On June 27, 2025, Kieran Healy became one of America’s newest citizens. He writes a lovely essay about the process. It’s a wonderful distillation of an emotionally complex experience:

When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relationship of individuals to the state. These have all been in the news recently; perhaps you have heard about it. These questions ask how polities work, how they impose themselves upon us, how power is exercised. They are tied up with deep-rooted principles, claims and myths—as you please—about where authority comes from and how it is or whether it ever has been justly applied. These are not easy matters to understand in principle or resolve in practice. Nor can they simply be dismissed. But I am not writing this note because I want to take on these questions, even though I acknowledge them. I am writing this because I do not want to forget how I felt yesterday.

He peppers questions from the Naturalization Test throughout his essay, each one an implicit rebuke of the many Americans—elected and otherwise—who ignore the rights and responsibilities they were born, or sworn, to uphold.

Some of the questions, Healy writes, “are not trivial at all,” adding:

I think many Americans would get them wrong if asked. And I feel confident every one of the fifty or so people who took the Oath with me on Friday knew them backwards and forwards.

I agree; I studied hard to make sure I could answer all 100 questions. I’m guessing fewer than half of “natural born” citizens could answer six of the ten (random!) questions needed to pass. (Give it a shot, then share your score—you’re aiming for at least 60%.)

Healy continues:

I know the nationalities of my fellow oath-takers because of the next stage of the ceremony. This was the Roll Call of Nations. I did not know this was going to happen. Every country of origin represented was announced in turn. As your country was named, you were asked to stand up, and remain standing. Afghanistan came first. Then Algeria. The last person to stand, immediately to my left, was from the United Kingdom. There were twenty seven countries in all, out of only fifty or so people. For me this part in particular was enormously, irresistibly moving. It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth—as you please—that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is.

But isn’t it more complicated than that? You know as well as I do that it is. So much more complicated. So much more painful. So much more dangerous. So much more messed-up. I will think about and work on strands and threads of that impossible tangle tomorrow, just like I have thought about and worked on bits and pieces of it since I came here. But I will not forget this moment. I will not forget what it felt like.

Seven years on and I still remember how I felt as I got sworn in as an American citizen. The feeling never fades, but it crystallized my view of my adopted country—as I’m sure it did for many others. More than most, we’re acutely aware when America strays from her ideals, and we remain resolute in their defense—a fierce loyalty not to what America is, but to what it claims to be.