The Meaning of American Citizenship

Bottom Line: American citizenship shouldn’t be thought of simply as a right or viewed through the lens of modern concepts of diversity. Instead, citizenship is as much a privilege as a right. Diversity is a means to the end of good government and must rest upon a shared understanding of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the requisite virtues and habits that mark a free people.

Carson Holloway argues that the antidote to misguided views about citizenship is to recur to the American Founders, who viewed citizenship as both a right and a privilege and stressed the importance of a shared understanding of the nation’s political principles and the virtues and mores that sustain republican government.

The various natural rights discussed in the Declaration of Independence and the individual rights laid out in the Constitution are not coeval with the rights of citizenship, which can be granted and revoked by the political community under the law. Citizenship is less about rights than a “sharing in collective responsibility,” in which the political community grants citizenship, along with its attendant benefits, and exercises control over its members for the good of the nation.

Although American citizenship is in principle open to a greater diversity of individuals than most other countries, the Founders nevertheless understood that diversity – as demonstrated, for example, in citizens’ attachments to their respective states – is a means to the end of securing the rights of every member of the political community. As Holloway explains, the “purpose of government makes a certain diversity among the citizens possible, but the rights of citizens – not diversity – is the object of good government.”

Additionally, diversity in the Founders’ understanding is undergirded by a unity regarding America’s fundamental principles and a patriotic love and loyalty to the nation, as well as to the states in which citizens reside. To pass on the blessings of liberty to future generations, citizens must possess the necessary habits of character – for example, a moderate love of liberty – that mark a free people.

Citizens must embrace not only the regime in principle – the creed spelled out in the Declaration of Independence – but the regime in reality, maintaining a strong attachment to our country’s traditions, history, and people. Thus, the United States should not admit immigrants to citizenship before they “become habituated to caring first and foremost for America’s national interests and not those of their country of birth.”

“A good American,” Holloway concludes, “will be committed to the universal principles on which our republic is based but will also safeguard and cherish the particular interests and identity of our country.”

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