This quote is from a letter written in 1773 by none other than Benjamin Franklin to someone named Peter Collison on the topic of the support for the poor in the colonies.
I'll grant you that today's immigration issues are different than in the old colonial days, but the feelings about immigrants have never really changed.
Well, the fundamental issues are the same, too. Language and cultural barriers will exist until assimilation occurs. During that process there is that cross cultural carryover that has increasingly separated American from English, as terms are added to the American Language while those who came here learn American, too. keeping in mind:
The Americans and the English are the only two peoples on the Earth separated by a common language
(George Bernard Shaw)
But there is a warning there, be it written in High German or English or Spanish, that the very concepts of Rights for all and none being above the law most directly descend from the Magna Carta, and that those ideas were English indeed, despite deeper philosophical roots. In practice, they did not come from Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, or Germany, but England, and are best understood viscerally if one understands the semantic nuances of that language. Americans took that one step farther, based on the unalienable equality among men, and denied the concept of a monarchy.
Without that conceptual background, difficult to translate into another language at best, the seminal ideas in this Republic are simply not conveyed. While American culture has definitely had its pop culture waves of infatuation with other cultures, those pass, and the fundamental concepts of Liberty have remained, adorned with new spices, cuisine, dances or modes of dress or decor, but still decidedly English if one raises the tablecloth or drapes. The peril is inherent in forgetting those cultural roots, or worse, not passing them on as a fundamental part of being 'American'. As a people we have drawn those elements we find favorable from a dozen or more cultures, but the philosophical roots that permitted the Republic in the first place must be preserved or the America of our forefathers will fail.
Now, to wander off-topic,
For America to lead the way requires a return to the concept of American Excellence. After all, we have taken the best 'heretics' of science and engineering and done marvelous wonders. We have rebelled, excelled, and unleashed those wonders and the minds which created them in a culture infused with Liberty and as a result rose from an upstart to world power in less than two centuries. We can, given that Liberty, continue to be prominent, if not preeminent in the world.
The patently insane attempts to adopt the Marxist and Socialist ways of nations which have failed dismally as cultures, economies, as nations, no matter what language was spoken there are not for a leading nation among nations, but for those who would follow. It takes Liberty to lead.
This is why no government based on more or even 'more efficient' government of overarching scope is suitable to American Excellence: It is our Liberty which made America great, and only that Liberty can keep America Great.
