President Donald Trump has been adamant for over a decade that Iran cannot be permitted to develop nuclear weapons. His reasoning is simple: the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regularly leads his people in chanting some variation of “Death to America,” so nuclear weapons in the hands of such a people would thus pose at least a peripheral or potential threat to America. Consequently, Iranian nationals in America have been considered a possible threat.
During last week’s quasi-conflict with Iran, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nearly a dozen Iranian nationals with Iranian terrorist affiliations. These were foreigners who crossed the border into the U.S. and now trod U.S. soil. One of those arrested, Linet Vartaniann, had even become a naturalized U.S. citizen, but was sheltering Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian national who was ordered deported in 2013 after threatening law enforcement officials. When ICE showed up to take Eidivand into custody, Vartaniann threatened to open fire on the federal agents and “shoot ICE officers in the head.”
America has had many “myths” over the nearly 250 years of her existence. Some are fables, like the mighty lumberjack Paul Bunyan, while some are larger-than-life figures who have entered the pantheon of legend: George Washington, Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett, and countless others. But some myths are axioms or maxims that we tell ourselves about our nation’s history and identity. In ages past, we have generally relied upon principles which inspire and encourage us to root our nation’s future in our American heritage; but, over the past several decades in particular, new myths have been promulgated, even less grounded in reality than the tale of Paul Bunyan.
These new myths are lies, violent and antithetical to the old myths, which were a means of illuminating and passing on truth. The new myths teach not inspiration or encouragement but shame and self-loathing. Where the old myths took tales of hardship, struggle, courage, and virtue and amplified their noble aspects, the new myths take figures and chapters of history and exaggerate or even outright fabricate modern evils. National heroes like the Founding Fathers, brave frontiersmen, pioneering presidents, and Civil War commanders are derided as colonizers, racists, and oppressors. The great Western tradition which forged our nation in the first place, and in which we have since played a part in shaping and contributing to, is dismissed as a system of “white privilege.” But one of the most dangerous myths peddled to us has been that of our magic soil.
We are told that anybody can be an American, which is technically true. However, the truth of that statement rests on the fact that an American is a specific type of person, with a specific culture, specific values, and specific ideals. The Founding Fathers were, in some regards, an intellectually and ideologically diverse crew, including Protestants, deists, and a Catholic at a time when religious differences ran deep and denominational disputes sometimes resulted in bloodshed. (Think of the Elizabethan persecution of English Catholics, less than 200 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.) Some of the Founders were staunch defenders of democracy, others were ardent federalists, and still others would have preferred an aristocratic republic or even a monarchy over the form of government which was eventually adopted. Yet all of the Founding Fathers shared the culture, values, and ideals of the American.
The same principle is evinced in regional differences. A Yankee in New England will likely have a different accent and wardrobe, eat different foods, and enjoy different hobbies than a Southerner would, and both would differ in the same context from an Arizona rancher, who may differ just as much from a San Franciscan. Yet all will share (or would have shared, up until relatively recently) in common that overarching culture and those values and ideals which are definitively American.
In order for “anybody” to be an American, he must conform and adhere to the definition of “an American.” The myth of magic soil, however, inverts this truth, claiming instead that there is no real definition of “an American” save one who lives on American soil. Rather than proclaim that anybody can be an American, the myth of magic soil propounds that an American can be anybody. An Iranian chanting “Death to America” can be an American, all he needs is that magic soil. In other words, where the old myths fostered the belief that American earth was reserved for those who conform, adhere, and assimilate to the definition of an American, the myth of magic soil contends that a few years living on the same American earth which generations of definitive Americans toiled, labored, fought, and died for is all that is needed to be an American. The very definition of an American is undone.
The results of this myth have been catastrophic. Even now, foreign-born Muslim and avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani, who has held American citizenship for less than a decade, has been named the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Over one third of New York City’s current population is foreign-born — not second- or third-generation immigrants, but fresh-off-the-boat foreign-born. Over one third of Los Angeles’s population, one fifth of Chicago’s, and 14 percent of Washington, D.C.’s is foreign-born. When illegal immigration is factored in, those numbers are likely significantly higher. At least 19 members of the current U.S. Congress are foreign-born: two senators and 17 representatives.
This nonsensical notion that foreigners hostile to assimilation are just as American as those whose ancestors fought in the American Civil War has resulted in the demographic replacement of Americans who can trace their heritage in the nation back centuries, in the destruction of cultural homogeneity and cohesion, in the erosion of American values and ideals, in the dilution of our nation’s immigration laws, in the supplanting of American politicians and the electorate with non-Americans, and ultimately in the annihilation of the American identity.
There has been much talk over the last two decades in particular of “immigration reform,” often centered on making legal immigration easier to achieve. This is a mistake. Immigration reform must be centered on crushing the myth of magic soil, ensuring that those who America welcomes across her borders and into her cities, her suburbs, her neighborhoods, and her homes conform, adhere, and assimilate to the definition of “an American.” Any other policy would be national suicide. America is in peril. Rediscovering the definition of an American will be necessary to save the nation and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
READ MORE by S.A. McCarthy:
Catholicism Is Not a ‘Foreign Influence’ in America