News Synopsis - Our own children - not just
immigrants - need a patriotic education which today is denied them by an entrenched
education bureaucracy.
Newt Gingrich on Securing our Borders and
Preserving American Civilization
Challenge Number Three Gingrich Communications - News Source Newt.org
We should not worry about people who want to come to the United States to work
hard, pay taxes, obey the law, and become Americans. In fact, we should be delighted to
have new Americans join our country because historically they have been the source of
enormous talent, energy, and courage. From Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Carnegie to Albert
Einstein to Henry Kissinger to Arnold Schwarzenegger, people who wanted to improve their
lives, and in the process improve the country, have enriched America.
Nor should we be concerned that a substantial number of new Americans are Hispanic.
America has a long history of absorbing and blending people of many languages and
backgrounds. There have always been non-English newspapers in America and now we have
non-English radio and television. I am also not worried that some immigrants come here
only to earn money and then go home (Italian immigrants, in particular, did that in the
past).
What should worry us is the breakdown of will on the part of America to control the
borders and to ensure that new immigrants learn to be American. What should worry us is a
breakdown of will to protect America’s unique civilization.
Controlling the Border
No serious nation in the age of terror can afford to have wide-open borders with millions
of illegal aliens crossing at will. But along with making it much harder to sneak in, we
need to make it easier for guest workers to enter the country legally and to work here as
long as they obey the law. Millions of illegal immigrants are here because Americans are
hiring them. They have jobs in your neighborhood and you know it. They may be serving you
lunch at a restaurant, washing your car, and mowing your lawn. They are probably working
on the construction projects you drive past each day. Keeping these hard-working people
illegal makes them vulnerable to criminals and keeps them from playing responsible roles
in our communities.
We need a guest worker program to ensure that guest workers pay taxes, get driver’s
licenses, buy auto insurance, abide by the law, and that filters out criminals and
potential terrorists. The program should not be an automatic qualification for
citizenship, though eventual citizenship should be held out as an opportunity.
Patriotic Citizenship
Before we declare immigrants citizens, we need to go back and remember how to turn
immigrants into citizens. For much of American history, states ran Americanization
programs designed to help immigrants assimilate into American culture. In the last two
generations the liberal establishment has undermined and ridiculed American values,
American history, and even the idea of American citizenship. Today, the Left wants voting
opened to non-citizens, including illegal aliens. The Left regards national identity as
irrelevant and patriotic commitment to America as irrelevant. The Left could not be
further removed from the thinking of our Founding Fathers.
Dr. John Fonte, America’s leading expert on civic education, explains the Founding
Fathers’ thoughts on how to make good citizens: First, as noted, they had to think
about the young. After all, children were not born republican citizens, but would have to
be taught how to become citizens. Second, they had to think about immigrants, how best
should these newcomers become American citizens? Their answer was clear and unequivocal:
immigrants should be assimilated into American ideas and American common culture. Hence,
the Founders regularly used words associated with ideas (“principles,”
“beliefs”) and words associated with the common civic culture
(“habits,” “customs,” “manners,” “language,”
“laws,” “our society”).
Fonte noted that George Washington worried about large numbers of immigrants not
assimilating. In a letter to John Adams he wrote that “...the policy or advantage of
[immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much
questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or
bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or
their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word, soon become
one people.”
Alexander Hamilton insisted that “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the
energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the
exemption of citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on the love of country...”
It is clear what the Founding Fathers had in mind. To become an American citizen meant
becoming an American in values, culture, and historic understanding. Citizenship was
something to be studied and acquired, not merely a piece of paper to be granted.
Furthermore, citizenship was exclusive and required renouncing any other allegiance.
Patriotic Education
Our own children—not just immigrants—need a patriotic education which today is
denied them by an entrenched education bureaucracy. We cannot win this fight within the
education establishment; we need to break out of the establishment so that we can bring
pride and patriotism back to our schools.
The very concept of America is under assault. The traditional notion of our country as a
union of one people, American peoples, has been assaulted with multicultural, situation
ethics, and values neutral model where Western values and American civilization are
ignored, minimized or ridiculed. Unless we act to change things, our next generation will
grow up with no understanding of core American values. This will destroy America, as we
know it, as surely as if a foreign conqueror had overwhelmed us.
It is absolutely necessary to establish a firm foundation of patriotic education upon
which further knowledge can be built; otherwise, Americans will lack understanding of
American values and how important and great it is to be American. Thomas Jefferson wrote
that the chief value of studying the past is “rendering the people the safe, as they
are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty…. [h]istory by apprising them of the
past will enable them to [be a] judge of the future.”
It is important to understand what makes America so unique that generations upon
generations of diverse peoples immigrated to this great land for freedom and opportunity.
If Americans do not appreciate America, and for what she stands, then how could Americans
be ready and willing to defend her? As Jefferson noted, Americans need to know where this
country came from in order to know where it should go.
It is a sad fact that American students are entering and even graduating college without a
proficient understanding of U.S. history. For example, a 2003 survey of seniors of the top
50 colleges and universities conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
found that more than half of the participants did not know George Washington was the
commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and accepted
Brig. Gen. George Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown (32% said Washington, 36% thought
it was Ulysses S. Grant, 6% said it was Douglas MacArthur). Historian and Pulitzer price
winning author David McCullough draws the logical conclusion to this state of affairs:
“If you don’t know what Yorktown was all about, and that Washington was the
commander, you don’t know…a lot about American history that you ought to
know.”
We must adjust the lens through which we view our nation’s priorities, focusing
especially on education. Patriotic education, like a vastly improved math and science
education, is a key step we must take to win the future. The House and Senate education
committees (as well as the education committees of each state legislature) should
establish standing subcommittees on patriotic education that define standards by which
patriotic education should be taught. We need new curricula and textbooks that accurately
tell the story of how people of all backgrounds struggled to make this country great to be
used in schools. The Library of Congress should provide a resource system for American
history so as to universally provide access to a world-class information system.
We will work to re-establish patriotic education in the classrooms to reinforce American
values in our children. Schools should be required to teach American history; state
universities should demand an understanding of American history before students can earn
their degrees.
We must challenge the entrenched education bureaucracy that seeks to rewrite and
secularize American history.
We must challenge teachers and professors who are radically anti-American.
We must review school textbooks to ensure that students are being taught factually and not
through some radical reinterpretation or bias that distorts America and defames our
society.
We must rebuild the cultural bond of historic memory that has made America the most
exceptional nation in history.
But in all of this, we must not be naïve. Insisting that public schools actually teach
American history and American values will provoke a bitter fight with the left, no matter
how popular those values are with the American people.
If we lose this struggle in the classrooms we will lose the America that was proclaimed in
our Declaration of Independence and defined in our Constitution.
If we do not teach America’s patriotic history to our children then how are they
going to learn it? We must make sure that our young people understand America and what it
means to be an American. This is a unique country, the Founders were unique people, and
the Constitution is a remarkable document. We live in a very magical place called America
and we need to reassert this truth again and again |
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