HCBA Lawyer Magazine Vol. 28, No. 4 | Page 27

the united states is a uniquely non-ethno state
Diversity Committee
Chairs: Timothy C. Martin – Martin Law Office & Victoria Oguntoye – Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney
learning from the fallacy
of european factionalism
and nationalism, our
founding fathers wanted
to do things differently.
I
© Can Stock Photo / zapomicron
n 1657, John Washington, the
father of our first president
George Washington, arrived
in the Virginia Colony from
England. Fourteen years earlier, the
Anglican and Royalist Washington
had been stripped of his clerical
position by the Puritans during the
English Civil War. During the 17th
Century, Europe was on fire with
religious and political strife, most
notable of these conflicts was the
Thirty Years’ War. Entire villages in
Central Europe were depopulated
during this time. This was
the Europe that John Washington,
along with many other of our
founding fathers’ ancestors, were
fleeing, ultimately bringing them
to America as refugees.
Meanwhile, during this period,
the Age of Enlightenment began,
with thinkers like Roussou, Voltaire,
Spinoza, Montesquieu, and
Comenius questioning the ideas of
absolute monarchy and religious
and ethnic intolerance that, many
of those philosophers concluded,
caused the conflicts in Europe.
Our Founding Fathers were
doubtlessly influenced by the
wars in Europe and the post-war
thinkers. James Madison starts
the tenth Federalist Paper with
“AMONG the numerous
advantages promised by
a well-constructed Union, none
deserves to be more accurately
developed than its tendency to
break and control the violence of
faction.” Alexander Hamilton, in
the ninth Federalist Paper, states,
“It is impossible to read the history
of the petty republics of Greece
and Italy without feeling sensations
of horror and disgust at the
distractions with which they were
continually agitated, and at the
rapid succession of revolutions by
which they were kept in a state of
perpetual vibration between the
extremes of tyranny and anarchy.”
John Jay, in arguing for Federalism
and Union, clearly references the
European conflicts in the sixth
Federalist Paper, stating, “Nay, it is
far more probable that in America,
as in Europe, neighboring nations,
acting under the impulse of
opposite interests and unfriendly
passions, would frequently be found
taking different sides.”
Unfortunately, today we see the
rise of people calling for the United
States to be an ethno-state. The
tragic events in Charlottesville,
Virginia, in August 2017,
demonstrate that. But such violence
is precisely what the Founding
Fathers, influenced by the
Enlightenment, sought to avoid.
Amidst the calls to turn away
refugees, tighten borders, and
restrict immigration in the name
of preserving the “American
Identity,” we must remember the
true American identity is a beacon
of hope, concisely inscribed in the
Statue of Liberty, “Give us your
poor, huddled masses.”
The Founding Fathers dreamed
of a nation free of the kind of
violence based on ethnicity,
religion, and political affiliation
that had torn Europe apart. They
saw a nation where people could
associate as they pleased, yet still
work together for the progress of
that nation. To allow ourselves to
give way to factionalism of any
kind would be a betrayal of that
vision. The United States is not
a nation of a
single ethnicity.
Rather, “E
pluribus unum.”
Author:
Abraham Shakfeh
- Shakfeh Law,
LLC
JoIn THe dIversITy CommITTee on AprIL 19 AT ITs AnnuAL CLe.
reGIsTer AT HILLsBAr.Com.
MAR - APR 2018
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