The Real Immigration Debate America Needs

January 22, 2016 Topic: Society Region: Americas Tags: United StatesImmigrationCultureAssimilationHistory

The Real Immigration Debate America Needs

It's time to dispel the myths about assimilation in the United States.

 

Myth #3

Which brings us to the last myth: the notion that a democratic nation-state can continue to exist without the cultural, patriotic and affectional accoutrements that we have come to expect of a single national culture; that a “multicultural” society where differences are celebrated and perpetuated can coexist with equal rights for all individuals. Are we sure?

Those who think long and hard on the subject believe two things: the first is that, for all its imperfections, the nation-state is still the best polity man has ever devised to defend individual liberty and representative government. The second is that such a formula cannot long survive in a country made up of separate groups having different conversations and dispersed experiences.

Britain's John Stuart Mill spent a good chunk of the nineteenth century pondering the question. His conclusion, in Considerations on Representative Government, was that “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.” As Mill explained:

"Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. ... A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they are united by common sympathies which do not exist between them and other others — which make them cooperate with each other more willingly than with other people."

It is good that we're finally debating assimilation, national identity and what they mean for representative government. But a serious discussion requires that we first clear the myths out of the way. We don’t have to go down the multicultural path of the past three decades.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for International Studies.

Image: Wikipedia/@Lipton sale