as American, if not more so, than the descendants of passengers on the Mayflower.

The final degradation of citizenship came with its granting to tens of millions of people who have no discernible affinity to this country unless “America” is defined as a random mélange of individuals who only have in common the quest for special “rights” and the resentful disdain for the ethnos of the founders and historic builders of the United States. 

This phenomenon is most strikingly evident in the readiness of the successive regimes in Washington to grant citizenship to self-avowedly devout Muslims who believe in jihad, in the need for institutionalized inequality of “infidels,” the establishment of Sharia law within the United States, et cetera. Let us point out here that a foreigner who becomes naturalized has to declare, on oath,

…that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law … and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God…

For a Muslim to declare all of the above in good faith, and especially that he accepts the Constitution of the United States as the source of his highest loyalty, is an act of apostasy par excellence, and apostasy is punishable by death under the Islamic law. The Sharia, to a Muslim, is not an addition to the secular legal code that can coexist with “the Constitution and laws of the United States of America”; it is the only true code, the only basis of obligation. All legitimate political power therefore must rest exclusively with those who enjoy Allah’s authority on the basis of his revealed will. In America, that is not the case, and its government is therefore illegitimate and suffered by Muslims to remain as it is only so long as they do not have the needed numbers to overthrow it. 

It is equally sacrilegious for a Muslim to swear to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That vow, if it means anything, means that he would be prepared to shoot a fellow Muslim or denounce him to the authorities in defense of his adopted homeland. That this is not how many, if not most, naturalized Muslims see it is a matter of record. 

So how can a self-avowedly devout Muslim take the oath of American citizenship and expect the rest of us to believe that it was done in good faith and not only to get that coveted passport? He can do it only if, in taking the oath, he is practicing taqiyya, the art of dissimulation that was inaugurated by Muhammad to help destabilize and undermine non-Muslim communities considered ripe for jihad. Or else because he is not devout enough and confused, in other words, not a very good Muslim; but in that latter case there is the ever-present danger that at some point in the future, he or his American-born offspring will rediscover their roots. 

At present, Switzerland provides the best foreign model for the reform of U.S. citizenship laws. The oldest continuous democracy in the world has some of the toughest naturalization rules in the world. Before one can apply for Swiss citizenship, one must live in the country legally for at least 10 years on a C permit (the Swiss equivalent to an American green card), pay taxes, and have no criminal record. It still does not mean that your wish will be granted, and the fact that you were born in Zurich or Lausanne does not make any difference. There are no “amnesties,” and illegal immigrants are promptly deported if caught. Even if an applicant satisfies all other conditions, the local community in which he resides has the final say: it can interview the applicant and hold a public vote before naturalization is approved. If rejected, he can apply again, but only after another 10 years.

Unfortunately, the left-leaning elites in Berne who run Switzerland’s federal government want citizenship applications to be processed centrally “along national guidelines,” taking the decision out of the hands of local communities. Such proposals were decisively defeated in a nationwide referendum two decades ago, in September 2004. This result was a victory for the long-established local democratic institutions over the tendency of state bureaucracy to centralize all power. It demonstrated that at least one civilized country in the world will continue to uphold the right of local communities to decide who will qualify for naturalization. Unique in today’s Western world, this healthy sense of Swiss citizenship reflects an underlying assumption of kinship among citizens that cannot be fulfilled by mere residence and observance of the rules.

Naturalization in Athens or Rome was possible but difficult; it was a privilege and by no means a right. Likewise, in today’s Switzerland, if you want to belong, you have to prove a high degree of cultural and civilizational kinship with the host society. The Swiss rightly sense that many immigrants have no kinship with their land and no connection to their community, except for the unsurprising desire to partake in its wealth. Such common sense is light years away from the postmodern understanding of citizenship promoted in the European Union and in North America. The Swiss example points at some useful steps that a second Trump administration—however unlikely that seems—may consider in reforming the entire naturalization process.

The Swiss example points at some useful steps that a second Trump administration—however unlikely that seems—may consider in reforming the entire naturalization process.

The reform needs to start with the open and resolute rejection of the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited, developed, and defended them for generations, that they can and should belong instead to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment, regardless of their mores, convictions, or intentions. 

The traitor class wants the whole world to share its death wish, to self-annihilate as peoples with historical memories and cultural identities. President Joe Biden thus called Japan and India “xenophobic” because they are countries that “don’t want immigrants.” Speaking to a predominantly Asian-American audience at a campaign fundraising event on May 1, Biden claimed that the coming U.S. election this November is about “freedom, America and democracy.” Why? “Because we welcome immigrants,” he said.

This is a colossal lie that must be fought tooth and nail. To fight it effectively, a gigantic reversal needs to transform the lives of countless still-complacent Americans. In all probability, the model of feasible recovery requires a catastrophic event, most likely a massive, rapidly spreading global economic crisis. The meltdown and the collapse of confidence in the ability of the all-pervasive state to manage relief would force millions of people to re-examine their lives and their assumptions. 

By being disillusioned in progress, the masses may rediscover the value and force of tradition. Children would no longer be a burden and a financial liability; they would regain their traditional value as economic assets and as a substitute for collapsed social security and pension systems. The family might re-emerge as the essential social unit. Amidst collapsing political structures and a loss of faith in the political system, all ideological propositions would be recognized as empty abstracts. 

In the end, true communities of true citizens, bonded by memory, language, faith, and myth, might be revived. And in extreme adversity, the eyes of men and women might be lifted, once again, to Heaven. It is very much in the American interest that this, or something like this, happens soon. ◆