My Point of View, By Ebenezer Howe III

As I have stated before in these columns, my political philosophy is liberty leaning — or at least that is what I think it is. When I drive, I generally listen to the radio. Twenty-five percent to CDs, which is not really radio but you can only take so much radio; 25 percent to country music; 25 percent to MPR and the last 25 percent to what some deem “hate radio.” The other day I heard the phrase that hits my philosophy right dead center bullseye: “Citizenship is allegiance.” I have wanted to talk about this subject for a while but never had the correct words to get ’er started. As Christians teach “have no other god before me,” so also, citizens shall believe “put no other state before me.” Note that state in the prior sentence was lower case, meaning other country. An interesting item from the definition of state under the list of attributes is: “a common language.”

From the Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4, “To establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;” Only six words used to give Congress the power to regulate citizenship: “establish an uniform rule of naturalization.” The framers thought this was so straight forward, it needed no more explanation or clarification.

A few definitions: Immigration — the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country; emigration — the act of leaving one’s own country to settle permanently in another; moving abroad; migration — to move from one country, place, or locality to another; naturalization — the admittance of a foreigner to the citizenship of a country. Immigration and naturalization kind of go together; a person leaves his country and citizenship to become, in the case of the United States, a citizen of the United States and only of the United States. Emigration and migration are more like just drifting around from place to place with no particular allegiance to anything or anyone.

I have this quote at the end of the signature I use for my e-mails: “We are friends of liberty everywhere, guarantors only of our own.” — Thomas Jefferson

I don’t know the context when Jefferson made this statement, but I use it because of what it means to me. “We” means the United States of America. “Guarantors only of our own” means our citizens have allegiance only to the United States. Unfortunately, at least since the end of World War II, the U.S. has failed to abide by the first part of the quote. Don Levin of Carnegie Mellon University has documented 81 times the United States has attempted to influence presidential elections in other countries between 1946 and 2000. And then, of course, there are the military coups backed by the United States and the regime changes imposed by military actions. Surprise, surprise that the Russians would attempt the same thing. Oh, I digress.

I believe that assimilation is a must for citizenship. Learning English is a must for citizenship and assimilation. The founding documents that make the United States the country everyone wants to come to were written in English. The language of commerce is English. We do irreparable harm to non-English speakers every day that we do not encourage, if not force, them to learn English. I believe your allegiance to the United States suffers if you do not speak English. A person cannot come to the United States and expect this country to adapt to his or her culture or language.

Very frequently there will be an article in the Tribune talking about a program or programs aimed at non-English speaking students or English as a second language students. Way too much money is spent on these types of programs. I think our government makes it extremely easy for people entering the country not to assimilate.

Alden resident Ebenezer Howe is chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the local party members.