Andanh.com

Being British, I've always had an uneasy time during the Fourth of July, imagining some people looking askance at me as if I were somehow working to win America back for the queen.

No longer.

On Friday I celebrated Independence Day as an American.

After an emotional and heartwarming ceremony in Philadelphia last week, I took the Oath of Allegiance and became a citizen of the United States.

A Scottish relative of mine recently asked me with a hint of accusation, or perhaps it was hurt, why I would want to become a naturalized American. I rambled on at length about the beauty of the country, its great people, about how I have spent more than half my life here, but the truth did not require so many words: I love America and I believe in her.

So much for a July Fourth week spent in idyllic celebration of our country's birthday. This year's festivities were marked instead by a debate -- childish, not constitutional -- over who is and isn't patriotic. The fireworks were sparked by a verbally maladroit retired general, fueled by two increasingly fatuous presidential campaigns, and heated to a boil by a 24/7 news culture that inflates any passing tit for tat into a war of the worlds.

Let oil soar above $140 a barrel. Let layoffs and foreclosures proliferate like California's fires. Let someone else worry about the stock market's steepest June drop since the Great Depression. In our political culture, only one question mattered: What was Wesley Clark saying about John McCain and how loudly would every politician and bloviator in the land react?

Unable to take another minute of this din, I did what any sensible person might do and fled to the movies. More specifically, to an animated movie in the middle of a weekday afternoon. What escape could be more complete?

The "Wall-E" crowds were primed by the track record of its creator, Pixar Animation Studios, and the ecstatic reviews. But if anything, this movie may exceed its audience's expectations. It did mine.

As it happened, "Wall-E" opened the same summer weekend as the hot-button movie of the 2004 campaign year, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Ah, the good old days. Oil was $38 a barrel, our fatalities in Iraq had not hit 900, and only 57 percent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. (Now more than 80 percent do.) "Wall-E," a fictional film playing to a far larger audience, may touch a more universal chord in this far gloomier time.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused last month to take up the appeal lodged by environmental groups that focused on a two-mile stretch of border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The fence, which has been built since the petition was filed, is a vital part of the Bush administration's drive to secure the border between the United States and Mexico. The Supreme Court's decision is a welcome and needed victory in the war against illegal immigration and the efforts to preserve the unique character that is America.

The environmentalists based part of their challenge on claims the fence would harm the mating habits of two types of wildcats. To them, it is more important to allow wildcats to procreate than to control our borders and demand that everyone who comes here obeys our laws.

Time magazine's June 30 cover story was titled "The Great Wall of America: A billion-dollar barrier between the U.S. and Mexico. It's reducing illegal immigration -- but does America really need to wall itself off?"

This isn't about walling ourselves off. This isn't a Berlin Wall erected to keep people in. It is a fence designed to keep illegals out. Anyone who doesn't understand the difference will not be persuaded by facts.

This fence and other inhibitors to illegal immigration should have been built long ago. But politicians -- Republicans and Democrats -- have been reluctant to offend Hispanic voters, so they have dragged their feet. Democrats, especially, wish to import votes, and so they welcome illegals and seek to help them become citizens. Their message: Vote for Democrats, or your relatives won't be able to come here, and mean Republicans will try to throw you out. It's a twist on their demagoguery about Social Security, which has worked for them over many election cycles.