Monday, December 19, 2005

How do immigrants become Americans? Well, I’ve thought about it, and I think I have the answer. The key ingredient is gratitude. It all begins with gratitude. An immigrant’s feelings of gratitude to America for the liberty, security, and opportunity our nation affords him and his family is what leads to his appreciation of the ideals and institutions of American cultural, economic, and civic life. From this appreciation comes his belief in the goodness of American ideals and the value of the institutions by which they are effectuated. And from this belief arises his aspiration to become an American citizen together with his willingness to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship and even to make great sacrifices for the nation, should it come to that. ...

If, as I have argued, it is gratitude that launches immigrants on the path to becoming Americans, it is attitude that impedes and prevents immigrants from embarking on the journey. Grateful immigrants become Americans; immigrants with attitude do not. What do I mean by attitude? I mean what the kids mean: a bad attitude. An attitude of hostility to America and her principles. An attitude of superiority. An attitude of entitlement. An attitude promoted, as I say, by influential people in education, journalism, and even government. An attitude abetted by misguided policies, such as forms of bilingualism that have the effect—though I am not claiming they all do (“bilingualism” means different things)—of discouraging mainly Latino young people from fully mastering the English language. Policies that turn the ideal of pluralism into an attack on national unity and common bonds. Policies that foster a culture of entitlement—one where all the emphasis on is on rights, and none is on responsibilities; one in which assistance provided by states or the federal government to those in need is perceived not as a manifestation of the generosity of the American people, but as payment (inevitably said to be meager and inadequate) on a debt created by the allegedly predatory and exploitative acts of previous generations of Americans.

Where a culture of opportunity flourishes, immigrants will feel, as my grandparents felt, gratitude for the opportunities they are afforded to lift themselves up, and make a better life for their children, by hard work and determination to succeed. However, it appears to be a brute fact of human psychology that where a culture of entitlement prevails, gratitude even for charitable assistance will not emerge. In part, of course, this is to be explained by the fact that upward social mobility is dampened in circumstances of a culture of entitlement. This is the phenomenon known as welfare dependency.

I observed its soul-destroying effects on many non-immigrant families in West Virginia as I was growing up. You see, dependency is an equal opportunity soul destroyer. And this, in turn, leads to resentment as people persuade themselves that the reason they are not getting ahead is that those who are already better off are cheating or manipulating the system to hold down people at the bottom of the ladder (who are dependent on entitlements). So the culture of entitlement ends up reinforcing the attitude that impedes the gratitude that enables immigrants to become Americans. ...

Not everything that does business under the label “multiculturalism” is bad, but much of it is. Much of it functions to discourage patriotism and national unity. Much of it fosters attitude and impedes the gratitude that we have always relied on to put immigrants on the path to becoming Americans.