Land That I Love
Dean
Note: I left the bulk of this in a comment on an earlier thread on Islam in America. I felt it worth editing and expanding a little and posting as its own article.--Dean
Like many of my conservative friends, I believe in the excellence of American culture. But just as I think that many of my liberal friends are wrong to sneer at American culture, I think that many of my conservative friends are wrong to deny that diversity is a key part of that excellence.
Mind you, I agree that "diversity" has become a dirty word. I think that has happened because the word has been debased (by some) into a sort of touch-feely "everything is of equal merit" bulls**t philosophy.
But I have always seen an extraordinary diversity in America, from its very beginnings. It is a diversity that has defined her from her very beginnings--in religion, in ethnicity, in language, in point of view. My own great love for America is steeped in what used to be called "the great American melting pot."
I admit that politically Correct lefties made the "melting pot" a dirty term back in the 1980s. But sadly, many conservatives--the people who are usually the first to step up and defend America--now seem to have signed on to that anti-diversity thinking. I wish they hadn't.
Diversity is a big part of who we are. Indeed, diversity has always defined us as a people, going back to our earliest beginnings.
We are the land of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Of Casimir Pulaski and the marquis de La Fayette. Of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Of Jack Kerouac and John Wayne. Of Yogi Berra and Muhammad Ali. Of Aerosmith and Leonard Bernstein. Of ZZ Top and Miles Davis. Of Robert Frost and Charles Bukowski. Of Marilyn Monroe and Doris Day. Of Cheech Marin and Will Smith. Of Stephen Jay Gould and Kary Mullis. Of Jimmy Swaggart and Harvey Fierstein. Of Ayn Rand and Fulton Sheen. Of Clare Boothe Luce and Betty Freidan. Of Camille Paglia and William F. Buckley Jr. Of George S. Patton and the Quakers. Of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater, and James Earl Carter. Of San Francisco California and Omaha Nebraska.
What the hell man: we are the country of Michelle Malkin and Michele Catalano. Of Sheila O'Malley and Juliette Ochieng. Even of Scott Harris and Aziz Poonawalla. Ain't it grand?
We are the land where people of any race, any creed, any color, any national origin, can hear these words and know hope and inspiration:
"We are the shining city on the hill. That is everything I love about this country, and everything I strive to defend for her sake. To say that I love this country is to say that I need oxygen to live. I often tell people I'm an atheist, which is (mostly) correct, yet as a man of white anglo-saxon protestant background with no particular religiousity, I often think of soaring words written by a Siberian Jew:
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,Yeah I'm a liberal patriot. So sue me.
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer:
God Bless America,
Land that I love!
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home!
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Great poem. Yes, it was originally a poem called The Defence Of Fort McHenry. Until somebody realized the words would go perfectly with an old English drinking song.
Who else would sing their national anthem to the tune of a song from a country they fought their first two wars with?
Given that we have 50 states, we caually have 50 different recipies for stir fry. Some are blander, some are spicier. Some are just white meat and soy sauce :)
Of course, I still fondly remember the School House Rock short on the U.S., ending in a melting pot shaped like the lower 48 states.
I think it'd be more accurate to describe the U.S. as a stew. All of the ingredients are in the same pot. The longer you cook them, the more they taste like the other ingredients. But, in the end, a potato is still recognizeably a potato.
However, I like Aziz's stir fry analogy, too - particularly the part about having 50 different recepies.
Sorry, Aziz, but that's funny. :)
I have a tendency to make food-themed analogies in Ramadan, especially the first week. Subconscious impulses.
mmmm. Sub.
Maybe we shouldn't call it a melting pot anymore. Gumbo, anyone?
granted Manji is not rightist but she is invoked by them. For perhaps the best examples of what I am talking about, read the tone of Paul J Cella's multiple entries (in Diaries and Front-page stories) at RedState.org (itself the DailyKos analog for the Republicans).
The basic idea is that tolerance for other cultures and diversity undermines the nation, and muslims need to abandon their Islamic values and embrace Christian ones (or at least recognize that America is founded on Christian values, defined in an exclusionary way). The attack on tolerance also extends to non-european ethnicities; see much of teh writing by John Derbyshire at National Review Online (disclaimer: I actually like the Derb, hes an interesting and even charming guy. he's just got a bug up his arse about white culture) and the thinly-veiled-in-science arguments at VDare.org by Steve Sailer.
-Russell Kirk, Introduction to The Portable Conservative Reader
Alain de Benoist defined Left and Right similarly, as did Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. The Left is for equality and uniformity. The Right is for hierarchy and diversity. We must not allow the Left to steal our word!
Oh, and etouffee for me.
You're going to need to define "Islamic values" because what seems to pass as "Islamic values" in the Islamic world truly is incompatible with the Constitution, religous freedom and freedom for women and men. And, yes, certain things shouldn't be tolerated because they do undermine the nation and the freedom of others: female genital mutilation, violent jihad, honor killings, treating women like a subspecies instead of equals, etc.
The melting pot analogy is better. Each individual ingredient affects the overall end product, but, and this is huge, each ingredient also loses its structural integrity and identity.
It is vitally important that immigrants forfeit their allegiances to their native lands in favor of allegiance to the USA. In other words, they must voluntarily lose their previous identity and replace it with a new identity.
This doesn't mean that they will not change what America is. Each new immigrant affects the overall composition of what America is and what it stands for. So each person gets to have their say; each person has an impact on our society; each person can be recognized as important to who we are as a people. Every spice changes the flavor of the pot. But those people CANNOT demand to retain their old identity. We CANNOT allow that.
And the conformity you attribute to the melting pot is the exact reason I reject the analogy.
Melting pots make alloys, where you cannot tell one component from the next. Sure, an alloy is often stronger than the original metals. But you'd be hard pressed to say that you cannot tell one American from another.
The only thing that new citizens agree to give up is their allegience to foreign powers. And that is hardly the sum total of an individual's identity.