Good morning FR readers and happy Tuesday. As I’m sure you noticed, we didn’t have a Stephen post yesterday, but we do today! And this one’s a two-fer, Part II will be published tomorrow. Thank you so much, Stephen! As always.
Mere proximity does not imbue integration. That is a statement of obvious truth and a sentiment which runs counter to every SJW pseudo-intellectual open border propagandist.
The modern revisionist of the classic concept of the American melting pot is that people simply coming to America, living here, working here, will magically absorb the culture, assimilate and become a patriotic, flag waving American just like everyone else.
This is false. The ability to Assimilate into another culture is not merely a arduous process, but requires an affirmative decision to effect such an outcome.
History is replete with groups and individuals who moved into another country and despite many years, or even many generations, never assimilated or never fully assimilated to their new neighbors.
The Amish make a great example because they illustrate an incredible contrast of assimilation. The Amish settlers in western Pennsylvania and Ohio of America who continue to this day to not only speak German but eschew modern mechanization of the industrial age.
Prior to the opening up of America’s borders to those immigrants from nations of a Catholic or Orthodox faith, most all of the immigrants who came voluntarily to this continent were from Protestant nations, the English, the Dutch, Danish, Norse, Scottish, and German, and even some French, although they were Catholic.
The two largest ethnic groups of the time were the English and the German, and for an English speaking nation once belonging to the United Kingdom, it is surprising to learn that more Americans trace their lineage back to Germany than to England.
Most of the Germans who immigrated to America, adopted English, and assimilated fully with the rest of America. Those French in Vermont, Dutch in New Amsterdam (New York), and Germans in most of Pennsylvania, adopted English and integrated as neighbors as well as identifying as English subjects.
There is a wonderful scene in the movie Casablanca where the old German barkeep and his wife are getting ready to come to America, where he tells Rick that from now forth, they will only be speaking English so that they will feel at home once they reach America.
(Quite a humorous scene if you speak German and understand the linguistic jokes the Epstein brothers wrote into the scene involving the German word “uhr”.)
Many immigrants to America would Anglicize their names so that they would not stand out as foreigners, though in later years sometimes the customs officials would Anglicize those names for them whether they wanted to or not.
As contrasted with the Amish, these early German settlers, far greater in number than the Amish, fully assimilated with the English culture. So what explains the difference?
To understand the Amish, one also needs to understand other groups of the time like the Shakers. Emergent Protestant sects like the Amish and the Shakers sought to separate themselves from the rest of society which they viewed as decadent from their religious perspective.
The Shakers, much like an English version of the Amish similar in beliefs and attitudes, would eventually fade into history because part of their religious beliefs included a strict separation of the sexes and adherence to a celibate life. Their dependency upon recruiting new converts rather than breeding their own replacements would eventually fail to sustain their movement.
However it is the religious admonishment to keep themselves apart from the secular world in their pursuit of a religious cultural identity which prevented both groups from assimilating with the general population.
The same phenomena can be seen in Jewish population throughout the world, not just in Europe but in parts of Africa and Asia, where as a part of their religious dictates they are enjoined to keep themselves apart, to marry only within their religion, and to practice their own customs tied to their religion.
In some nations, the Jews kept, or were kept, almost entirely to themselves, whereas in others they settled down and often mixed with the local populations. Where there was more acceptance and they were placed under the same laws, there was often greater assimilation.
The same behaviors are seen in the another wandering population, the Gypsies, whose stories of remaining separate from the populations of the nations through which they wanders and the attitudes towards them were virtually identical. Both Jews and Gypsies were seen, and actually had a history of, practicing forbidden arts of black magic, as well as reputations as thieves and confidence men.
It is the inherent difficulty in separating out what norms, mores, and behaviors are cultural and those which are religious in nature, and the line is seldom that distinct. In Spain, it was at a time forbidden for non-Christians to hold public offices within the kingdom. As Spain had only recently re-conquered the isthmus from the Muslims, and the Jews of the area had a history of playing one side against the other naturally seeking the best advantage for themselves, it was not an unreasonable requirement.
Well, with the lure of these lucrative jobs, a number of educated Jews converted to the Catholic faith. However, they would often be known to continue certain of their Jewish traditions such as celebrating Passover, keeping the Sabbath, lighting the Menorah, covering their head, et cetera. So it was suspected that they had not really converted but had only pretended to convert in order to obtain employment, a natural suspicion given the financial incentive.
Thus an inquisition was launched to ferret out the crypto-Jew, or fake converts, from the sincere and faithful Christian converts. It is ironic that those very practices of Judaism were at this time thought to be anti-Christian where a millennia before that emerging Christian sect was debating whether one had to first convert to Judaism before one could actually become a Christian.
There is no assimilation of any people so long as that people do not wish themselves to assimilate. So long as the dictates of their religion or their culture are to keep themselves apart, to follow their own ways, that dictate will forever prevent them from becoming part of the culture, from assimilating.
While it appears that assimilation is at a cultural level, a group level, in reality it is an individual’s choice, and it is not an easy choice. To seek to become part of a new culture you have to be willing to give up you old culture, not just in a few superficial aspects, but in your core beliefs of what is right and wrong, your outlook on reality itself.
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but he also pointed out that such self-examination was the hardest task a person could ever undertake. The French expressed the state of emotional turmoil both necessary and caused by such deep-seated changes to one’s values as a state called “anomie”.
It is difficult to adopt new customs, to approach solving problems and conflicts in a different way than you are familiar, to either be more accepting of authority or more challenging, to be more polite and deferent or more assertive than you are practiced.
Imagine trying to assimilate in an Oriental or east Asian culture where you are expected to always smile, defer, and be polite; where you must avoid directly contradicting another person and phrase your different ideas as a suggested possibility rather than asserting your reasoning and conclusion, unless you are directly asked to do so. Difficult, isn’t it?
With those cultural changes in mind, imagine how much a deeper philosophic change requires, where one’s approach to something like religion is fundamentally challenged. For example, a Catholic coming to America where the Protestant philosophy that truth comes from God to each individual, who then lends power to those in authority rather than the old tradition of God granting the authority directly to the rulers and from them to the citizen.
That is not an easy transition, though obviously an easier transition for some religions than others. It is not impossible to square the American political philosophy of the power of the people, the individual rights of man, who then create the state with any religion, but it may require a fundamental re-understanding or reformation of that religion. That is far from easy.
That which sets people apart is also that which can prevent them from assimilating into the larger culture. The further one’s original culture or philosophy or religion is from that of the host nation into which one seeks to assimilate the more difficult and arduous that assimilation will be for the individual.
That is why fellow European Protestants have an easier time assimilating to the English/American culture than other groups. The further one is from the English core of America, the more difficult it will be to actually begin to feel that one is American. Well, that is part of the reason.
