Obama’s Ethnic Divide-and-Conquer Strategy. By Mike Gonzalez. National Review Online, January 13, 2016.
Patriotic Assimilation Is an Indispensable Condition in a Land of Immigrants. By Mike Gonzalez. The Heritage Foundation, January 8, 2016. PDF.
Gonzalez [The Federalist]:
Why did Mussolini’s siren song of fascism fall on deaf ears with Italian immigrants, while the sadistic song of terror today finds a receptive audience among Arabs with long ties here?
Two
refugees are now in federal custody, charged with terrorism-related activities.
So much for all immigrants and their children being assimilated into Norman
Rockwell’s America!
That
level of assimilation is a tall order, you might say. Yes, but it’s a worthy
goal. In fact, we had some success when we at least tried it. The best purveyor
of that American archetype in Hollywood was a Sicilian-born immigrant known as
Francesco Rosario Capra—whom you might know as Frank Capra.
Contrast Previous Immigrants with Today’s
Immigrants
Benito
Mussolini found out the hard way that assimilation worked for America. In 1929
he called on Italian-Americans to remain loyal to the motherland. They pretty
much reacted by giving Il Duce the gesto
dell’ombrello, which is not exactly a salute. Hundreds of thousands of them
fought in World War II, many in Italy itself.
But
things seem different today. On Thursday, federal authorities announced the arrest of two refugees on terrorism-related charges. One of the men allegedly
had ties to terror groups even before entering the country three years ago. The
other came to the United States in 2009 and apparently became radicalized here.
He then tried to recruit people here to join terror groups overseas.
What’s
going on? Italian-Americans spurned Mussolini when he said “my order is that an
Italian citizen must remain an Italian citizen, no matter in what land he
lives, even to the seventh generation.” Why did the siren song of fascism fall
on deaf ears, while the sadistic song of terror today finds a receptive
audience among people with long ties here?
Then, We Didn’t Apologize for Deliberate
Assimilation
Obviously,
there’s much at work, and it will require different disciplines to arrive at a
holistic explanation and solution. But allow me to humbly take up one strand
and suggest something that is never discussed, yet seems so self-evident.
At the
turn of the last century, when Italian-Americans poured in large number through
Ellis Island, they encountered what was then called—quaintly, and without irony
or angst—an Americanization program. They were actually taught to love their
new country.
One
driver behind the assimilationist push was the fear that the Italians and other
immigrants such as Slavs and Jews would bring in—and cling to—socialist and
anarchist ideas ascendant in their native lands. By mid-century, the only
traitors helping the Soviet cause were people with long American pedigrees like
Alger Hiss.
The
immigrants who experienced the Americanization program went on to become
full-fledged members of the Greatest Generation. They endured the Depression,
defeated Nazism and fascism in World War II, then Communism in the Cold War. To
say the least, they met the existential questions of the day. No fewer than 14
Italian-Americans received the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in
WWII.
Now We Encourage Newcomers to Hate Us
Today,
our elites are far too “sophisticated” to promote Americanization. As
immigrants, refugees, assylees and others come and settle here, they are
actually taught that this is a racist, Islamophobic country and that they are
victims. In fact, much about how they live—from social standing to actual tangible benefits—will depend on their status as members of an aggrieved,
protected group.
Is it
any wonder we have the current situation? It is an economic axiom that the more
you tax or deter something, the less of it you get, while the more you
subsidize another thing, the more of it there will be. American elites’
decision to turn away from patriotic assimilation and pursue a multicultural
model that perpetuates group differences—in effect, culturally and functionally
segregating them—has created societal problems we will be dealing with for
years.
Discussion
of this issue has nearly become taboo, because the Left pounces on anyone who
will take it up. One can surmise, of course, that the Left pounces as hard as
it does because it realizes that an internally riven society is an essential
ingredient of regime change—or “fundamentally transforming the United States of
America” as some call it.
The Time to Debate This Was Yesterday
Monday,
The Heritage Foundation published my special report detailing how we used to
assimilate immigrants, then how and why we stopped. The word “assimilation”
itself was used by President Washington and embraced by all the Founders on
down to Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Ronald Reagan.
Most importantly, the report calls for presidential candidates of both parties
to debate this existential matter.
This is
a debate we haven’t really had. Elites in the academy and the arts, the
bureaucracy and politics, decided on their own to stop assimilating newcomers
and move to the multi-group model.
Undoing
the damage of multiculturalism, affirmative action, and the entire culture of
victimhood won’t be easy, and working only toward cultural and economic
integration will not be enough. After all, 2013 Boston bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev
and last year’s San Bernardino’s Syed Farook were “culturally integrated.”
Patriotic assimilation is key. But first, we need to be able to talk about
it—without being shouted down.
