7/15/2014 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce in Albuquerque in 2001, George W. Bush declared that, as Mexico was a
friend and neighbor, "It's so important for us to tear down our barriers
and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States." Bush succeeded. And during his tenure, millions from Mexico
exploited his magnanimity to violate our laws, trample upon our sovereignty,
walk into our country, and remain here.
In 2007, backed by John McCain, Hillary
Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and Barack Obama, Bush backed amnesty for the 12 million
people who had entered America illegally.
The nation thundered no. And Congress
sustained the nation.
The latest mass border crossing by
scores of thousands of tots, teenagers and toughs from Central America has
killed amnesty in 2014, and probably for the duration of the Obama presidency. Indeed,
with the massive media coverage of the crisis on the border, immigration, legal
and illegal, and what it portends for our future, could become the decisive
issue of 2014 and 2016.
But it needs to be put in a larger
context. For this issue is about more than whether the Chamber of Commerce gets
amnesty for its members who have been exploiting cheap illegal labor.
The real issue: Will America remain one
nation, or are we on the road to Balkanization and the breakup of America into
ethnic enclaves? For, as Ronald Reagan said, a nation that cannot control its
borders isn't really a nation anymore.
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote, "Providence
has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a
people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language,
professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government,
very similar in their manners and customs ... "
He called Americans a "band of
brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties." The republic of the
founders for whom Jay spoke did not give a fig for diversity. They cherished
our unity, commonality, and sameness of ancestry, culture, faith and
traditions.
We were not a nation of immigrants in
1789.
They came later. From 1845-1849, the
Irish fleeing the famine. From 1890-1920, the Germans. Then the Italians,
Poles, Jews and other Eastern Europeans. Then, immigration was suspended in
1924.
From 1925 to 1965, the children and
grandchildren of those immigrants were assimilated, Americanized. In strong
public schools, they were taught our language, literature and history, and
celebrated our holidays and heroes. We endured together through the Depression
and sacrificed together in World War II and the Cold War.
By 1960, we had become truly one nation
and one people.
America was not perfect. No country is.
But no country ever rivaled what America had become. She was proud, united,
free, the first nation on earth. And though the civil rights movement had just
begun, nowhere did black peoples enjoy the freedom and prosperity of
African-Americans.
Attorney General Eric Holder said
Sunday that America is today in "a fundamentally better place than we were
50 years ago."
In some ways that is so. Equality of
rights has been realized. Miraculous cures in medicine have kept alive many of
us who would not have survived the same maladies half a century ago. But we are
no longer that "band of brethren." We are no longer one unique people
"descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing
the same religion."
We are from every continent and
country. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans trace their ancestry to Asia, Africa and
Latin America. We are a multiracial, multilingual, multicultural society in a
world where countless countries are being torn apart over race, religion and
roots.
We no longer speak the same language,
worship the same God, honor the same heroes or share the same holidays.
Christmas and Easter have been privatized. Columbus is reviled. Stonewall
Jackson and Robert E.
Lee are out of the pantheon. Cesar Chavez is in.
Our politics have become poisonous. Our
political parties are at each other's throats.
Christianity is in decline. Traditional
churches are sundering over moral issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
Islam is surging.
Our society seems to be disintegrating.
Over 40 percent of all births now are illegitimate. Among Hispanics, the figure
is 52 percent. Among African-Americans, 73 percent. And among children born to
single moms, the drug use rate and the dropout rate, the crime rate and the
incarceration rate, are many times higher than among children born to married
parents.
If a country is a land of defined and
defended borders, within which resides a people of a common ancestry, history,
language, faith, culture and traditions, in what sense are we Americans one
nation and one people today?
Neocons say we are a new kind of
nation, an ideological nation erected upon a written Constitution and Bill of
Rights.
But equality, democracy and diversity
are not mentioned in the Constitution. As for what our founding documents mean,
even the Supreme Court does not agree.
More and more, 21st-century America
seems to meet rather well Metternich's depiction of Italy -- "a geographic
expression."
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