The Paris terrorist attacks have raised questions about how Western nations assimilate immigrants.
Heritage Foundation expert Mike Gonzalez explains, countries like the United States and France do little to counter Islamist propaganda among immigrants. This propaganda holds that Western ideals of freedom are hedonistic. In fact, many Western countries make apologies for their culture and as such have abandoned the assimilation practices which used to be standard with immigrants.
Gonzalez points out the high price the U.S. and France have paid:
Many people think the tradition of assimilating immigrants into society is solely an American thing, something not practiced in “blood and soil” Europe. But one European nation used to take immigrants from around the world and turn them into fervent patriots.
Then, just as it happened here, that country’s elites decided to indulge in self-defeating ennui and gave up on assimilation. That country was France.
Reports that some of the Paris terrorists last week were French-born and raised show the high price the nation has paid for abandoning assimilation.
National pride is the basis upon which a strong country is built. Gonzalez quotes demographer Guillaume Marois:
“Confidence in one’s own people is an essential condition for the assimilation of immigrants and it is no longer sufficiently strong . . . Why would anyone want to become French when the intellectual elites and the media ceaselessly denigrate France? Some immigrants want the material comfort and the security that the West provides, but not necessarily its way of life.
In America, America’s core principles are scorned by the media and overly-apologetic intellectual elites. It is all the more reason we must redouble our efforts to restore those principles to their rightful place.
What do you think? Is assimilation important?
Howard Woodrow - November 20, 2015
After years of membership, you screwed up my name! I am Howard Woodrow not Woodrow Howard. You sell my contact and now I get mail as Woodrow Howard. STOP IT!