1 00:00:02,290 --> 00:00:06,050 I picked a fine time to become an American. 2 00:00:06,050 --> 00:00:10,349 It was a grey, overcast morning in Oakland, California. 3 00:00:10,349 --> 00:00:18,669 I was one of 1,094 people of every color and creed, from 85 nations, beginning with Afghanistan 4 00:00:18,669 --> 00:00:21,210 and ending with Yemen. 5 00:00:21,210 --> 00:00:26,920 We had gathered, anxiously clutching the requisite documents, outside the rather antique 6 00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:29,280 Paramount cinema. 7 00:00:29,280 --> 00:00:34,620 I wasn’t the only new citizen of European origin, but we were a distinct minority. 8 00:00:34,620 --> 00:00:39,220 Rather to my surprise, the Chinese were the most numerous group, accounting for close 9 00:00:39,220 --> 00:00:41,700 to a fifth of the new Americans. 10 00:00:41,700 --> 00:00:45,520 (How many Americans became Chinese citizens that week?) 11 00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:53,060 Next were the Mexicans (more than 150 of them), then the Filipinos, closely followed by the Indians. 12 00:00:53,060 --> 00:00:58,250 Yet it was the sheer range of countries represented that was most marvelous. 13 00:00:58,250 --> 00:01:03,649 The young man to my right, immaculately dressed in white, was from Eritrea. 14 00:01:03,649 --> 00:01:10,200 He had studied computer science in Wales and had initially come to California to work for NASA. 15 00:01:10,200 --> 00:01:16,760 I approach any encounter with US bureaucracy weighed down by dread. 16 00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:22,780 So I wondered, would this be like the Department of Motor Vehicles, famed for its Soviet-style 17 00:01:22,780 --> 00:01:24,960 antagonism to the public? 18 00:01:24,960 --> 00:01:29,620 Or would it be more like the implacable, pitiless Internal Revenue Service? 19 00:01:29,630 --> 00:01:34,380 In fact, the officials of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services could hardly have 20 00:01:34,380 --> 00:01:36,420 been more affable. 21 00:01:36,420 --> 00:01:41,530 The master of ceremonies was a genial, balding, bespectacled chap who won his audience over 22 00:01:41,530 --> 00:01:47,060 with a virtuoso display of multilingualism, chatting to us in what sounded like pretty 23 00:01:47,060 --> 00:01:53,990 fluent Spanish, Chinese, French, Hindi and Tagalog. 24 00:01:53,990 --> 00:01:58,000 Yet this was very far from a multicultural occasion. 25 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,080 Quite the reverse. 26 00:02:00,080 --> 00:02:06,180 To get us in the mood for our impending Americanization, a choir sang a patriotic medley, 27 00:02:06,180 --> 00:02:11,540 including a rather baroque setting of the preamble to the constitution, Yankee Doodle, 28 00:02:11,540 --> 00:02:16,160 and Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land. 29 00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:17,720 Well, that did it! 30 00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:22,940 The way that song conjures up vast American landscapes (“From the redwood forest / To 31 00:02:22,950 --> 00:02:29,400 the Gulf Stream waters”) always gets me by the throat because, glimpsed in films, 32 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:33,860 such vistas were what first drew me to the United States. 33 00:02:33,860 --> 00:02:39,220 Then came the information about our rights and obligations—specifically, our right 34 00:02:39,220 --> 00:02:47,120 to vote, our option to obtain a passport and our inextricable link to the Social Security system. 35 00:02:47,120 --> 00:02:51,780 (Nothing— rather disappointingly—about the right to bear arms. 36 00:02:51,780 --> 00:02:57,200 And not a word about the spiraling federal debt we were all now on the hook for.) 37 00:02:57,200 --> 00:02:59,560 The ceremony then became more stirring. 38 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:04,360 A “Faces of America” video had a distinctly martial soundtrack. 39 00:03:04,360 --> 00:03:09,180 We raised our right hands to swear the oath of allegiance, absolutely renouncing 40 00:03:09,180 --> 00:03:15,460 “all allegiance to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty” and swearing to “bear 41 00:03:15,460 --> 00:03:20,340 arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law.” 42 00:03:20,340 --> 00:03:25,059 Then we placed our right hands on our hearts to recite the pledge of allegiance to the 43 00:03:25,059 --> 00:03:32,370 national flag “and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, 44 00:03:32,370 --> 00:03:35,880 with liberty and justice for all.” 45 00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:41,150 It’s heady stuff, even in Oakland on a Thursday morning. 46 00:03:41,150 --> 00:03:46,609 And then, there he was—the President of the United States himself, much larger than 47 00:03:46,609 --> 00:03:49,040 life on the big screen. 48 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:53,540 “This country is now your country,” Donald Trump told us rather sternly. 49 00:03:53,540 --> 00:03:56,020 “Our history is now your history. 50 00:03:56,020 --> 00:03:58,980 And our traditions are now your traditions.” 51 00:03:58,980 --> 00:04:04,829 And that wasn’t all: “You now share the obligation to teach our values to others, 52 00:04:04,829 --> 00:04:09,460 to help newcomers assimilate to our way of life.” 53 00:04:09,460 --> 00:04:15,499 Compare and contrast with the Barack Obama version: “Together, we are a nation united 54 00:04:15,499 --> 00:04:21,170 not by any one culture, or ethnicity, or ideology . . .” 55 00:04:21,170 --> 00:04:26,440 The grand finale was God Bless the USA, a country music anthem by Lee Greenwood, made 56 00:04:26,440 --> 00:04:31,380 famous following the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. 57 00:04:31,380 --> 00:04:34,200 It too was a call-to-arms. 58 00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:39,410 “And I’m proud to be an American / Where at least I know I’m free / And I won’t 59 00:04:39,410 --> 00:04:42,840 forget the men who died / Who gave that right to me." 60 00:04:42,840 --> 00:04:47,500 More than half a century of being British has made it hard for me not to cringe just 61 00:04:47,500 --> 00:04:49,620 a little at this kind of thing. 62 00:04:49,620 --> 00:04:52,420 But this hokum is now my hokum. 63 00:04:52,420 --> 00:04:59,780 And this president is now my president, until such time as we, the people, vote in another one. 64 00:04:59,780 --> 00:05:06,920 Yes, I picked a fine time to become an American—because it's always a fine time. 65 00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:12,780 I’m Niall Ferguson, fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, for Prager University.