Intending Anonymity under the Law

"The experiment of citizenship knows nor requires anything more than willfully admitted adherence to the Constitution."

It's obvious there is much more to say here but "adherence to the Constitution" is especially important when one is choosing to become a citizen of this nation into which they were not born by parentage or place. 

The oath of allegiance is the last act before one is declared a naturalized citizen. In that oath there is no mention of any office of government or an office holder to which one clings.  No President, Senator, Representative, Secretary, etc., not even a flag is named or indicated.  Only the Constitution and its laws hold our allegiance.

I am musing on what sort of nation would follow if all citizens were subject to the same oath of allegiance.  Our flag focused pre-game pledge of allegiance seems weak in comparison and is not strengthened by our modern anti-communist addendum, "under God."  That only cracks an opening for religiously practiced partisanships and confusion.  

As well as missing any religious attestation the citizenship oath fails to mention political parties or ideologies, extreme or otherwise.  Even the words democracy and republic are absent.  Also missing is any mention of one's race or ethnic group, one's sex, gender expression, educational aspirations, career paths, marriage intentions, or sports affiliations. (I'm winking at "America's Team" from Texas.)

There is a profound anonymity afforded us by our citizenship, naturalized or not.  It renders all possible inflections as wastes of our time and effort.  But waste we will and in that partisan confusion grasp at straws.  Straws out of which we fashion arguments to exclude so many from the very protections the constitution establishes for all citizens.  

Here I'm thinking of Tennessee's Healthcare Ban of transgendered citizens and "Bless her heart" Nancy Mace's sequestered congressional potties just to name two current examples of campaigns intending to define-down citizenship. Both instances intend to prevent the gift of constitutional anonymity and to promote partisanship above citizenship as the vessel of adherence.

There's plenty more to say because our nation is still learning, still experimenting through trial and error, legislations and judgements, and campaigns and elections how easily forwarded and accepted are substitutes for citizenship.  

Below is the Oath of Allegiance.  Recite it to a fellow citizen and have them do the same to you.

"I hereby 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 the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Partisan Buckets

I've been focusing on our contemporary struggles as partisans in a coarsening of our shared civic lives. Do you remember John Roberts during his consent hearing before the Senate characterizing the practice of the Supreme Court as "calling balls and strikes?"  That was heard as indicating a humble respect for "the law."  It was overly simplistic and hiding an ambiguity through which we as a nation now are lurching.

It might help to acknowledge that things are changing in Major League Baseball calling balls and strikes.  Experimental technology will help make pitch calls in Cactus and Grapefruit minor league play this year.  Inaccurate calls can be challenged. Similar to other sports there will be a limit to the number of challenges allowed during each contest.  

I am musing about an equivalent being practiced within our courts.  WOW!  Seems to me a long way off if ever to happen.  Instead I'd be happy with some version of humility in SCOTUS similar to one assumes results from an overturned umpire's call and as is approximately present by an appeal process in the rest of our federal courts.  The potential for appeal makes a difference and shapes the way lower court decisions are made.  

The varying appearances of humility from members of SCOTUS is not an isolated occurrence. It is part of that coarsening I spoke of to begin.  Humility is not "the law."  It cannot be legislated or enforced.  It is more in the realm of custom and character and thus relies on wisdom, respect and self-awareness.  None of which are built into video replays. 

As well, humility by itself is not enough. I'm thinking of something like Southern Baptist theologian Carlyle Marney said, "humility is not a virtue unless you have something to be proud of."  He was expanding his claims that denominationalism allows a false pride/humility in the specific orthodoxies.  His favorite target was "good Baptist."

Marney often said that our denominations were "buckets" for manifesting our relationship with God.  But he would continue, "the name for who we are in relationship to God is HUMAN! And the pronoun is US!" 

Roberts' was a false humility because it was hiding a deep partisan interest. In the end, Roberts didn't have anything of which to be proud because his bucket wasn't big enough.

Was it a ball or a strike?  We needn't review the video on Citizens United.  We have to live with that call until a Congress and President change the rules.  Sometimes real humility is better than the video.

Celebrating Citizenship

It is no accident that Constitution Day is also Citizenship Day.  September 17, 1787 a majority (39 of the 55) of those delegates assembled in Philadelphia signed the Constitution. Those that agreed intended for the legislatures of the then 13 states to add their affirmations and ratify the document into force.  With New Hampshire's ratification in June 21, 1788 a fledgling experiment in democracy was formed as a constitutional republic.  

It is the "gravity" of our Constitution that collects us, not a single president, or lurching legislature, or a pretentious bench.  No state pledges allegiance when the "stars and stripes" are raised.  Only citizens can make that pledge.  We are made a nation by an agreement begun nearly 238 years ago and sustained by our adherence to the same.

William Randolph Hearst had a good idea and eventually his 3rd Sunday in May “I am an American Day” was moved by a joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives to September 17 and added the name “Citizenship Day.”  Again, it is not a mistake or coercion to bind these two fundamentals together even acknowledging the 165 years it took to come about.   

How else are we to celebrate citizenship? Seems obvious to me that idolizing a President is well short of our pledge.  Just as short would be a rabid partisanship.  The constitution doesn't appear to contemplate political parties. One wonders what sort of adherence to our founders' intentions is expressed by SCOTUS's decisions such as Citizens United (irony?) or Trump v. U.S. (more so?). Both decisions misconstrued citizenship as something less than that for which we hope in our celebration.  

It's not just recent decisions, good or bad our history exposes a persistent unease with the practice of citizenship as foundational.  I'll long muse about the relationship, if any between John Adam's absence on September 17 and his expressed preference for property as determinative for voting status.  Suffrage has long suffered the proprietariness of propertied white men.  Our contemporary fixation on "voter fraud" wants to appear interested in this particular -- can I say crowning? -- exercise of citizenship and ultimately shows itself captive to the skewed partisan ALEC orchestration of gerrymandered state legislatures. That's putting it mildly. What should be protected FOR all citizens to choose is instead restricted to sustain the newest version of those old preferences for Adam's landed gentry or worse.

I am advocating for a citizenship that has been hoped for more than practiced.  Citizenship with its crown is meant to be the fuel of our constitutional republic, not family, property, race, sex, gender expression, privilege, or even merit.  The resistance to that understanding is centuries old and brand new. It is causative not merely coincidental that demographic shifts are triggering the fears of propertied white men so used to voting as a majority.  No wonder Trump is attacking birthright citizenship in his executive orders.  No wonder Georgia criminalized handing out water to voters waiting for hours at the their limited polling stations.  No wonder the escalator lapse of historic context that abuses asylum seekers and with calculating imprecision admits, "And some, I assume, are good people.”  I can't see a tiki torch without Charlottesville's cries of "blood and soil" ringing in my ears.

The experiment of citizenship knows nor requires anything more than willfully admitted adherence to the Constitution. Until my fellow, privileged, white, men admit their deeply seated and unresolved fears of being treated as their fathers before them treated through law, and religion, and social institution, and business in public and in private anyone who was not of their "station" my advocacy for a practice of constitutional citizenship, better than Adams or Hearst imagined will not cease.