Matt Bai: I’m American. And You?
...Last week, a group of senior Republican senators called for hearings on repealing the 14th Amendment; that’s the one that affords children born on American soil automatic citizenship. At the same time, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were among those posting outraged Twitter updates over the decision to allow an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the fallen trade center towers....
Sometimes the threat is economic or cultural. The 1850s, for instance, saw the rise of the American Party — more commonly called the Know Nothings, because that was their response to any inquiries about their secret activities. Like us, they found themselves stranded in a fast-changing society, its economy transformed by emerging railroads and this gizmo called the telegraph.
“If your status was slipping, and if your grandfather had been a general in the Revolution but now you had no access to the new money, you could feel like your country was going away,” explains Ted Widmer, a Brown University historian who wrote a book on the period. The Know Nothings responded by lashing out at Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Some members supposedly stole a stone meant for the Washington Monument, because it was a gift from the pope, and threw it into the Potomac River.
At other times, the societal peril has been physical and imminent. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers oversaw the forced relocation of more than 100,000 immigrants of Japanese descent. Most were citizens, made suspect by their customs and their language....
Read entire article at NYT
Sometimes the threat is economic or cultural. The 1850s, for instance, saw the rise of the American Party — more commonly called the Know Nothings, because that was their response to any inquiries about their secret activities. Like us, they found themselves stranded in a fast-changing society, its economy transformed by emerging railroads and this gizmo called the telegraph.
“If your status was slipping, and if your grandfather had been a general in the Revolution but now you had no access to the new money, you could feel like your country was going away,” explains Ted Widmer, a Brown University historian who wrote a book on the period. The Know Nothings responded by lashing out at Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Some members supposedly stole a stone meant for the Washington Monument, because it was a gift from the pope, and threw it into the Potomac River.
At other times, the societal peril has been physical and imminent. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers oversaw the forced relocation of more than 100,000 immigrants of Japanese descent. Most were citizens, made suspect by their customs and their language....