A major theme—perhaps clumsily conveyed—of yesterday’s post was that Americans should be able to keep their culture and local identity without shame. As I noted, struggling rural communities are particularly susceptible to being swept away by large-scale immigration, legal or otherwise. Thus, we see small South Carolina towns gradually hispanicize, turning into little replicas of various Latin American cultures, rather than the old Southern culture that predominated.
One often hears that Americans should be tolerant and open-minded to other cultures, and to extend maximum understanding and patience. That is a generous and worthy view: I don’t expect the Chinese foreign exchange students at our school to speak accent-less English and understand liberty their first day off the plane. In that instance, we go out of our way to attempt to understand the cultural background from which those students came.
It’s another matter, though, when it involves the permanent or long-term relocation of foreign aliens to our land. Remember the expression, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do?” That rule always seems to apply to Americans—who are routinely criticized for being uncouth abroad—but never to any other ethnic group, and especially not to cultures outside of the West.
It’s an enduring frustration of mine: one-way cosmopolitanism.
The Portly Politico 