I started this yesterday and it was already out of hand, so I’m continuing it today.
And what is American Culture anyway?The other huge problem with King’s statements is that he is begging a huge question of what is American culture. It seems to me that he seems to be referencing a slice of American culture that is somewhat narrow. When he talks about people in a football stadium, it seem to me that he is talking about a kind of “Norman Wells” apple-pie kind of American culture, and the truth is that there are a lot of very American people who don’t embrace or who don’t fit in to that kind of culture. American culture is an extremely diverse and varied culture. If you want to protect it, you have to define it, and that’s no easy task. The only way I could think of doing it in an honest way is to start with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and if you’re going to do that, then you are likely going to find that whether you like it or not, your definition of American culture is going to need to include Muslims.
American culture is about striving for freedom, and I don’t say that with my heart over my chest as I look at a waving American flag as a slow and majestic fanfare plays in the background. It seems to me that striving for freedom is the defining characteristic of American culture with all its warts and divisions – it’s what started it in the first place – it’s what gets all the people who love their right to bear arms all excited – it’s what gets people all riled up when they want to disagree with something and criticize the government because they have freedom of speech. It’s about freedom to disagree, freedom to be selfish, freedom to do whatever you want within the bounds of the Constitution and the law, and freedom to fight for that freedom to the death if need be.
Maybe that’s a bad definition of American culture, but how do you do it? Berkley California is American Culture. Mormon Utah is American Culture. The NRA is American culture. Manhattan is American Culture. The Marines. The Amish. Hollywood. Southern Baptists. For good and for bad these are all a part of American culture. So if you want to increase the birth rate to protect American culture. Good luck with that.
I think the same kind of concern about culture would have fit into the conversation after the emancipation of slaves – how are all these people going to fit into the culture? I’m sure that there would have been people saying the same things leading up to the civil rights movement.
I think that the movements to abolition slavery and then to abolition the Jim Crow laws are a big part of American culture. There are many many Americans who see that striving for freedom for everyone as one of the most important features of American culture.
I think that if Steve King wants to talk about culture, he can’t just talk about the parts of American culture that he likes, because the truth is that this diversity of opinion and the protection of that difference is also a big part of American culture. If you were to somehow stamp out that conversation and that debate, then American culture would be radically altered – far more radically than by any influx of immigrants.
The same kind of thing is bubbling up in Canada. Kellie Leitch, a Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate proposed a Canadian values test for immigrants wanting to come to Canada. What are Canadian values? How on earth are you going to test for that?
Part of the unspoken assumption is that Islam is dangerous. There is a fear that there are elements of Islam that are dangerous and “barbaric”. There is a fear that people are going to come in and wage jihad against us from within. It’s a scary prospect if you are ready to accept that it’s a real threat, but the big question needs to be, “Is this really happening? Is it really a danger? And all the evidence that I’ve seen seems to suggest strongly that it isn’t.”
If these people really want to protect American culture or Canadian values, it seems to me that what they really want to do is to redefine those things more narrowly, and that’s also going to mean that they’re going to need to exclude a lot of the people who are already a part of our countries, and that’s just not very American or Canadian.
