The Multicultural Iceberg
Hyphenated Americanism and the Suicide of the West
Political scientist Samuel Huntington once posited,
“Would America be the America it is today if, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese?
The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.”
What about the West? Would the West remain what it was if it continued to accept immigrants from parts of the world hostile to its values and traditions?
That answer is also no. The West would not be the West; eventually, it would begin to look like a conglomeration of South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and parts of the Middle East.
Sadly, this is the situation the West finds itself in today as Western nations have been significantly transformed from their earlier identities.
Mass migration, both legal and illegal, has had a profound impact on their host cultures, as evidenced by the recent protests in support of the Palestinians, where hundreds of thousands have marched worldwide against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza while openly celebrating the Hamas terrorists’ attacks on Israel.
London and New York, traditionally regarded as the historical and contemporary hubs of Western Civilization, recently exemplified the extent of this cultural transformation through massive demonstrations that unfolded across two iconic bridges: London’s Westminster Bridge and New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.
Regardless of your stance on the Gaza conflict, the extensive and fanatical backing for one side within so many Western countries, with no direct stake in this foreign conflict, highlights the disarray within native cultures across the Western world.
Additionally, the rise in antisemitism across much of the West can be attributed to the rise in populations from Middle Eastern countries. Case in point, in London, posters of innocent Israeli children that Hamas has taken hostage have been routinely torn down. At the same time, Jewish citizens within Britain have been so scared of reprisals they have tried to hide their religion to avoid abuse.
Unbelievably, even displaying your nation's flag within your country's borders will lead to a confrontation with your own country's police because we wouldn’t want to offend those screaming “glory to the martyrs” while calling for jihad against the West now, would we?
Although the complexities related to multiculturalism can be linked to and worsened by higher levels of immigration, it's crucial to recognize that multiculturalism is a comprehensive ideology that believes Western nations are inherently racist and irredeemably wicked, and thus, mass migration can be seen as a form of Western penance administered by leftist clergy. This ideology has had a substantial impact on the younger generations across the Western world, mainly by gaining complete control over academia.
Today’s Western student activists are the primary drivers of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” They enthusiastically embrace all cultures except their own and tend to focus primarily on identifying instances of racism and imperialism within the Western context, as recently exemplified by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and subsequent protests.
Shockingly, a recent Harvard Harris poll shows that a majority of those aged 18-24 in the United States believe that Hamas killing 1,200 Israeli civilians “can be justified by the grievance of Palestinians.” Compared to the responses from older generations, you can see the stark cultural differences in worldview that can occur after academic indoctrination, much of which is now centered around the woke narrative of “decolonization.”
The threats from multiculturalism are not a new concern. Plato discussed the effects of multiculturalism and diversity within a given polity long ago and touched on three central reservations:
Homogeneity: Plato advocated for a harmonious society in which individuals had defined roles and duties. This suggests a preference for a unified culture and a significant emphasis on shared values and standards.
Assimilation: Within Plato's envisioned state, there is a strong focus on education and the shaping of citizens to adhere to the state's values and laws. This might be seen as a process of cultural assimilation, wherein individuals are encouraged to embrace the prevailing cultural norms.
Foreign Influence: Plato feared the possible negative impact of foreign concepts and traditions on native culture. He may have endorsed measures aimed at restricting the adoption of external allegiances that might disrupt the stability of the state.
Long after Plato walked the earth, Theodore Roosevelt addressed similar concerns about the United States in a speech he delivered in 1915 on the subject of “Americanism.”
Roosevelt disapproved of the idea of "hyphenated Americanism," which described individuals who identified with both their American nationality and their ethnic or ancestral backgrounds (e.g., German-Americans, Irish-Americans). He contended that genuine Americanism required unwavering loyalty to the United States, prioritizing allegiance to the nation over other affiliations.
Roosevelt believed that the United States' success, especially in the face of international pressures and challenges, hinged on the citizens' elevated patriotism, where the commitment to the nation took precedence over individual rights and any prior foreign allegiances.
Representative Rashida Tlaib perfectly encapsulates what Teddy Roosevelt was referring to and cautioning against.
Contrary to the “no human is illegal” advocates for mass migration, immigration, both illegal and legal, has worrying impacts on the economic, fiscal, political, and perhaps most importantly, cultural health of the United States, not just initially, but generationally.
Garett Jones, an economist associated with George Mason University, published a book called "The Culture Transplant." In this work, he posits that immigrants bring distinct values and behaviors from their places of origin, passing them down to their descendants, thereby perpetuating these cultural characteristics in their adopted homeland. This concept of a cultural "transplant" does away with the idea that immigrants entering the United States will exert little influence on the existing social fabric.
The Iceberg Model of Culture
The image by James Penstone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
The common refrain that multiculturalism brings with it immense benefits, such as diversity of food, music, art, and literature, are merely surface-level representations of culture.
While these are important parts of a culture, today, they are not *shared* by all and are far from the only components of a robust national culture. Every cultural attribute that falls below the waterline in the graphic above has an immense effect on a nation’s society and, in just a generation or two, can change the entire fabric of a nation.
Unless immigration is seriously constrained and even reversed through deportation, ongoing waves of migration across the West will introduce enduring changes that no amount of assimilation will be able to correct as each new generation becomes further divorced from a host nation's history, traditions, and values.
The challenges of multiculturalism are far broader and more profound than what the recent pro-Palestinian protests suggest. In fact, for much of the West, we are only witnessing the tip of the multicultural iceberg.