Every ethnic group on earth can say they were discriminated against. The Jews and the Irish are just bigger whiners than most. How have those two groups shown their appreciation toward Anglo-Saxon America for allowing them the opportunities they have had in the U.S.A? I believe they thanked them by first complaining about discrimination. Then by using their votes and media influence to flood America with Third World, making the descendants of those Americans who built the country a minority. And finally they used their influence to drag Americans further into Middle Eastern and Irish/British politics. Anglo-Saxon America owes them nothing.

http://www.taxpayer.net/awards/goldenfleece/about.htm

“Senator Proxmire, where are you when we need you?”

1. “Between 1924 and 1965, the Melting Pot worked. It converted the children of 15 million European immigrants into American citizens with shared traditions, values and culture.”

Not really. Any Jew and any Irishman and any Catholic can tell about discrimination in those years against them. That discrimination ended not by their melting into a homogeneous blob with the rest of us. In fact, America was always and from the start polyethnic and polyreligious, as David Hackett Fischer has proven. Discrimination against Jews and Catholic ethnics ended because of the tradition of what Europeans call “Liberalism”, and is best represented by Jeffersonianism. It ended by the attempted privatization of religion and ethnic identity. It also ended because the market doesn’t care who your father was or where you go to church.

Yet it’s worth asking if Liberalism or a business culture in this sense is enough to hold people together. There seems to be reasons to doubt this. Similar doubts ought to be raised about Social Democracy of the Rawls stamp. For Leviathan too quickly becomes the tool of one ethnic group or religion to mistreat another. The libertarians think that with less coercion, folks leave each other alone. I not so sure about that either. Well, what then are the alternatives to Liberalism?

Homoreligiousity? This worked in the Austrian Empire and Belgium in 1830 (together with a prestigious throne) until nationalism fractured them. Still, our memory of the 17th Century prevents this from being an option. The Puritans tried it on our shores. William Penn and Roger Williams had their objections. Or do when wish whole states to be only of one legal religion (as each of the 13 colonies were?)

Homoethnicity? Nationalism tried this, and we know the bloody result. Even where a national state is homoethnic, it seems to be unable to leave its neighbors alone. Chamberlain thought that by letting the German Sudentenland join the Reich, we’d have perpetual peace. We in America tried this with The Indian Removal Bill to Oklahoma and Reservations. And because almost everyone regards this as a shameful moment in our history, the idea that it could be done again isn’t realistic. Secession captures my fancy, however quixotic it may be. Yet the economy is world-wide, we sell in all markets, and if it takes as long to fly to Rome as it takes to walk across my county, then we’re going to have to live in some sort of a polyethnic social order. It’s a moot point anyway: Neither politicial party will do anything to stop the immigration or expel illegals.

So if a homoreligious and homoethnic order just isn’t possible, what do we then do to hold us together? Roger Scruton argues for a common and large embracing culture, culture being “the consolation prize for the loss of religion”. And culture can be shared. I welcome other responses — responses that are not so risible as to suggest that we can and ought to have another St. Bart’s Day Massacre or another Indian Removal Bill.