The adoption into law of Utah’s Senate Bill 334, inspired by the General Education Act and co-sponsored by the National Association of Scholars, is a much-needed development. Promoting the values and pillars of our shared tradition, from classical education to the preparation of responsible citizenry, there is much to be grateful for, and we hope that this model propagates everywhere in U.S. universities.
I would like to single out one aspect of the good that this and similar legislation will promote: The introduction of immigrants to the American constitutional order. I am an immigrant and arrived in this country as a young adult twenty-six years ago. The promise of freedom and the possibility for prosperity were the inspirations for this move, antidotes to communism and socialism that we knew best. We had no illusions about this “land of plenty.” We knew our family would start from scratch and work our way up. So we did.
Along the way, the realizations of what makes the United States truly exceptional began to emerge.
These realizations were superficial at first, but then they deepened with the increasing familiarity of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Because aging plays its part, reading these documents in my early 20s is different than reading them now. In those early days, I quickly fell into the Wilsonian trap of the “living” constitution. Statements such as, culture evolves, immutable and final truths are not real—only simpletons believe them, I was told—were easily believed by young people because they are themselves growing and learning. The repetition of these sentiments was common during my U.S.-education years. Time and experience, and the growing stability of middle age, allow one to acknowledge the similarity with previous generations: Family is the pillar of society, freedom is not spontaneous, the development of work ethic builds prosperity and responsibility, and confers dignity to human activity, education is important now as it always was. And so, the stability of society makes the stability of its laws understandable. With the passing of time, our Constitution emerges anew as a continuous source of marvel, and the gratitude to its Framers grows.
The First Amendment is sacred but also easily undermined, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Second Amendment becomes a protective scaffolding of the First Amendment. It promotes the individual’s growing responsibility for the protection of one’s own family, physical integrity, and hard-earned private property, and the citizen understands better the dangers of government overreach. The Fourteenth Amendment, in all its complex history, comes into focus, and one becomes even more aware of its scope when the freedoms of natural-born citizens and immigrants alike are at stake.
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Thinking back now during those early days, it is easier to understand why many of my colleagues, both during and after school, focused on the necessity of change, while holding in contempt the necessity that the laws of the land can and should remain fixed. These convictions were expressed concretely in different areas of constitutional order: “The U.S. Supreme Court errs when it does not take into account popular opinion.” “Why does Wyoming have the same number of Senators as California, with a much smaller population?” “If you’re talking about Article II of the U.S. Constitution, you must be a right-winger.” These exemplifying statements come from both native-born Americans and immigrants with post-baccalaureate degrees. They display educational deficit and confusion of logical categories. Better civics education counters the contents and the logical mistakes and would halt the amplification of misleading information.
In some way, these examples suggest that change in the Wilsonian sense is the perfect ground for not engaging in a debate that arrives at a correct conclusion. It has been interesting and baffling to see how the idea of change makes it impossible to agree on anything because it does not afford a shared point of reference. This is especially important for immigrants, who already face an enormous life change by arriving in this new country and have no direct experience with the citizenry—online exposure to the U.S. notwithstanding, except for large concentrations of immigrant populations that become welcoming hubs. Immigrants from smaller countries, with far less representation in the U.S., are less anchored and therefore much more in need of assimilation and adaptation. This was our case, and it has worked very well. To the contrarians who say that assimilation is a betrayal of one’s own origin and identity, the answer is remarkably simple: You do not betray who you are in your core! Formative experiences of the early years stay with you forever. What does change is the accumulation of new experience, which helps you see yourself and your past in a new light—but is that not true for everyone? This is a change for the individual, but it is not a change for humankind, whose lessons are transmitted from generation to generation.
When observing an immigrant’s experience, one sees its evolution.
At first, the immigrant, still new, insecure, and tentative, compares the home country and the U.S. The supermarket layout is unfamiliar. The freeway system is different. The English you thought you mastered sounds very different when spoken at high speed or in the formulaic utterances of the clerk at the coffee house, the fast-food store, or the grocery checkout line. You know you are supposed to understand it, but you do not, because you are not accustomed to these sounds. Only time makes this happen. Because of these continuous frustrations, the comparisons deepen. The home country did most things better. This goes on for a while until familiarity reaches a point when the immigrant starts to shift everyday attention from what the Starbucks barista said for the thousandth time that day that you did not catch to answering swiftly and knowingly, while your mind focuses on other matters that are not as predictable. The first visit back to the home country supplies a new experience: the comparison in reverse. Whereas the loyalty to the home country prevailed, it is now loyalty to the U.S. that does, by realizing that things in the U.S. are as they are because there have been many reasons for them to evolve so. Those reasons are in large part based on catering to every customer that walks into the store, every citizen that walks into the city hall, every defendant that faces justice, and every law that is passed.
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Next comes the critical part: Does the immigrant take the further step of learning about his or his history and constitutional order? It is not simply about the utility of living in the U.S., passing the citizenship exam, or traveling abroad with the protections of the U.S. government as U.S. passport holders. Many naturalized immigrants I meet in my daily and professional life, due to the erosion of civics cognizance, do not deepen their understanding of why the United States exists as it does. Naturalization is regarded as a mere bureaucratic step, and the habit of comparison remains. The critical step, by no means guaranteed, is to move towards a stepwise, reasoned, and teleological understanding of our constitutional order. This is the meeting point between the evolving and the unchangeable, the adapting and the immutable. It is where we are all equal, despite historical missteps and current progressive partitioning into “communities” with various levels of grievances, amplification of differences, and refusal to acknowledge similarities.
Patriotism is still relevant and worthwhile. At the moment of conferral of citizenship, immigrants swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. Those who renounced their citizenship to their home countries have a home now in the United States, but this renunciation does not change their beginnings, the affective ties to the old country, or their native personality. Change is not as ubiquitous as Woodrow Wilson and progressivism want us to think.
As we are a country of immigrants—always changing, we are also a country—always stable. Our legitimate needs for organizing our civic life are based on common laws founded on common values. These are the values of the Western tradition, achievements of human reason that build upon its appreciation of God’s creation. The U.S. Constitution is one of the highest achievements of the Western tradition, the highest in self-governance, certainly the most enduring. It has stabilized us as a country. In critical moments of the 20th and 21st centuries, it has stabilized the world. Despite the accumulation of knowledge and technological advancements, the truths that inspire our Constitution are happily immutable. The civics excellence efforts will benefit every immigrant with ears to hear and eyes to see.
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Image: “House Chamber inside the Utah State Capitol” Utah State Legislature on Wikimedia Commons
