WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT? Orrin Judd thinks it’s Christianity. John Ray begs to differ. And, whatever it is, Nick Denton thinks America deserves extra points in a degree-of-difficulty sense:
There’s one argument that US cheerleaders should employ, but don’t: it’s a miracle that the US can even match Europe in productivity. Over the last three centuries, the US has taken the world’s dropouts: losers in African tribal warfare, starving Chinese peasants, starving Irish peasants, and wastrel Brits. Sure, there were a few refugees and Nobel prizewinners in the mix, but the mass was overwhelmingly tired and huddled. With such dismal human capital, any kind of functioning economy is a miracle, and testament to the American way.
Well, we let you in, Nick. . . . Or, in Bill Murray’s immortal words from Stripes:
We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi, we’re not Spartans, we’re Americans! With a capital “A,” huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world!
It always comes back to Bill Murray, doesn’t it?
UPDATE: Reader Daniel Newhouse observes:
I do not have a complete view of America’s changing demographics, but in current times there is a phenomena that foreigners refer to as the “brain drain.” Because the economies of Europe (and India) are dysfunctional the best and brightest graduates from overseas attempt to come to the United States to go to graduate school or to get a job. Because our education system is dysfunctional we desperately need them. Thus is Western civilization kept going.
There’s a kind of fearful symmetry in that, isn’t there?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Nelson Ascher emails:
I strongly disagree with Denton. He’s not considering the following: to take a plane today and go elsewhere in the planet is just trivial. A century ago, however, most people spent their whole lives in or around the village they (and their ancestors) were born. To move from their hometown to a big city was already a scary adventure.
Imagine, then, crossing the ocean, going to a place reputedly full of man-eating savages, having to learn another language without even knowing how to write one’s own. Leaving Europe for America didn’t take any less “cojones” in the 19th century than in Hernan Cortez’s time, nor did it look less of a risky enterprise than exploring the “Dark Continent”.
Most of those who left said farewell to their parents, families, communities forever. And usually they had indeed a less scary choice: staying where they were, allowing themselves to be enslaved, massacred, starved to death as countless generations had done before. Only those who had courage, motivation and initiative dared to leave their Polish “shtetl”, Irish slum, Sicialian village for good. Even nowadays, ask anybody if he/she would easily abandon everything, every certitude and begin elsewhere, in some unimaginably strange place, from zero.
The migrants who went to the Americas, Australia, Israel were, in a Darwinian sense, those who didn’t want to give up without a fight: and they were the exception.
I’m inclined to agree. That’s one reason why I favor immigration even today. I think it should be just hard enough to produce the requisite sorting effect, and I think that immigrants must accept American values. But if they’re willing to do that, I’m willing to take them, wherever they’re from. In fact, I’m more than willing — I’m eager.
But is it just me, or is the “brain drain” already having an effect on the rest of the world?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Matt Bower notes:
I agree with you and with Nelson Ascher on this front and, like you, I generally support immigration for that reason. But I also suspect that the factors that have made America great–lots of hard-headed, independent, courageous, determined, borderline anti-social people from all over the world–may also be among the reasons that it’s a pretty violent place. I guess it’s true that you’ve got to take the bad with the good.
True enough — and well worth it. Though the currently skyrocketing crime rates in Britain suggest that there’s more to it than that.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Sloboda emails:
As an aspiring immigrant, I’d say the brain drain has no effect on the rest of the world. One reason I’m here is because I know I’d make no difference to my home society if I stayed, whereas here I can make a difference. It’s a question of staying home and wasting your life or coming here and making something of oneself.
Meanwhile, Howard Owens observes:
Freedom, capitalism — pretty much no brainers to me. The human desire to control one’s own destiny is as natural as breathing. You take your huddled masses and let them roam a large, diverse continent and decide for themselves how to make the best of it, they’re going to figure it out, and they’re going to do a damn good job of it.
America did indeed take in the people Europe no longer wanted, largely because Europe didn’t know what to do with them. Often times Europe couldn’t feed them, couldn’t clothe them and couldn’t educate them. Europe put them in a position of having nothing to lose in taking on a dangerous, difficult journey. It may take some courage to leave your ancestral home for the land of milk and honey, but it doesn’t take a lot when all you have is stone soup.
America’s immigrants were not the greatest raw material Europe had to offer, but those who survived the journey were those who were best suited to making the best of what America had to offer.
Yep. The guy — obviously an immigrant, though I’m not sure from where — who served me at Subway the other day was a good example. He wasn’t doing the best job yet, but he was trying damned hard.
Meanwhile, on the subject of violence, another reader writes:
I want to take issue with Matt Bower’s characterization of America as a violent place. It may be that we have a slightly higher level of daily violence, but we never explode into orgies of death like the Old World does. Have we forgotten WWII and Stalin so quickly? Far, far many more people have been killed in Europe in the past century than in the US.
Good point. We do retail; they do wholesale.
STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader writes:
I agree that immigration acts a sorting mechanism, and that immigrants can bring new vigor to the country. But you make a critical distinction when you say that immigrants: “must accept American values”. This is key.
An immigrant that accepts American values is an asset; one that does not is a danger. And today we seem to be actively fostering the danger.
One hundred years ago, during the last big immigration wave, we had a strong self-confident (call it chauvanistic, if you like) culture, where “Americanizing” immigrants was accepted as a matter of course. Today the government, academia, and the “civil-rights” lobby all combine to promote ethnic separatism, “multiculturalism” and “diversity”.
I agree. I don’t care if people keep harmless aspects of their native culture, so long as they buy into American ideals of freedom, etc. But I think it’s entirely fair to insist on a degree of cultural assimilation where key American values are involved.