True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism

Extract

True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism. By Noah Pickus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 272p. $35.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Is civic nationalism an oxymoron? Noah Pickus does not think so, at least not in America. Here, the best leaders have been able to combine a “rational commitment to a common creed based on abstract ideals” with a moderate nationalism valuing “tradition, inherited opinion, and a set of obligations that flow from sharing a distinctive history and culture” (p. 5). Civic nationalism, he argues, is possible in theory and has been achieved in practice. At pivotal moments in American history, leaders like James Madison and Theodore Roosevelt found a way for “civic principles and American nationalism” to reinforce each other (p. 5). Pickus calls for a new emphasis on civic nationalism in our time and cautions against too quickly dividing “civic nationalist positions into civic or national positions alone” (p. 125). In this carefully argued if not always persuasive book, he counsels a prudent policy of balancing “the universal thrust of civic principles” with “the particularist bond of nationalist sentiment” (p. 62). He bravely challenges a new generation of civic nationalists to fight for that balance today.