Culture and Society

Reinvigorating Citizenship

Stephen Bates

I f citizenship is withering, who is at fault? Georgie Anne Geyer (in her bookAmericans No More." The

Death of Citizenship) and other authors have fingered a number of culprits, including various acts and atti- tudes of citizens, the processes of becoming a citizen, and indicators of social balkanization.

Citizen Acts The foundation of active citizenship is voting, which

ties the citizen to his government and its traditions. In the 19th century, some 80 percent of voters turned out. A decline began late in the century and continued to the 1920s, when the rate bottomed out around 40 per- cent. In recent presidential elections, it has hovered near 50 percent (in 1996, 49 percent).

Why the drop? One reason may be the growth of alternatives. In the 18th and 19th centuries, campaigns and elections were occasions for festivities--what an essayist in 1857 termed "election-jubilees." Alcohol was a key ingredient. When George Washington ran for Virginia burgess in 1758, he meticulously recorded his purchases, including 47 gallons of beer, 35 gal- lons of wine, two gallons of cider, a half-pint of brandy, and three barrels of rum punch. In Cabot, Vermont, circa 1800, political partying was more alluring than political parties; the town voted to lock up the whis- key for half an hour so that citizens would take time out to cast ballots. Political rallies often featured mu- sic and other entertainment, too. People then may have followed politics, says the political scientist Richard

E. Neustadt, "because they didn't have anything else to do in those boring times." Turnout dropped as citi- zens gained livelier alternatives, especially movies and broadcasting.

According to another theory, nonvoting reflects an excess of democracy. In 1992 the Census Bureau counted 511,039 popularly elected officials in the United States, according to Seymour Martin Lipset's American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. Elections are more numerous and more frequent here than elsewhere; only Switzerland, whose voting turn- out is similarly low, calls so many elections.

A few commentators suggest that negative adver- tising has diminished turnout. "These are campaigns that drive people away from the polls," says the col- umnist David Broder. The causality isn't altogether clear, though. In 1988, the year of the much-maligned Willie Horton ads, barely half of eligible citizens voted, the lowest in 40 years. A CBS survey, however, found that citizens who were disenchanted with the tone of the race were mostly voters. Nonvoters tended to be so inattentive that they were unperturbed.

In his book What It Means to Be an American: Es- says on the American Experience, Michael Walzer goes further, suggesting that it may be clean politics that's driving away voters. Whenever Americans have mo- bilized to participate in high numbers, political dis- course has turned rowdy, even violent. In 1834, for example, New York newspapers reported that 15,000 "enraged Whigs" blocked the streets until they were

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dispersed by soldiers. Walzer suggests that the only way to avoid dirty politics and the danger of violence is "to avoid significant issues or to make it clear that the democratic political struggle is a charade whose outcome won't affect the resolution of the i ssues- - and then rates of participation will quickly drop off."

Finally, some experts lay part of the blame for low turnout on the process of voter registration. Among registered voters, turnout in the United States isn't much different from turnout in other Western democ- racies. But only in the United States does the entire burden of registration fall on the individual rather than on the government. The government has tried to sim- plify the process by letting citizens register at shop- ping centers, post offices, welfare offices, motor ve- hicle registries, and elsewhere. On a smaller scale, some states have tried to ease the process of voting itself, allowing citizens to cast ballots by mail.

Here, however, we confront a trade-off. When we try to raise turnout by making it easier to vote, we also rob the process of some of its solemnity. Keeping one's registration current, traveling to the polls on election day, standing in line, marking a ballot--these are the transaction costs of participating in the American po- litical system. Voting (and to a lesser extent register- ing) is a ritual, and, as Joseph Campbell has written, "a ritual concentrates your mind on the implications of what you are doing." For Geyer and other commenta- tors, citizenship made easy is citizenship devalued.

While less publicized than voting, no-show jurors may represent an equally serious problem. Nationwide, some 60 percent of people summoned for jury service don't bother showing up. Many suffer no penalty. A 1995 Los Angeles County poll found that 41 percent of people consider jury duty a matter of civic respon- sibility, well below the 57 percent who deem it a mat- ter of personal choice. The problem is exacerbated by the popular "three strikes and you' re out" laws in many states. Because of the cumulative impact of a convic- tion, more and more defendants now demand jury tri- als on the first or second felony as well as the third one.

An assortment of reforms has been suggested. Some commentators recommend eliminating most or all exemptions from jury service; what began as a nar- row recognition that the community needed ready access to a handful of individuals (such as the only doctor in town) has become a contest to establish oc- cupational status. The Washington-based Council for Court Excellence has promoted a system in which ju- rors serve for a day or a trial but no longer, rendering jury duty more predictable. Some courts are experi-

menting with ways to make trials more comprehen- sible to jurors, such as letting them submit questions for witnesses. Minnesota has erected billboards en- couraging jury service. California has contemplated denying driver's license renewals to people who have ignored a jury summons. And some groups are pro- ducing classroom videos and exercises to help students understand the importance of jury service.

Geyer cites the political scientist Robert Putnam's concern about the decline of voluntary associations. In his widely discussed 1995 article "Bowling Alone" and several follow-ups, Putnam has developed the the- sis that American "social capital" is in dangerous de- cline. Controlling for education, Americans of today are less likely than those of 20 years ago to belong to church-related groups, bowling leagues, PTAs, and a number of other organizations. Overall, membership has fallen by about a quarter since 1974. Putnam's thesis builds on the work of Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, Peter Berger, and others on the im- portance of "mediating institutions" in American life.

Not everyone agrees with Putnam's diagnosis. Jour- nalist Robert Samuelson points out that as percent- ages of the population, more Americans belong to pro- fessional associations and sports clubs today than twenty years ago, fewer belong to labor unions and church-related groups, and about the same proportion belong to other types of organizations. Putnam over- states the decline, in Samuelson's view, by control- ling for education. The membership rate within each level of education has dropped, but because the popu- lation as a whole has grown more educated, the over- all rate has not shifted substantially. And Michael Schudson, author of the recent book The Good Citi- zen: A History of American Civic Life, observes that some m e m b e r s h i p s revea l nothing abou t the individual's actual involvement. He writes: "If people who formerly joined the YMCA to use the gym now go to the local fitness center, Putnam's measures will show a decrease in civic participation when real civic activity is unchanged."

If there is a problem, what can be done? Some schol- ars (including Putnam) favor government programs to promote volunteerism, such as AmeriCorps. Con- servatives, in contrast, see government as at least part of the problem. They favor shifts in tax and liability laws to help voluntary organizations. Both approaches are now being tried, so far with no clearcut results.

Citizen Attitudes Patriotism seems about as strong as ever. Accord-

ing to comparative Gallup surveys of some 30 coun-

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tries, Americans are more patriotic, as gauged by pride in nationality, than citizens of any other nation. In the mid-1990s, writes Lipset, 75 percent of American adults expressed pride in their nationality, compared to 54 percent of Britons, 35 percent of French, and 20 percent of West Germans. Asked if they would leave their country if free to do so, affirmative answers came from 38 percent of Britons, 30 percent of Germans, 21 percent of French, 19 percent of Canadians, and just 11 percent of Americans. In a 1998 survey, 70 percent of Americans said patriotism is very impor- tant to them personally, ranking it ahead of self-ful- fillment (66 percent), religion (62 percent), having children (59 percent), community involvement (47 percent), and money (31 percent). The only value that ranked ahead of patriotism was hard work (83 percent).

While individual attitudes remain strong, cultural shifts are unmistakable. Walzer notes "a certain cyni- cism today about the symbolic expressions of Ameri- can loyalty." Holidays--venerable ones like the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, as well as the more re- cently commemorated birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.--exist mainly as days off from work (accompa- nied by department store sales), with most Americans untouched by any communal observance.

While patriotism rates remain high, trust in gov- ernment has fallen sharply in recent decades. From 1958 to 1966, roughly half of Americans said the fed- eral government could be trusted to do the right thing "most of the time"; around 15 percent said it could always be trusted. In 1995, 18 percent thought it could be trusted most of the time; only 1 percent trusted the government all the time.

In recent years, trust has rebounded somewhat. The proportion of Americans who trust Washington rose from 21 percent in 1994 to 38 percent at the end of 1997, then fell 5 points in early 1998. Analysts at- tribute the rise to the healthy economy, falling crime rates, and other indicators of a strong nation.

The issue of trust in government has fueled two provocative debates among conservatives in recent years. The first arose in 1996, when the magazine First Things asked, with reference to abortion, "whether we have reached or are reaching the point where consci- entious citizens can no longer give moral assent to the existing regime." The point was soon echoed by Na- tional Review, which published a tongue-in-cheek let- ter suggesting the formation of independent Christian city-states. The writer closed: "Anyone out there ready to join me in a new secessionist movement?" Other anti-abortion activists adopted the strident rhetoric of First Things. Focus on the Family president James C.

Dobson spoke of "the illegitimacy of the regime now passing itself off as a democracy" in the United States. Evangelist (and Watergate co-conspirator) Charles Colson contended that the United States, in allowing partial-birth abortions, is "no better than Nazi Ger- many." From an ideological group once committed to the principle "my country, right or wrong," these were astonishing sentiments.

With the "regime" talk, First Things and its fol- lowers seemed to want to diminish trust in govern- ment even further. In 1997, two editors of the Weekly Standard made the opposite case, suggesting that dis- trust of government ought to worry conservatives. "How can Americans love their nation if they hate its government?" wrote William Kristol and David Brooks, in the course of calling for "a conservatism committed to national greatness." They contended that "what's missing from today's American conservatism is America," and that filling the gap requires a revival of the activist traditions of the Republican Party. Like the First Things pronouncement, Kristol and Brooks triggered a lively round of Op-Eds, albeit with little real-world consequence.

Making Citizens Geyer laments the declining salience of citizenship.

As of 1993, only slightly more than one in three legal permanent residents of the United States sought to become citizens. Immigrants once had to become citi- zens in order to receive many government benefits, but no longer. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot restrict welfare benefits paid to resident aliens. The Court reasoned that because resident aliens are politically powerless, the judiciary must be espe- cially sensitive to any governmental incursions against them. The explanation is somewhat curious, as Jef- frey Rosen of the New Republic notes, because the reason for aliens' political powerlessness is that the nation has traditionally excluded them from voting.

Perhaps that tradition is on the way out, too. Geyer recounts the tale of Takoma Park, Maryland, which in 1991 voted to give non-citizens the right to vote in local elections. As she notes, Takoma Park was nei- ther the first nor the largest city to take this step; New York City granted non-citizens the vote in the 1960s in some local elections, including school board elec- tions. Geyer also objects that federal law now discour- ages states from verifying the citizenship of people registering to vote.

Some observers ascribe fluctuations in citizenship applications to shifts in immigration sources. Natu- ralization rates tend to be roughly proportional to the

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distance an immigrant has traveled. "Asians and Eu- ropeans routinely naturalized almost as soon as they became eligible, usually after five years as permanent legal immigrants," writes Washington Post journalist Roberto Suro in Strangers Among Us. "By contrast, Canadians and Mexicans rarely would become citi- zens even after living in the United States for decades. Along with immigrants from the Caribbean and Cen- tral America, they retained intense ties to their home- lands and often lived with the dream of returning."

Naturalization rates now may be rising as a result of anti-immigrant sentiment. In the view of immigra- tion experts, the recent uptick in citizenship applica- tions results from proposals like Proposition 187 in California, which sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants. For many immigrants, according to David Rosenberg of Citizenship USA, "citizenship was the best way to protect themselves and their fami- lies for the future." We may lament this outcome if we prefer that immigrants naturalize out of lofty mo- tives. "Ideally, we want people to become citizens because they admire the United States for its highest goals and accomplishments, and wish to become a part of our people, participating as full partners in the gov- erning of the nation," writes Nathan Glazer. Alterna- tively, we may conclude that nothing could be more American than using the democratic process to pro- tect one's interests.

Geyer also faults the process of becoming citizens. No longer do immigrants face a door that, as Henry James wrote in 1907, "opens to them...only with a hun- dred forms and ceremonies, grindings and grumblings of the key." Citizenship exams have become (in Geyer's words) "little more than a joke and a fraud," requiring little study and, often, no English competency. Worse, the exams sometimes stress the prosaic benefits of be- longing, what some have called the "commoditization of citizenship." And the tests seem suspiciously easy. Nationwide, under 10 percent of applicants fail the tests. "We try to administer the test in line with the applicant's capacity," an INS official in Puerto Rico told research- ers. Those multitudes who pass the test move on to a swearing-in ceremony that has been degraded to a per- functory, bureaucratic process. "Our tendency today would be to strip seriousness from the process [of be- coming citizens]," writes Glazer, "and that would be a mistake, for there is little enough that is taken seriously in our lives today."

Finally, just as it has become easy to get, citizen- ship has become nearly impossible to lose. Under the Supreme Court's decision in Afroyim v. Risk (1967), every citizen has a fight under the Fourteenth Amend-

ment to remain a citizen unless he voluntarily relin- quishes the status. In Mona Harrington's analysis: "As a practical matter, short of formal renunciation of citi- zenship American citizens legally have virtually un- limited scope for the expression of dual loyalties."

A favorite culprit in the assault on citizenship is immigration policy. Some critics contend that the na- tion is simply admitting too many immigrants. Ac- cording to the Economist, one in four Californians to- day was born outside the United States; for Los Angeles, the figure is 40 percent. (For the nation as a whole, the figure is under 10 percent.)

Others say the issue is not the absolute number of immigrants, but the source of immigration. The United States once encouraged immigration from the nations that had provided the majority of America's popula- tion at the time. Since 1965, the numbers have shifted. European newcomers now are outnumbered by Asians and Latin Americans, who together constituted 85 percent of immigrants in the 1980s. Current policy encourages as immigrants, writes Geyer, "the poorest and least developed peoples of the world, whose cul- tural habits were furthest from America's."

What are the consequences of these policies? Ac- cording to Professor Peter H. Schuck of the Yale Uni- versity School of Law, the foreign-born accounted for 3.6 percent of total federal prisoners in 1980; in 1996, it had risen to 29 percent. On the other hand, studies have found that immigrants do not diminish the wages of most Americans, with the exception of unskilled workers: High school dropouts earn some 5 percent less than they would absent widespread immigration.

Geyer and others also fault the demise of assimila- tion. Newcomers once were asked, she writes, "to learn English, promise to obey American laws, have a sort of vague 'attachment to the Constitution,' and swear allegiance to a political creed that in fact exemplified a universal inclusiveness and which had built into it a unique respect for their cultural (if not political or military) origins." These "amazingly minimal and modest requests are today no longer made." Similar arguments are advanced in Peter D. Salins's Assimila- tion, American Style and John J. Miller's The Unmak- ing of Americans.

These views are shared by middle-class Americans, according to studies by the sociologist Alan Wolfe. While Wolfe's respondents are divided on the ques- tion of immigration po l i cy - -mos t favor a middle ground of relatively open borders, with the rest di- vided between sharp restrictions and no restrictions-- nearly everyone praises "good immigrants": those who adapt to American ways, work hard and maintain self-

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sufficiency, and quickly become citizens. "As most Americans grapple with these issues," Wolfe writes in One Nation, After All, "they support the principle that groups within the United States ought to be al- lowed to retain their distinctiveness, but only so long as they do so within an official culture that insists on the priority of the national community over subnational ethnic groups." The respondents are equally unsym- pathetic to bilingualism. "Americans place great store on English as the language of the country," Wolfe writes. "When given a series of statements about the obligations of citizenship--voting, keeping informed, serving in war--being able to speak and understand English placed second in importance, behind only re- porting a crime that one has witnessed."

Why has assimilation become an issue in the 1990s? As in the 1890s, more immigrants are coming from non-European countries, and they stand out in starker contrast to the American majority. In addition, some immigrant cultures actively discourage assimilation. For many Chinese Americans, writes Eric Liu in The AccidentalAsian, "the assimilist is a traitor to his kind, to his class, to his own family. He cannot gain the world without losing his soul." On occasion such re- sistance is self-protective, as when parents fear that assimilation for their children will produce indiffer- ence to schoolwork, insolence, and other negative traits that, in the parents' view, prevail among native-born American children.

While we become citizens in the legal sense through birth or naturalization, most of us come to understand the import and obligations of citizenship through edu- cation. Geyer criticizes the schools for embracing multiculturalism and neglecting their traditional func- tion of p roduc ing patr iot ic , proud ci t izens. Multiculturalism, she writes, "is one of the major movements weakening citizenship." She and other critics of multiculturalism contend that today's cur- riculum too quickly finds fault with the United States and its founders; overplays incidents of oppression and victimization; promotes marginal figures to promi- nence based principally on race, ethnicity, or gender; and slights historical accuracy in an effort to retool students' attitudes.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is particularly concerned about historical accuracy. In The Disuniting o f America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, he quotes one educator who suggests that different stan- dards ought to apply to multicultural works: "To evalu- ate a book on [Crispus] Attucks solely by the canons of scholarly objectivity and historical accuracy is miss- ing the point. It ignores the necessity of creating black

counterparts to the Nathan Hales and Molly Pitchers of the white past." Schlesinger, not surprisingly, dis- agrees: "The issue is the teaching of bad history un- der whatever ethnic banner."

Still, schools have presented myth and misinforma- tion before. In a popular series of antebellum history textbooks, Peter Parley concocted heroic acts by young boys, especially during Indian raids. The tales, writes Frances FitzGerald in America Revised, "were there not just to make good reading but to provide moral instruc- tion." In 1883, a century before anyone spoke of an Afrocentric curriculum, the black educator Richard Robert Wright declared that blacks had originated "all the great religions" of the world, "our methods of al- phabetic writing," and "the majority of the sciences."

While part of the debate over multiculturalism re- volves around accuracy, both sides accept that more is at stake. Both sides agree that education can and should affect students' attitudes. The critics contend that the schools need to promote patriotism and pride, inculcating loyalty to nation. Many educators, in con- trast, concentrate on instilling group pride in order to raise the self-esteem of minorities and to promote in- tergroup tolerance.

Opting Out of the Unum In the view of some critics, shifts in technology,

politics, and economics are leading us toward a borderless world. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Pico Iyer depicts an executive without a country--a management consultant who crossed bor- ders 139 times in the past year. "The 'borderless economy' we hear trumpeted so often means that today's businessmen and women have to live every- where at once, and the speed of global communica- tions means that they can be anywhere tomorrow," writes Iyer. But, he adds, the globetrotters must face "the most basic human questions: Where do they be- long, what is their community and to whom are they most responsible?" Concerns about blurring borders cross the political spectrum. From the left, William Greider asks (in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism): "What is a nation, after all, if commerce has destroyed the meaning of national boundaries?" From the right, Pat Buchanan (in The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereign~ and So- cial Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy) declares that "a country that cannot control its borders isn't really a country anymore."

While some commentators focus on the need to re- assert national sovereignty as a counterweight to globalism, others call for the rebirth of localism. "In

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the age of NAFTA," Michael Sandel writes, "the poli- tics of neighborhood matters more, not less." Benjamin Barber proposes "a nationwide system of neighbor- hood assemblies of approximately 5,000 citizens that would meet weekly and permit discussion and even- tually voting on issues of local, regional, and national significance."

Citizenship Today and Tomorrow Finally, critics worry about withdrawal from the

civitas, especially withdrawal by the wealthy. In his article on global executives, Iyer notes the boom in high-priced special tickets on airlines. Such t ickets-- whether called first class, business class, connoisseur class, or (as Virgin Atlantic boldly does) upper class-- are "increasingly popular in a world where other bor- ders are collapsing." The result is the airborne equiva- lent of gated communities.

Critics also lament the rise of authentic gated com- munities, where, in the words of Robert Kaplan, people live like "resident expatriates." The number of corpo- rate-built insulated communities has increased from about a thousand in the early 1960s to more than 80,000 by the mid-1980s. Writing in The Wilson Quarterly, Andrew Stark details the divisions of labor in one such community, Hidden Hills, a Los Angeles suburb with the highest per-capita income of any California com- munity. Operating from a city hall 75 feet outside the gates of the town, the government provides security, trash collection, and the like, while the private homeowners' association oversees the roads, parks, and Fourth of July celebrations. As Stark explains, the city hall is outside the gates because, as a government office, it must be open to the public--that is, outsid- ers. That's also why the local government does not control public spaces and civic celebrations: so that they need not be accessible to nonresidents.

What are the implications? Kaplan notes that with gated communities (as well as malls, private health clubs, and the like), people opt out of the public sphere, the sphere of the social contract, in favor of a more tightly regulated private sphere governed by its own contract. Paying for their own services and resenting the obligation to pay taxes to help those outside the city walls, many residents of such communities "have ceased to think of themselves as Americans in any important sense," in Christopher Lasch's view, "im- plicated in America's destiny for better or worse."

So where do we stand? Reflecting on 223 years of American citizenship offers grounds for confidence as well as anxiety. Commentators of the past have warned that citizenship was on its last legs. Every surge

of immigration has provoked doubts about the nature and stability of American identity. How our schools train citizens has engendered perpetual discord and occasional violence. The various groups that consti- tute this polyglot nation have regularly abraded one another, often much more so than now. And many of today's problems, especially those related to immi- gration and globalization, are afflicting most of the developed world. While neither the familiarity nor the ubiquity of concerns renders them invalid, it may in- spire some degree of hope.

Equally significant are the issues that, at least for now, have slipped off the agenda. Scholars pondering citizenship in the late 1960s would have worried about protests, assassinations, and riots. They also would have probed the "crisis of legitimacy" that social sci- entists detected as an offshoot of record-high distrust of government. Thirty years later, Americans distrust officialdom even more, yet they continue to revere the nation and its system of government. The crisis talk has faded.

Still, Geyer and other commentators are wise to call attention to the perils. Just as Americans living abroad often retain the attitudes and mores of their homeland, foreigners do not become Americans simply by relo- cating. Upon the immigrant's arrival, nothing about the topography or the climate extinguishes Old World ethnic hatreds, and nothing instills an abiding faith in the American Creed. If the strength of the American nation lies in its people, with their distinct attitudes and beliefs, then the pace and the nature of immigra- tion raise a host of legitimate questions.

Other matters also merit public attention and de- bate. If schooling can create good citizens, it can also turn out inferior ones. If we produce one kind of citi- zen by emphasizing the noble aspects of the Ameri- can past, we may produce a different kind by playing up the ignoble aspects. And if government policy can promote national unity, as it has done in the past, then it also has the power to promote discord.

Historians love to point out that there was nothing inevitable about the founding of the United States, the ratification of the Constitution, or the outcome of the Civil War. As we enter the 21 st century, the endurance of the nation is far from preordained. The future of America is likely to be intertwined with the future of American citizenship.

Stephen Bates, the author of three books, is literary edi- tor of The Wilson Quarterly and an attorney practicing in Washington, D.C. This article is adapted from "Citizen- ship in Conflict," a monograph commissioned by the Rob- ert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation of Chicago in 1998.