I was born and raised in New York City and lived there until my early forties. I loved the city of my birth, although from time to time, like many others (even in those last days of the twentieth century, when Rudy Giuliani had restored it to greatness), I thought frequently about moving someplace else — specifically, in my case, someplace warmer. My happiest times as a boy had been during summer vacations in my mother’s small South Carolina hometown and on the glorious Grand Strand; but in the pre-Internet era, being a cultural journalist in North Myrtle Beach was a non-starter. L.A. was a possibility, and once I actually rented an apartment in West Hollywood, only to break the lease two days later and run back to New York.

Then there was Cannes: when, in 1990, the American Spectator shipped me there to cover the film festival, I instantly fell in love with the place, and for years thereafter I entertained images of myself walking up one of its hilly, cobbled streets with a baguette under my arm.

But, no, I stayed in New York — right up until the late 1990s, when certain life events led me to spend six months in Amsterdam, after which, having fallen hopelessly in love, I abandoned all thoughts of warmer climes and followed my new significant other to Norway, where I’ve lived ever since.  

Relocating to Europe was a big change. But one thing stayed the same. I remained a writer — and, more to the point, a critic. Living in New York, I’d repeatedly sounded off about aspects of American society, culture, and politics that I found wanting. After moving to Europe, I began to pay more attention to European affairs, notably in my 2006 book While Europe Slept. If I’ve written about Norway with unusual frequency and, perhaps, unusual fierceness, it’s precisely because I’ve felt obliged to cast an especially harsh eye on what’s going on in my own backyard. At the same time, I’ve continued to write about America (as in my 2012 book, The Victims’ Revolution, about identity studies in U.S. universities). My expatriate status, far from making this more of a challenge, has given me a curious combination of an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective that, I think, has enhanced my ability to comment usefully on my native country. (I suspect that many earlier self-exiles — among them Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Paul Bowles, James Baldwin, and Patricia Highsmith — would understand what I’m talking about here.) (READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: Feud’s New Miniseries Recycles Old Truman Capote Gossip)

I’ve now lived in Norway for twenty-five years. During most of that time, it wasn’t possible for me to become a Norwegian citizen without forswearing my U.S. citizenship. Curiously, while the U.S. has allowed dual citizenship since 1967, Norway, until recently, permitted it only in very unusual circumstances.

From one angle, to be sure, the thought of exchanging an American for a Norwegian passport was tempting: the U.S. is one of only three countries (along with Eritrea and Myanmar) that tax citizens living abroad. But as someone whose ancestors on my mother’s side fought in the Revolution and Civil War (in both the Union and Confederate armies), and whose paternal grandparents thanked God every day for having found refuge in America from the strife, poverty, and bigotry of eastern Europe, I wasn’t about to forsake my American identity, no matter how much mishigas I had to endure at the hands of the IRS. Besides, during the first decade or so of my residence in Norway — a time when I lived in Oslo and saw that city rapidly being Islamized — I viewed my U.S. passport as a lifeline, a guarantee that there was a place to which, when the time came, my partner and I could flee. 

As it happens, Norway’s ban on dual citizenship was rare in Western Europe: for decades, Turks who were granted German citizenship, for example, were permitted to remain Turkish citizens as well. A few years ago, inevitably, it was proposed that Norway go with the flow. Debate ensued. In a 2018 op-ed, the leader of the Center Party opposed the idea, maintaining that citizenship involves the kinds of rights and responsibilities that leave no room for multiple loyalties or commitments. Victor Davis Hanson, who made the same argument in his 2021 book The Dying Citizen, contended in a 2022 essay for the New Criterion that “an erosion of citizenship” is the root cause of innumerable social ills, from high levels of crime to increasing tribalism to decaying infrastructure.

I’ve written about these matters myself. In a 2019 essay for Commentary, “The ‘Global Citizen’ Fraud,” I noted with displeasure that during the previous decade, the concept of citizenship had become “not only passé but déclassé.” Many bien pensant types now styled themselves “global citizens” — a concept introduced by Diogenes in the fourth century B.C. But in his day Diogenes was an outlier. In ancient Greece, I wrote, citizenship “was inextricable from the idea of civilization”; later, in Rome, citizenship “conferred protection and prestige throughout the ancient world…. It meant, at a bare minimum, a degree of respect and rights and security that was without parallel.”

Today, however, we live in the shadow of John Lennon’s “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no countries.” As if a borderless world would solve everything. Poppycock. “Global citizens,” I charged,

pretend to possess, or sincerely think they possess, a loyalty that transcends borders. It sounds pretty. But it’s not. By the same token, to some ears a straightforward declaration of patriotism can sound exclusionary, bigoted, racist. It isn’t. To assert a national identity is to make a moral statement and to take on a responsibility. To call yourself a global citizen is to do the equivalent of wearing a peace button — you’re making a meaningless statement because you think it makes you look virtuous.

To be sure, there’s a vast difference between global citizenship and dual — or even multiple — citizenship. When I lived in Amsterdam, I had a friend, Paul, who’d grown up in Canada and Florida with a British mother and American father. When he moved to the Netherlands as an adult he already had three passports — British, American, and Canadian — and soon acquired a fourth. I never thought of Paul as being potentially torn between seriously conflicting loyalties. By contrast, being a dual citizen of a Western democracy and of a Muslim sultanate or emirate with a sharia-based law system is an obvious recipe for conflict. 

It’s this kind of dual citizenship that has boomed in recent decades. Last year, Hugh Fitzgerald wrote at FrontPage that in 2022 alone “about 70,000 Muslims, from just three countries,” had been granted German citizenship. “How,” asked Fitzgerald, “can a Muslim believer offer a sincere ‘civic commitment’ to the German state, created by and for Infidels, whom he has been taught are ‘the most vile of created beings’ (Qur’an 98:6)?” How indeed?

Also last year, Fitzgerald pointed out that 90 percent of the participants in a recent series of destructive riots in France had been identified as “French citizens” — but that 90 percent of those citizens were actually Muslims who, while “milk[ing] the French welfare state of every conceivable benefit,” refused “to integrate into French society” because they “still saw the world through the lens of Islam,” which meant that they viewed French natives as “the most vile of created beings.”  

In America, the foreign country that has most often, in modern times, been at the center of charges of divided loyalties is, of course, Israel. In the March 1950 issue of Commentary, the columnist Dorothy Thompson fretted at length that American Jews’ attachment to the newly founded Jewish state would diminish their devotion to America. “The American of Jewish religion,” she wrote,

has always been, and as long as this nation holds to its basic and Constitutional principles will always be, accepted as a full and equal citizen. But sooner or later the Jewish nationalist, which today means the Israeli nationalist, will have to choose allegiances. ‘One cannot,’ says an old Jewish proverb, ‘sit on one chair at two weddings.’ There is no room in American nationality for two citizenships or two nationalities.

In the same issue of Commentary, however, the historian Oscar Handlin replied to Thompson’s arguments by noting that ties of blood to other countries have always informed Americans’ views on foreign relations. “When the Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie or the English-born E. L. Godkin argued for closer American ties with the land of their birth,” wrote Handlin, “there was no suspicion that they were treacherously dividing their loyalties or deviating in the slightest degree from their attachment to the land of their adoption.” Hence, 

requests by American Jews that their government take steps on their behalf as Jews are not at all unusual…. Now, as in the past, the Jews of this country maintain an interest and, through their government, act in behalf of those across the seas, in Israel and elsewhere, to whom they feel particular ties of brotherhood along with those that bind them to all men. Such actions and such motives are wholly creditable and wholly American.

Indeed. I have American and European Jewish friends who have moved to Israel permanently or who at least spend a good deal of time there. The young American-born son of a dear American friend of mine is a member of the IDF. To me, his service, his sacrifice, and his courage are beautiful to behold, and make him, in my view, a more admirable American than he would otherwise be. Certainly his case could not be more different than that of some freeloader from Guatemala or Mauritania or China who, after entering the U.S. illegally, is given ample government benefits that are denied to legal immigrants — and, for that matter, to natural-born Americans, including military veterans — and placed on a fast track to legal residency and, ultimately, a U.S. passport.  (READ MORE: No, the 1950s Weren’t ‘Dull’ and ‘Conformist.’ Neither Were the Movies.)

Some arguments against dual citizenship are motivated, quite understandably, by a concern about freeloaders. In one 2018 op-ed, Andreas Christiansen Halse, a former head of the Norwegian Socialist Party’s youth division, made the following case. Among Muslim immigrants who’ve exchanged their original citizenship for Norwegian citizenship, he observed, it’s standard practice to fly one’s teenage daughters back to the old country (where they’re never turned away), force her into an arranged marriage, and hold her prisoner there until she gives birth — whereupon the daughter, husband, and baby are brought back to Norway so that the latter two can enjoy Norwegian welfare benefits, and, ultimately, acquire their own Norwegian passports. On rare occasions, the fact that the bride in question is a Norwegian citizen — and not a citizen of any other country — makes it possible for the Norwegian government to intervene on her behalf; if the Norwegian government allowed such families to retain their original passports, however, it would render itself powerless to act in such cases.

Halse has a good argument here — but it’s an argument against awarding Norwegian citizenship in the first place to devout Muslims who seem likely to force marriages on their children and to hold them prisoner in their native lands. 

One remarkable case, which came to light in 2017, focused attention on the issue of granting Norwegian citizenship to people who come from countries with very different values and who plainly still retain those values: it turned out that the just–elected prime minister of Somalia, Hassan Ali Khaire, was a dual citizen, holding passports from both Somalia and, yes, Norway.

Which brings to mind Ilhan Omar, who recently delivered a speech in which she made it clear that her primary loyalty isn’t to America but to her native Somalia. Her remarks served as yet another reminder that many a Western country is granting citizenship these days to people who know and care nothing about its history, culture, and values. Obviously the U.S. erred when it granted citizenship to Omar, because her fierce loyalty to majority-Muslim Somalia — the fifth least democratic country in Africa — is entirely incongruent with loyalty to the U.S. 

By contrast, my affection for Norway — a founding member of NATO that, like the U.S., is basically a democracy (despite the popularity here of the very same woke ideologies that currently plague the U.S.) — doesn’t seem to me to be dramatically at odds with my attachment to the land of my birth. And whereas my U.S. passport used to feel to me like a lifeline, I’ve felt increasingly that having a Norwegian passport would be very useful to me if the Democrats retained power in the 2024 elections and beyond and continued to steer the U.S. in the direction it’s going. 

Which brings me to January 1, 2020. On that day, after considerable debate, dual citizenship became legal in Norway. Ultimately, the measure had won support across the political spectrum; among its strongest advocates in parliament was the Progress Party’s Sylvi Listhaug, an outspoken critic of mass Muslim immigration, whose chief reason for supporting dual citizenship was that it would make it easier to withdraw Norwegian citizenship from terrorists and other Muslim miscreants and deport them to their original homelands. 

After the law came into effect, I wrestled with the question of whether to apply to be a Norwegian citizen. On the one hand, there was the issue of divided loyalty. On the other hand, there were the sights that greeted me every time I set foot in Oslo airport. Inevitably, my blue U.S. passport in my hand, I’d pass Muslim families — the mothers in hijab or even niqab — carrying red Norwegian passports. They invariably had tons of luggage, because they were flying to their native land, where they planned to stay for several months. For that land was their real home; to them, Norway was an ATM, a source of free welfare income.

Researchers have shown that not a few people with Norwegian citizenship have actually bought palaces in their native Pakistan with the money they’ve collected from the Norwegian government. Some of them even own slaves. (Yes, you read that right: they own slaves.) If these leeches deserved Norwegian passports, I found myself wondering, why didn’t I? Hell, forget about the Muslims. A few years ago I took a test online that showed my Norwegian vocabulary to be better than that of well over 99 percent of natives. Didn’t that count for something? 

Then there was this simple point: during the pandemic, when the U.S. government sent out checks to absolutely everybody, I opposed it vehemently. How better to spike inflation and damage the world economy? But when my check arrived, I cashed it. I’d have been an idiot not to. In the same way, if dual citizenship was on offer, and every rogue, rascal, and reprobate without the remotest sense of national loyalty to any country was eligible, how could I not take what I had coming to me? 

But it wasn’t just a matter of what I deserved. I’ve lived in Norway for a quarter century. I’ve criticized the hell out of it. The more I mulled over the subject, the more I felt an obligation to take out Norwegian citizenship. Applying for a Norwegian passport would be a token of my respect for, and sense of responsibility toward, the country in which I live and where — I’m 67 now — I expect I’ll spend the rest of my life.

Once, a long time ago, I wrote a piece somewhere that was critical of some aspect of Norway — I don’t remember the specifics — and one of Norway’s major newspapers replied with a full-page article headlined, “The man who hates Norway.” Taking out Norwegian citizenship would indicate, once and for all, that whenever I criticize this country (and I’m criticizing it a great deal these days for, among other things, its government’s intense hostility to Israel and affection for Hamas), it’s because I have a vested interest in its well-being and want to contribute, as best I can, to its improvement. 

So I finally decided to apply for citizenship. This past February 6, I went to the police station in the city of Drammen and submitted my paperwork to a friendly young policewoman. The meeting went quickly. I was told that the average wait time for a decision was two years. So imagine my surprise when, three weeks later, on February 28, I received an email telling me that I was now a Norwegian citizen. Simple as that. 

How different from America! When you become a U.S. citizen, you get dressed up and attend a moving ceremony at which, along with other brand-new citizens, you pledge allegiance to the flag and swear an oath in which you state that you hereby “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen” (a rather odd vow, given that the U.S., as noted, has permitted dual citizenship, and therefore joint national allegiances, for over half a century). You also get a certificate suitable for framing. (READ MORE: The Whole Ugly Hustle of Globalism: Itxu Díaz’s I Will Not Eat Crickets)

But in Norway, there’s no ceremony, no oath, no certificate. You receive the email and that’s it. If you want a Norwegian passport, you wait at least a week after getting the news about your citizenship, then go to your local police station and have your picture taken. (I did that on March 5.) It’s not that Norway doesn’t take citizenship seriously; it’s just that Scandinavians are more prosaic, more matter-of-fact, about such matters, than Americans. But I have to admit that I wasn’t. When I read the email telling me that I was now a Norwegian citizen, I was surprised by the intensity of my reaction: I bawled like one of those little boys in YouTube videos who’ve just been given a new puppy. And no, I don’t think my honest acknowledgment of my sense of belonging to Norway, in some way and to some degree, detracts in any way from my undying loyalty to the country of my birth. Truth to tell, I tear up at both “The Star-spangled Banner” and the Norwegian national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker.” So sue me.