Assignment due 9/20

"He sees the new peoples here with a new vision. They are no longer masses of aliens, waiting to be "assimilated," waiting to be melted down into the indistinguishable dough of Anglo-Saxonism. They are rather threads of living and potent cultures, blindly striving to weave themselves into a novel international nation, the first the world has seen. In an Austria-Hungary or a Prussia the stronger of these cultures would be moving almost instinctively to subjugate the weaker. But in America those wills-to-power are turned in a different direction into learning how to live together."

     This passage basically speaks of the nation that America should be, and of how it should no longer be a country in where the majority tries to assimilate the minority.  It describes a nation in where people learn to live within each other's presence.  It describes not exactly a melting pot, but rather a pot in where everyone works with each other in a way that still acknowledges their culture.  The author points out that it is something that has to be learned, and taught.

      I chose this passage because it described a very ideal way to live in harmony with everyone in a country.  I think for a America it is a weird subject to speak of when talking of patriotism, mainly because of the large number of immigrants.  However one cannot simply try and convert an immigrant into a full on American, who lives by the American ways.  For one because there really isn't an American way of living, and also because it is morally wrong to try and rid a person of their origins. Diversity is important for this country, it is a component of the foundations of this country.