Christine M. Flowers: No matter my distaste for Obama, Giuliani’s wrong

When I was about 11 or 12, I saw a made-for-television movie called “The Man Without A Country.” It was based on a short story written by Edward Everett Hale, and told the story of a man who – angered at being tried for treason against the United States – spouted out in the middle of the trial, “I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

In punishment, the astounded judge grants him his wish: He is found guilty and sentenced to spend the rest of his life on U.S. Navy warships. He is prohibited from ever setting foot on U.S. soil again, or from getting any news about his homeland. He learns, at the end of his long life, just how precious it was to have a country, and how empty to be without one.

That story struck me then as one of the most profound tragedies, as sad as any of the star-crossed legends of Shakespeare or the gods of Greece and Rome. There is something fundamental and important about being able to say, “I belong,” and to have that ripped from you, especially because of a deliberate act, is devastating.

It’s probably not coincidental, then, that I became an immigration lawyer. Somewhere deep inside, I must have remembered that movie and decided that giving people an opportunity to share in what I treasure – my citizenship and my identity – is the most honorable way to use my education. Of course, it might also have been that I couldn’t stand the idea of dealing with divorcing couples engaged in a legal death spiral or representing suspected rapists and murderers or dying, bit by bit and moment by moment, as I waded through the Bankruptcy Code.

But the feeling that I get when I take a client from being without any status at all to the point when they can take the oath of allegiance to the flag is indescribable, something that triggers all the emotions that a viewing of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” elicits.

You might read this and smirk and think that the emotion I really get is satisfaction at a nice bank account, but you would be wrong (ask my accountant). The reason I do what I do is, in large part, because I can’t think of anything more valuable than a United States passport.

For that reason, I was troubled by Rudy Giuliani’s comments about President Obama the other day. Unless someone has taken deliberate steps to attack the United States either through espionage, participation in acts of treason and violence or the promotion of the Kardashian clan, it’s out of line and completely inappropriate to accuse them of not loving the country.

We are in no position to judge the hearts of others, and while my fellow conservatives have tried to point out that he’s taking the country in the wrong direction and therefore must not love her, that’s a red herring. No one gets to determine what direction is the “patriotic” direction, and even though I might (and do) strongly disagree with this president on almost every single topic, I would never presume to say that he does not love this country – one in which he was born four months to the day before I was born in it – as much as the rest of us.

That makes me, in some quarters, a woman without a country, if that country is to be measured by philosophical latitudes and longitudes. I am, for all intents and purposes, the enemy of the Democratic Party and the antithesis of just about everything it has represented over the past few decades. Gay marriage, legalization of drugs, abortion rights, global warming, Michael Moore, all of these things are abhorrent to me because they represent a deliberate attempt to undermine my image of what makes America great.

And yet I would not say to someone who fights for same-sex marriage that he does not “love” my country, because in his own idealization of this place, he is doing something to make it better. I would not say to a woman who believes the killing of unborn children is a “right” that she does not “love” the United States because, in her own misguided way, she sees reproductive autonomy as a sacrament that only elevates society to a higher plain. I would not say to Michael Moore that he does not … OK, maybe I am getting carried away. Let’s move on.

The point is that while I detest much of what this president represents, I think that he is sincere in his affection for this place that we both call home. Having seen, now, 20 years worth of immigrants attempt to integrate themselves fully into this once foreign but always beloved place has taught me that you cannot be so arrogant as to determine who “loves” and who “belongs” and what is truly the basis of being American.

All of us who strive to make this country better, even if our ideas of “better” differ drastically, have the right to be a part of this place. None of us should be “without a country,” and none of us, short of Edward Snowden, should be exiled from participation in this grand, great adventure of belonging.

Rudy Giuliani, god love my Italian paisan, should know that. So should the rest of us who, blessedly, have a country.