> How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Allegiance is not love. Allegiance is recognising yourself as part of some whole. It’s not impossible to feel that and also dislike or even hate the whole, though it probably would not come without psychological issues unless you channel that into political activity to effect what you think is a positive change to the whole. It’s complicated.
In terms of what dictates your action, true allegiance is more significant: it is possible to really love somebody and not do something for their sake, but if you really are a part of something then it’s not much of a choice.
Some people, culturally or temperamentally, have an allegiance to their family and do not care beyond that. Some feel allegiance to a community (whether defined religiously or geographically or elsewise). Some people feel allegiance to nothing. In the US specifically feeling belonging to one’s state I presume could be more powerful than belonging to the country. It is not always or not everywhere that people feel a strong allegiance to a country, even if they always lived in one and never thought of moving.
Among people who do feel country allegiance, I would imagine it is rare to feel belonging to two different countries with a similar force. Perhaps those people do exist (e.g., someone who mostly lived in country A but was born to immigrants from country B and also spent a lot of time in country B), and then it would be mighty unfair if they had to pick one, but people I know can usually classify one citizenship as “convenience” and another one as “true”.
Comprehensively assessing true allegiances (or lack thereof) of a prospective citizen is fraught, but as phrased the question does not actually require that. For 99.9% of people, “do you feel allegiance first to a foreign state?” is pretty unobtrusive and has a clear answer. The main caveat is, of course, that those for whom the answer is positive will almost certainly just lie.
In case using tangentially related quotes is considered smarter than original thought, I looked one up too and I raise you Orson Scott Card:
“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to… a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”
Any law that allows a government to renounce people's citizenship for broad, vague reasons is a very, very bad law. Regardless of its intentions, it will be used as a tool to subvert the rights of citizens even outside the target group.
Amazed to see such a take after what happened in LA. Obviously the median immigrant has strong feelings of loyalty to their mother soil as can be witnessed by the huge Mexican flags and the direct testimony of many individuals. Should we deport all those people who swear loyalty to “La Rasa”? If we want immigrants, and we should because we need them to lead us into the future, we need to be realistic about their loyalties. People are proud of their race/nationality, and immigrants often even moreso.
The Chicano movement made their own flag back in the Cesar Chavez era. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Gen Los Angeleños of Mexican origin could have used (and plenty did) and a sign finger portion of protestors made sure to incorporate the US flag as well, but a significant portion simply did not realize that the Mexican flag is not viewed as an ethnic marker outside of CA.
The US State of California WAS Mexico in 1848. Much of California still is Mexico. The personal notion of "mother soil" may have nothing to do with current political boundaries.
Wow ... this will suck. Islam, the ideology, either is a state, or meant to be a state (just ask a few muslims, they'll explain. Also historically islam was a state until 1918/1923, and died in WW1, with the leader of islam, the caliph, abandoning islam)
And, frankly, while this is most prominent with Islam, that religions describe their goal to be a single state and trying to be a single state is the norm, not the exception. Christianity is the exception here that does not want to have state power (even though that rule screams "compromise with the Roman emperor", and hasn't exactly been followed very well once Christians were well established)
So no more muslims allowed in the US then? In fact no religion allowed except Christianity or revering the US directly somehow?
However, I disagree with your conception of Islam as a state, even if it was explained to you by Muslims. The strongest argument I can build from your statements is that, according to the reference to the end of the Sunni Caliphate in 1923,
p1) only Sunnis are Muslims, and
p2) the Caliphate is unique, and
p3) the Sunni Caliphate of 1923 is the original one, thus
c) it was the state of Islam.
We can disprove all of these premises. p1) is obvious, there are more Muslim religions than just Sunnis. The earliest schism was the Sunni-Shiites split, happening immediately after the first prophet's death.
About p2), while I'm fuzzy on the details, I'm pretty sure that between the 900s and the 1900s there were at least 3 major, parallel Caliphates and also a bunch of smaller Caliphates. Geographically they were even sometimes overlapping. It might be interesting that the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire (the one in question) was a Hanafist (a Sunni splinter group) Caliphate.
On p3), the Sunni caliphate of 1923 was reestablished after a 300 year "hiatus" by the Ottoman Emperor to lay claim on Crimea. It had no representation besides a leader, the Sultan. Before the dissolution of the major Sunni Caliphate in the 1500s it relocated several times, from today's Syria to today's Iraq, to then and now Egypt. Thus we can say that the Caliphate had no continuous existence. We can furthermore say that the time the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was the Caliph, it was because it was a diplomatic ploy of the secular power of the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, c) must be wrong. There are more Muslims than Sunnis, the Sunni Caliphate wasn't unique, and the Caliphate that ended in 1923 was not the original one.
A less philosophical counter-argument could be the vigorous infighting between different Muslim groups we see today. I'm curious how the war on Iran changes that, if at all.
You're applying logic to dogma. I hope you understand your error at this point, but as to exactly what's wrong:
... every group of every monotheistic religion says and believes they're the only "true" group, their group is the only valid group, and the entirety of that religion. Islamic dogma states very clearly, and every muslim will repeat it, that there is "only one islam".
This despite the fact that what you say is correct. There's 100s, minimum, of different versions of islam.
Your idea, that history is clear proof to the contrary ... well history is clear proof that there is no god and therefore no valid religion. In the case of islam, one might point out that the central promise of islam as a religion is that muslims will win militarily, because god will intervene directly (but "of course" what is currently happening in Iran proves they are wrong and every other group of muslims is right - this is the sort of argument you're up against). The fact that any caliphate fell at all is a pretty damn obvious contradiction to the entire religion.
Frankly, I must say, I like the "goal" of Christians and Jews a whole lot better.
Does that mean all Americans should be stripped of their other citizenship since they have allegiance to a foreign state? For example Barron Trump is a dual citizen.
Let me escalate: I think such a bill would find bipartisan support. Right now might be a good time to attempt it.
I hate the idea of revoking citizenship. But a question about swearing, on naturalisation, that your supreme allegiance is to America should be incredibly popular to secure.
Hate to break it to you, but you'd have to find support from the IRS / Ways and Means Committee first. For these institutions, the primary characteristic of US Citizenship is filing your taxes, no matter where to live or if you've ever even lived in the country. This puts the USA in the same odd category as Eritrea, Hungary, and I believe one other country.
And despite the difficulty of revoking US citizenship, the rate of revocations has increased over the last decade or two. If there was such a simple way to toss out that old rag, I'm sure there would be many more (and a little less tax revenue).
So I'm afraid* the USA is much more transactional than you think, at least regarding citizenship.
*I must admit this is sarcasm. Thank god the US is transactional rather than so stubbornly patriotic about citizenship.
That would have the consequence that naturalized citizen would be second class. Because they have to watch out for what to say, otherwise somebody might denounce them and they have to fight against their live being destroyed.
The class of American citizens with two nationalities is populated more with the native born than naturalised citizens. If the class became second class, the latter would be—I suspect—underrepresented in it.
> Also, to be pedantic, you don’t have to have citizenship of a foreign country in order to have a greater allegiance to it.
The behavior of the christian conservative cult is a bit more than a pedantic detail at this point. Why is trying to get Israel into a conflict to get Jesus to come and accelerate the end of all jews on Earth not antisemitism? I don't see wanting to use the Jew for cockfighting making it to the State Department's summary of antisemitism.
This is legitimately debatable. If your allegiance is first to a foreign state, in my view, you should have to relinquish your American citizenship.