What Does It Mean To Become An American?

In this episode of The Right Side: As America approaches her 250th birthday, Doug Billings explores a question that goes far beyond citizenship and paperwork: What does it truly mean to become an American?

Doug examines assimilation, American identity, civic responsibility, constitutional principles, and the values that have united generations of Americans. Is America simply a place to live, or is it a shared commitment to liberty, faith, self-government, and personal responsibility?

A thoughtful conversation about citizenship, culture, national identity, and the future of the American experiment.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

The Right Side with Doug Billings. Hello, America. Hello, world. I'm Doug Billings. Welcome to the Right Side. Thank you very much for joining. I appreciate it. And before we get started, don't forget wherever you're watching this thing, like, share, subscribe, follow on social media X. Thank you very much. Facebook, same thing. YouTube. You can subscribe to the channel at the Right Side Doug Billings over on YouTube. Click the bell, click all your notifications so that you get notified when I drop new content. Prayerfully consider heading over to DougBillings.us to donate to the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, today I want to spend some time with you talking about a question that sounds simple on the surface, but the more that I think about it, the more I believe that it's one of the most important questions that's facing our country. I guess, you know, especially in light of obviously the 250th anniversary, the birthday of our country, what does it mean to become an American? Now, notice something. I didn't say and didn't ask, you know, what makes somebody a citizen? I didn't ask what paperwork they filled out. I didn't ask what passport they have. I asked what it means to become an American. And those aren't necessarily the same thing either, by the way. You know, I was thinking about this today. I was getting ready for the show earlier in the morning. You know, obviously we're approaching a remarkable moment in our nation's history, the 250th birthday. You got to think about that for a minute. 250 years. I mean, that's a long time. Most countries in the grand scheme of the history of the planet don't get to a hundred uh to 250 years. Many of the nations that have been created have come and gone and have ended well before getting close to 250 years. I mean, governments have collapsed, borders have shifted, empires have disappeared, but America is here. America remains. And it's not because we're lucky, it's not because we're perfect. Obviously, it's not because we haven't made mistakes. America remains present because generation after generation of our people have believed there was something worth preserving. And that brings me back to this question. What exactly were they preserving? I mean, when immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, what was it they were hoping to be part of? So it's always been interesting to me because millions of people have left everything they knew, right? Think about that. They've left family, they've left languages, they left traditions, they left familiar places. Many of those people stepped onto ships with just hope, no money at all. They just had to hope of the American dream. And, you know, hope that somewhere, sometime on the other side of the ocean, there would be an opportunity to build a better life. Now, here's the part that I think modern America sometimes forgets. Those immigrants, they didn't come here because they wanted America to become more like the place they left. They came here because they wanted to become part of America. And that's a profound distinction. I don't think we talk about it nearly enough. You know, when I when I think of my great-grandparents and my grandparents and their generations, when they talked about becoming Americans, they weren't talking about abandoning their heritage. My people, you know, my grandparents and great-grandparents came over from England and Ireland. So they didn't talk about leaving their Irish heritage behind. That's not what happened. The Irish didn't stop being proud of their Irish roots. The Italians didn't stop being proud of their Italian roots. The Germans didn't stop being proud of their German roots. People kept their family traditions. I mean, they kept their recipes, they kept their stories, they kept their history, right? But they added something to it. They became Americans. And somehow they understood that those two things weren't in conflict with one another. They could honor where they came from, and they could also embrace at the same time where they had chosen to go. That's one of the great strengths of the American story. But somewhere along the way, I think we've stopped thinking and talking about becoming American, and we've started to talk only about arriving in America. And there's a difference, a very big difference. Arriving, I mean, it's a physical act. Becoming is a transformation. You can arrive at somewhere without becoming part of it. You can live in a country for decades and never really join it. And you can benefit from the freedoms and the opportunities of America while at the same time you choose to remain disconnected from its identity. But becoming an American, it's something completely different. It's a conscious decision, it's a decision to embrace certain ideas. Now, what are the ideas? Because we got to talk about them, because America was never united by ethnicity. We were never united by ancestry, and we were never united by bloodlines. I mean, if that had been the requirement, America would have never worked. What united Americans was something much more powerful. A shared belief. A belief that rights come from God, a belief that government exists to protect liberty rather than to grant it, and a belief that ordinary people are capable of governing themselves. And a belief that freedom and responsibility, they belong together. Those ideas are the heart and the soul of America and her story. It's not geography, it's not demographics, it's ideas. And that's why I personally have always believed that becoming American has a lot more to do with embracing principles than it does with inheriting genetics. You know, sometimes people ask why assimilation matters. And the answer, I mean, to me it's obvious. Assimilation matters because no nation can survive if its citizens don't share a common understanding of what the nation actually is. Think about your family. Every family has traditions, every family has expectations, every family has values. They're not identical from family to family, but they exist. And without them, the family begins to drift apart. Well, the same thing's true for nations. America requires a shared center. Not because diversity is bad, but because unity matters. Diversity and unity are not opposing concepts, by the way. In fact, America's greatness came from combining both of those things. We've always had diversity. We are chalk full of diversity in this country. And that's a good thing. The challenge has always been creating unity. And for most of our history, assimilation helped to accomplish that. People came here and they learned what it meant to be American. They learned the history, they learned the civics, they learned how their government worked, they learned the language, they learned uh traditions, they learned the constitution, and most importantly, they learned that America was bigger than any one group. It was bigger than any one ethnicity, bigger than any one religion, and America became a shared project. So I mean, I realize that talking about assimilation makes some people nervous. They immediately assume that it means you got to force everybody to be the same. That's not at all what I'm talking about. Uniformity is not the goal. Unity is, and there's a difference there in those words. I don't care if your grandparents came from Ireland or Italy or Mexico or Poland or India or Korea or Nigeria or anywhere else. What I care about is whether we share a commitment to the principles that make America possible. That's the real question. Because without those principles, America becomes really little more than just a piece of land between two oceans. The ideas are what make America special. And you know, one of the things that I would love to see discussed more seriously is the concept of civic assimilation. Today, immigrants who become citizens take an oath of allegiance to the United States. That's good. Perfect. I support that. But I've often thought and I wondered whether we should be more explicit than that. Not about race, not about ethnicity, not about religion, about commitment. A commitment to the Constitution, a commitment to American laws, a commitment to self-government, a commitment to becoming part of the American story. Because I don't think that's unreasonable. In fact, I think it's one of the most pro-immigrant positions that a person can hold. Because successful immigration requires successful assimilation. Otherwise, you're not building one nation, you're building separate communities moving in different directions. And history shows us where that will lead, folks. And it rarely ends well. Now, before anybody misunderstands me, this is not about fear. This is not about panic, and it's certainly not about hostility towards newcomers. It's actually the opposite. It's about confidence. A confident nation isn't afraid to explain what it believes. And a confident nation isn't embarrassed by its founding principles. I think that a confident nation has the courage to say, you know, these are the values that built this country, and we'd love for you to join us. That's the American invitation, folks. So join us, become part of the story. Help us write the next chapter. As America approaches her 250th birthday, I think that it's one of the most important conversations that we can have. Not because we're looking backward, but because we're looking forward. I mean, what kind of country do we want to be in just 50 years, 100 years, 250 more years from now? I think the answer depends largely on whether we're willing to preserve the ideas that made America exceptional in the first place. You know, those extreme positions and beliefs like freedom and faith, personal responsibility, equal justice under the law, limited government, self-government, human dignity, those are the ideas that transformed a collection of colonies into the most successful nation in human history. And they remain just as important today as they were in 1776. So, what does that mean for us? What does it mean to become an American? I think personally it means something very, very beautiful. It means joining a story that's bigger than yourself. It means embracing freedom and the responsibility that comes with freedom. And it means honoring the sacrifices of those people who came before us. And it means accepting the obligation to preserve this nation for the people who come after us. So it's not just citizenship, it's stewardship. And that's what America needs more of today, not less. Ladies and gentlemen, please subscribe, follow, set reminders to get my latest content, and please prayerfully consider donating to the show at Doug Billings.us. Because after all, like I always tell you, we're in this thing together, folks. Believe it. For the Republic. Cheers. The right side with Doug Billings.