HYPHENATED AMERICANS?

Thomas Paine, an influential pamphleteer for the American Revolution, wrote” “We have it in our power to begin the world all over again.” George Washington believed we were beginning a new race of people welcoming the “oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” Our nation was to be a “melting pot”, a crucible for making the new American, “the new race of people.”

But today, says the late New York University historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., we have developed a cult of hyphenated Americanism. Further says Dr. Schlesinger, we have neglected to teach in our universities and colleges the high values and traditions of our history.

Western civilization and the high ideals of the American democratic system often are neglected in our schools. Commonly critical of the sins of the West, and laudatory of Marxist, Socialist or other regimes, many intellectuals have turned their backs on the very culture that gave them the power and freedom to critique it.

And these same intellectuals fail to note the West has produced its own antidotes to its several ills. Says Schlesinger, the West “provoked movements to end slavery, to raise the status of women, to abolish torture, to combat racism, to defend freedom of inquiry and expression, to advance personal liberty and human rights.” (see his The Disuniting of America).

These movements were, in many cases, fueled and energized by religious conviction and Western European and American ideals. They were not promulgated in Asia, the Soviet Union, the Mid-East or Africa. It is the Western democratic tradition that attracts and empowers people of all races and creeds. And when in 1987 the Chinese students demonstrated for democracy in Tiananmen Square, they brought no representation of Buddha or Confucius. Oh no. They held aloft instead a model of the Statue of Liberty.

But it has become popular for some to be critical of America and to re-emphasize their nation of origin. So we have a abundance of hyphenated Americans such as: Afro-Americans, Italian-Americans, European-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, etc., etc. Rather than embracing the dreams of Thomas Paine and George Washington for a new American “race”, many retreat into their past race or nation of origin.

And the critics rightly say, if your past race or nation was so great, why don’t you go back there and retreat into your past poverty and misery? Most immigrants come here for the liberty of conscience, religious and political freedom, and economic opportunity they lacked in their country of origin.

The way forward is not to be hyphenated Americans, but Americans united for freedom, individualism, diversity of opinion, and resistance to oppressive political establishments. And above all, Americans need to be united in a fierce loyalty to our democratic ideals which made us great.