From the campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Here's your host, Scott Bertram.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome

into another edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this episode, we'll talk with Tom

West, Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, about citizenship. Amitye Schlaes, noted historian

and author, will discuss her new book, Great Society, A New History.

And Colin Barnes from Hillsdale's Psychology Department will tell us about humidistic psychology and Maslow and Rogers.

We're joined now by Dr. Tom West, Potter, Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College.

Dr. West, thanks for joining us.

I'm glad to be here, Scott.

Thanks for having me.

So I saw a story recently.

The Trump administration right now is working on revising the U.S. citizenship test, and I thought

we might discuss that. Why do we have a citizenship test? What's the importance of the knowledge

contained on that test? Well, the origin of the citizenship test goes back to a law passed by Congress in

1802, Naturalization Act of 1802, in which they stated that one of the requirements for citizenship

was to affirm support of the U.S. Constitution. And that requirement was interpreted, and back in those days, you had to go before a federal judge to become naturalized.

And the judge would ask you questions to find out, are you, in fact, supportive of the U.S. Constitution?

And that meant they would ask questions in many cases.

It was left up to the judge.

Sometimes they would ask questions about, well, do you know how the government works?

Do you know what its purpose is?

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