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So many people refer to the ethnic nationalism vs. civic nationalism dichotomy. What if we as a country are promoting neither? Multiculturalism is a form of "anti-nationalism" that acts against national unity. If we are promoting multiculturalism rather than "civic nationalism," can we afford to take in as many immigrants as we once did? In any case, I have to wonder if libertarian/liberal America really wants enough "civic nationalism" to make assimilation work.

And if we have changed so as to make it harder for immigrants to assimilate successfully is that not also a sign that we should limit immigration? If it doesn't work any more, is the experiment worth continuing? It looks like it would be easier to limit immigration first, than to try to reshape our whole society to make assimilation work better. Certainly, it seems like having cheap immigrant labor to clean up after us is one factor -- though clearly not the only one -- in the decline of our character.

American culture is a mish-mash of a myriad of cultures, each immigrant wave added to it, changing it a bit perhaps, but never, hurting it.

The idea that is America, is one of people bounde together by certain ideals, and not so much ethinicity, or even religion.

Best explained by three simple words found on the back of every dollar bill ever printed: "E Pluribus Unum".

Seems to me that your analysis leaves conservatives with two choices. We can leave control of the naturalization process and the larger education establishment with the multiculturalists and try to win a meaningless victory by stopping immigration. It would be meaningless because then it'll just be the John Suleyman Abdul Walkers with good ethnic pedigrees that destroy the country. Or we can focus our energies on fighting for a revival of citizenship education in our schools and also in the naturalization process. I think that post 9-11 we have a window of opportunity on this.

I think the country needs a common language and I support English-only education as commonsense kindness to immigrant kids so they can succeed here. But I also wish some conservative foundation would start producing textbooks and translations and tracts on the meaning of American ordered liberty in Spanish and Arabic and other languages. I have an old German songbook from Iowa with the Star-Spangled Banner translated into German - it's a weird thing to contemplate but I bet it helped keep a lot of midwest Germans out of the German-American Bund in WWII.