IMMIGRATION

We're a nation of immigrants, even native American Indians immigrated at some point in time to this fair land. The current immigration issue and the questions surrounding it are as far ranging as they are interesting. It is important to note that our views on immigration as a country have changed substantially since 9/11.

Recently, I came across an excerpt from an article written by Peggy Noonan, and I would love to hear your comments on this issue. Peggy was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan.


“…It’s the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are
not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that,
you'll lose it all.

“We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no
ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We
communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways – in our
schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there,
in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of
immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of
Americans.

“We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now.…

“But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the
great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.

“What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That
they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more
than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the
greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought,
free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic:
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the
great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the
stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.

“The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the
rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. … How did that
happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he
had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was
‘providential.’)

“…We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our
nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We
went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our
enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet
communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and
taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

“Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.…

“Because we do not communicate to our immigrants, legal and illegal, that
they have joined something special, some of them, understandably, get the
impression they've joined not a great enterprise but a big box store. A
big box store on the highway where you can get anything cheap. It's a good
place. But it has no legends, no meaning, and it imparts no spirit.

“Who is at fault? Those of us who let the myth die, or let it change, or
refused to let it be told. The politically correct nitwit teaching the
seventh-grade history class who decides the impressionable young minds
before him need to be informed…that the Founders were hypocrites, the Bill
of Rights nothing new and imperfect in any case, that the Indians were
victims of genocide, that Lincoln was a clinically depressed homosexual who
compensated for the storms within by creating storms without…

“You can turn any history into mud. You can turn great men and women into
mud too, if you want to.…

“When you don't love something you lose it. If we do not teach new
Americans to love their country, and not for braying or nationalistic
reasons but for reasons of honest and thoughtful appreciation, and
gratitude, for a history that is something new in the long story of man,
then we will begin to lose it.…”