The New Immigrant and the Death of the Melting Pot

At one time in our nation’s history, when people cared about symbols and archetypes, there existed a particularly popular symbol of a woman named Columbia. She was the female personification of the United States, much as Uncle Sam was to be the male face of the nation. She was the warrior-goddess, the seeker of truth, defender of virtues, and exemplar of all that was noble. It was she that the space shuttle Columbia was named after, the ill-fated ship that broke apart as it came back to earth a few years ago. In his eulogy of those who died on that day, President Bush said, “Columbia is lost; there are no survivors”. Sadly, today that same thing may be said about the United States, our Columbia.

Anyone who has tuned into the news over the last few years has no doubt seen what passes for a debate on our immigration problem. The arguments have ran from legalizing those already here illegally, to building a fence across our southern border, to what effect this will have on a head of immigrant harvested lettuce. What hasn’t been addressed is that we don’t really have an immigration problem. The hundred of thousands of illegals (or undocumented workers, if you prefer) waving Mexican flags and marching down the main thoroughfares of dozens of American cities is only the symptom of a much deeper problem. Our true challenge is that most immigrants, legal or illegal, don’t care to assimilate into a culture that most native born Americans are not willing to stand up for and don’t seem to value anymore. Decades of cultural relativism and homegrown anti-Americanism from a very vocal left-leaning minority has left very few Americans willing to stand up and defend what is good and right about this country and an undefended rampart is easily breeched.

Why should any immigrant want to adopt America as their homeland when even Americans don’t seem to value it? Why not just come here for the benefits (employment, welfare, free education, etc…) and still maintain your allegiance to your country of birth? We may find that, if American citizens don’t start defending what we are and what we have created, that our children may find themselves in a radically different America, an America unlike anything that we could imagine. If the ideal of the melting pot isn’t revived, the nation we leave behind may find itself treading the same rough waters of other civilizations that have failed to bring disparate cultures together into a unified whole rather than factions of competing minorities. Multiculturalism and e pluribus unum don’t mix.

If those of us who are proud of this country and thinks it worth defending don’t start making our voices heard in this debate we may find that President Bush words about Columbia are all to prophetic about our country’s future. Columbia has fallen, there are no survivors.