My wife and I made some money off the sale of our house (I’m almost ashamed to admit, what with the sales crisis) and I was about to give a bunch to our investment guy when my wife invoked Sharia, or Islamic law. She knows a little about it from working at Newsweek International some years back. And she said that Sharia’s ban on interest, or usury, springs from the idea that money shouldn’t make money, your money should be active in the world. "I come from a world of coupon-clippers," she said, referring to her WASP roots, and that is offensive to her understanding of Sharia. You should be building the community with your money, not resting on your gilded laurels.
The personal finance issue aside, I found it amazing that my wife was invoking Sharia. She’s a highly evolved type, and in New Age circles people describe religions as "wisdom traditions." It’s just unusual to hear of Islam in that connection. Because Islam has been so slimed in the west, partly legitimately, because of the 72 virgins and the stoning of adulterers. Bad stuff (caricatured by Sam Harris in his anti-Islam books). But of course there’s bad stuff in Jewish law too, like capital punishment for adulterers and covering a woman’s hair. Also a lot of great stuff in Jewish law, like paying someone who works for you before a day passes, or feeding your animals before you feed yourself, or not eating an animal that was killed in fright.
I’m a Chinese-menu Jew, as they used to try and guilt us: one-from-column-a, one from column-b. Henceforth I know my wife and I are going to be thinking about Sharia when it comes to our money…
Islam's ban on usury, which was shared by Christianity for most of its history, is not so much about "putting your money to work," as about not profiting from the neediness of your neighbor. (Although maybe I'm just saying the same thing as you, but in different words.)
I'm no expert on Islam, but one area of wisdom that is hard for Westerners to miss (unless they're employed at WINEP) is the great emphasis on the health of the community and not just the individual. It is the reason that Muslims halfway across the world in Indonesia are fully alive each day to what is being done to the Palestinians. In the context of Christianity's long-term move towards the private and individualized, it is at least thought-provoking.
"It is the reason that Muslims halfway across the world in Indonesia are fully alive each day to what is being done to the Palestinians."
And what about the non-Muslims? Are they concerned with their plight? For example the animists in Darfur.
You seem to glamorize the same traits in Muslims that you demonize in Jews. Can you please clarify the differences.
Anon-
You don't understand the conflict if you think it is Muslims against animists in Dafur. I suspect you may have just cruised right-wing or zionist propaganda sites and weren't able to keep the proper talking points straight.
The conflict in Darfur, which is in essence a civil war, is pitting those who want an independent Darfur against those who want it to remain a part of Sudan. It is also fed by fierce battles between pastoralists and farmers over dwindling water and arable land, due to growing desertificaion. There are atrocities being committed by both sides, and the conflict is in some sense being exacerbated by foreign governments with an interest in exploiting Darfur's natural resources. It is also being exacerbated by Sudan's use of brutal militias with an interest in siding with the pastoralists. It is NOT a conflict between Muslims and animists. Both sides in Darfur are black, both sides in the conflict are Muslim.
Since Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, has committed to providing peacekeeping troops in Darfur, I would suspect that many Indonesians are aware of the plight of the people in Darfur. But being as how the plight of Palestinians has been wretched and unrelieved for nearly 60 years and the conflict in Darfur is much more recent and has at least seen an attempt at peacekeeping by outside forces, it would seem quite understandable that the Palestinian plight rings more clearly for Indonesia's Muslims.
Zed – Thank you for the corrections on Darfur. You're correct that my understanding of the conflict is quite limited. My understanding is that while the current conflict is Northern Muslim on Southern Muslim, earlier conflicts in the region were between Muslims and non-Muslims. Someone with better knowledge of the region's history could perhaps provide a better example. The Nigerian Ibo in Biafra? Regardless, my primary point was that there seems to be a bit of a double standard regarding the issue of looking out for ones own community. David seems to see this as a virtue in the Muslims world, but a fatal flaw in the Jewish world. I'm not arguing one way or the other as to whether this communal mindset is a good thing, I'm just trying to understand what appears to be a double standard.
Sigh… another "where are the moderate muzzies" call, this time from anon. But they are everywhere my friend… (twinkle twinkle) open your eyes (in a lilting voice)!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7054948.stm
(just by example)
So rather than sit on your fat ass thinking – what did the muzzies do for darfur today? – why not go and talk to a Muslim and get a clue? Zionists and right wing assholes don't have a monopoly on the issue – but if they keep saying it over and over "muzzies don't care for darfur" you just might think it's true. Oops ya just did.
Btw. Darfur is between Muslims. The animists are in the south and that long war is over. Neither conflict is religious or essentially ethnic, just read Alex De Waal's writing on the subject. Here's one:
Seigfried,
Who told you my ass was fat? It's true, but I want to know who is spreading such news. Actually, I've not been able to get off my "ass" for some time now, but that's due to a health issue and not laziness. I concede any and all points about Darfur. It was a bad example for the point I was trying to make, which no one has actually addressed. I'm interested in the apparent double standard. My parents come from a country where there was significant friction with Muslims politically, but personally people got along. You don't have to sell me on the concept of the Muslim world being very diverse. I see the same diversity in the Muslim and Jewish worlds as far as I can tell when I look at them. Neither seems more diverse to me than the other. What I am trying to get my head around is David's apparent glorifying of the very behaviors that I see others here demonizing depending on which group is demonstrating them. There seem to be some underlying principles here that are not being carefully applied, or rather are being selectively applied.
I am not asking about moderate Muslims. I know many. I am asking why is Muslim concern for other Muslims considered honorable and Jewish concern for other Jews considered treacherous?
Now if the latter is considered problematic because it creates dual loyalty issues, why is the former not similarly considered problematic? A similar line of argument lends itself to Christians who care about other Christians or "pre-Christians" and their loyalty. A friend who is a religious Chrisitian is very pro-Israel. He tells me it is his duty as a Christian to support Israel and he will be cursed if he does not. Does that not constitute a conflict of interest in regards to what is best for the USA? We are asking him to chose between his God and his country, but he doesn't see it that way. He truly believes that the USA supporting Israel is in the interest of the USA and to not do so would be putting the USA in grave danger. These are not my views at all, but I can attest to his committment to them. I imagine that some Muslims feel similarly about the need to remove Israel as a nation from the region. One could imagine that a Palestinian could question the loyalty of Hamas if they choose an Islamic agenda over a Palestinian agenda in negotiations. We have seen that issue raised in Lebanon about Hezbollah and whether they have a dual loyalty to Iran or Shiism.
Mr. Witty raised some very interesting questions in other dicussions on this blog regarding the nature of loyalty and aside from some nasty messages to Mr. Witty I did not see anyone really tackle this issue.
Thank you for your time.
Very wise decision by your wife.
People who use their money only to make more money are usually very,very boring.
Dual loyalty……
this message board is primarily about Jewish dual loyalty that the blogger Phil Weiss has brought up…I think that you make a good point that dual loyalty has become more common in the US in the last 40 years with the rise of multiculturalism…..Hispanic dual loyalty manifests itself with a growing insistence that English speakers learn Spanish or at least the govt provide services in Spanish. To the silent majority such demands are unacceptable…
However, the Hispanic lobby has not made a substantial contribution to starting a war yet (e.g. Iraq) or antagonising 1/4 of humanity–the Islamic world by demanding that we subsidise a state like Israel which would soon collapse without US aid…
President Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt both said that they "did not believe in hyphenated Americans…." Inevitably it will lead to dual loyalty, a society with a lower trust level that will disintegrate…I mean could you trust your realtor if he were working for the seller if you a were a buyer?
BTW what were those interesting questions that were raised by Mr. W?? Could you repeat them?
Pro Zionist Christians….fair subject to bring up about what % power of the pro-Israel Jewish lobby would you say that they have?
I would say that if you held a referendum in the US re aid to Isreal currently running at $31 Bil over the next 10 years…about 70% of Christians would vote to end it entirely…right away….look if Christians in America were pro Israel why would AIPAC have to throw so much money around and twist so many arms if Israel were as popular as ,say veteran benefits? Why would AIPAC members have booed so loudly when Pelosi suggested that she slow down the plan to bomb Iran? Is it not because support for Israel is so lukewarm or nonexistent among the TYPICAL Christian?
Weiss says that 60% of Democrat donor money is from Jews while 50% of Republican is Jewish…..it would appear to me that so many Jews donate because they know that the typical American, of Christian background is not really interested in supporting Israel…
I am extremely depressed and have the feeling of being struck by a thunderbolt. Words cannot describe what I witnessed. For that reason, as the pain of what I’ve seen will take some time to percolate and dissipate, this is going to be part one of a three part series.
First off, anyone who knows me and the body of my work knows that I stand up for the little guy. Whether it’s innocent black farmers in Tulia, Texas being framed by racist white cops, or innocent Hispanic youth laboring in the modern slave fields of corporate prisons, I’m there standing up for them.
Earlier this year, when a young Hispanic man named Daniel Rocha was shot in the back for absolutely no reason by a female APD officer, I called for her indictment. I interviewed multiple organizations that were trying to get the word out about his tragic death.
I have protested the Klu Klux Klan at least 10 times – and by protest I don’t mean that I’ve trailed along in the back of a counter rally.
I have led demonstrations. I have bullhorned the toothless ne’er-do-wells at point blank range and have been the target of their death threats right in front of the police, who did nothing.
When a young black girl was falsely accused of abusing a baby, we rallied to her cause and she was found not-guilty. When US Marines shot the young Texas goat herder, Esequiel "Zeke" Hernandez, we sent cameras to the border and did dozens of reports on the case.
If I attempted to give you a bibliography of everything I’ve done in defense of the disadvantaged, it would fill a volume
What is the point I’m making? I don’t have any guilt. I don’t dislike people because of where they’re from or because of their race. I work hard every day of my life to fight tyranny and corruption in places high and low to defend the dignity of the human spirit.
For many years, I have been aware of the Atzlan reconquista movement, which openly states that it wishes to take over the United States Southwest from California to Louisiana, reunite it with Mexico and forcibly drive out all whites, as well as many blacks, from these states. Rabid hatred of America, Texas and whites is evident in over a third of Dies y Seis marchers personally poled by Texans for Freedom
Then I began to learn that Dies y Seis celebrations around the country, which in the past were simply fun equivalents of a Mexican Saint Patrick’s Day, were being infiltrated by extremist Mexican hate groups.
I talked to some of the groups that were planning to participate in the Dies y Seis parade through downtown Austin this year and it only reaffirmed my previous research that there was a powerful revolutionary core to these groups dedicated to overthrowing Texas and setting up a racial state.
Being a minority (that’s right, whites are now the minority in Texas and in five other states), this was of great concern to me. I put the call out a day before the parade to my radio listeners that all Americans who understood the threat of the reconquistas and their corporate funders in Washington should assemble in front of the Capitol to simply educate other well-meaning celebrants who hadn’t realized that the Atzlan crowd had co-opted their parade.
Our press release that was sent to the media clearly stated that we were there to expose racist groups that were preaching their message in the Hispanic community, and that these groups were creating division that was detrimental to everyone.
Of course, this meant absolutely nothing to the corporate media, who universally went with the line (in four different news stations’ reports and in different newspapers) that what happened was a clash between minutemen (there wasn’t one minuteman in attendance) and loving, wonderful, pure, sweet, innocent people who “just wanted to celebrate Mexican independence.”
The controlled media continued their lies by running multiple quotes by parade marchers and Congressman Lloyd Doggett that basically anyone questioning anything was a Klu Klux Klan member.
Our crowd of about a hundred consisted of at least 15 Hispanics and 10 blacks. We have actual TV news reports that show some of these Hispanics and blacks who were with our protest in which they are falsely depicted as being with the other side. In one news clip by News 8 Austin, a young Hispanic girl is wearing an infowars "tyranny response team" t-shirt, but the clip implies that she was protesting us (while she’s talking on my bullhorn).
Why does the corporate media have such a stake in making this a white vs. brown debate? Answer: divide and conquer.
(Oh, by the way, if any damages are accrued by these lies, people are going to get sued. Folks who know our history know that’s not a bluff.)
What did we witness? Why am I so upset?
At least a third of the participants we talked to said that Texas was Mexico and that they were taking over. Of this third their responses ranged from a belief that our two countries would merge into one nation to that all whites would be killed and that the entirety of the Americas would only be for “indigenous peoples.”
Of course the haters shouting all of this had European Spanish blood coursing through their veins.
In parts two and three, I will detail the long trail of horrors that I witnessed as well as posting a lengthy video report documenting our claims. We have ten hours of footage from four cameras, which includes people frothing and screaming racist comments and then calling us racists for saying that we should all live together in peace.
Near the end of the melee, one of my Hispanic friends walked over to me and began pointing out people wearing shirts promoting the author of the Plan of San Diego. Another friend who has taken Latin-American studies pointed out another shirt directly mentioning the Plan of San Diego.
Folks, every time I think I know everything about Texas history, I learn how ignorant I am. I asked my friends what the Plan of San Diego was and they told me that it was a plan in Northern Mexico and throughout the Southwest hatched in 1915 that called for the genocide of all white males over 16.
I’ve known my friends for many years, but I couldn’t believe them. I got home and spent three hours on the Internet at the University of Texas’ historical website, at other universities’ websites in Mexico and Illinois, and on the website of the Hispanic Historical Society.
What I learned chilled me. They didn’t just write up a plan, they acted upon it, killing at least 21 white males in South Texas in cold-blooded murder. We’re talking helter-skelter, Charlie Manson-type cold-blooded murder of random white ranchers and farmers: cornering people and hacking them up.
I then found websites making excuses for it by saying, “well, whites did this to natives…” Yes they did. Select military units did, which should have been brought to justice for their actions. And I’ve spoken out against them, be it at Wounded Knee or in Waco.
Think about it: full-grown adult men with their families wearing shirts calling for the killing of all white males above 16. Will there be a genetic test? Will Hispanics who are more than half white be killed? How far will this racial state go?
This is the nightmare of tribalism. As this intensifies it’s only going to create friction on both sides. None of us are going to be safe, whether we’re from India, Mexico or Germany.
Speaking of Germany, the German government got wind of the plan of San Diego, endorsed it in 1917 and attempted to fund an insurrection in the United States during WWI. The same thing happened during WWII.
According to Hispanic Historical Society’s website, throughout most of early Texas history, Hispanics and whites got along wonderfully (this is obvious as many of the founders of Texas and its solders were Tejano) but after repeated wars and skirmishes with Mexico and the increased publicity of the plan of San Diego a racist sentiment against innocent Hispanics exploded.
We cannot let that happen here. We have got to get the Hispanic community to expose these vipers in their midst. The Federal government, in the name of “keeping us all safe from each other,” would love to use something like this as an excuse to set up an incredibly powerful police state.
I don’t want Hispanics looking at whites with fear, nor do I want whites looking at Hispanics with fear. We’re all human beings. Empires have always sought to "divide and conquer" their populations to manipulate.
The reconquista movement has big corporate funding. In almost every case we’ve researched, rich white men are behind the neo-Aztec movement. One businessman in California bought almost 700 signs telling the public that Los Angeles is now Mexico. This is an attempt to create false pride by which people can be easily steered.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigration/deisyseis_partone.htm
Usury? Ezra Pound viewed it as seminal evil. Christians can’t charge interest. It’s one of the most basic tenets of Christianity. It is actually ONE of those things that’s in the Bible. One that most Christians gloss over now, but it is in there, in the words of Jesus himself. (Luke 6:35)
It’s also the reason that Jews got the reputation for being money-grubbing bank-owners: They were the ones the Church (that would be the Catholic Church) went to to finance things like the Crusades. One sect of Jews also prohibits usury.
Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is a usurer. His “excessive interest”? If memory serves, 4%. FOUR. I read the top rate in some states is Twenty-five percent. I also read congress is considering a bill with loan sharks to be limited to charging 35% for pay day loans to our combat troops.
A few years ago I looked at the way sharia law as it relates to loans is practiced; when you look at a typical transaction it seems they indirectly charge interest but call it something else.
Colin,
What is the specific point you are trying to make with this long tract on Mexican-Americans?
Can you understand their position that the South West USA is occupied land?
Philip raised this issue earlier. I continue to see signs that a major shift in attitudes towards Israel amongst American Jews is occurring. Note this response to the article on Haaretz.
My mother used to tell me that after the war with the Palestinians was done, there will be a war with the religious right. Perhaps she got the sequence wrong.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/929258.html
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent : Debate rages on World Jewry's role in peace concessions
Talkback
Title: Time to get serious
Name: Ross
City: Summit State: NJ
Orthodox jews should be careful. The sleeping giant of the majority of American jews who are either secular, conservative, or reform, are getting fed up with the morally wrong and politically inept occupation. We are going to exert heavy pressure on the US and Israeli governments to negotiate an agreement with the Palestinians that will give back the settlements and share Jerusalem in exchange for the Palestinian refugees agreeing to return to the new Palestinian state and not their old homes in Israel. Frankly we are just as sick of the intransigent orthodox here and in Israel as we are of Hamas and Fatah. Mark my words, a quiet revolution has begun in the Jewish world in America. You say world jewry should have a say – wait until you hear what we have to say.
I was thinking along the same lines earlier today:
Subject: Annapolis Peace Negotiations
Thank you for using Congress.org Mail System
Message sent to the following recipients:
Secretary Rice
Representative Bilirakis
Senator Martinez
Senator Nelson
President
Message text follows:
November 28, 2007
[recipient address was inserted here]
[recipient name was inserted here],
Dear fellow Americans,
Let's not allow this chance to be a photo-op opportunity. Tell Israel if they don't get out of the occupied territories by a date certain we will cut off their annual foreign aid and loan funds. Tell the Palestinians (the party represented, and leak it to Hamas too) if they don't sign a declaration recognizing the state of Israel by that same date certain, we will also cut off aid to them, and do our best to get the world to do the same. If these things transpire by the same date certain, divide up Jerusalem, recognize a Palestinian state with Israel withdrawn to its pre-1967 borders. No right of return to Israel for the Palestinians, but lavish funding and support by the USA and UN for the new Palestinian state.
Sincerely,
Charles Keating
To Anonymous:
No!
Across the pond it is a similar situation:
Morrissey 'refuses to live in the UK because of immigration explosion'
By JAMES SLACK
The pop singer Morrissey claims he can no longer live in a Britain he believes lost to an "immigration explosion".
The former frontman of the Smiths, who is now based in Rome, claimed England was just 'a memory now'.
The 48-year-old added: "Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.
"The change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country.
"If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent.
"You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
"The British identity is very attractive, I grew up into it and I find it quaint and very amusing."
Morrissey, who has sung of his love for English culture and can count Tory leader David Cameron as a fan, is the son of an Irish immigrant family which settled in Manchester.
In 1986, when The Smiths released their critically-acclaimed album The Queen is Dead, the UK had a population of 56million.
It now stands at 60million and some predict that could almost double by 2081.
Morrissey's comments were made in interviews with the music magazine NME.
In the mid-1990s he was accused of racism after wearing a Union Jack on stage and releasing the songs Bengali in Platforms and the ironically-named National Front Disco.
The singer's supporters insisted he had been seeking only to reclaim the flag from extremists.
Tim Jonze, the reporter who conducted the interview, said: "Morrissey has had a stormy relationship with this magazine and its readers over the last three decades.
"He might once have been the voice of a generation but given his comments in these two interviews, he's certainly not speaking for us now."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=496992&in_page_id=1773
Re anon2's: "Dual loyalty……
this message board is primarily about Jewish dual loyalty that the blogger Phil Weiss has brought up…I think that you make a good point that dual loyalty has become more common in the US in the last 40 years with the rise of multiculturalism…..Hispanic dual loyalty manifests itself with a growing insistence that English speakers learn Spanish or at least the govt provide services in Spanish. To the silent majority such demands are unacceptable…However, the Hispanic lobby has not made a substantial contribution to starting a war yet (e.g. Iraq) or antagonising 1/4 of humanity–the Islamic world by demanding that we subsidise a state like Israel which would soon collapse without US aid…
President Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt both said that they "did not believe in hyphenated Americans…." Inevitably it will lead to dual loyalty, a society with a lower trust level that will disintegrate…I mean could you trust your realtor if he were working for the seller if you a were a buyer?"
Actually, being a typical real estate agent involves many conflicts of interest recognized vaguely by laws, rules and regulations in many states: More on this:
July 02, 2007
What Does It Mean To Be An American?
By Steven M. Warshawsky
"Undocumented Americans." This is how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently described the estimated 12-20 million illegal aliens living in America. What was once a Mark Steyn joke has now become the ideological orthodoxy of the Democratic Party.
Reid's comment triggered an avalanche of outrage among commentators, bloggers, and the general public. Why? Because it strikes at the heart of the American people's understanding of themselves as a nation and a civilization. Indeed, opposition to the ongoing push for "comprehensive immigration reform" — i.e., amnesty and a guest worker program — is being driven by a growing concern among millions of Americans that massive waves of legal and illegal immigration — mainly from Mexico, Latin America, and Asia — coupled with the unwillingness of our political and economic elites to mold these newcomers into red-white-and-blue Americans, is threatening to change the very character of our country. For the worse.
I share this concern. I agree with the political, economic, and cultural arguments in favor of sharply curtailing immigration into the United States, as well as refocusing our immigration efforts on admitting those foreigners who bring the greatest value to — and are most easily assimilated into — American society. (See generally here, here , and here.) But this essay is not intended to rehash these arguments. Rather, I wish to explore the question that underlies this entire debate: What does it mean to be an American? This may seem like an easy question to answer, but it's not. The harder one thinks about this question, the more complex it becomes.
Clearly, Harry Reid has not given this question much thought. His implicit definition of "an American" is simply: Anyone living within the geopolitical boundaries of the United States. In other words, mere physical location on Earth determines whether or not someone is "an American." Presumably, Reid's definition is not intended to apply to tourists and other temporary visitors. Some degree of permanency — what the law in other contexts calls "residency," i.e., a subjective intention to establish one's home or domicile — is required. In Reid's view, therefore, a Mexican from Guadalajara, a Chinese from Shanghei, an Indian from Delhi, or a [fill in the blank] become "Americans" as soon as they cross into U.S. territory and decide to live here permanently, legally or not. Nothing more is needed.
This is poppycock, of course. A Mexican or a Chinese or an Indian, for example, cannot transform themselves into Americans simply by moving to this country, any more than I can become a Mexican, a Chinese, or an Indian simply by moving to their countries. Yet contemporary liberals have a vested interest in believing that they can. This is not just a function of immigrant politics, which strongly favors the Democratic Party (hence the Democrats' growing support for voting rights for non-citizens). It also reflects the liberals' (and some libertarians') multicultural faith, which insists that it is morally wrong to make distinctions among different groups of people, let alone to impose a particular way of life — what heretofore has been known as the American way of life — on those who believe, speak, and act differently. Even in our own country.
In short, diversity, not Americanism, is the multicultural touchstone.
What's more, the principle of diversity, taken to its logical extreme, inevitably leads to a rejection of Americanism. Indeed, the ideology of multiculturalism has its roots in the radical — and anti-American — New Left and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Thus the sorry state of U.S. history and civics education in today's schools and universities, which are dominated by adherents of this intellectual poison. Moreover, when it comes to immigration, multiculturalists actually prefer those immigrants who are as unlike ordinary Americans as possible. This stems from their deep-rooted opposition to traditional American society, which they hope to undermine through an influx of non-western peoples and cultures.
This, in fact, describes present U.S. immigration policy, which largely is a product of the 1965 Immigration Act (perhaps Ted Kennedy's most notorious legislative achievement). The 1965 Immigration Act eliminated the legal preferences traditionally given to European immigrants, and opened the floodgates to immigration from less-developed and non-western countries. For example, in 2006 more immigrants came to the United States from Columbia, Peru, Vietnam, and Haiti (not to mention Mexico, China, and India), than from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Greece. And once these immigrants arrive here, multiculturalists believe we should accommodate our society to the needs and desires of the newcomers, not the other way around. Thus, our government prints election ballots, school books, and welfare applications in foreign languages, while corporate America asks customers to "press one for English."
Patriotic Americans — those who love our country for its people, its history, its culture, and its ideals — reject the multiculturalists' denuded, and ultimately subversive, vision of what it means to be "an American." While the American identity is arguably the most "universal" of all major nationalities — as evidenced by the millions of immigrants the world over who have successfully assimilated into our country over the years — it is not an empty, meaningless concept. It has substance. Being "an American" is not the same thing as simply living in the United States. Nor, I would add, is it the same thing as holding U.S. citizenship. After all, a baby born on U.S. soil to an illegal alien is a citizen. This hardly guarantees that this baby will grow up to be an American.
So what, then, does it mean to be an American? I suspect that most of us believe, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in describing pornography, that we "know it when we see it." For example, John Wayne, Amelia Earhart, and Bill Cosby definitely are Americans. The day laborers standing on the street corner probably are not. But how do we put this inner understanding into words? It's not easy. Unlike most other nations on Earth, the American nation is not strictly defined in terms of race or ethnicity or ancestry or religion. George Washington may be the Father of Our Country (in my opinion, the greatest American who ever lived), but there have been in the past, and are today, many millions of patriotic, hardworking, upstanding Americans who are not Caucasian, or Christian, or of Western European ancestry. Yet they are undeniably as American as you or I (by the way, I am Jewish of predominantly Eastern European ancestry). Any definition of "American" that excludes such folks — let alone one that excludes me! — cannot be right.
Consequently, it is just not good enough to say, as some immigration restrictionists do, that this is a "white-majority, Western country." Yes, it is. But so are, for example, Ireland and Sweden and Portugal. Clearly, this level of abstraction does not take us very far towards understanding what it means to be "an American." Nor is it all that helpful to say that this is an English-speaking, predominately Christian country. While I think these features get us closer to the answer, there are millions of English-speaking (and non-English-speaking) Christians in the world who are not Americans, and millions of non-Christians who are. Certainly, these fundamental historical characteristics are important elements in determining who we are as a nation. Like other restrictionists, I am opposed to public policies that seek, by design or by default, to significantly alter the nation's "demographic profile." Still, it must be recognized that demography alone does not, and cannot, explain what it means to be an American.
So where does that leave us? I think the answer to our question, ultimately, must be found in the realms of ideology and culture. What distinguishes the United States from other nations, and what unites the disparate peoples who make up our country, are our unique political, economic, and social values, beliefs, and institutions. Not race, or religion, or ancestry.
Whether described as a "proposition nation" or a "creedal nation" or simply just "an idea," the United States of America is defined by our way of life. This way of life is rooted in the ideals proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; in the system of personal liberty and limited government established by the Constitution; in our traditions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and entrepreneurism; in our emphasis on private property, freedom of contract, and merit-based achievement; in our respect for the rule of law; and in our commitment to affording equal justice to all. Perhaps above all, it is marked by our abiding belief that, as Americans, we have been called to a higher duty in human history. We are the "city upon a hill." We are "the last, best hope of earth."
Many immigration restrictionists and so-called traditionalists chafe at the notion that the American people are not defined by "blood and soil." Yet the truth of the matter is, we aren't. One of the greatest patriots who ever graced this nation's history, Teddy Roosevelt, said it best: "Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul." Roosevelt deplored what he called "hyphenated Americanism," which refers to citizens whose primary loyalties lie with their particular ethnic groups or ancestral lands. Such a man, Roosevelt counseled, is to be "unsparingly condemn[ed]."
But Roosevelt also recognized that "if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else." Roosevelt's words are not offered here to suggest that all foreigners are equally capable of assimilating into our country. Clearly, they aren't. Nevertheless, the appellation "American" is open to anyone who adopts our way of life and loves this country above all others.
Which brings me to the final, and most difficult, aspect of this question: How do we define the "American way of life"? This is the issue over which our nation's "culture wars" are being fought. Today the country is divided between those who maintain their allegiance to certain historically American values, beliefs, and institutions (but not all — see racial segregation), and those who want to replace them with a very different set of ideas about the role of government, the nature of political and economic liberty, and the meaning of right and wrong. Are both sides in this struggle equally "American"?
Moreover, the "American way of life" has changed over time. We no longer have the Republic that existed in TR's days. The New Deal and Great Society revolutions — enthusiastically supported, I note, by millions of white, Christian, English-speaking citizens — significantly altered the political, economic, and social foundations of this country. Did they also change what it means to be "an American"? Is being an American equally compatible, for example, with support for big government versus small government? the welfare state versus rugged individualism? socialism versus capitalism? And so on. Plainly, this is a much harder historical and intellectual problem than at first meets the eye.
Personally, I do not think the meaning of America is nearly so malleable as today's multiculturalists assume. But neither is it quite as narrow as many restrictionists contend. Nevertheless, I am convinced that being an American requires something more than merely living in this country, speaking English, obeying the law, and holding a job (although this would be a very good start!). What this "something more" is, however, is not self-evident, and, indeed, is the subject of increasingly bitter debate in this country.
Yet one thing is certain: If we stray too far from the lines laid down by the Founding Fathers and the generations of great American men and women who built on their legacy, we will cease to be "Americans" in any meaningful sense of the word. As Abraham Lincoln warned during the secession era, "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Today the danger is not armed rebellion, but the slow erasing of the American national character through a process of political and cultural redefinition. If this ever happens, it will be a terrible day for this country, and for the world.
Steven M. Warshawsky is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.
And on the slow erasing of the American national character:
PEGGY NOONAN
The American Way
What does it mean that your first act on entering a country is breaking its laws?
Thursday, December 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
As Congress considers the Bush administration's guest-worker plan, as Republicans try to figure out what their immigration philosophy is, and as political observers parse the implications of yesterday's California House race, here are some small and human questions on immigration to the United States.
I recently found out through one of her daughters that my grandmother spent her first night in America on a park bench in downtown Manhattan. She had made her way from Ireland to Ellis Island, and a cousin was to meet the ship. It was about 1920. The cousin didn't show. So Mary Dorian, age roughly 20, all alone, with no connections and no relatives interested enough to remember her arrival in the new world, spent her first night in America alone on a bench, in the dark, in a strange country. Later she found her way to Brooklyn and became a bathroom attendant at the big Abraham & Straus department store on Fulton Street. (It's now a Macy's. I buy Christmas gifts there.)
Two generations after my grandmother arrived, I was in the Oval Office of the American president saying, "I think you oughta." And amazingly enough he was listening.
In two generations. Two.
What a country.
 Am I proud of this? Sure. It's the American way to point out that your people went from zero to 60, or will, or can. It's the American way to acknowledge, too, that someone made the car you jumped into. There was an assembly line. My grandparents were ahead of me in that line, and the Founders were ahead of them.
Every time an American brags about where he came from and where he wound up, he's really complimenting the guys on the line.
In my case before there was the car there was a ship. I do not know the name of the ship that took Mary Dorian to America, and yet it gave me my future. I know she wore an inspection card attached to her clothing. I have such a card, encased in plastic, on a table in my home. It is the card worn by Mary Dorian's future husband's sister, who came over at the same time.
It says at the top, "To assist Inspection in New York Harbour." It notes dates, departure points, "Name of Immigrant." On the side there's a row of numbers that mark each day of what appears to have been a 10-day trip. Each day was stamped by the ship's surgeon at daily inspection. You got the stamp if you appeared to be free of disease.
You know how the card looks? Thin. An old piece of paper that looks vulnerable. I guess that's why I encased it in plastic, to keep it safe, because it's precious.
 Here is what is true of my immigrants and of the immigrants of America's past:
They fought for citizenship. They earned it. They waited in line. They passed the tests. They had to get permission to come. They got money that was hard-earned and bought a ticket. They had to get through Ellis Island or the port of Boston or Philadelphia, get questioned and eyeballed by a bureaucrat with a badge, and get the nod to take their first step on American soil. Then they had to find the A&S.
They knew citizenship was not something cheaply held but something bestowed by a great nation.
Did the fact that they had to earn it make joining America even more precious?
Yes. Of course.
We all know it is so often so different now. Perhaps a million illegal immigrants come into the United States each year, joining the 10 million or 20 million already here–nobody seems to know the number. Our borders are less borders than lines you cross if you want to. When you watch videotape of some of the illegal border crossings on a show like Lou Dobbs's–who is not a senator or congressman but a media star and probably the premier anti-illegal-immigration voice in the country–what you absorb is a sense of anarchy, an utter collapse of authority.
It's not good. It does not bode well.
 The questions I bring to the subject are not about the flow of capital, the imminence of globalism, or the implications of uncontrolled immigration on the size and cost of the welfare state. They just have to do with what it is to be human.
What does it mean that your first act on entering a country–your first act on that soil–is the breaking of that country's laws? What does it suggest to you when that country does nothing about your lawbreaking because it cannot, or chooses not to? What does that tell you? Will that make you a better future citizen, or worse? More respecting of the rule of law in your new home, or less?
If you assume or come to believe that that nation will not enforce its own laws for reasons that are essentially cynical, that have to do with the needs of big business or the needs of politicians, will that assumption or belief make you more or less likely to be moved by that country, proud of that country, eager to ally yourself with it emotionally, psychologically and spiritually?
When you don't earn something or suffer to get it, do you value it less highly? If you value it less highly, will you bother to know it, understand it, study it? Will you bother truly to become part of it? When you are allowed to join a nation for free, as it were, and without the commitment of years of above-board effort, do you experience your joining that country as a blessing or as a successful con? If the latter, what was the first lesson America taught you?
These are questions that I think are behind a lot of the more passionate opposition to illegal immigration.
 There are people who want to return to the old ways and rescue some of the old attitudes. There are groups that seek to restore border integrity. But they are denigrated by many, even the president, who has called them vigilantes. The New Yorker this week carries a mildly snotty piece by a writer named Daniel Kurtz-Phelan in which he interviews members of a group of would-be Minutemen who seek to watch the borders with Mexico and Canada. They are "running freelance patrols"; they are xenophobic; they dismiss critics as "communists" and "child molesters."
How nice to be patronized by young men whose place is so secure they have two last names. How nice to be looked down on for caring.
And they do care, that's the thing. And pay a price for caring. They worry in part that what is happening on our borders can damage our country by eroding the sense of won citizenship that leads to the mutual investment and mutual respect–the togetherness, if that isn't too corny–that all nations need to operate in the world, and that our nation will especially need in the coming world.
This is what I fear about our elites in government and media, who will decide our immigration policy. It is that they will ignore the human questions and focus instead, as they have in the past, only on economic questions (we need the workers) and political ones (we need the Latino vote). They think that's the big picture. It's not. What goes on in the human heart is the big picture.
Again: What does it mean when your first act is to break the laws of your new country? What does it mean when you know you are implicitly supported in lawbreaking by that nation's ruling elite? What does it mean when you know your new country doesn't even enforce its own laws? What does it mean when you don't even have to become an American once you join America?
 Our elites are lucky people. They were born in a suburb, went to Yale, and run the world from a desk. Which means this great question, immigration, is going to be decided by people who don't know what it is to sleep on a bench. Who don't know what it is to earn your space, your place. Who don't know what it is to grieve the old country and embrace the new country. Who don't know what it is to feel you're a little on the outside and have to earn your way in to the inside. Who think it was without a cost, because it was without cost for them.
The problem with our elites as they make our immigration policy is not that they have compassion and open-mindedness. It is that they are unknowing and empty-headed. They don't know, most of them, what others had to earn, and how much they, and their descendents, prize it and want to protect it.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," just out from Penguin, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
Modernity is a bitch.
Lets blame the Jews.
A rather free-wheeling thread.
Just would note to Phil that under Islam, the law IS the religion, the religion the law. Judges are theologians. Not only is there no separation of "Church" and State, the concept is utterly foreign.
This is what you endorse?
Phil – Just be careful with the whole Sharia thing. I invoked it a couple of years ago in regards to my comare (mistress) and now I've got two wives and I get to hear them complaining in stereo.
Good thing you don't have young children Phil. Sharia is a real bitch on the whole Teddy Bear naming thing.
Good thing your wife wasn't gang raped Phil. Sharia is an even bigger bitch on dealing with rape victims.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/20/saudi.rape.victim/index.html
Mike – You seem to be highly critical of Islam AND Judaism. Is there a religion that you prefer or are you just anti-religious?