Being an American

The core concept of being an American is our citizenship. It's something those of us born here may often have taken too much for granted.

Being an American, a citizen, means being a committed member of this society. It includes the franchise, which is both a right and a privilege, the opportunity to participate actively in voting for the men and women to whom we entrust our safety through their management of the American government.

Being a citizen also means that we mey be called upon, from time to time, to serve on a jury. Since we cannot choose when this occurs, we may find it inconvenient, even annoying, but it is our responsibility to present ourselves to the court on the appointed day, and to be selected, or not.

Being a citizen means, or should, that we will make a determined effort to educate ourselves with regard to the issues facing our various governments, federal, state and local, so that when the day comes to vote, we may do so in a responsible and informed manner, not in ignorance.

In bad times, being a citizen means that we may also be called to defend our country, and if necessary, to die in that cause. But as the saying goes, freedom is not free.

Being a legal immigrant (a redundant term, as immigration is intrinsically a legal process) brings with it some of the rights of a citizen. Being an illegal alien (the too much heard phrase illegal immigrant is an oxymoron — one cannot be an immigrant and illegal) brings, or should, none of the rights of a citizen, and should routinely result in deportation, not a mere serving of papers, but the forthright eviction from our country, our home, to that from which the illegal alien originated. Overwrought oration that references phrases such as due process and legal entitlements has no place here; those are due a citizen, but not to an illegal alien.

When illegal aliens (also known as federal criminals, as that's precisely what they are) are given the opportunity to remain here, simply because of the efforts of some overly empathic folk whose understanding of the law and of the U.S. Constitution is nil, what we see is the criminal application of inflation cheapening the treasure we call U.S. citizenship.

When a state refuses to participate in the responsibility of policing our national borders from an informal invasion by aliens, we are witnessing the malfeasance of our politicians, and it may even rise to the level of treasonous behavior — they took an oath, each of them, to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, and the laws of our land. Nowhere in that oath is there an escape clause.

When illegal aliens are afforded expensive health care at no cost — health care not available to a citizen or legal immigrant other than at great cost, then each of us is being robbed, not by the aliens in question, but by our elected representatives, and worse, by the unelected judges those representatives appoint, and who render judgments against the welfare of citizens.

When President Bush referred to the Minutemen now patrolling the southern border of Arizona as vigilantes, he was in grave error; they are patriots, and they are doing a spectacular job, a job that must be done by citizen volunteers because the government employees hired for that function are not doing it.

Should we at some future date find ourselves outvoted by a population of people whose ability to vote (I won't call it a right) was obtained through some dilution of immigration laws, or worse, through an outright amnesty, then not only has the value of our citizenship been lost, but we will have lost our country.