I very much liked your Fourth of July editorial “Keep on stirring the American melting pot.” You are exactly right about the need for legal immigrants to come to our country and be prepared to assimilate. Most immigrants make a real effort to do so.
However, two points. First, the public education system is split between those who believe in the melting pot (assimilation) and those who believe in the salad bowl (nonassimilation). Salad bowl advocates have told me that American civilization is no better than any other civilization and that to force immigrants to speak English, learn our customs, abide by our moral values and laws, and celebrate our holidays is nativistic prejudice at work. We each should be able to find our own way, they say. Our “one nation” does not have to be understood and accepted as “under God” (which one?) and certainly not “indivisible,” because that would upset the salad bowl.
Second, the argument between melting pot and salad bowl advocates has now spread throughout academia and into many other institutions of American life through the misapplication of the law, creating a self-consciousness about who we are as Americans. Many social issues today are at their core expressions of the melting pot vs. salad bowl argument. For example, the flag desecration amendment, properly understood, is not primarily about free speech but about whether you will be loyal to the “Republic, for which it stands.”
Similarly, mandatory reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance ingrains the promise of loyalty to country for the benefits of liberty. English-only is another conservative concept, and so is mandatory teaching of civics and the U.S. Constitution. Salad bowl types hate these minimal requirements.
Stirring the melting pot means we all should be perpetually stirred up to love our country more.
Craig Spicer
Director, WA Conservative PAC
Lynnwood
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