Liberal Virtues and Protestant Narratives: National Membership and Identity of the Mexican in America
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2007
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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eng
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Abstract
On January 7, 2004, President George W. Bush held a press conference in the East Room of the White House to outline his new proposal for a temporary immigrant worker program with Mexico. His outlined proposal called for the need to reform immigration law with the two-fold purpose of securing American national borders and providing economic opportunities to American industries and legal aliens across the country. President Bush’s proposal came in response to a rising public interest in illegal Mexican immigration into the United States. In the years following, Mexican immigrants have found themselves in a quagmire of political debate both within the halls of Congress, in the mainstream television and radio media and in the debates occurring in towns and cities across America. Through this political debate, philosophers and politicians alike point to a distinct American “anxiety” over the foreigner’s presence within the boundaries of the United States as fostering this sense of “urgency” on the part of ordinary Americans to address illegal immigration. There have been many arguments for addressing the seeming “problem” of illegal Mexican immigrants in America; varying from calls to protect the American economy and social service network from foreign dependency and exploitation, as well as “cultural” concerns for Americans needing to protect the United States’ distinct national values, ideals and ideologies. In looking at the rhetoric of President Bush in his guest worker proposal, as well as various other political speeches from the President and other political pundits addressing immigration in America, I have primarily become interested in understanding where does this “American anxiety” over Mexican immigration derive from, why does it occur within the realm of both national political debate and the opinions of individuals, and how this is affecting the identity of both Mexican immigrants living in the United States and Mexican American citizens. In order to tackle these important contexts for American anxiety of the foreigner, I seek to understand American responses to immigration as directly influenced by the conception and envisioning of the “American nation”; and the promotion of an ideology of “American nationalism”. In this thesis, I show how anxieties over Mexican immigration are directly linked to conflicting, yet surprisingly interdependent, ideologies and virtues of how the American nation ought to be constructed and ways which American citizenship ought to be defined. Through an investigatory look at the political, philosophical and ethnic resources that have helped construct how Americans envision the “American nation” and its stipulations for membership; we will be able to see there are two integral, yet conflicting, visions of the American nation state. These two visions can be best characterized by the philosophical and cultural forces they draw upon; whereby one vision of the American nation derives from classical liberal ideology of individual liberty and personal autonomy. These cherished “civic virtues” of the American nation are best embodied in the prose and philosophy of the American Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. A second, and competing vision of the American nation, is steeped within the mythic of America’s “ethnic” founding of Anglo-Protestant settlers; which the religious and cultural ideology of Protestant asceticism, work ethic and social mobility have translated into American “cultural” values in our contemporary times. While theorists such as Rogers Smith contend these competing visions of the American nation are differentiated and inevitably separate, some philosophers such as Bonnie Honig argue for their expressed interdependence in contemporary American consciousness; understanding these “resources” in American political life as collectively working to create a complicated and interdependent relationship between the foreigner and the nation he immigrates to. Honig would claim the American civic philosophy of dedication towards classical liberalism is coupled, antagonistic and reliant upon the nation’s “illiberal” ideologies seeking to define American citizenship within narrow and exclusive terms of individuals who ascribe to Protestant cultural values of piety and work ethic. I am particularly interested in how American citizenship is created through this dialectic of “liberal” and “illiberal” influences within our national consciousness, and how these influences collectively establish a xenophobic anxiety within our national public policy, rhetoric and political opinions of Mexican immigrants. I will come to the conclusion that American citizenship fits well with Honig’s theory of an expression of both a “xenophilic” and “xenophobic” national consciousness; which American civic virtues are cherished in our national political culture, yet are reliant upon the immigrant foreigner for their expression and exclusion from national public life. I will investigate rhetoric of America as being an “immigrant nation” which seeks to be an inclusive and a welcoming land for foreigners; and how these ideologies shore up “good feelings” towards American liberal ideologies as the United States philosophically seeks to embrace the challenges of being a poly-ethnic state. These moments of “xenophilia” prove to only be punctuated by profound moments of xenophobia, which as we can see through the words of critics of Mexican immigration, there is a deep-seated anxiety in the American public that prevents the full expression and implementation of American liberal philosophies attempting to embrace the foreigner. In understanding why xenophobia exists in American political discourse despite a seeming dedication to American liberal values seeking cultural and ethnic inclusiveness, I will highlight the difficulties of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants to achieve political and cultural recognition in the United States. Through looking at attempts by Mexican Americans to promote their own political rights against discrimination in housing and job employment, as well as ways which xenophobic cultural barriers to social mobility have affected the personal lives of many recent Mexican immigrants in the United States, I come to the conclusion of advocating for a strengthening of liberal values of self-autonomy and individualism in American political culture. In the final portion of this project, I utilize the theories of contemporary liberal Charles Taylor who advocates for authenticity and the equal recognition of citizens in the political and private domain. In particular, Taylor’s theory of recognition amongst individuals has a contemporary applicability to the discourse of individualism and self-autonomy provided by the classical liberal resources to American civic nationalism. The addendum to liberalism proposed by Taylor calling for equal recognition proves to be a powerful influence if applied to American politics; which if promoted in tandem with cosmopolitan theories of intimacy of sharing “life narratives” amongst citizens, there can be profound implications for community building amongst individuals of different cultural backgrounds. Through using lessons learned from liberalism and cosmopolitanism, I seek to inject individualism as a “primary good” within American politics; in hopes that a celebration of self-autonomy would prevent xenophobic impulses towards foreigners from expressing itself in detrimental ways. In order to mitigate the “illiberal” influences of American nationalism through a strengthening of its “liberal” ideology, this thesis advances a proposal for a stronger political, social and cultural understanding amongst all individuals residing within the United States.