The real problem is thta most neocons are white ethnics. They believe in the immigation myths of the early 20th century. Their attachment is not to the America of 1789, but to 1910. Their ideal of America is not found in Democracy in America or the Federalist Papers but in the Hollywood "American dream."
White ethnic intellectuals have defined their group identity in opposition to the WASPS. They associate assimilating to 1800 to become a WASP. Thus they created a new America. In effect, they believe in a "melting pot" where immigrants keep their identity but switch allegience to America, but it is America which must change. To accept that ideas are based on a culture and that America has a national identity would force them to confront their cultural identities.
How many of them can truly agree with the following though by Teddy Roosevelt?
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.... A hyphenated American is not an American at all... Americanism is a matter of the spirit, and of the soul...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans...each preserving its separate nationality.... The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans.... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American."They refuse to accept that you can be an American and a Jew or Irishman, but you need to be an American first and foremost.
Thanks rmlew. Your analysis of Neo-Con immigration ideology is similar to how I have come to understand it. Their beliefs of course are naive and contradictory in the extreme. The notion that all cultures and peoples of this world are essentially equal and contribute the same to America's national greatness is ludicrous on its face. It naturally begs the question as to why some countries prosper while others remain eternal pits of squalor.
Another underlying (false) assumption that Neo-Cons advance is that America has no culture, therefore there is no compelling reason whatsoever for new immigrants to assimilate. But taking this thought to its logical end: how could an immigrant ever become an "American" if there really is no core American culture or identity? Apparently by way of circular reasoning their answer is that the existing population in America must assimilate to the cultures of the new immigrants, not the other way around...which is what is happening today.
There is little mystery as to how America’s immigration policies beginning in the mid-1960s have gone so wildly off track. Neo-Cons for many years have steadily built up tremendous influence within the Republican Party. In conjunction with the majority of democrats who are always interested in importing a new subservient under class, they have successfully turned sensible immigration policy right on its ear to the inescapable disaster that it is.
Honestly, I cannot fathom anything more dangerous to the future of this Republic than the continuance of our government’s “anything goes” immigration polices--Muslim Terrorism not withstanding.
I’m glad you posted Teddy Roosevelt’s comments on immigration. Teddy Roosevelt understood this problem well and all Americans should heed his warning.