Published April 17, 2025
American citizenship once served as a unifying framework — rooted in shared rights, responsibilities, and national identity. But today, distinctions between citizen and noncitizen are increasingly blurred, as legal boundaries dissolve and civic obligations are replaced by personal entitlement, tribal affiliations, and ideological activism.
Senior Hoover Fellow, Victor Davis Hanson, examines how identity politics, demographic shifts, and the rise of unelected bureaucracies have reshaped the meaning of citizenship, and how those changes threaten the viability of the American republic.
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a classicist, and a military historian. He is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture.
Check out more from Victor Davis Hanson:
Learn more about Victor Davis Hanson here.
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The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
© 2025 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
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