(Originally published in the book Open Systems, Closed Mind)

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” — Thomas Paine, 1776

The ghost of Thomas Paine would weep to walk through America today. The man who midwifed a revolution with little more than a pamphlet and the clarity of moral purpose would find himself a stranger in the republic he helped conceive. Where he once envisioned an “asylum for mankind,” he would now encounter walls—both literal and symbolic—designed to keep the world’s suffering at bay, and often, to preserve a narrow vision of national identity at the expense of universal ideals.

I. The Betrayal of Universal Welcome

Paine didn’t merely champion American independence; he dreamed of American exceptionalism in its truest, moral sense. In Common Sense, he argued that the new nation could “receive the fugitive and the persecuted of all nations and religions” and become “the asylum for mankind.” This was not rhetorical flourish—it was the cornerstone of a radical proposition: that a nation could define itself not by blood or borders, but by principle.

Modern America, with its immigration raids, detention camps, and travel bans that target entire faiths, would be not just unrecognizable to Paine, but unconscionable. “My country is the world,” he once declared, “and my religion is to do good.” He believed that human rights did not stop at national boundaries. The moment America began to prioritize exclusion over welcome; it ceased to be revolutionary—it became reactionary, yet another citadel guarding privilege rather than liberating people from it.

II. Expanding the Critique:
Economic Barriers to the Asylum

Paine’s vision of an inclusive America extended beyond physical borders to economic opportunity. He advocated for progressive taxation and social safety nets in Agrarian Justice, proposing that wealth derived from common resources should benefit all. Today, skyrocketing wealth inequality—where the top 1% own more than half the nation’s wealth—would horrify him. The asylum he envisioned was not just a refuge from persecution but a place where all could thrive, not merely survive. Policies that favor corporate monopolies, tax loopholes for the ultra-rich, and wage stagnation for workers betray this vision, creating economic walls as exclusionary as any border fence.

III. White Christian Nationalism:
The Return of What We Rejected

Few things would disturb Paine more than the resurgence of White Christian Nationalism disguised as patriotism. He had no patience for the merging of church and state. In The Age of Reason, he denounced institutionalized religion as a tool “to terrify and enslave mankind.” While he respected faith as a private matter and acknowledged divine reason as part of natural law, he reserved his fiercest critique for those who used religion to consolidate power.

Today’s theocratic impulses—laws that impose one religious moral code on a pluralistic society, political rhetoric that casts non-Christians as lesser citizens—represent precisely the kind of authoritarian synthesis that Paine hoped the American experiment would abolish. He would see this fusion not as a deviation from the founding ethos, but as its betrayal. When religion is conscripted into the service of politics, both are corrupted—and the result is neither moral nor democratic, but oligarchic in a clerical costume.

IV. Expanding the Critique:
Education and Cultural Narratives

Paine would also be alarmed by efforts to control education and historical narratives to align with nationalist agendas. Book bans, revisionist curricula that downplay systemic injustices, and attacks on academic freedom echo the dogmatic control he criticized in religious institutions. Paine championed reason and inquiry as tools for liberation, believing that an educated populace was essential to democracy. The suppression of critical thinking in schools, coupled with the elevation of mythologized histories, undermines the rational foundation he saw as vital to a free society.

V. Military Power Turned Inward:
The Contradiction of Force Against Citizens

The sight of militarized police or federal troops detaining protesters in American streets would strike Paine as a nightmare. To him, the legitimacy of any government hinged on the consent of the governed—and that consent must be earned by justice, not enforced by intimidation.

In The Rights of Man, Paine asserted that the role of government is to safeguard natural rights: life, liberty, expression, and dissent. He had himself been hounded, imprisoned, and nearly executed for speaking truth to power. He knew tyranny’s scent well, and he would have recognized it in any government that weaponizes its power against its own citizens for exercising the very rights it purports to protect.

Force used to suppress protest does not preserve order—it desecrates the very principles on which the republic stands. A government that fears dissent more than injustice has already lost its moral compass.

VI. Expanding the Critique: Surveillance and Privacy

Paine would also recoil at the modern surveillance state. Mass data collection, facial recognition technology, and the erosion of privacy rights under the guise of security would strike him as tools of control, not protection. In his era, governments relied on physical force to silence dissent; today, digital surveillance achieves the same ends with chilling efficiency. Paine’s emphasis on individual liberty would lead him to condemn these practices as antithetical to a free society, where citizens must be trusted to think and act without constant monitoring.

VII. The Return of Monarchical Instincts

The “No Kings” protest signs dotting American streets would move Paine—first to pride, then to sorrow. Pride, that his insight endures. Sorrow, that it must still be shouted. Paine’s opposition to monarchy was not just a reaction to George III; it was a wholesale rejection of the idea that some are born to rule and others to obey.

He would see the rise of executive overreach, wealth-as-power politics, and dynastic ambition in American leadership as echoes of the aristocracy he once helped overthrow. The idea that government exists to serve citizens—not the other way around—has frayed under the weight of concentrated influence and institutional inertia.

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil,” he warned. But left unchecked, it becomes a perpetuating hierarchy—a crown without a coronation.

VIII. Expanding the Critique:
Corporate Influence and Political Capture

Paine would be appalled by the extent to which corporate interests dominate American governance. The influence of lobbying, campaign finance loopholes, and revolving-door politics between corporations and government would appear to him as a new aristocracy, where wealth buys power. He would likely argue that this system undermines the democratic will, creating a de facto ruling class that prioritizes profit over the public good—a betrayal of the revolutionary principle that power derives from the people, not from privilege.

IX. The International Dimension:
America First vs. Mankind’s Asylum

Paine’s vision was always larger than one nation. His revolutionary fervor led him not only to support American independence, but to risk his life for the French Revolution as well. To him, freedom was indivisible. If it was not universal, it was counterfeit.

Modern cries of “America First,” especially when used to dismiss the plight of refugees, deny asylum-seekers, or abandon allies in pursuit of expedient self-interest, would appall him. He believed that the fate of humanity was intertwined—that America could not flourish in moral isolation.

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” he wrote. But today, that cause is too often diminished into a slogan. If we use our power to build borders rather than bridges, to isolate rather than inspire, we surrender the moral leadership Paine envisioned—and with it, the soul of the American experiment.

X. Expanding the Critique:
Environmental Neglect as Global Betrayal

Paine’s universalism extended to humanity’s shared stake in the natural world. His writings in Agrarian Justice show a deep respect for the earth as a common inheritance. The failure to address climate change—through inaction or denial—would strike him as a profound moral failing. A nation that prioritizes short-term economic gain over the survival of future generations and the global ecosystem betrays the principle of interconnectedness that Paine championed. He would see environmental neglect as a rejection of the asylum ideal, abandoning not just people but the planet itself.

XI. Reclaiming the Revolutionary Spirit

And yet, Paine would not despair. He knew revolutions are never won once, but must be renewed by every generation. The spark that once set a continent ablaze still flickers in Americans who dare to challenge injustice.

The protesters demanding justice, the lawyers at airports defending the rights of the displaced, the teachers refusing to whitewash history, the voters resisting authoritarian drift—these are Paine’s spiritual descendants. He believed not in American perfection, but in American potential. The power to “begin the world over again” was not reserved for 1776—it is the birthright of every generation that dares to believe in equality and acts upon that belief.

The revolution was never intended as an event, but as a process: ongoing, unfinished, often uncomfortable, but always necessary. A nation’s greatness is not in how well it preserves its past, but in how courageously it shapes its future.

XII. Expanding the Call to Action:
Grassroots Empowerment

Paine’s pamphlets were not written for elites but for ordinary people, empowering them to demand change. Today, he would champion grassroots movements—community organizing, mutual aid networks, and local activism—as the heart of the revolutionary spirit. He would urge citizens to reclaim democracy through direct action, whether by voting, running for local office, or building coalitions across divides. Paine’s faith in the common person’s ability to reshape society remains a clarion call to resist apathy and engage actively in civic life.

XIII. Conclusion:
A Challenge to the Conscience

The world is still watching.
Not for American supremacy.
Not for American wealth.
But for American conscience.

The question remains:
Will we give them reason to hope?

Paine’s America was never a finished project but a challenge, a call to align the nation’s actions with its highest ideals. To honor his vision, we must confront the ways we’ve fallen short: in our borders, our schools, our streets, our laws, and our global responsibilities. The dream of an asylum for mankind is deferred, but not dead. It lives in every act of courage, every demand for justice, and every refusal to accept the world as it is.

Let us begin the world over again.

The post Thomas Paine’s America: A Dream Deferred appeared first on Obermaier.

(Originally published in the book Open Systems, Closed Mind)

Part I: The Illusion of Birth-Based Superiority

At the heart of nationalist ideology lies one of humanity’s most persistent logical fallacies: the belief that the geographical coordinates of one’s birth somehow confer inherent worth, specialness, or moral superiority. This notion, dressed in the appealing rhetoric of loyalty and fidelity, crumbles under the slightest rational examination. You did not choose your birthplace any more than you chose your eye color or the decade of your arrival on Earth. It is, quite literally, a genetic and geographical accident—a confluence of circumstances involving your parents’ location at a particular moment in time.

Consider the arbitrary nature of this pride. If your mother happened to be visiting relatives across a border when you were born, would that fundamentally alter who you are as a person? If your family moved when you were an infant, which soil should command your supposedly innate loyalty? The questions reveal the absurdity of the premise. National boundaries are human constructs, often drawn by historical accidents of war, colonial administration, or political convenience. To derive personal identity and worth from these lines on a map is to mistake the arbitrary for the essential.

Yet nationalism asks us to do precisely this—to feel pride in achievements we had no hand in creating, to claim ownership of cultural accomplishments that preceded our existence, and to assume responsibility for a “national character” we played no role in shaping. This is not the healthy pride that comes from personal accomplishment or meaningful contribution; it is borrowed glory, unearned identity, and vicarious achievement of the most hollow kind.

The distinction between ethnic nationalism and constitutional patriotism becomes crucial here. Ethnic nationalism—the belief that blood, soil, and shared ancestry create inherent bonds and superiorities—represents the most toxic form of this geographical accident worship. It suggests that your value as a human being depends on the purity of your lineage and the specific patch of earth that witnessed your first breath. Constitutional patriotism, while potentially less harmful, still often relies on the problematic assumption that you should feel special pride in political documents and systems you had no role in creating, simply because you happened to be born under their jurisdiction.

The historical record speaks with devastating clarity about where such thinking leads. Nationalism, in its various forms, has been the ideological fuel for history’s most catastrophic conflicts. The trenches of World War I filled with young men convinced that their particular piece of geography was worth dying for. The Holocaust emerged from a nationalism so toxic it sought to eliminate those deemed insufficiently connected to the “right” soil and blood. The Rwandan genocide, the Yugoslav wars, the partition of India—each represents nationalism’s capacity to transform geographical accidents into justifications for mass murder.

When we compare nationalism’s death toll with other ideologies, only religious fundamentalism rivals its destructive power. The Crusades, the Thirty Years’ War, and countless sectarian conflicts show how easily humans can be convinced to kill for abstract ideas about divine preference and chosen peoples. Nationalism simply replaces divine selection with geographical selection, trading “God chose us” for “this land chose us.” The result is equally deadly and equally irrational.

Even in its supposedly benign forms, nationalism corrupts moral reasoning. It asks us to value the life of a co-national more than that of a foreigner, to prioritize the welfare of those who share our accidental birthplace over those who do not. It creates in-groups and out-groups based on nothing more substantial than the random distribution of human births across the planet’s surface. This moral particularism—caring more about some humans than others based on geographical proximity of birth—directly contradicts any coherent system of universal human ethics.

The alternative to this geographical chauvinism is not rootlessness or anomie—it is humanism. Instead of deriving identity from the accident of birthplace, we can ground our sense of belonging in our shared humanity, our common capacity for reason, creativity, and moral growth. Instead of pride in inherited geography, we can take pride in personal accomplishments, in contributions to human knowledge and welfare, in the cultivation of wisdom and compassion that knows no borders.

Part II: The Miraculous Geography of Divine Truth

What are the odds? In a world with thousands of religions, hundreds of denominations, and countless interpretations of divine will, you—through no effort or wisdom of your own—happened to be born into the one true faith. Not only that, but you were born to parents who practiced the correct version of that faith, in the right geographical region where that truth was already established, speaking the language in which divine revelation was most perfectly preserved. Truly, you are among the luckiest people who have ever lived.

But wait. Here’s where the miracle becomes even more extraordinary: billions of other people around the world are experiencing this exact same incredible fortune. The Muslim in Jakarta is absolutely certain that his birth into Islam represents the same kind of divine luck. The Catholic in São Paulo knows with equal certainty that her childhood baptism placed her among the cosmically fortunate. The Hindu in Mumbai, the Buddhist in Bangkok, the Orthodox Christian in Moscow, the Protestant in Nashville—all are marveling at their impossibly good fortune of being born into the one path that leads to eternal salvation or enlightenment.

This presents us with a statistical miracle of unprecedented proportions. Not only did you win the cosmic lottery, but somehow billions of others won the exact same lottery simultaneously—except they all won different prizes that they each insist are the only real prize. It’s as if millions of people were all handed lottery tickets that said “WINNER” while insisting that everyone else’s winning ticket was actually a fake.

The geographical distribution of this divine luck reveals patterns that would make any statistician suspicious. How remarkably convenient that the “true religion” tends to cluster in specific regions and correlate so perfectly with the accidents of political history, trade routes, and military conquest. The truth about God, it seems, spreads in exactly the same way that languages, cuisines, and folk tales spread—through human migration, cultural transmission, and political power. What are the chances that divine truth would follow the same distribution patterns as entirely human phenomena?

Consider the historical implications of this miraculous geography. When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas, they encountered millions of indigenous people who had somehow failed to discover Christianity despite having thousands of years to figure out the correct path to salvation. Were these civilizations simply unlucky? Did God forget to send them the memo? Or perhaps the divine plan required them to wait centuries for European ships to deliver the truth—along with smallpox, slavery, and territorial conquest.

The same pattern repeats throughout history. The “true faith” always seems to arrive with armies, merchants, or colonial administrators. It travels along trade routes and spreads through political networks. Truth, apparently, needs human institutions to carry it across the world, and it seems to be remarkably bad at crossing cultural and linguistic barriers without military or economic assistance.

But let’s return to the personal level of this miracle. Not only were you born into the right religion, but you were born into it at exactly the right time. If you had been born a few centuries earlier, you might have been unlucky enough to be born into a version of your faith that is now considered heretical. If you’re a Protestant, imagine your misfortune if you had been born into pre-Reformation Christianity. If you’re a Catholic, consider how unfortunate it would have been to be born into one of the early Christian sects that the Church later declared heretical.

The timing of your birth was also perfect in terms of theological development. You arrived just after all the major doctrinal questions had been settled, just after the correct interpretation of scripture had been established, just after the proper rituals had been codified. How lucky that you didn’t have to live through centuries of religious uncertainty, schisms, and theological debates. The truth was already packaged and ready for you.

This miraculous timing extends to your specific denomination as well. If you’re a Christian, you weren’t unlucky enough to be born into one of the other 45,000 Christian denominations that have gotten crucial details wrong. If you’re a Muslim, you avoided the misfortune of being born into the wrong branch of Islam. If you’re Jewish, you landed in the right movement within Judaism. Each level of religious specificity represents another lottery win, another impossible stroke of luck.

The psychological comfort of this belief system is obvious. It means you don’t have to do the hard work of examining different religious traditions, comparing their claims, or grappling with the possibility that your deeply held beliefs might be products of geographical and historical accident rather than cosmic truth. You can simply assume that the universe arranged itself to deliver the correct information to you through your parents and local religious community.

But this comfort comes at a staggering intellectual cost. It requires you to believe that billions of equally sincere, equally intelligent, equally devout people around the world are all fundamentally mistaken about the most important questions of human existence. It requires you to believe that geographical location is a reliable indicator of theological truth. It requires you to believe that divine revelation follows the same patterns as human cultural transmission—which raises the question of whether you’re actually dealing with divine revelation at all.

The alternative explanation is far simpler and requires no miraculous coincidences: religious beliefs, like languages and cultural practices, are learned from the social environment in which we are raised. They spread through human networks, adapt to local conditions, and evolve over time through entirely human processes. The passionate conviction that believers feel about their faith is real, but conviction is not evidence of truth—it’s evidence of effective cultural transmission.

Part III: The Accident of Supremacy and the Holy Trinity of Evil

The most destructive force in human history is not natural disaster, disease, or scarcity—it is the toxic combination of two fundamentally stupid ideas that have convinced ordinary people to commit extraordinary evil. The first is the delusion that your accidental birthplace makes you inherently superior to other humans. The second is the fantasy that your accidental religious upbringing connects you more directly to the Supreme Being of the Universe than the billions of other humans who happened to be born into different traditions.

When these two accidents of supremacy combine, they create a psychological nuclear weapon: the absolute certainty that you are not just different from others, but divinely ordained to be better than others. You are not merely lucky—you are chosen. Your random geographical and theological coordinates become evidence of cosmic favoritism, transforming life’s arbitrary circumstances into proof of your special relationship with ultimate reality itself.

This lethal combination has been the ideological fuel for humanity’s most catastrophic violence. Consider the Crusades, where European Christians convinced themselves that their accidental birth into Christianity and their accidental residence in Christendom gave them divine permission to slaughter Muslims in the Holy Land. The Crusaders didn’t see themselves as invaders or murderers—they saw themselves as instruments of God’s will, their violence sanctified by the miraculous coincidence of their birth circumstances.

The Spanish conquest of the Americas represents this toxic fusion at its most devastating. Spanish conquistadors combined their accidental European birthplace with their accidental Catholic upbringing to justify genocide on an unprecedented scale. Indigenous peoples weren’t just different—they were inferior by virtue of their wrong geography and wrong religion. Their annihilation became not just permissible but holy, a divine mandate delivered through the accident of Spanish birth and Catholic baptism.

The Holocaust elevated this poisonous logic to industrial efficiency. Nazi ideology fused nationalism (German soil) with pseudo-religious mysticism (Aryan chosen-ness) to create a supremacist death cult. Jews, Roma, and other targeted groups weren’t just different—they were cosmically wrong, their very existence an offense against the natural and divine order that supposedly favored the accidentally German-born adherents of accidentally acquired racial mythology.

But these two accidents of supremacy never operate in isolation. They are amplified and weaponized by what we might call the Holy Trinity of Evil: tribalism, racism, and isolationism. Together, these five forces create a psychological cocktail that transforms humans into monsters while convincing them they are heroes.

Tribalism takes the accident of birth and expands it into an us-versus-them worldview where loyalty to your accidental group becomes the highest moral value. Your tribe—defined by the random circumstances of your birth—becomes the center of moral concern, while all other humans become either irrelevant or actively threatening. The Rwandan genocide demonstrates how quickly tribalism can turn neighbors into enemies, how radio broadcasts can convince Hutus that their accidental ethnic identity made them naturally superior to their Tutsi neighbors, justifying mass murder as ethnic destiny.

Racism adds biological pseudoscience to geographic and cultural accidents, claiming that your random genetic inheritance determines not just your appearance but your intelligence, morality, and worthiness of life itself. American slavery lasted centuries because white Americans convinced themselves that their accidental European ancestry made them naturally superior to people of accidental African ancestry. The accident of melanin production became proof of cosmic hierarchy, turning human beings into property and torture into economic policy.

Isolationism completes the trinity by making ignorance a virtue and curiosity a threat. Instead of learning about other cultures, religions, and ways of life—which might reveal the arbitrariness of your own accidents of birth—isolationism encourages you to reject outside influence and view foreign ideas as contamination. The accident of your birth circumstances becomes not just superior but fragile, requiring protection from the corrupting influence of other accidents of birth.

When all five forces combine—nationalist supremacy, religious supremacy, tribalism, racism, and isolationism—they create humans who are capable of extraordinary evil while feeling extraordinary righteousness. They transform the basic human capacity for group loyalty and meaning-making into engines of dehumanization and violence.

This toxic combination makes people less human in the most literal sense. It shrinks their circle of moral concern from the universal human family to their accidentally defined in-group. It replaces curiosity about other ways of life with fear and hatred. It substitutes the earned pride of personal accomplishment with the borrowed glory of group membership. It trades the difficult work of understanding complex moral questions for the simple comfort of assuming divine endorsement of your prejudices.

The psychology is seductive because it offers everything humans crave: specialness without effort, purpose without uncertainty, community without responsibility, and righteousness without self-examination. You don’t have to accomplish anything meaningful—your birth circumstances already make you special. You don’t have to grapple with moral complexity—your group membership provides ready-made answers. You don’t have to earn respect through your actions—your accidents of birth entitle you to superiority.

History’s greatest monsters were not born evil—they were ordinary people who became convinced that their accidents of birth made them extraordinary. Hitler was a failed artist who transformed his personal inadequacies into national and racial superiority. Pol Pot was an unremarkable student who turned his accidental Cambodian birth into a justification for murdering anyone with accidental markers of education or foreign influence. Osama bin Laden was a privileged construction heir who converted his accidental Islamic upbringing into divine permission for mass murder.

Conclusion: The Choice to Be Human

The antidote to this poison is the recognition that all human worth comes from what we choose to do with our lives, not from the circumstances into which we were accidentally born. Every person you meet won the same lottery you did—the lottery of human consciousness, the ability to think, feel, create, and care. Their different birthplace, different religion, different language, different appearance are just different outcomes of the same cosmic randomness that produced your own circumstances.

Humanism offers what nationalism and religious supremacy promise but cannot deliver: a basis for community that is both inclusive and earned, both meaningful and rational. It asks not where you were born or what religion your parents taught you, but what you have done with the gift of consciousness. It measures worth not by passport color or theological pedigree, but by contribution to the human project of understanding, creating, and caring for one another across all artificial boundaries.

True human dignity lies not in the accidents of birth but in how we use our brief time as conscious beings. Do we choose to learn from those who were born into different circumstances? Do we create beauty, knowledge, or compassion that enriches the human experience? Do we expand our circle of concern beyond our accidental in-groups to embrace our shared humanity?

The love of one’s immediate community—one’s neighbors, local environment, and familiar places—need not extend to claims of superiority or special chosenness. You can appreciate your hometown without believing it superior to all others. You can work for local improvement without nationalism’s toxic brew of pride, superiority, and us-versus-them thinking. You can find meaning and purpose without the delusion that cosmic forces arranged themselves for your particular benefit.

The choice is always before us: we can worship the accidents of our birth, or we can transcend them through the conscious choice to become fully human. We can remain prisoners of geographical and theological lottery tickets, or we can recognize that our only true birthright is the capacity to think, choose, and care beyond the narrow boundaries of our accidental circumstances.

In the end, the accidents of supremacy are just that—accidents. What matters is not where the cosmic dice landed when you were born, but what you choose to do with your consciousness now that you have it. True belonging comes not from the accident of geography or theology, but from the choice to contribute meaningfully to human flourishing, wherever that contribution might be needed.

The post The Accidents of Supremacy: How Birth Lotteries Create Human Monsters appeared first on Obermaier.

How Language Shapes Policy and Perception

Bottom Line Up Front

The U.S. government’s pervasive use of “non-citizen” to describe foreign nationals distorts the meaning of citizenship and dehumanizes people — dedicated teachers, skilled doctors, vibrant students — who hold full citizenship in their home countries. This term, entrenched in official documents, fuels policies that diminish the humanity of good people based solely on their lack of American citizenship, revealing a worldview that elevates U.S. identity over global dignity.

In a world of 195 sovereign nations, every person walking this earth is a citizen of somewhere. Yet the United States government has adopted language that erases this basic reality, reducing millions of foreign nationals to what they supposedly ‘are not’ rather than acknowledging what they are — full citizens of their own countries.

Introduction

Let’s be clear from the start: People who are not U.S. citizens are still citizens, just citizens of other countries. The fundamental truth we must recognize is that there are no ‘non-citizens’ in this world — only citizens of different nations. The German engineer, the Japanese artist, or the Nigerian physicist living among us are not defined by their absence of American citizenship. A Canadian doctor saving lives, a Mexican teacher shaping young minds, or an Austrian student enriching American campuses are not “non-citizens” — they are citizens of their nations, with dreams, families, and dignity equal to any American. English is a rich language, brimming with precise terms to honor such humanity, yet the U.S. government wields “non-citizen” across Department of Homeland Security (DHS) orders and legislative texts, casting these individuals as lesser for lacking U.S. citizenship.

Using the wrong term out of misguided convenience or laziness may be excusable in casual talk, but it is abhorrent when deliberately turned into a weapon by the government to denigrate fellow human beings. This linguistic dagger reduces vibrant identities to a cold negation, framing good people as outsiders devoid of legitimacy. “Non-citizen” is not bureaucratic shorthand but a deliberate distortion that fuels exclusionary policies and perceptions, betraying America’s promise of fairness and justice.

The Perversion of Citizenship

Citizenship is a sacred bond, granting rights, responsibilities, and recognition of one’s humanity within a political community. A French tourist is a French citizen, a Mexican worker a Mexican citizen — not “non-citizens.” Yet, U.S. agencies apply this term across immigration enforcement, benefit programs, and legal documents, defining people by what they lack. This linguistic choice creates a false hierarchy that treats American citizenship as the universal standard, implicitly devaluing the citizenship bonds that billions of people hold with their own nations — bonds that are just as meaningful, just as ‘real’ as any American’s relationship with the United States. It implies that billions worldwide — from Japanese diplomats to Canadian prime ministers — are mere shadows defined by their distance from U.S. borders, their contributions erased by a reductive label that wounds global dignity.

Government Usage and Official Sanction

The term “non-citizen” is entrenched in U.S. policy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service demonstrates this linguistic harm by labeling international students as ‘non-citizens’ in official guidelines — a reductive term that erases their full citizenship status in their home countries. FEMA’s 2025 guidelines limit cash assistance to “U.S. citizens, non-citizen nationals, or qualified aliens,” relegating foreign nationals to secondary status, even in disaster-stricken communities where they suffer alongside Americans. Most disturbingly, DHS’s 2025 enforcement of the Alien Registration Act, under Executive Order 14159, mandates “non-citizens” to register or face penalties, framing them as threats to national security. The State Department recognizes “non-citizen nationals” — U.S. nationals who are not citizens — acknowledging gradations of belonging, yet this nuance is withheld from foreign nationals, revealing a selective disregard for their humanity.

Whether in immigration, education, healthcare, or disaster relief, this linguistic choice shapes how we see and treat foreign nationals across every aspect of government interaction.

The Dehumanizing Effect

Language shapes hearts and minds, and “non-citizen” cuts deeply.

Imagine Maria, a Brazilian nurse who moved to the U.S. to care for patients during a hospital staffing crisis. Despite her sacrifices, she’s labeled a “non-citizen” in official documents, her identity reduced to a bureaucratic void, her contributions dismissed. This term brands a Mexican nurse or an Indian engineer as “other,” their efforts — building communities, saving lives — erased by a word that screams deficiency.

Even well-meaning friends and family, who defend immigrants amid recent tensions, now casually use “non-citizen” in conversations, unaware that its normalized acceptance perpetuates harm. In immigration enforcement, this language justifies harsh policies, like DHS’s 2025 registration requirements, which treat foreign nationals as suspects requiring surveillance. It flattens diverse identities — students, workers, visitors — into a monolithic category, stripping away their stories.

This linguistic cruelty fuels policies that punish rather than protect, shattering the dreams of good people who enrich America’s cultural and economic fabric, betraying the fairness America claims to champion.

Now, imagine if Germany labeled all Americans visiting Berlin as ‘non-citizens’ in official documents. Picture the French government referring to American students in Paris as ‘non-citizens’ rather than ‘American students.’ The absurdity becomes clear — these terms erase national identity and dignity, reducing people to bureaucratic negatives.

Every American traveling abroad remains a fully American citizen — they do not become ‘non-citizens’ of their host countries. They would rightfully reject such labeling as demeaning and inaccurate. Why then do we accept this linguistic diminishment of others?

Historical and Legal Context

Historically, U.S. immigration law used “alien,” a term rejected for its dehumanizing sting. The Biden Administration’s shift to “non-citizen” aimed to soften this, but traded one harm for another. Federal statutes, like the Immigration and Nationality Act, define people by their lack of U.S. citizenship, a practice that seeps into DHS reports, media, and public discourse. This legal language perpetuates a narrative that devalues foreign citizenship, ignoring the pride and identity it holds for billions.

A Global Perspective

Other nations show that language can honor humanity. Canada uses “permanent resident” or “temporary resident,” affirming individuals’ status in their home countries. The UK employs “migrant” or “international visitor,” recognizing agency without negation. Australia’s “visa holder” focuses on legal status, not absence. These terms contrast with the U.S.’s “non-citizen,” which elevates American identity over global dignity, exposing a linguistic nationalism that isolates rather than unites.

A More Accurate Alternative

Terms like “foreign nationals,” “foreign citizens,” “international visitors,” or “residents of other countries” acknowledge citizenship elsewhere while maintaining clarity. These alternatives reject the negative framing of “non-citizen,” which positions American citizenship as humanity’s gold standard. Choosing “non-citizen” reflects an ideological bias that devalues global citizenship and undermines the very justice America claims to champion.

Language is a choice. Every time we say ‘foreign national’ instead of ‘non-citizen,’ we choose to see the whole person rather than the bureaucratic void.

The Broader Implications

The term “non-citizen” is more than a word — it’s a worldview that elevates American citizenship above all else. It fails to see the Mexican teacher, the Canadian doctor, or the German student as equals, reducing their lives to paperwork. This linguistic nationalism fuels policies that treat foreign nationals as problems, not people, betraying the principles of fairness and dignity. It asks: how can a nation claiming justice dehumanize those who contribute to its strength?

Conclusion

The U.S. government’s use of “non-citizen” is a deliberate distortion that erases the citizenship and humanity of billions — good people who teach, heal, and dream. From SNAP guidelines to DHS’s punitive registries, this term shapes policies that punish rather than protect, breaking America’s promise of justice. Alternatives like “foreign nationals,” as used by Canada, the UK, and Australia, honor global citizens. The language we choose shapes how we treat others. For a nation built on fairness, it’s time to reject “non-citizen” and embrace terms that uplift the humanity of all, regardless of borders.

Will America choose a language that recognizes the full humanity and citizenship of all people, or will we continue using terms that reduce millions to what they supposedly lack? For a nation that claims to champion human dignity, the answer should be clear.

Sources:

• U.S. Department of Agriculture, SNAP Eligibility for Non-Citizens, 2025–03–17
• FEMA, Citizenship Status and Eligibility for Disaster Assistance, 2025–01–20
• DHS, Secretary Noem Reminds Foreign Nationals to Register, 2025–04–10
• USCIS, Alien Registration Requirement, 2025–05–05
• State Department, Certificates of Non-Citizen Nationality, 2023–04–30
• Migration Policy Institute, Shaping Citizenship Policies, 2012–08–02

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