Posted on 06/28/2006 7:35:44 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
If 200 years from now America will be filled with people who know and love the ideas of Jefferson and Madison -- but these people are overwhelmingly dark skinned -- will this be good or bad?
That's the question I asked Pat Buchanan when I debated with him about the content of his book, The Death of the West. He said it would be 'a disaster and a tragedy'. What do you say?
Your answer is a pretty good indicator of whether you're a we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident conservative or a blood-and-soil conservative. Let's use a technology analogy: the first kind believe that the software of liberty runs equally well on all hard technology platforms. The latter think that some platforms (whether for genetic or cultural reasons) are not easily adaptable to the liberty program.
A few years ago, I was studying the life of Charlemagne. His troops had been continually harassed by tribes who would attack, be defeated, surrender, make a treaty and violate the treaty as soon as Charlemagne's troops were out of sight. They did this over and over again. I was reminded of various Palestinian 'pledges' to abandon terrorism. I wondered whether groups like this could ever learn to honor their treaties and live according to the rule of law. Then I realized that the people who were harassing Charlemagne were my ancestors. If you are of Northern European stock, or British or Irish, and you are tempted to racial pride, I highly recommend that you study Romans like Tacitus or Caesar to get some idea how your ancestors looked to the civilized world 2000 years ago.
Clearly, there is a rage of anti-immigrant feeling in large swaths of my political party (Republican) at the moment. I don't think, however, that it's racism that drives it. It's nostalgia. Large numbers of conservatives seem to think that they have a constitutional right to have their country look the same in their old age as it did in their childhoods. The problem of course, is that the country of their childhoods, didn't look the same as the country of their parent's childhoods. America is a highly dynamic country. In fact, dynamism is the point of it, especially racial dynamism. When the first Congress commissioned that Adams, Franklin and Jefferson create a 'great seal' which would represent the ideals of our country, the (eventual) results included the Latin words "E Pluribus Unum", From many, One. From many what? From many races. How could Jefferson and Franklin (who worked together on the Declaration of Independence) see it any other way? When they 'declared' to the world that rights were self-evident, they staked everything on the notion that the software of liberty runs on all varieties of human hardware.
History proved them right. The group that they were most concerned about (more because of forced servitude than because of race), were Africans. But even that group eventually assimilated into American life. Despite waves of German immigrants, English remained our national language. Despite waves of Irish and Italian immigrants from the 1840's to the 1920's, which were proportionately far larger than our current immigration wave, America never really did become a vassal of the Pope.
Immigration doesn't represent the 'death of the West' it represents its renewal. People go from places that they don't like to places that they do like. This implies that they 'buy in' to what we're about to some degree. I would argue that immigrants tend to buy in to America more fervently than those of us who are born here. By definition someone who crosses oceans and valleys to get to something has proven already that he values it.
Such people are also, by nature, risk takers. We're the children of the people who left their homes (mostly in Europe) and started over. Present native Europeans are the children of those who thought it was better to stay put. Perhaps that partly explains the difference between America and Europe now; their risk aversion is hardwired, as is our risk tolerance.
Immigrants start businesses at significantly higher rates than the native born. Entrepreneurship is risky. It's difficult to imagine Silicon Valley occurring without immigrants from India. Immigrants have more children, which, of course, parents will recognize as the ultimate risk.
Do they change the culture? Of course, they do. Living cultures change, dead cultures don't. Cicero's Latin and Benedict XIV's Latin are pretty much identical. I can read both equally badly. Look at English from Beowulf (thoroughly unreadable to moderns) to Chaucer (mostly unreadable to moderns) to Shakepearre (pretty tough going) to Jefferson (not too bad) to Lincoln (kind of flowery) to Harry Potter. Honestly, I'm a huge English bull. It's the language of the Indian parliament. It's the language that every Chinese businessman is trying to learn, and it's the language of the internet. If you're looking for a language to be bearish about, I'd try French. Figure out a way to short-sell French futures and you'll make a fortune.
>>>>Living cultures change, dead cultures don't.
In 200 years, your average American won't know who Jefferson and Madison were.
I'm afraid this question is pointless anyway. The people who are slowly displacing American culture will never know and love the ideas of Jefferson and Madison. They have been indoctrinated for decades and they know and love the ideas of Marx and Guevara, that that is the way that it is.
Don't answer all at once.
If they go to publik skool, you mean?
Assimilation (American) ping.
Therein lies a serious problem. I am no fan of uncontrolled immigration, but there are serious defects in public knowledge of basic civics and American history. At least legal immigrants get some education in these areas. The fact is that in 2006, not 2206, a large majority of Americans have little knowledge of their nation's origins.
The US has taken in a million legal immigrants a year for decades, which very few people have opposed. Rather interesting our "friend" here doesn't note that or distringuish between legal immigrants, who generally want citizenship, and illegal immigrants, many of whom want welfare benefits of various types.
Probably not, so it will only get worst in 200 years.
As for the Citizenship Test, there is not one question about Jefferson or Madison.
Also, your average immigrant forgets 99% of what they studied for that test, shortly after taking it.
Sorry, but very few legal immigrants want citizenship.
In an average year, approximately 5% of eligible legal immigrants apply for citizenship.
It is the job of government to teach -- and impose if necessary -- common American ideals. It is the job of private organizations like churches and ethnic associations to preserve the traditions of the old country.
I am in complete agreement with the author's claims as abstract propositions. The last thing most Mexicans who come here want is for the U.S. to become the country they fled. But I teach undergrads, and one of my courses is in law and economics. I can assure you that by the time they get to my class (as juniors and seniors), most have no familiarity with Jefferson and Madison. Over and over again on student evaluations students say they had no idea what their rights were, or about the Constitution and its jurisprudence, before they got there.
Now I don't want to excessively romanticize the past. Part of this is just the natural expansion of college accessibility and the unavoidable decline in standards that follows. It was probably never true that most Americans knew and were devoted to the ideas of Jefferson and Madison. But there has been a systematic change in U.S. education, and Jefferson and Madison are not as important as they once were. The rise of multiculturalism, with its obsession with tribal statis and separatism, is both part of the reason and a problem on its own.
If you believe, as I do, that different tribes are prone not to get along, but that there is something in the American recipe that historically has overcome this tendency, then the sustainability of immigration from everywhere depends critically on whether that recipe still holds. I have my doubts that it does. I say this as someone whose life has been immeasurably enriched and assisted by immigrants in too many ways to count.
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