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The cry of multiculturalism has become a Trojan horse for allowing the most un-American philosophies to flourish in the United States. Is there any chance Americans can take back their cultural identity, and move forward with the self confidence they once had? At The American Mind, Ryan P. Williams, President of the Claremont Institute, examines multiculturalism and what Americans may do to stop defeat it. He writes:
Today, multiculturalism and its politics of identity pose an existential threat to the American political order comparable to slavery in the 1850s or communism during the Cold War. Once confined to graduate seminars and the ethnic “studies” departments at our nation’s colleges and universities, multiculturalism is now the authoritative ideology reigning over higher education, our media and political establishments, legal system, and corporate boardrooms.
If we do not reverse multiculturalism’s advance, it will continue to undermine our country and constitutionalism, destroying the possibility of a common good and a life of civic peace. Indeed, multiculturalism threatens to take down western civilization as whole.
By multiculturalism, we do not mean the mere presence of many cultures, races, or ethnic traditions, which are a fixture of modern American life and can be found across our states, communities, institutions, and private associations. One of America’s—and Americanism’s—great virtues has always been the maintenance of a wide realm of liberty and civic society in which a vibrant mix of cultural heritages and individual excellence could flourish.
America’s most important politico-cultural virtue, though, has been the insistence to its current—and especially potential—citizens that they assimilate to a certain view of justice embodied in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded by our state and national political institutions, first and foremost the U.S. Constitution. E pluribus unum (“out of many, one”), America’s motto, means that assimilation has always been in our national DNA.
Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is not this benign tolerance of diverse traditions. Multiculturalism is a comprehensive ideology, demanding obeisance to a rigid system of justice, vices, and virtues. It boasts an intellectual tradition that guides its leadership and adherents in the policing of its boundaries and the maintenance of its categories. It keeps a running list of friends and enemies, a roster of praise, shame, and blame.
In short, multiculturalism is a worldview—a regime, in the classical sense; a political and cultural way of life all wrapped up in one. As an ideology, it stands for nearly the opposite of America’s national motto. It seeks to divide and conquer Americans, making many groups out of one citizenry. The modern Left, accustomed to running the campuses according to the new social justice diktats of multiculturalism, now wants to run the world that way.
The threat multiculturalism presents to the American regime and our way of life is now urgent.
Read more here.
