America: A Melting Pot No More
According to a USA Today news article, the foreign-born population of NH grew 45% from the years 2000- 2005- putting us in the top five states. Nationally, the average shows the growth at 16%. Taken on its face, I have no problem with newcomers to our great land. I have a great friend from Columbia who is the most patriotic, civic-minded American citizen that I know. Unfortunately, he is now the exception, not the rule. (Click here for more my prior post on the modern "immigrant") He represents the American immigrant of a different era- the era when new citizens assimilated with those already here. And everybody was taught America's founding principles...
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I recently found an interesting passage in a copy I have of the 1929 Boy Scouts of America’s “Handbook For Boys”. I found it to be quite to the contrary of today’s emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity. The first section of the book asks, “What is scouting?” Part of the answer includes this:
“Scouting helps the Scout to value the great heritage which the past has brought to him in the life and ideals of America… Our America is the ‘melting pot’ of the world. Her strength has come from every people. Good will must be extended to these new citizens, indeed only as ‘the spirit of Brotherliness’ is present, can Liberty develop.”
Ah, the old “melting pot theory”. Do you remember learning about this when you were back in school? You know, people would come to America to shed their Old-world life in order to become Americans and live in a place where they could enjoy the fruits of their labor- free from the fear of confiscation. One people- “melted” together as Americans.
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That was then. In today’s America one could contend our students are taught the “anti”- melting pot theory (diversity). Instead of becoming ONE people, united with a common history, we have become MANY. No longer is America united by a common idea. We have become a geographical group of people sharing very few universal ideas and traditions. In World War II, Americans stood with one voice and shared determination. WE had been attacked. WE faced the threat of the Nation’s very survival. WE fought that war and won. Today, even though, once again, WE have been attacked and, once again, WE could be faced with untold catastrophes, WE can’t agree to barely defend ourselves. WE can’t even agree who or what is the real enemy.
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In 1919, Justice Louis Brandeis spoke of “Americanization.” He believed it meant that the immigrant
“adopts the clothes, the manners, and the customs generally prevailing here … substitutes for his mother tongue the English language and comes into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate[s] with us for their attainment.”
Just like our forebears did. In 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote in his “Letters from an American Farmer”:
“Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”
Do you know of any such sentiments found in today’s America?
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One of the contributing factors in the ongoing assault on the sense of an America as “one” is the massive wave of illegal immigrants coming here with no intent of assimilation. Besides breaking our laws as their very first action on American soil, these folks have no need to make any attempt to adopt to our “common” culture once here. The nearly 10,000 per week arriving can simply join with the tens of millions already here benefiting from the English/Spanish society America has become. With a government and its colossal welfare apparatus fluent in any language for all comers, product packaging in multiple languages, and cable and satellite broadcasts in the native tongues readily available, why bother to somehow change and adapt to something new?
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If the authors of the 1929 Boy Scout handbook were alive today, wouldn’t they be shocked by how much has changed.
