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I think of America as a set of ideas more than a firm border.

Some of the ideas include that of hospitality to those outside of its borders, a long-standing tradition here.

I happen to find that tradition very appealing and find it very sad that many people speak so negatively of it.

I also appreciate another American tradition, one of defiance of rules many consider unjust, and using that defiance to change the rules.

Let me flip this over for a minute. I think you understand now why I like the idea of open borders - it is hospitality, and fair dealing with people who genuinely want to work. They want to help us out, doing jobs most of us don’t want to do, and in return all they ask is to be left alone.

I just don’t see anything bad about this.

So tell me, what’s so great about closed borders? Why is inhospitality, turning your back to people, so appealing to you? Why do you want to separate willing workers from employers which need employees?

Why not let people work who want to work?

I like to see a nation that grows, and a society that is open minded and receptive to all who do not threaten or oppose its core values. Many Muslims do oppose our core values, and I’m right with you in wanting to throw them out. But the hispanic immigrants who are 99% of this situation are Catholic, support our core values and just want the opportunity to work hard and succeed like Americans do.

Tell me why this is so bad.

(Please ignore the impact on the health and educational system. I’d like to hear what is wrong with having them here, not how their kids are educated or their health is treated. I want to understand about the principle of borders itself and why you consider it important. Frankly, I think if there was no impact at all on our educational or medical systems, you would still want to get rid of illegals, and I want to know why this is.)

America is not an idea. Have you actually thought of the consequences of your theory.
1. Anyone who holds your beliefs are American.
2. Any place where this is held is American.
3. Those who disagree with you are not American.
4. Any place where your views are not held is not America.

For you, most of our historic cities are not American, but parts of Australia would be.
For you 1/3 Americans are not American. Although, I wonder if it has occurred to you that many foreigners and their children fail to immigrate. The illegals you love are therefore turning American soil into non-America.
The logical consequence of your argument holds that illegal immigrants are a threat!

A country is based not only on laws but also on a culture. The Founding Fathers were all Anglo-American and their arguments fell along these lines.
No governing system is independent of the values of its citizens. In keeping with the ideas of the founders, we believe that only a virtuous country can remain free. The United States was founded by men who shared a common British heritage and Protestant values. This culture of liberty has been the thread that has held us together and has kept us from the fate of other Republics. The loss of these ideals virtues through a failure to transmit these to posterity and to assimilate immigrants is an existential threat to the United States greater than that of any foreign power. Our education and immigration policies must suit the needs of this nation and our posterity, not those of special interests.

I think of America as a set of ideas more than a firm border.

Please see http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000444.html

America: proposition nation?

There isn't much more inhuman in our national life than the notion that the United States is a "creedal" or "propositional" nation. We need something to hold us together, so it is said, and we don't have blood and soil, which sounds Nazi anyway, so we have to rely on our national creed - the proposition that all men are created equal. It is acceptance of that creed that makes us American, and since anyone can accept it, anyone from anywhere can become an American immediately simply by saying the magic words, while otherwise staying just as he is.

So what's wrong with the idea? Lots:

The more insistent people get that America is a propositional nation the more conclusions they try to extract from the notion of equality. Equality quickly becomes destructive, however, because all it can tell you is that nothing can have any quality that makes it different from anything else. A little equality may be good, as a restraint on other things and as recognition of certain respects in which we are indeed equal, but it becomes crushing and inhuman when made the sole basis of a constitution. It doesn't help to add liberty, since on the abstract line of thought proposed liberty turns out to be identical with equality--everyone has the same right to get his own way. (If the two weren't the same why would the ACLU be so strongly committed to diversity, inclusiveness, affirmative action and all the rest of it?)
If a nation is creedal the people can't be self-governing. The creed's coherence requires an authorized interpreter, and whoever the interpreter is gets to tell everyone else what to think and do, and no backtalk. Since dissent from the creed is a direct attack on the social order, the more the implications of the creed get translated directly into law the narrower the range of permissible opinion. If the creed is liberty and equality it will therefore turn out in practice to be a form of those things that is indistinguishable from servitude.
What happens to people who are born American of American parents, live in America, marry American, have American children, work for a living, obey the law, pay their taxes and mow their lawns, but decide they reject the creed? Do they suddenly become not American? What's so tolerant, inclusive and un-mean-spirited about that? Shouldn't there be an essential difference between a nation and a political movement?
Does anyone anywhere have the right not to be an American? If being an American is simply accepting human equality, and if accepting human equality is incontestibly right and refusing it is simply embracing discrimination, oppression and violence, then why shouldn't it be universally compulsory? If American government is based on a universal proposition and not on particularist claims and loyalties, then why doesn't whatever right American government has to rule America apply equally to Madagascar?

For all these reasons it's wrong to view America as a propositional nation. America is a particular group of people living together in one place under common institutions and joined together by their history as such, and by the beliefs, attitudes and habits, the loyalties and aversions, the personal and family ties, and even the distinctions and disputes that have grown out of that history. To reduce all those human realities to a proposition is unforgivable. It is certainly legitimate to propose that our life together be inspired by certain truths about man and the common good. The practical function of defining America as a propositional nation, however, is to foreclose discussion of just what those truths are. It is to abolish America as a human reality in the interests of America as the ideological project of a manipulative elite.

Posted by Jim Kalb