TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/083192/0831640.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.7 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 74

We Can All Share American Culture


By Richard Brookhiser


    What then is the American, this new man?" asked French
immigrant Hector St. John de Crevecoeur in 1782. Two hundred ten
years later, many Americans answer, "No one." America has always
treated its ethnic and racial minorities abominably. The only
consolation they have for being shut out of the mainstream is
that they should never have wanted to join it in the first
place. Happily -- what with multicultural education and
bilingualism -- the very concept of a mainstream is being
junked.

    The facts that get pitched around in the multicultural
debate are all familiar. Immigration has reached levels higher
than at any other time since the turn of the century.
Majorities or near majorities of students in some big-city
school systems speak English as a second language, if they speak
it at all. An urban underclass seems cut off from any culture,
much less mainstream American culture. What is new, however, is
not the facts but our attitudes toward them. Once upon a time,
Americans knew what to do with people who seemed different:
obliterate the differences. Today increasing numbers of nominal
Americans refuse to see America as anything more than a
collection of ZIP codes. Their ideal is Yugoslavia, without
machine guns. Multiculturalism, in the words of historian Arthur
Schlesinger Jr., "belittles unum and glorifies pluribus."

    The stakes are high, and so is the decibel level. Why then
is only one side of the argument being presented effectively?
Schlesinger's alternative to multiculturalism is "an open
society founded on tolerance of differences." That sounds pretty
pluribus, professor. If the toleration of differences is the
be-all and end-all of America, then why not tolerate
multiculturalism?

    A less mealymouthed defense of the American character
would begin by acknowledging its historical roots in the
behavior of the Anglo settlers of 200 and 300 years ago -- what
are known today as Wasps. The Ur-Wasps brought with them a load
of cultural baggage, which they unpacked when they arrived.
Their load included a politics of natural right, derived from
English Whigs; Protestant churches, mostly Bible reading and
"low" in ritual and theology; and a near religious belief in the
virtues of working hard and getting rich. These traits
reinforced one another: pulpits proliferated under
nonauthoritarian government, and the work ethic flourished under
the stimulus of earnest preachment.

    The ways of the Wasp linger today, despite condoms and
Madonna. America attracts hard workers from abroad and breeds
them at home, whatever Japanese politicians may think. Thomas
Jefferson could still vaguely recognize our politics (Aaron Burr
would certainly recognize our dirty politics). Survey after
survey finds that Americans are the most religious people in the
industrialized world, and the seriousness with which we take our
sex scandals amazes cynical Europeans.

    Throughout American history, newcomers assimilated to this
model, despite the doubts and hostility of their hosts. At the
turn of the century, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge was worried that
East European immigrants labored under a "Byzantine"
inheritance that would make them inimical to republican rule.
Sixty years earlier, Protestant mobs burned Irish Catholic
churches. The Senator and the rioters were both mistaken in
their fears. Even blacks, the oldest and most abused American
minority group, bear the marks of Americanization. Martin Luther
King Jr. may have written about the influence on him of the
teachings of Gandhi, but when he spoke, the texts he cited were
the King James Bible, the Declaration of Independence and My
Country, 'Tis of Thee. Minorities assimilated, because
assimilation allowed them to get ahead here, and because here
seemed better than any available alternative -- especially their
homelands.

    One of the stumbling blocks to acknowledging and
proclaiming such once obvious truths may be the figure of George
Bush, who is the most visible Wasp in America right now. But
Bush is more post-Wasp than genuine article. Thomas Jefferson
didn't think in cliches and speak in mush. There is also a lot
worse in Wasp history than George Bush's inarticulateness, with
slavery standing at the top of the list. The best defense of
Waspdom is that it always included people who saw that slavery
was wrong, and when it came to a fight, they won the war and
(thanks to Lincoln) the argument. The way of the Wasp contained
the correctives for its vices. It is the matrix of most of the
good that America has done as well as the good that needs to be
done.

    This is not an argument in favor of DWEMS (dead white
European males) -- at least, not in favor of those recently
dead. As an intellectual and social system, America is clearly
superior to Europe, which for the past 200 years has been an
assembly line for destructive ideas, and for destruction. We
don't have to take second place to the continent of Robespierre
and Enver Hoxha.

    Americans should take pride, not in empty formulas of
tolerance and diversity, but in the historic content of their
culture, in forms as homely as Benjamin Franklin's
how-to-get-rich maxims, or as sublime as Lincoln's second
Inaugural Address. There is no need to say to those who demur,
"Love it or leave it." They have already left, for internal
exile. If there are Americans who feel as alienated as the
Amish, let them live like the Amish -- without harassment, but
without subsidized proselytizing for their rejectionist world
views. America has business -- noble business -- to attend to.