George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2015.]
Jo Ann and I hope that everyone had a meaningful and enjoyable Thanksgiving, and have properly girded themselves for the busiest, most stressful month of the year. Rather than delve into another globe shaking issue or national catastrophe in the making, I’ll instead try to rattle some cages on a more general collection of our new shibboleths and ingrained verities. Many of you know that I host a controversial blog that is inevitably on the wrong side of every politically correct thought held dear by 21st century progressives. This evening I want to cover some details of these thoughts. And in line with today’s progressive protocols, perhaps this is the place to issue a trigger warning to some of our more sensitive listeners.
The other day on my blog it was noted that five illegal aliens are suing Oregon for not granting them driver’s licenses. I then had the temerity to post the following, somewhat edited, question – “Does anyone know where these illegal aliens and their coddling collectivists get the harebrained idea that they are owed anything in this country save a free trip back to the border? How did all this get started?”
The point of the question was summarily ignored, and I was taken to task by two prominent liberals of our community about my presumably callous attitude toward these people, seeing as how I too was born in a foreign land and, at the invitation of the US Congress, immigrated here after WW2. The left-leaning debaters made no difference between legal immigration and a felonious entry into our land. The implicit conclusion was that as long as you’re both here, you both should have equal rights. However, the last time I looked, immigration to America was still subject to a two-party agreement between our government and the applicant for immigration.
I will not bore you with the heated discussion which followed, with many readers weighing in on the issue. One of the threads that developed, at least in my mind, was the matter of culture. What may be called America’s mainstream culture has always been in flux since Europeans first set foot on these shores. But the progress of cultural change was very measured, and in the public square centered on an amalgam of European Christian values and traditions. This accepted cultural target for assimilation started to unravel in the 1950s, slowly at first as we became Judeo-Christian, but then picking up steam as the Great Society programs kicked into gear, after which an uncounted number of new and old cultures and their traditions were elevated and celebrated, while symbols and observances of the old were diminished or completely removed.
Today we are in a cultural turmoil where the once dominant American culture is now daily maligned along with those who dare recall it in discussions of who then are we and where are we going. Have we abandoned the adoption of a new American culture which can again be accepted by all as our common ground? Don’t get me wrong, we cannot go back, nor am I promoting a return to yesteryear. But will our future hold a culture that again can be called American, and about whose traditions and tenets our young will be educated? Or will we continue as a multi-cultural polyglot with no shared center?
Over the life of our Republic immigrants have come to enjoy our liberties and opportunities for a better life, and in the process they have contributed lavishly to what made America the envy of the world. These immigrants came and stashed their native cultures behind their private lives as they visibly celebrated American culture and assimilated with astonishing speed. But today there is little reason to abandon exhibiting the culture into which you were born. Why? Because there is nothing of apparent value, form, and function which you can adopt in its stead. So all over the world immigrants and migrants are facing the same cultural challenge, and given a choice, they would overwhelmingly opt to return to or retain their native culture. This is especially true in the Mideast where, instead of emigrating, almost all refugees in the camps simply want to return to the life and culture they had. The important question then becomes, what culture will they cling to as they arrive in a strange country that neither claims nor offers a dominant culture of its own?
And from our own perch here in the western hemisphere, what kind of country are we evolving toward as we indiscriminately pile every new culture upon our already large stack of recently arrived and recognized cultures? It’s worth a thought when we consider the function that culture serves in organizing a cohesive and stable society.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] Coincidentally the 2dec15 WSJ contained a piece by News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch from a recent speech he gave at the Hudson Institute. The essay ‘America the Indispensible’ summarizes much of my conservetarian sentiment that is recorded in these pages, and it is germane to my radio commentary since Murdoch is also an immigrant and naturalized American citizen. The essay is about world order and America’s role in maintaining it since WW2. In it the author expresses a sentiment I experienced as a sixteen-year-old ‘Indiana teenager’ when I finally received my citizenship papers after being country for seven years – “Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.”
rebanesruminations.com 
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