A Fourth of July message from Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, rightly emphasizes the need for every generation of Americans to engage in thoughtful, informed reflection on, and debate about, our founding principles. His message focuses on the Constitution but, given its timing, it is of course intended to apply to the Declaration of Independence as well. Those magnificent documents contain what Martin Luther King, Jr., memorably referred to as the “promissory note” of equal liberty that all Americans fall heir to and are obligated to work toward in word and deed.
An article I wrote last year is relevant here. Entitled “Canary in the Coal Mine of America’s Future,” it offers a defense of the melting pot ideal inspired by our founding documents. Honoring those documents requires remembering what they actually stand for, which is too often obscured by America’s critics in today’s media and classrooms. In that connection, it is also worth reading “Frederick Douglass Didn’t Hate America, and Neither Should You,” by Angel Eduardo, on the Substack page of the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism.
Heartfelt wishes for a Happy Fourth!
Assimilation means that when I come to your country I adopt your values, your rule over me.
When I come to your country I must not conspire to take over your country; bring on disorder and chaos, with the goal of having you endure my values and submit to my rule over you.
On that, we largely agree, though I might put it a little differently: assimilation means that I embrace your fundamental values and system of government.
Some of us don’t share your high opinion of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even less appealing is your opinion that America is a melting pot ideal inspired by our Founding Fathers.
Fact is the White old boys would have fought to the death to prevent the massive immigration of non-Whites, both legal and non-legal.
The multiculturalism, multiracial mania engineered by governing elites has produced, not a peaceful melting pot, but a violent battlefield of warring unassimilable immigrants.
Walter L.,
My “high opinion” of MLK is for his crucial role in leading the nonviolent movement to attain for black Americans the civil rights promised to all citizens by our founding documents. If you can’t share that, I would like to know why.
As for what the founding “White old boys” would have thought about the “massive immigration of non-Whites,” what evidence do you have?
My guess is that what they would have most opposed is the sort of massive immigration without cultural assimilation (regardless of race) that has been occurring since the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.
The “multiculturalism, multiracial mania” you refer to has indeed undermined the melting pot ideal, as I clearly implied in my “Canary in the Coal Mine” article. The problem is due not only to the ethnic diversity of who is entering the country, legally as well as illegally, however, but to the subsequent policies and practices “engineered by governing elites”—especially in the realm of education—that serve to impede their assimilation. The very concept of assimilation has tragically become politically incorrect among those elites. If we do not reverse this course, the great American experiment in government of the people, by the people, and for the people is, I fear, doomed.