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Not long ago, I was a political science major.  I graduated with a liberal arts degree.

When America fought Great Britain for freedom from it’s rule, we severed our roots, and began a new life NOT as English people but as Americans.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “asylum of all nations will construct a new race.”
What did Waldo mean by that?
George Washington was a practical man.  He believed that “the bosom of America.  … is open to the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”
But Washington counselled people who came to this great nations against keeping their language, customs, culture, principles of good and bad.  George Washington said come here not in clannish groups (don’t be cliquish) but come as individuals prepared to intermix with other people. In this way you assimilate to our NEW AMERICAN customs, measures and laws–we become one people.
John Q Adams also a practical man.  Agreed with Washington and also insisted in the distinctness of the new american identity.
Emigrants need to make up their mind on one thing: when you come here and seek asylum take off your south american, central american, Mexican, Cuban, Canadian, European skin and NEVER RESUME IT. You must look forward to their posterity instead of backwards to your ancestors. That was the idea that came from John Q Adams.
But how can we transform this mixture of people into one society?
Tocqueville said, it lay in the commitment of Americans to democracy and self-government.  Civic participation.
How does this happen in America where the inhabitants have only recently migrated to the land which they now occupy?  It is because everyone takes an active part in the government of society.
Immigrants, Tocqueville said, become Americans through the exercise of the political rights and civic responsibilities bestowed on them by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  If you don’t participate then you aren’t American!
To become a citizen, new comers have only to swear to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the land.
In the new republic, civic commitment replaced bloodlines as a test for citizenship.
When the new republic came together, the 13 colonies, The majority of the population came from Great Britain.  The revolution “cleaned” most of North America of their French, Spanish, and Dutch rivals and now the British colonies were FREE to set the mold.
And the mold was an anglocentric flavor.  For better or for worse, our American tradition comes from Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition and is still the dominant influence.  This tradition has provided a lasting union.  We are going on 300 years right?
This tradition has provided the standard to which all immigrant nationalities were and are expected to conform, the metrix to which we should assimilate.
There was a lot of fear from the Anglos that newcomers would never become loyal to Americans.  Because since the begin of our nations, whether you were German or Irish or Mexican or Cubans, etc. would cling to their compatriots and to the language, schools, churches they brought with them.  Often segregating themselves into enclaves. The Anglo viewed this as a risk. And for good reason.  You can’t be loyal to 2 masters.
W.E.B. Du Bois, a black scholar in Barrington, Massachusetts, 1870s, said, ” the racial angle was more clearly defined against the Irish than against me.” So, right there, you can’t say that black people were always discriminated against.
The fear was on people coming here and NOT being loyal.  And I believe, we fear this today.
But back then in around 1856, discrimination was against blacks, foreigners and Catholics. Why? Because the Anglo-Saxon tradition was protestant.
We were even called the Know-Nothings. But Democrats can’t claim that today.  Because blacks, Catholics, and foreigners make up the Republican party too.  I am definitely NOT racist.  I was born here from Cuban-Catholic refugees.  We Cubans are LOYAL to America.
We believe in being one people.  We became Americanized, liberated and fused into one race.
After the civil war, came the “NEW” immigration from the south and eastern europe.  Over 27,000 million people came here!  That is more than the total population of the country in 1850.
These new immigrants came from Italy, Poland, Hungry, Czech, Slovania, Russia, and Jews– settled here in cities and were strange clothe, had strange customs, spoke strangely, and had their religions that like today excited new misgivings.
The new immigrants of yesteryear’s, suffered from social prejudice, but they were NOT barred from civic participation, and civic participation indoctrinated them in the fundamental American Creed.  They altered the ethnic make-up of the country but they preserved the old ambition to become American’s.
So what I see today is that Democrats want to disunite us, and not only alter the ethnic make-up of the country but also alter the meaning of what it means to become American’s.
Many immigrants today, don’t participate in their civic duty! Heck! Most American’s today don’t participate in their civic duty!