Well, I was under consideration for a fill-in gig as a local paper's "conservative" columnist, but I've just heard back that they've gotten someone else -- someone known for publishing their writing on paper, no doubt...on paper! Can you believe it? Welcome to yesterday, pal! Just kidding...I appreciated the opportunity and all that...yada, yada...

Anyway, the two items I wrote "on spec" to see if I was on the track they wanted have been sitting around for a month now collecting dust which is agony to a blogger -- when you spend all that time writing, you want to get it up on the site as soon as possible.

So, at least I can post them now. No need to let all that content go to waste. Here's the first one. I'll put the second into another entry. They were supposed to be about 800 words (I exceded that by a bit), pertain to domestic issues and hit "Jewish" and "conservative" angles. I had forgotten to give them titles, so I'll add that now.

"This amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish."

Thus spoke Harry Reid (D - Nev.) during the debate over whether English should be affirmed as our "national language." He, along with 33 of his colleagues - including both Senators from Massachusetts - voted against the measure. Perhaps it's past time for someone to take the Senator aside and explain what happened to his predecessor in the minority leadership when he began drifting too far to port…he suffered a fate shared by few - he lost to a newcomer. Unfortunately, no such fate need concern our own representatives who's positions appear to be secured until the next ice age, but be that as it may.

It is neither racist nor mean-spirited to make clear to new arrivals to our nation that they are expected to learn the English language and that it is they who must begin to adapt themselves to their new host country, and not the country that needs to adapt itself to them. On the contrary, what could be more heartless than to patronize our new neighbors by implying they are incapable of learning, and by encouraging them to remain in linguistic ghettos and stunt their integration into the majority English-speaking community with all its opportunities? If we are truly a society that cares about and is willing to accept new members without regard to skin color or national origin, then clearly articulating what's expected of them and making such expectations achievable is simply fair. It's fair to new residents, and it's fair to us.

It has been the long-time strength of American multiculturalism that we have expected immigrants to integrate while not interfering in their choices for private association and celebration. Students may attend religious schools but must still meet State standards, or they may attend State schools and their cultural, religious or language schools in their spare time without concern that the government will stop them. In America, all people may maintain personal identities while coming together over shared American values. Fortunately, America still has a strong and proud enough culture and sense of civic pride that we still correctly feel we have something of value to indoctrinate new immigrants with.

This is in direct contrast to our friends in Europe, where post-colonial guilt and an unwillingness to publicly criticize or articulate expectations of minority group behavior for full acceptance has resulted in massive ghettoization across the continent. Immigrants from North Africa and Asia are heaped into their own neighborhoods, shut in behind artificial walls of non-integration mortared in by both themselves and a society at large too paralyzed by political correctness to properly make clear what is expected of them to be included for full membership, and too full of self-doubt to enforce it if they could articulate it (As an aside, perhaps there's a bit of unspoken intent there in keeping the immigrants out of the mainstream - perhaps there's yet a bit more racism alive in the Old World than some would like to let on. But that's a subject for another day). Astoundingly I, as the grandson of Russian immigrants could, by European parlance, be referred to as a "third generation immigrant," rather than simply as "an American." Author Shelby Steele offers one explanation for this timidity on the part of society at large -- "White Guilt":

…I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

They struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with. When they behave in ways that invoke the memory of those sins, they must labor to prove that they have not relapsed into their group's former sinfulness…

One need look no further than the out of control rioting and mayhem in France and the terrorist bombing and murders committed by "disaffected" Muslim youths elsewhere on the continent to witness the inevitable end result of this societal weakness and self-doubt.

Conservatives and our sensible friends on the Left recognize this and are concerned. "Custom Tailors," "Independent Workmen's Circle," "Immigrants Mutual Aid Society," "Roxbury Mutual," "Chevra Kadusha," "Vilno" … a walk through our old Jewish Cemeteries is a trip into a past when self help and mutual assistance were necessary and expected -- not resented. Immigrants came, helped each other, worked hard and were themselves or their children integrated by an American full of sin but not yet burdened with too much self-doubt. It was an America yet strong and sure enough of itself to take in such disparate newcomers and not fear losing its identity to them.

The mutual aid groups of the past are, along with that essential concept of self-help, now mostly lost in the mists, destroyed by a welfare society which waits for and expects government to take care of our needs. Today's organized immigrant advocacy groups, rather than overseeing and easing their integration and seeing to the basic needs of the new generations they supposedly represent, seem more concerned with assuring that their groups receive their "fair share" of the entitlement pie, and that they are sheltered from too many expectations, if any at all. This serves no one's interests.

A little guilt for past misdeeds and a little self-examination are good things, healthy things. They indicate the presence of a morally aware and concerned body politic. But taken too far they reach a point of self-abrogation, and thus become a self-destructive pathology. Europe may have hit that point, but there's still time for us yet. Those who recognize this ought not be stigmatized with the universal debate ender of being labeled "racist," or "xenophobic." We owe it to our American forefathers, ourselves, and those newcomers working hard to achieve the American dream not to fall into that trap.