A few weeks back, I visited Scotland for the first time, and just before traveling I learned that Scotland is actually my family’s homeland – well, it was, anyway, a very long time ago. But it got me to thinking: What makes a country a home?
It’s worth considering in these days when immigration is such a fraught issue for America – as our president makes it clear that we have moved on from the eloquent words at the base of the Statue of Liberty that once invited people from all over the world to consider this a safe haven.
Shortly before my wife and I headed to Scotland, a cousin gave me a name of an ancestor she had discovered while doing genealogical research – my 10th great-grandfather – and I found that the guy was a big deal in Scotland in the middle of the 16th century. He was Sir Archibald Campbell, the first Marquess and eighth Earl of Argyll, Chief of the Clan Campbell, and for a decade in the 1500s he was the de facto leader of the government of Scotland. In fact, he placed the crown on the head of King Charles II of England, when there was a move to unite England and Scotland.
Sadly for my Grandpa Archie, he and the king had a falling out – a dispute over the rights of the good people of Scotland to choose their own course – and the king ordered him beheaded. And so most of Grandpa was buried in a family plot in Argyll, while for three years his head was fixed on a pike outside St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Eventually the head and the rest of Grandpa Archie were reunited – interred together now in the land he called home. In the cathedrawl, there’s a suitably impressive monument to Sir Archibald Campbell.
We loved Scotland – the crashing surf off the coast, the glorious highlands, the friendly people. Regrettably, though -- my connection to such an important personage as the First Marquess of Argyll notwithstanding -- I do not qualify for Scottish citizenship. I’m a bit sad about that because the United States of America isn’t so much a country that I can claim to be proud of as a citizen these days.
Our leader is backing away from humanitarian commitments worldwide and turning away from steps that could slow the pace of global warming – actions that will lead to millions of deaths around the earth. We are no long the champion of democracy in places where people struggle for their rights; we instead cater to tyrants. Without a declaration of war, we are blowing civilian boats out of the water off the shore of South America. In our great cities, masked troops are tearing down doors and grabbing people off the streets.
This is having an impact not just now, but on the future. A Gallup poll released last week found that for the second straight year, about one in five Americans would like to leave the U.S. and move permanently to another country if they could. But get this: among young women, aged 15 to 44, the desire to quit America is double that: 40 percent say they want to move abroad. Young men: not so much; they match the national average of about one in five wishing to live elsewhere.
They’re not the only young people second-guessing Americanism. This month we learned that the number of new international students enrolled in American higher education dropped by 17 percent this fall, on top of a 7 percent drop last year. Experts say this will cost the economy a billion dollars and 23,000 jobs. Beyond that, it will likely have the effect of shifting a lot of scientific discovery and economic growth to other countries, as we cope with the decline of our higher education sector, which has long been the envy of the world.
So what does it mean when millions of young people think their future would be better elsewhere? You know, it’s one thing for someone like me to toy with the idea of emigrating; I’m an older person whose most productive days are behind me. But if our present is so bleak that a growing share of our young people – our future – don’t want to have anything to do with America, we need to be worried.
This is not putting “America First,” as Donald Trump promised he would; he is not, in fact, making America great again. We don’t behead people in this country, fortunately, or some of us might find ourselves on a pike like my 10th great-grandpa. But the fact that I’m here now is because Sir Archibald’s descendants chose America as their land of hope. If you want that to be true again, and if you want a future for the generation now taking up leadership roles in this country – and the generation that’s next, and the one after that – you need to consider: What can I do to change the destructive heading that is now America’s course?
Rex Smith, the host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
