I am quite familiar with Michael Barone’s lapidary style in political writing, which raises him above the rest of the polemicists out there.

I have received gratis from Regnery Publishing a review copy of a previously published book of his, originally published in 2001 before the September 11 attacks: The New Americans: How The Melting Pot Can Work Again. In the new preface included in this year’s printing, he further states his theses succinctly: first, that we have been a nation of immigrants long before Kennedy himself stated it, second, the different racial/demographic groups of today already resemble a respective group earlier in American history, third, that the real threat to problems in this country brought about “by immigrants” stem actually from the Liberal bastion-concept of multiculturalism, and fourth, as an answer to multiculturalism, the concept of assimilation and “Americanization” that has been in place less than a hundred years ago needs to be revived.

From the old introduction, he quotes Washington:“It is now that tolerance is no more spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no saction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” Here in Washington’s ornate eighteenth-century prose, was the idea of the Melting Pot, long before it received its name. Anyone could become an American. The nation would welcome newcomers of all backgrounds—there were no restrictions on immigrationthen—and treat them as equals, not out of generosity but on principle. A diverse people wold share a common citizenship. America would be a proudly multiethnic nation. But it also would be a nation with a common civic culture. (p. 3)

He also mentions in the preface something that a lot of people who have taken public transportation through suburban areas of Maryland would be able to observe: the formation of ethnic ghettoes. Writes Barone: … Elites came to see Americanization as teh unfair subjection of members of other races and cultures. They came to celebrate, as Al Gore did in 1994, an American that would be made up of separate and disparate “multicultural” groups, fenced off in their own communities, entitled to make demands on the larger society but without any responsibility to assimilate to American mores. This outlook, along with the governmental policies and administrative practices it fosters, has in many cases retarded assimilation. (p.12-13) From the new preface, after citing the value that Americanization has done to help the country in the past, he cites a very relevant example: Other models have been offered. The nations of Western Europe—Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden—have taken many immigrants. But in the name first of maintaining ethnic purit and then under the rubric of multiculturalism, they have discouraged—or at any rate have failed to encourage—assimilation. they have encouraged Muslims to live in separate Muslim communites, where the cultures of the old country—including submission of women—have been maintained and where too often the police have no writ to interfere. (p. ix)

Perhaps the most “ouch” moment in the new preface is the lengthy enumeration of the elites in America today that affect immigration and the cultural amalgamation: Thus I quote verbatim:

The main threats to assimilation come not from the immigrants themselves, but from American elites who flinch at the mention of Americanization and who find European-style multiculturalism more appealing. There are the educational elites, who support so-called bilingual education—which in practice is too often neither bilingual nor education—in which children are taught in bad Spanish and kept from mastering the English language, the first rung on the ladder of upward mobility. There are the political elites, who persist in requiring foreign language ballots even though immigrants who wish to become citizens are required to show that they have learned English. There are the governmental elites, who allow Wahhabi imams to serve as prison chaplains and preachers of terrorism to teach in Middle Eastern studies programs. There are the academic elites, who pride themselves on admitting as a student at Yale a spokesman for the murderous Taliban regime. There are the highly educated moral-relativist elites, who regard our civilization as a virus and hostile immigrants and multiculturalism as the cure.

But beyond the surgically incisive attacks on the elite, the emphasis of the rest of the book is that “we have been here before,” and that it isn’t fair nor right to actually compare the different demographic groups of today—Black, Latino (the use of which he explains in a lengthy footnote) and Asian—with each other, but rather, with a respective group from the nation’s past: Irish, Italians, and Jews.

I have only begun to read the main portions of the book with respect to the different cultures, but only Barone can pull off something like this without being branded a flaming racist. None of the pages I have read on the Blacks and Irish so far even resemble a racist polemic meant to inflame. In a methodical examination of political history—heavy with endnotes—he draws parallels between one era and another in a way that only Michael Barone can: clear, factual, and thorough, with context intact. It reads more like an academic paper more than anything else, but it remains engaging enough nonetheless.

Being an immigrant myself, this book is particularly relevant even from the new preface alone. I look forward to reading the rest of the book and probably even doing a follow-up soon.

Requisite disclaimer: Regnery publishing’s publicity department furnished me with a copy of this book. No other compensation has been provided for the review that I have written.