Barone on the overdue re-examination of rampant multiculturalism.
In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swathes of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.
But most Americans know there is something special about our cultural heritage. While Harvard and Brown are replacing scholars of the founding period with those studying other things, book-buyers are snapping up first-rate histories of the Founders by David McCullough, Joseph Ellis and Ron Chernow.
Mutilculturalist intellectuals do not think our kind of society is worth defending. But millions here and increasing numbers in Britain and other countries know better.
I wonder when or if Harvard will ever lose its patina…my brainiac elder son was encouraged to apply there by his counsellors, on the basis of his grades and SAT scores…he said, “no, thanks – not interested in a school with its head so far up its own rear end.”
My boy! :-)
About Elizabeth Scalia
