The greatest nation on Earth has fallen into tough times. There is a lot to pick at and criticize America for, there's no getting around that. But despite all of its flaws, America is the land of opportunity. Today, we lead the world in innovation, entrepreneurship, and academia. The United States is the most diverse nation in the world and start of the democratic experiment. Speaking of democracy, I want to tell a little story about how America came to be.
The years during and after the Revolutionary War were nothing short of chaotic. Our founding fathers were not yet statesmen, but former generals, lawyers, and capitalists. Never before, and arguably never since, has a mismatched group tried to create something as bold and as new. The one thing tying them all together were the ideals and values of the Enlightenment.
Liberty and equality were two key concerns in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. It was a document that sharply criticized the concentration of political power, characterized authority as an alien threat to the individual, and upheld the Hobbesian attitude toward overthrowing an unruly ruler. Representation also became an important matter. As colonies, they had no sway in England's Parliament. Excluded as they were, colonies developed their own sense of political unity separate from their colonial rulers. Though Republicanism had yet to sweep through Europe, America's geographical and political distance allowed for these ideas to stir.
John Locke's expansion of the social contract and his treatises on the function of government led to elite colonists reconsidering their colonial relationship. The Declaration's second paragraph drops a line practically stolen from Locke on "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". It is said that Thomas Jefferson replaced Locke's original 'Property' with 'Happiness' as a caveat around the idea that slaves, that people who likewise held certain unalienable rights, were property at the time.
At the time, almost a third of the population in the thirteen colonies were comprised of Black slaves. Many founding fathers owned slaves, and though some grew to resent the system as passive abolitionists, very few did anything about it. Calling attention to the slavery problem would be political suicide, and so the issue was pushed back for decades until the Civil War. How is it that the man who wrote that "all men are created equal" could own other human beings? Though some will say that it was just the times, notably John Adams and Thomas Paine never owned slaves. However, Adams kept quiet while Paine's abolitionist writings were unpalatable for some of his contemporaries.
This is not the first, nor will it be the last, contradiction integral to American history, politics, and philosophy. The Declaration's jabs at the concentration of power drastically limited what the Founding Fathers thought were acceptable for a contemporary Enlightenment-based form of government. Their first attempt, in the Articles of Confederation, didn't last long.
In the midst of fighting a war, something was needed to hold the thirteen colonies together. The same convention saw both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation written. Intwined in the Articles is a commitment to the Declaration it was based on. The conviction of the convention was that no central authority should reign supreme. The result was an astoundingly weak federal government that lacked the authority to do much of anything.
The second contradiction to focus on is the fact the Constitution itself goes against the values of the Revolution. Even today, the Constitution has its critics. Libertarians strike against the power of the ever-expanding federal government. Beardians hold that economic motivations skewed the nation's founding in favor of wealthy, white landowners. Turn on the TV or open Twitter to see unfavorable assessments of the electoral college or the federal court system.
The Constitution, as the founding myth goes, is a document of compromise. Philosophical theory only goes as far as your capital requirements. The war meant excessive lending, which meant shaky economic foundations, which meant the working class wasn't too happy. Hence, Shay's Rebellion pointed out the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and led to the Constitution's inevitable contradiction.
Central authority must exist. The power to raise an army, levy taxes, and govern legal supremacy became federal powers unthinkable to many in the early days of the nation. The Federalists and Anti-Federalists fought for years over this idea. Eleven of Alexander Hamilton's Federalists Papers are solely about the concept and role of the President, perhaps the most pernicious example of centralization in the American experiment.
To counter these claims, Hamilton writes in great detail about the presidency and the executive branch. In No. 69, *The Real Character of the Executive*, Hamilton compares the presidency with the Governor of New York and the King of England, saying that the presidency should and will strike a middle ground, a golden mean so to speak. Relating to recent current events, Hamilton does state that "the President of the United States would be liable [...] to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law". I wonder what originalists would think.
Since the nation's founding, nearly a hundred million people have immigrated to the United States. However, the legality and dignity of that immigration has fluctuated over time. The third and last contradiction that defines America is immigration. Citizenship in the U.S. is synonymous with recognition and representation. If a lack of these was a contributing factor to independence in the first place, it should stand that expansive citizenship and immigration policy would be critical to the nation. By most accounts, it is not.
The earliest settlers escaped persecution, looked for new riches, or sought a different path. Along with them were hundreds of thousands of people forced to migrate under slavery and servitude. The Irish, German, British, and French arrived in large numbers after independence. The Irish famine and the Mexican American War saw even more people immigrate or be considered citizens.
Anti-Catholic and Nativist sentiment rapidly grew, even from the small numbers of early immigration. The western expansion of farmland and California's gold rush saw more southern and eastern Europeans, Jews, and Chinese arrive. Broadly speaking, most of society viewed these immigrants at the bottom of society. They often lived in tenements or shanty towns and worked in manual labor. In a very literal sense, it was first slaves then immigrants who built this nation.
People feared that aliens were damaging the 'moral character' of their cities, and so racism and nativism spread. These concerns were furthered by the Congressional Dillingham Commission which created inaccurate reports about 'new' immigrants. Charged with eugenics and scientific racism, the commission concluded that 'new' immigrants committed more violent crime, worked less, and depended on welfare more than 'old' immigrants and native-born citizens based on innate characteristics. Immigration quotas, English literacy tests, and entrance taxes followed these reports.
The debate over the assimilation and the treatment of immigrants continues today. Whether or not America is a melting pot, a quilt, or even a dumping ground stands as an important question about the nature of Americans themselves. Non-Latino white Americans will become a 'minority' by 2050. Underpinning these changing demographics is the history and the current politics of American immigration.
America is nothing without its people. Though all these contradictions are important to understanding how we got here, this last one is the most pertinent to the future. Nobody likes the crisis on the Southern border. But many also don't like the annoying system for international students, the difficult process of obtaining a work visa for high-skilled workers, or the practical impossibility of being an extraordinary alien.
This 4th of July to me is about recognizing what makes America great by understanding its flaws. We can always be better, and Americans know that to be true. This piece has been harsh, maybe overly critical. Even nations need a little bit of tough love. Resolving contradictions is a tough ordeal, though very possible. We hold the lead in many things, but we should be leading in many more.