Eric Liu
Eric Liu
Eric P. Liuis an American writer and founder of Citizen University. Liu served as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy at the White House between 1999 and 2000. He served as Speechwriter and Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Security Council at the White House from 1993 to 1994. Liu is currently a Senior Law Lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. In 2014 he was nominated by President Obama to be a member of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
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We live in a great country. It's time again to get religion about it.
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The summer of 1991, I took $2,000 of my savings and a desktop program, and I asked my friends to write 800 words about something they cared about. I got eight or nine articles and put them together. It was no frills, black and white, no graphics. I printed them out and just dumped piles around D.C.
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Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.
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You cannot mistake Bush's clarity of purpose. He believes in a story about freedom and opportunity that makes his followers feel like they aren't just ticking their days down but are part of something larger than themselves.
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Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics, it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.
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Why should citizenship be a matter of birth? The premise held by those who want to end birthright citizenship is that some people deserve it and some do not - that the status shouldn't be handed out automatically. Frankly, that's a premise worth considering.
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Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting.
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It turns out umpires and judges are not robots or traffic cameras, inertly monitoring deviations from a fixed zone of the permissible. They are humans.
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Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.
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The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop aging. But it is possible, by committing to show up for others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality.
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True fans of the Constitution, like true fans of the national pastime, acknowledge the critical role of human judgment in making tough calls. We don't expect flawless interpretation. We expect good faith. We demand honesty.
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Republicans say they want citizenship to truly mean something. Let's be equal-opportunity about it and test everyone, including those very Republicans and others whose forbears came here generations ago.
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If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.
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I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America.