By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
As we celebrate our nation's 237th birthday, a crucial
facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic
and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering
civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens.
What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both
parties keep pushing to create a new "path to citizenship" for
millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still
matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who
would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim.
The pavers of the amnesty pathway think illusory
requirements of paying piddling "fines" and back taxes will inculcate
an adequate sense of responsibility and ownership in the American way. Other
fair-weather friends of patriotism satisfy themselves with shallow holiday pop
quizzes on American history to fulfill the "well-informed" part of
the "well-informed citizenry" mandate of our Founding Fathers.
But Thomas Jefferson said it well: "No government
can continue good but under the control of the people; and ... their minds are
to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in
habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice... These are the inculcations
necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of
government."
John Adams said it better: "Liberty can no more
exist without virtue ... than the body can live and move without a soul."
And Thomas Paine said it best: "When we are planning
for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."
Civic virtue cannot be purchased with token gestures or
passed down in perfect form like a complete set of family china. A life of honor,
honesty, integrity, self-improvement and self-discipline is something you
strive ever to attain. Being American is a habit of mind, but also a habit of
heart and soul. Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "electric cord in that
Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together,
that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in
the minds of men throughout the world."
Calvin Coolidge, profiled in "Why Coolidge
Matters," a terrific new book by Charles C. Johnson, echoed the Founding
Fathers' emphasis on virtue, restraint and work ethic. "If people can't
support themselves," he concluded, "we'll have to give up
self-government."
The failure of public schools to impart even rudimentary
knowledge of self-government principles, natural rights theory and the rule of
law is compounded by the suicidal abandonment of civic education. As Stanford
University education professor William Damon notes: "Our disregard of
civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect
on the attitudes, understanding and behavior of large portions of the youth
population in the United States today."
Add militant identity politics, a cancerous welfare
state, entitled dependence and tens of millions of unassimilated immigrants to
the heap, and you have a toxic recipe for what Damon calls "societal
decadence -- literally, a 'falling away,' from the Latin decadere."
Civilizations that disdain virtue die.
Independence Day sparklers will light the skies overhead
this July 4th, but George Washington's "sacred fire of liberty"
belongs in the breasts of Americans every day of the year.
How to rescue citizenship and civic virtue?
Let's start by sending a message to politicians in the
nation's capital who imperil our sovereignty.
Citizenship -- good citizenship -- is not just a piece of
government-issued paper. It is not merely a bureaucratic "status."
It's a lifelong practice and propagation of founding principles. A nation of
low information is just half the problem. A nation of low character cannot long
remain a free nation.
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