Conservatives, Multiculturalism, and U.S. Reality

The conservatives at Power Line take out after multiculturalism today, citing a piece from Britain discussing supposed British policy:

"As an ideology, multiculturlism [sic] is a corrupted form of Marxism in which race and nationality replace class. Like Marxism itself, it is an ideology that must be opposed if we are to preserve a country founded on the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.

I don't know enough to judge whether France is in better shape than Great Britain with respect to the corruptions of multiculturalism. Moreover, it seems to me that elites in the United States -- the 'leaders' whom John wrote about yesterday -- have similarly elevated multiculturalism into an operative principle, if not a principle of governance. We have our own multicultural problems with with which to contend. McKinstry's article outlines the looming perils that confront us as well as the Brits and the French."

Americans have often been suspicious of "multiculturalism" (which I define as the presence and recognition of different cultures on U.S. soil). After all, the land has seen a congeries of peoples presumably ever since the first immigrants crossed the Bering Sea. I'd like to think that conservatives have been especially suspicious, but it's true of liberals as well. The irony for conservatives is that they tend to be libertarians, wanting the maximum of autonomy for individuals. But when the individuals share a culture, it becomes a threat.

When you think about the range of cultures within our borders, everything from California valley girls (am I showing my age) to the Amish, from the hasidic Jews to the Mormons, from the Lakota to the Appalachian country, from all the recent immigrants from around the world to the descendants of Virginia's First Families and the Winthrops and Kerrys from New England; we've a big spectrum. And mostly we accept all the cultures--we'll grant the right of the Amish to be Americans, even though their culture is very "un-American". Where conservatives (and others of us) object is when a group tends to deny the hegemony of the dominant culture. As long as a group goes quietly around their business, whatever their oddities, we can accept it as part of the American quilt. But when a group becomes vocal and insistent, then it becomes a threat.

Ironically, it's often when a group well into the process of melting that it becomes vocal. Witness the "black power" movement of the late 60's and early 70's; the emphasis on the great famine among Irish Americans; the Ku Klux Klan among white rednecks, and so forth. Conservatives should have more confidence in the power of the market system to bring cultures into at least loose coordination. You have only to look at the restaurants in the DC area (see Tyler Cowan's site) to see the power and attraction of multiculturalism.