May 11, 2004
Multiculturalism is 'bunk'
Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich is more correct than he knows when he states (from the Baltimore Sun):
Once you get into this multicultural crap, this bunk, that some folks are teaching in our college campuses and other places, you run into a problem. There is no such thing as a multicultural society that can sustain itself, in my view, and I think history teaches us this lesson.
Much of the kneejerk criticism of the governor's statement (and Comptroller William Donald Schaefer's defense of speaking English) comes from fuzzy-thinking people who don't understand the simple difference between the words multiethnic (good) and multicultural (bad).
Our multiethnicity is a national strength.
Multiculturalism, however, holds that Americans need share nothing greater than physical proximity -- not language, not shared ideals, not the cultural agreement that makes for a social contract, only competing grievances.
I addressed this topic in my first book, 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet, which in a chapter on Greece looks at the matter of national greatness and decline. How does a nation like the United States, which resembles in its multiethnic makeup the Roman Empire, achieve and maintain its status as a World Power?
In a nutshell: The United States needs to insist on assimilation, including that its immigrants speak English. Ehrlich has a sense of history and a leader's willingness not to bow to today's fad of catering to advocacy groups that insist on splintering a great people into little identity-riddled factions.
From An Amateur's Guide (pages 164-65):
Rome’s approach to minorities: sharing power and insisting on cultural assimilationThe length of time a Great Power gets to stay at the top may hinge upon how much it ensures that its diverse population shares a stake in national success.
My husband, artist and historian Lamont W. Harvey, notes that Great Powers such as the United States, China or the former Soviet Union cover large areas and comprise more than one ethnic group. (The exception is comparatively homogeneous Japan.)
Thus Great Powers need a policy to prevent instability among differing peoples. History reveals some widely divergent approaches taken by Great Powers toward minorities (defined in the sociological sense, as persons subjected to different treatment, rather than groups smaller in numbers).
In the Greek colonies and British Empire, for example, no one could hope to join the ruling classes except by birth. The Greeks in their cities and colonies simply considered themselves innately superior to barbarians outside and saw no purpose in trying to civilize their neighbors. Thus virtually all citizens of Athens came only from married Athenian parents.
The Romans looked at things quite differently. Non-Romans during the imperial era could exercise power, particularly in their home provinces. For Rome’s subject peoples, who came to cherish the peace established under Roman rule, to become a Roman citizen was a high honor.
Stephen Neill, in Colonialism and Christian Missions, wrote that
Citizens in Spain who had never once seen the eternal city became more Roman than the Romans, and spoke and wrote the Latin tongue with an almost classical elegance. Rome seemed identical with the civilization and stability of the world.Rome only permitted those who adopted its language and culture to become citizens. It tolerated but did not celebrate diversity, even as it absorbed elements of other cultures (especially Greece’s).
Rome allowed its subjects to continue to speak Celtic, Aramaic, Libyan and other languages. But officials, soldiers, traders and schoolchildren learned Latin, which became the official language of the Mediterranean. As John Matthews wrote in “Roman Life and Society: Distances and Diversity” (in
The Oxford History of the Classical World):
It was precisely the achievement of the Roman Empire to have assimilated in one political and administrative system the immense diversities of the Mediterranean, and much of the northern European, worlds.Like modern U.S. conservatives, Rome also came to emphasize public safety and family values. People in the empire had to obey the law and allow free passage on the Roman roads. And Augustus Caesar introduced numerous social reforms designed to strengthen the family and the integrity of marriage. (Though his own family failed disastrously in this regard, as
the BBC television series based on Robert Graves’s book I, Claudius amply demonstrated.)
