A reader recently wrote a letter that made the point that
pluralism is the strength of the United States.
I submit that this is only a recent concept with no empirical or
historical basis.
It was only in 1947 that the court called supreme ruled that
government cannot aid or favor a particular religion, nearly 170 years after our nation’s
founding, though as recently as 1955 it still noted that we are a Christian
nation.
Prior to 1965, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding,
immigration to our country was almost entirely from Europe, Western countries
that shared a common culture and worldview, which is what a religion is.
Prior to 1965, immigrants had to meet a long list of
criteria that included literacy, health, morals, and the likelihood they would
not require government assistance. Now the
politically correct, global mindset is that every immigrant is of equal value
and any desire to choose between them is inherently racist and evil.
The reader also criticized the idea of the American Dream,
some idealized picture of American life from the past, which apparently to him
never existed.
Well, it did. In my
lifetime, the United States has gone from being the richest nation the world to
arguably one of the poorest. We look rich,
but you can’t be rich when you are 20 trillion dollars in debt, and that’s only
our federal debt. We used to have the best
schools in the world, and now they are mediocre, at least by traditional
American standards.
We used to feel safe in our homes and on the streets, even
though guns were always a part of American life. We used to have gun clubs in our public
schools.
Now we live with terror watch lists and the threat of
terrorist attacks in our country, just like third world countries have had for
decades. Those of us who are older are
seeing their country being transformed into a third world country with its
violence and poverty.
It would be wrong to say that pluralism is the reason for
this decline in the quality of American life, but the mindset that created
pluralism is:
the idea that it is wrong for us as a nation to pursue
policies that benefit us more than they might benefit the world community as a
whole;
the idea that truth is not an absolute, but a social construct, that absolute truth if it existed is unknowable, such that
religions are mere preferences like one’s taste in food or music rather than
one’s view of the world and thus inconsequential for public policy and the life
and health of a nation;
the idea that it is wrong for a nation to select immigrants on
the basis on which ones would contribute more to our country, meaning also the
right to refuse an immigrant who does not meet certain requirements;
the idea that Western or American culture is not something special
or unique in world history but that American life should become a culture of either
the lowest common denominator or reducing our entire cultural life to the bare
minimum of values, like tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.
Instead of being our strength, pluralism is the driving
force toward mediocrity and social chaos.
