Commencing Chaos

John Leo of Rudolph Giuliani's Manhattan Institute recently wrote an article about UCLA's graduation problems. Apparently every ethnic group and its uncle plus different gay groups have their own graduation ceremonies, all paid for by the university. This seems like typical California lunacy but take note. Local companies in the Potomac Highlands have already started requiring their employees to learn Spanish. To some, ethnic pluralism means not just respecting differences, but also having the right to have government and other services provided to them in their own language.

Lets look at two nations from around a century ago. Both contained large numbers of ethnic groups with different cultures than the dominant one. The first nation, we'll call it country A, required its groups to assimilate into society, at least to the point of learning the language and functioning in the dominant culture. Country B recognized each of its fifteen major ethnic groups as a unique and viable culture.

The vast majority of country A's ethnic peoples learned to speak the dominant language, but they still retained some of the aspects of their original culture. The groups grew patriotic to the point where they took pride in fighting for it when the time came. Country B saw its ethnic groups demand more and more concessions. When it went to war many of its ethnic peoples turned against it despite the extreme concessions and toleration shown them. That country no longer exists.

Country A is the United States but we have not learned from the positive policies used a century ago. In that case ethnic groups strengthened our nation for a new century of prosperity. Country B, Austria-Hungary, was torn apart because the ethnic groups within it did not assimilate to the dominant culture.

Now Austria-Hungary's fate is not necessarily ours. Many other differences exist that separate the two systems. However it does demonstrate that maintaining strong separation of cultures leads to severe problems. We need to return to the policy of not coddling those that do not speak English. It is not fair to native born citizens, nor is it fair to those that came here and worked hard to learn how to livehere. The more incentive they have to learn how to speak and function in the United States, the faster they will learn.

Coming to America (legally) ought to be the start of opportunities for them and us to benefit each other, but by the standards of this country not the one they just left. It should not be the commencement of cultural chaos.