"Ferocious differences"

Rod: At the age of eight I came to the US from Argentina. It was the sixties. I spoke not a word of English and landed in a public school in the middle of Kansas' wheat fields. These rural folk had not seen an immigrant in a along time. What happened? I had no bi-lingual education only some extra attention from the teacher. It was tough, real tough, but I was immersed in American culture and language at least for my time at school and church. Spanish was spoken only at home. I am thankful I didn't have bi-lingual education, because I assimilated into the main stream of American life. My heritage has remained an important part of my self-identity. The other day at a dinner, I sat next to man about my age who also came to the US when he was eight from Mexico. He landed in South Texas. He was also glad he didn't have bi-lingual education and he is now part of the American mainstream. We both agreed that new immigrant children are underestimated by bi-lingual education.
We are both Americans and still honor where we came from. America has changed us but we have also changed America. That's the beauty, assimilation is a two-way street.

Please do get down to the Alamo. Americans can be inclusive and mobile because we're willing to adopt and be adopted. If we forget that, the inclusivity and the mobility will sink us.

Do Mexicans move to USA only because they want to be rich or because they like american life more than mexican? Or maybe they view all earth of Northen America as common, belonging to them the same as to Yankees? Maybe a silly question, if the majority of Americans would think that mexicans are the same, will it be possible some day to add Mexico to the United States as one of equal states?

Bill, I agree with you, and that's why America is the modern nation par excellence. The point I'm struggling to make is that we are set up from the beginning to lose our national myths. I mean, we had to create national myths to bind the country together, and we did. But it's in our nature as Americans not to be rooted in place. Globalization and the consumer economy seals the deal, don't you think?

"This strikes me as exactly the kind of idiotic error that got us into this mess in Iraq -- the idea that inside the breast of every foreigner is an American, dying to come out." Rod, I think this is a brilliant observation, whatever I might think of immigration and the present bill being considered by the gov't.

True (and semi-relevant) story: I'm actually writing right now from my mother-in-law's home in Flanders, in Belgium. (I met my wife a couple years ago via a Catholic web site on the internet, and after a while of chatting online, we got married right as I was moving to a different state for my job. How's that for globalization?) My better half and I arrived here a couple days ago without luggage due to the usual airport hassles. Literally right as I was writing my previous post, I got a call from my MiL's cell phone, mentioning that the courier company that handles the delayed luggage deliveries had called to say that the courier was standing right outside the door of her building. (Funny, he hadn't rung the bell...) I'm on vacation, so I wasn't wearing shoes when I stepped outside to check to see if he was there. He wasn't, he was halfway down the block on the torn-up street outside my MiL's house (which they've been "working on" for several months now.) He then waved for me to come to him. I pointed out that I had no shoes on. He still insisted that I come to him to get the luggage that his employer had screwed up on the delivery. I simply couldn't understand what he was asking. I guess my point is, globalization and all, we're still rather different, and it kind of drove home to me just how much "The customer is always right" is an American sentiment.

Yeah, and the Irish who swamped the Anglo culture of Massachusetts sure did everything they could to bury the memories of Bunker Hill and All That. Right. Your mistake is to think that the Mexicans who come to the U.S. represent the ethos of Old Mexico. Actually, in any culture vis-a-vis the U.S. it is the ones who stay behind who represent that ethos. The adventurers are a self selecting group open by definition to new things. The Mexican immigrants will end up celebrating Thanksgiving like they were starving settlers in Massachusetts. Just wait and see! Then they's turn on the TV and fall to sleep in front of the big game. Maybe the rest of us will celebrate Cinco de Mayo (sp?) like everybody pretends they're Irish on St. Pat's.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.

Rod, you need to get to the Alamo.

"The US is a middle class nation, but Mexico is ruled by an oligarchy." Was this essay written in 1995 or 1955? Just as an experiment, I tried Googling the phrase "new gilded age" and got over 36000 hits.

~tv I'm glad you reposted that. It is exactly right. By the way,is there anything in our culture worth saving?

Conservatives...confine themselves to largely whining, complaining, and moaning...largely placed themselves at the fringe of the culture and done so intentionally... There might be a good reason for this, MZ. Many Conservatives find themselves on the "fringe" of culture in order to do what all the non-whiners don't care about: pass the culture on. Just imagine those Conservative whiners as penguins who go inland to hide from predators. And the results are already showing up. From the 2004 General Social Survey: Liberal TFR=1.47 Conservative TFR=2.08 (a 41% gap) --and-- VT/ME/MA/RI lowest TFR (smug BlueState) UT/AZ/AK/TX highest TFR (whiner RedState) I guess I can forgive a poor Conservative mother trying to make ends meet at Wal-Mart for failing to make your sophisticated shopping choices. But hey, since she is working hard rasing kids who will be changing our bedpans and paying our SS, we can at least try to cut her some slack. And those kids who are raised in sheltered environments away from the media and cultural decay will most certainly sweep the culture as it implodes.
In summary, the smart man knows when to fight and when to withdraw in order to fight another day. I think the latter is more applicable for these times.

"They have largely placed themselves at the fringe of the culture and done so intentionally." Considering the sewer that is American culture, I am proud to agree with this statement. If you are a serious Christian, the ship has left port and you're not on it. This nation is the ship which has left you behind. Be glad and rejoice you're not on it as it's headed off a cliff into the abyss. Trust Christ, hold fast to the rock of the Gospel, and don't turn back as Lot's wife when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

All of these comments about immigrants changing the character of the US have been repeated over and over during each wave of immigration. My Grandparents were from Italy and my father and his two brothers slept head to toe in the same bed while their father worked as a busboy. The boys grew up half-Italian/half-American. They assimilated mostly and us kids are purely American (for better or worse). The good educated people talked about the Italians never integrating and about the stock being weakened. The lower-class blockheads picked up on the upper-class predjudice and my grandfather got beaten up and my dad was called a wop and guinea.
America survived and we kids have almost all married people with longer roots in the US. The Italians brought better food to the US and also the mafia. Everybody was changed. So what. I have lots of friends who are 2nd generation Mexican Americans. They are much like my parents generation and their kids remind me of our generation. The only big diffence I see is that travel is cheaper and Mexico is closer so they keep more ties to the old country. Otherwise the differences are almost non-existent.
Mexico is changing because of the relationship too. In traveling to Mexico over 20 years the changes are dramatic. I also have a few close friends who grew up there and live in the US now. Mexico actually has a functional democracy now for the first time. Like it or not, borders get erased by people. Mexicans inter-marry at a high rate and there are already enough bi-cultural people to navigate the merger. Cross-cultural criticism is healthy however as both sides have things to learn from each other. I'd venture a guess that we will both adopt good and ill from each other. And so it goes.

TFR = total fertility rate

Rod: According to Linda Chavez, you are a racist xenophobe. http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/LindaChavez/2007/05/25/latino_fear_and_loathing " Where once the xenophobes could advocate forced sterilization and eugenics coupled with virtually shutting off legal immigration from "undesirable" countries, now they must be content with building walls, putting troops on the border, rounding up illegal aliens on the job and deporting them, passing local ordinances to signal their distaste for immigrants' multi-family living arrangements, and doing whatever else they can to drive these people back where they came from." Welcome to the club.

Those on the fringe aren't passing on culture. They are absorbed in cult. Not all. An unbiased view of culture as simply what is can be defined by what actually passes on. Hence, TFR. I agree that culture is organic. But that's the whole thing, culture is organic and thus grows and changes. And most change first happens at the incubation phase; small, quiet, and removed as it slowly grows into the dominate group. Moving to the suburbs by the way is alienation I agree with this. However, I don't think the suburbs have a hold on the conservative movement. I think they will merge back into the urban areas as they re-assert their numbers. Look, Wal-Mart and the 'burbs are a sick parady of culture, but they won't last and are just a phase as the culture finds its bearing. Families with similar views will find each other over time (like attracts like, I see it where I live big time), and will eventually have the numbers to assert themselves and outgrow the competition. But it takes time, and there will be no fireworks or notice until it's over, sort of like Hispanic immigrants (nobody notices until illegals hit 500,000 a year, but demographers knew it a long time ago although liberals scoffed and cried ZPG). Right now, the pig-in-the-python boomers dominate the cultural landscape, but their ideology is going extinct with their lack of children. All the while, homeschooling and the long-tail gives hints as to upcoming death of our "common culture".

Santa Anna began to see the mass influx of Anglo settlers into Texas as an U.S. led and supported invasion of Mexican territory. The previous 15 years the Anglo settlers were supposed to have become Catholic, become Mexican citizens, change their names to Spanish, etc. Most seemed to ignore these requirements.
So, naturally, Santa Anna leads an army into Texas to put down this rebellion, and fails stupendously. If he had remained in Mexico City and let General Urrea handle the situation, there might have never been an "Alamo". Santa Anna is a famous bungler.

Where I come from, people are much more concerned about immigration from California than immigration from Mexico. And with good reason.

"Moving to the suburbs by the way is alienation" What bunk. Alienation (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=alienation) Main Entry: alien ation Pronunciation: "A-lE-&-'nA-sh&n, "Al-y&- Function: noun 1 : a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment : ESTRANGEMENT 2 : a conveyance of property to another Let me help the misguided to understand some of what drives a purchase of property in suburbia: 1. Economics. Can't buy trendy organics if all your money is going into a house that costs* twice per square foot what a similar house goes for in the 'burbs. Or, perhaps, you want one parent home with the kids. Urban centers and their property values are fine for DINKs (Double Income, No Kids), not so fine for SISKs (Single Income, Several Kids). 2. Dislike of population density. Not everyone wants to live on top of their neighbor. Some folks want to be able to toss a baseball in the backyard with their kid.
3. Schools, schools, schools. For folks who can not afford private school or home schooling, the 'burbian school districts provide a much better education. 4. Greenery. There is less of it in the city center and more to be found the farther away from the city center one goes. 5. Safety. The flipside to #1 (Economics) is that some property is as affordable as that in the 'burbs. It just has the problem of being in a terrifically crime-ridden hole of a neighborhood.
As a side note, I am continually amused by the urban-centric viewpoint. You see it expressed many places, even in the construction of mass-transit. Folks think that all begins in the urban center and flows from it.
Not to rain on urbanists' parade, but many/most folks who do not live in the urban centers don't give a flip about the urban center. There is nothing to be alienated from, as there was no affection or attachment to begin with.
Many of us live in one 'burb and work in another. We are forming our own communities without reference to an urban center. * Cost, as in total cost: mortgage, property taxes, insurance, etc.

General Ulysses S Grant had this to say about the democratic founding of Texas in his Memoirs:
"[Texas] had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution ... The occupation, separation, and annexation [of Texas] were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union." America resolved to make war upon Mexico in 1846 in order to seize territory for the expansion of slavery, Grant observed, adding: "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times." America's refusal to think about history, I think, stems from the trauma of the Civil War, and the need to bind the unbearable wounds of the South by not mentioning the fact that the slave interest was bent on imperial expansion, had to be stopped, and got what was coming to it. Mexico was a failed culture from the outset, and the 20th century myth of "La Raza" promoted by the quasi-fascist PRI has undergone a catastrophic meltdown. That does not, however, prove that the Mexicans are not entirely justified in their rancor about Texas. After all: if the Confederacy (including Texas) had won, they well might have been the slaves. There: that should offend just about everybody.

Yo, white boy. Them's fightin' words.

Rod said, "I think the only states I've ever lived in where so many people are so strongly conscious of the state's identity are New York and Texas -- and New York's is really just NYC." Rod, how many states have you lived in? I've lived in ten, so far, and in every single state, in every single town, I've heard some native say with obvious glee, "Hey, if you don't like the weather in X, wait an hour, and it will change!" I studied state history in school in Washington State, grinned at the pride with which my friend in New England pointed to their tiny, postage stamp size farms (and chuckled when she 'approved' of my move to PA; she said, "Well, at least there's *some* history there,") and wished I had a dollar for every time a native Missourian told me that theirs was the "Show Me" state (and why, in some cases). As a school kid in Georgia I visited many antebellum plantations, touring with guides who told the story in a curious and poignant mixture of identity and sadness; I heard the story of the burning of Atlanta, which was still viewed as a war crime by some of the native citizens of that town. As a college graduate in North Carolina I arranged, on my boss's behalf, a tour of the major city the bank I worked for was located in, so that the people coming from the bank in New Jersey that had proposed a merger could see firsthand the charms of the southern city where we were located; the natives of that state wanted to impress their northern visitors with the city's capacity for chic sophistication as well as true southern gentility. My point is that every state and every town I've ever lived in had a pretty strong consciousness of their identity as a community, as a state, and as part of the patchwork quilt that is America. Americans are all, at heart, Notting Hill Napoleons; there's not, as O.Henry wrote over a century ago, a true cosmopolitan among us. And I don't think I'm as ready as some posters on this thread to consign America to the rubbish bin of history. The America I know consists of people who join a caravan to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina to distribute water and bandages and just be there to help; the America I know spontaneously grieved after 9/11, and was willing to do everything from go to NYC and volunteer to go donate blood at the nearest community center, just to be doing *something.* The America I know still brings food over when a friend gets out of the hospital; the America I know asks, "How are you?" and sticks around for the detailed answer. In the America I know, a woman who works at Wal-Mart comes over to my family to help us with something, and then asks, "You homeschool, right?" I answer in the affirmative, but then ask her how she knows, since it's well after school hours; she smiles, and says, "Sometimes the Lord just whispers into our hearts--and besides, your kids are so well-behaved." And in the America I know, I get to share the total joy of a complete stranger who tells me when her baby is due, and then goes on to tell me that she's been married for seven years, and the doctors more or less told her this would never happen, but that God has answered her prayers. And I tell her I'll pray for her safe delivery, and she thanks me, her eyes glowing in anticipation of the future. That's America. That's what it means to believe in these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

My point is that every state and every town I've ever lived in had a pretty strong consciousness of their identity as a community Not like Texas does. Rod is right. I live around people from nearly every state, but nobody is like Texans. They can be two generations away from home, and they just can't let it go. We tease them just for fun (point out how you can cut AK in half and make TX the third largest state), but they have no humor when the honor of their state is on the line. When I first saw the Rio Grande, I couldn't believe it - that's a damn creek, not a river!. I had heard so much about it I had forgot Texans were, well, known to exaggerate. No, not even the Deep South or old Eastern states with more history have a thing like TX does. It must be something in the water (what little they have...sorry for that).

M_David, I do hate to be contrary--I really do. But what I encountered in New England was much stronger than any state sentiment I've ever encountered elsewhere, Texas included. Maybe the reason it goes unnoticed is that New Englanders rarely move away from their states, being imbued with that pride and sense of culture the rest of us lack (and they'd be the first to agree with that notion, btw.). I mean, you want "small, local, old, and particular," just move to New Hampshire or Massachusetts. It's there, all right. And for sheer state pride, I'll never forget the moment when a student at the Ohio college I was attending, defending the honor of his state (possibly against a Texan; I wasn't paying attention) jumped onto the top of his desk, pumped his fists into the air, and shouted, "Minnesota is the True Holy Land, and God is on Central Time!" :)

When I first saw the Rio Grande, I couldn't believe it - that's a damn creek, not a river!. I had heard so much about it I had forgot Texans were, well, known to exaggerate. Of course, before modern communities started diverting water from the river, it might have been larger and more impressive than it now appears.

Things may be different away from the megapolises, but one doesn't find much strong "state" identity in Boston. Vermont, especially with its secessionist movement, is probably a different story.

jfruser, thank you for your comments re: living in the suburbs. Where I live, there *has* been some relocation back to the city - but almost all among either childless people, or those with grown children.
Of all your criteria on your list, schools are the #1 priority among people with kids. Not everyone has the money to send kids to private school (or may not be the "right" religion for the private schools in one's area), and not everyone has the inclination to homeschool. The vast majority of kids go to public schools - and that means the hunt is on for districts perceived as good. No slur to private/homeschooled students; this is just the statistical reality. Finding a house one can afford on one income (or 1 1/2 incomes, if there's a part-time working adult) AND a good school district often means that people have to move quite far out from the central urban core. I don't see this school dilemma being solved anytime soon. But failure to understand the school issue results in inability to understand what has shaped the American wave of moving to exurbs (way-out suburbs) since the 1960s.