"I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous."
This from former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, speaking at a Washington DC fundraiser on June 8th (see video below).
Gingrich has long been a polarizing figure across traditional party lines, but these particular comments have put him at odds with longtime Republican icon Ronald Reagan, while stirring up some surprising debate among progressives.
According to CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley and CQ Politics' Jonathan Allen, Gingrich's "I am not a citizen of the world" line (and the sentence that followed) was a jab at President Barack Obama, who, in a July 2008 speech in Berlin, Germany, described himself as "a citizen -- a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world." Never mind that President Reagan used almost the same words in a June 17, 1982, speech to the United Nations General Assembly, saying "I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world."
Granted the world has changed some in the past 27 years, but it just might be that Gingrich’s comments aren’t necessarily representative of conservatives in general.
On the other hand, they seem to have struck a chord with an audience Gingrich could not possibly have targeted. When word of Gingrich’s comments reached the unapologetically left-leaning site OpEdNews.com, there was, of course, the expected "then get the heck out!" knee-jerk response. But it wasn’t long before Gingrich was receiving some unexpected support.
Here’s part of one comment on the site:
'Citizen' implies allegiance to a government etc. and secondary definitions may say 'resident', I prefer to use resident for 'resident' and not entail issues of allegiance. Thus, being a citizen of the Republic and a resident of the world do not have the same implications. I am not a citizen of the world. Also, when folks talk about 'the world' are they simply talking about the planet (as one appears to do above) or are they implying 'world government' (because they use the word 'citizen', confusing its meaning with 'resident')? Because if one means or implies 'world government' ... then count me against that too.
And here is part of another:
"World citizen" sounds more like an agenda than a reality. What's most frightening to me is the air of superiority with which everyone who does not buy into the whole "citizen of this world" mumbo jumbo (a meaningless phase without one-world-Government except as elitist coded speech referring to the same) is branded with the same epithets as Mr. Gingrich and told to "stay the eff out of it". If that is the meaning of "world citizenship", then I remain gladly an American citizen. I want to be worldly, not a "world citizen". I not only want my own Government instead of a world Government, I want more power returned by my Federal Government to my local and state governments.
Are self-proclaimed progressives really agreeing with Gingrich?
I don’t think they are. The "citizen of the world" phrase is ambiguous enough that it operates a bit like a psychological projective test in which respondents are presumed to interpret ambiguous stimuli (like an inkblot) by projecting their own experiences and personalities. The interpretation of the "citizen of the world" phrase, just like an interpretation of an inkblot, therefore, says more about the person doing the interpreting than it does about the actual stimulus.
So, what can we say about Gingrich, based on these particular comments? A glance at the sentences that followed (see below) provides some clues of his intentions.
Let me be clear. I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous. There is no world sovereignty. There is no world system of law. There is in fact no circumstance under which I would like to be a citizen of North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia. I am a citizen -- I am a citizen of the United States of America, and the rest of this speech is about the United States of America.
To begin with, it seems unlikely that he was advocating a more isolationist U.S. foreign policy or a more careful use of military force abroad, though that’d be hard to imagine anyway, given Republicans’ continued support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
What is more plausible is that the comments were, indeed, intended as a shot at Obama for pandering to world opinion, as well as a possible attempt to differentiate himself from the President (perhaps in anticipation of the 2012 election) by making the point that he puts American interests front and center and no other nation’s interests need be considered. Progressives would not agree with this assertion.
Some, however, would find common ground on Gingrich’s claim that there is no world sovereignty or a world system of law. And, like Gingrich, some progressives (see comments above) would eschew any effort toward such a reality. On the other hand, other progressives would like nothing better than an international set of laws that provided accountability and, if necessary, constraint, to individual nations.
Me? I am a naturalized U.S. citizen and have no wish to be a citizen of any other nation. But I am also a resident of the world and, in all the ways that matter, consider "my people" to be all human beings living on this planet. I feel strongly about this. In both my lived experience and in my work as a psychologist who studies group relations, dividing the world into "us" and "them" very often results in negative outcomes – sometimes on a small scale, sometimes writ large. Cliché thought it might be, to have peace and justice requires that we focus on our commonalities, not our differences. What a pleasant revelation it is to discover that Ronald Reagan and I have at least our "world citizenship" in common.