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Constitution Day and Citizenship Day 2025
Today is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. This day, in particular, is chosen to conduct ceremonies in which the Oath of Citizenship is taken by people who have undergone extensive training on civics and citizenship in preparation of becoming vital contributors to our society as fellow citizens.
📜 Our Constitution 👨🏾⚖️
The more I study it [the Constitution], the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. ~Calvin Coolidge
What is the US Constitution?
It is a document outlining our form of government.
It is peak Enlightenment philosophy reacting to the overreach of the constitutional monarchy and parliament that had ruled over us up to that point.
The Founding Fathers represented a broad swath of colonial society in the late 18th century.
Most had a classical education, and many attended prestigious universities.
Some were self-educated in various fields out of sheer mental curiosity.
The thing was, in this time period, the home country might as well have been on the moon.
We were, and had been for decades, a collection of standalone societies.
In the wake of the conflict we call the French and Indian War but is known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War, Britain won but the national debt nearly doubled.
They saw the resource-rich colonies as a piggy bank to raid. Made perfect sense to them, but it didn’t play well over here.
The thought was that we were functioning very well on our own and didn’t need the British government squeezing us for no actual benefit.
Typically for a colony, it’s an unprotected enclave that has been founded to feed resources back to the home country. They need the protection of the home country.
That was not the case here.
The colonies here were typically entrepreneurial experiments, self-exile enclaves, groups of explorers seeking riches and freedom.
Our independence was almost inevitable. We weren’t a colony of people dedicated to sending food or raw materials to the homeland.
We were people who didn’t want to be there anymore.
So, when the desperation following the Pyrrhic success of Britain in the Seven Years’ War led to socioeconomic overreach upon an effectively independent set of colonies, the call to cut ties and make that independence official was also essentially inevitable.
In so many cases, revolutions are executed in proximity to the source of the oppression. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution and so many others took place in the homeland and that proximity clearly heated things up and led to more radical outcomes.
Ours was not in proximity. Ours was a matter of “Hey, we’re basically on the moon here. We’re fine by ourselves. Leave us alone now.” instead of “Kill the ruler! Kill the collaborators! Change absolutely everything!” that we see in other revolutions.
Because we were fine on our own and we didn’t feel the need to pay the British Parliament’s war debts or to be cowed by their sociopolitical overreach, we simply formalized the fact that we are in fact fine on our own and let’s just formalize it.
Some of the finest minds of the late 18th century convened in Philadelphia to lay out a structure for our constitutional republic.
They completed and signed the original seven articles of the Constitution on September 17th, 1787.
Ratification by the various states came later, as did the first ten amendments.
So, 238 years later, we still celebrate the signing of our Constitution by taking the opportunity to make the citizenship of new applicants official.
👩🏽⚖️ A Day For Celebration 📜
Constitution Day & Citizenship Day 2016
We celebrate the people who have gone through the exhaustive process of becoming American citizens.
It takes a lot of time, effort, paperwork, money and study to complete this process.
Why? Because that is what immigration law currently requires.
In earlier years, we allowed waves of people to surge into the US because that’s what the government of the day deemed necessary.
We had about 1/3 of the North American continent to occupy, and we welcomed settlers from England, Germany, Sweden, Poland and various other European countries en masse.
In more recent years, we have seen an approach of allowing only small numbers of extremely vetted applicants.
Why? Because we’ve already filled our 1/3 of the continent plus Hawaii and Alaska.
Ideally, our populace would marry and produce at least 2 kids per family to keep the population stable or more than 2 kids to grow the population in a stable way.
What we cannot do is let people who flout the law and sneak into the country unannounced to become part of the populace. We can’t.
If you break into my house and start eating all the food in my fridge and watching my TV all day, you’re not actually a member of my family. You’re an invader and you need to GTFO.
Same with the country at large. We have rules. Follow them or fuck off.
Are the rules too stringent? There’s room for societal debate on that. There is room for think tanks to really study the situation.
Maybe we should have a guest worker program to let people from underdeveloped countries come here to do seasonal work and then go home.
Maybe we should tweak the existing rules to allow more people from various countries to come in than are currently permitted.
Those are discussions we can have, but they need to be held openly and candidly so we can gauge what the actual response is.
We don’t need elites deciding these things for us so that we wind up with unacculturated randos doing heinous things because that’s how it goes in their home locale.
That’s not okay.
If you’re here, we need to know who you are so that if you do something heinous, we can bounce your ass back to whatever hellhole you came from.
If what you do is okay in that place, you should probably stay there.
The people we invite here are people who we believe will operate within our rules and contribute something to our society in exchange for the opportunity to live in safety and prosperity.
Key word? Invite.
If you want to come here, you need to wait for the door to be opened to you. Creeping through a fence, jumping out of a dinghy, tunneling across the border or any other means of sneaking in is thoroughly unacceptable. We’ve got a house and the right to defend it from invaders.
Knock and wait your turn. That shows us you’re civilized.
Otherwise, we’ll fly your ass home and put you on the blacklist to bar your reentry. Simple.
📜 Citizens 👨🏻⚖️
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead
Congratulations to the new collection of naturalized citizens whose status will be finalized today.
We’re glad to have you and wait with eager anticipation to see what marvelous things you’re going to do.
We welcome new citizens from each of the inhabited continents of this world, not just Europeans but people from everywhere who want to be part of the American experiment.
That’s the difference.
They want to be here, and they want to be American.
They’re not here as parasitical economic colonists who come to be paid under the table and send their remittances back to wherever.
The people who are being naturalized today may come from the exact same places as the invaders, but they have explicitly declared that they want to be American.
The Oath of Citizenship clearly states that they are not here for purpose of evasion and that they disclaim the sovereignty of their place of origin.
It would be good for that to remain in force.
We have members of Congress who clearly and repeatedly say that they are more aligned to their place of origin than to their adopted country.
Denaturalize and deport.
If they cannot be part of the American experiment in good faith, then they should not be in America.
If you love your home country so very much, go back.
If you love America, focus on the here and now.
Be a proud American or purchase a flight home.
That’s all for today. See you back on Saturday for 🤸🏻 gymnastics 🤸🏼…