The standard — and correct — complaint about the immigrants of the last few generations is that they do not assimilate. Never mind the illegal ones…even legal immigration policies have lost sight of the basic concept that preservation of our traditional culture is a good thing.
We need no justification to try to protect traditional American culture; that is the right and obligation of every sovereign nation. But if one were to attempt it, a cursory glance at the stupendous achievements of America would be enough. American Exceptionalism, which can be used as a placeholder for traditional American culture, is unparalleled in world history. No country has achieved nearly as much, especially with massive legal immigration that demanded only one thing! And that one thing was to embrace American Exceptionalism and become American. Tens of millions of people came to our shores and accepted that arrangement, and the results speak for themselves.
But starting in the 1960s with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Assimilation became secondary, as did maintaining the approximate ethnic makeup of the country. So we were flooded with immigrants from countries that had none of the cultural basis that created American Exceptionalism. And LBJ’s “Great Society” took away the social pressure to succeed…expanding welfare and other government support programs far beyond their original intent.
With no pressure to assimilate, these immigrants created their own worlds within America. But that wasn’t the most destructive aspect of this sea change in immigration. Our feckless governments began to cater to each of these foreign enclaves within our cities. Don’t speak English? No problem! Comfortable with multiple generations on welfare? Fantastic! Vote for us!
And if that sounds bad, these anti-American-Exceptionalism cultural norms began to creep into the larger American culture. Black America, which before LBJ’s destructive policies was entering the American middle class at an astounding rate, was destroyed by the creation of a cradle-to-grave welfare state.
We now have embedded foreign cultures, plus Black American culture that is functionally identical to a foreign culture. And instead of assimilating and embracing American Exceptionalism, these cultures have co-opted large swaths of traditional American culture. Black American and Hispanic slang has degraded normal English among many people, as has clothing and other cultural markers. Even smaller immigrant population’s behavior has entered American culture. For instance, the odd Muslim affectation of a beard but no mustache can be seen on the streets of American cities, and even among professional athletes, in particular in the NBA.
More destructive is the modes of behavior, in particular the casual violence of the ghettos, which once was confined to the inner city, but has now exploded into much of America.
What we have done is not only allowed large immigrant populations to maintain their own cultures, which are empirically less successful than American culture, but we have embraced some of the worst aspects of those cultures…thus the term “reverse assimilation.”
We are in an existential fight for the future of our country, and these large populations of of supposed Americans who nonetheless are completely foreign is bad enough, but accepting those cultures’ worst excesses as some sort of post-modern talisman of moral superiority is, frankly, insane!