Radio Derb Is On The Air: Stanley Fischer And Dual Citizenship, Etc.
01/18/2014
As a podcast on iTunes, listenable/downloadable onscreen at Taki’s Magazine, or as a transcript here.
This week’s title story concerns the nomination of Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel, to be Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. I take the opportunity to vent against the concept of dual citizenship, which I call “an abomination”:
Patriotism can have only one object. When a British person becomes a naturalized American, there is a way to finesse the situation so that you remain a British citizen, holding dual British and American citizenship. I know people who did that. I myself didn’t. Taking the Naturalization Oath, I declared before a judge that “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” Taking an oath is a serious matter, or ought to be.
Well, that’s personal. I’m sure Mr. Fischer has his reasons. I do find it hard to believe, though, that for such a senior post, with such power over the U.S. economy, it wasn’t possible to find someone among the 300 million-odd non-dual citizens of the U.S.A.
The full Radio Derb playbill:
- Juicing for dollars. (A baseball player is suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs! Good grief!)
- Sex scandal in France. (A French politician is found to have a secret mistress! Zut alors!)
- The African horrors. (Tribal wars, cannibalism, nomad v. farmer, Muslim v. Christian, …. Legacies of colonialism, no doubt.)
- A treaty about nothing. (Cosmetic diplomacy on Iran.)
- A job Americans can’t do… (…unless they are also citizens of somewhere else? See above.)
- Congresscritters support Americans! (Sixteen of them stand up to the Slave Power.)
- Christie: the story about the story. (Democrats are much better at politics.)
- Libertarianism in one country. (Maximum security at the borders, maximum liberty inside them.)
- The progressive war on language. (The left’s war on words.)
It’s all there at Taki’s Magazine.