For once, just for once, I agree with Ann Coulter

I generally don't sit well with Ann Coulter's strident, almost harpy-like commentary on this country and its politics.  She may be right about many things, but her way of presenting her views is off-putting in the extreme.  Nevertheless, I'll give credit where credit is due;  and I think her recent column about immigration and its implications is spot-on. (Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.)

Can we have a quick reality check and acknowledge that what is happening to America is a million times worse than what's happening in Europe and is of much greater consequence?

Conservatives regularly point to the mass migration afflicting Europe as if it's the Ghost of Christmas Future for America. Since waves of Third World migrants began sweeping into the European Union, we've seen terrorism, knifings, rape gangs and riots popping up all over the birthplace of Western civilization. Sweden has gone from a country where rape was essentially nonexistent to the Rape Capital of the World.

It's sweet of Americans to be so concerned about Europe, but maybe they should look at their own country. On account of a mass immigration policy imposed on us by our government, the United States has undergone a transformation unprecedented in all of world history.

. . .

This isn't about race -- though it might be of some concern to the rapidly diminishing white population that our cultural overlords are so tormented by "whiteness" ... This stunning demographic replacement matters because American culture is the envy of the world. Not only was this wonderful culture created by white Western Europeans, but merely asking immigrants to assimilate to it is generally considered a hate crime.

If everyone assimilated to our culture, who cares what race they are? But given sufficient numbers, they don't. They don't need to, and we certainly aren’t asking them to. The reason we successfully assimilated not-so-different European cultures was that we controlled the numbers -- essentially stopping immigration for 50 years while we forged an American character.

. . .

Whatever the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, one thing is for damn sure: There were not vast bands of powerful Romans prattling about "Roman privilege," demanding that the Huns be given preference over Romans and writing articles with titles like "Abolish the Romans!"

That is the driving impulse of one of our two major political parties. The other party can't bestir itself to care about anything other than tax cuts, abortion and moving our embassy to Jerusalem.

There's more at the link.

I totally agree with Ms. Coulter on the importance of assimilation, and I agree that the reason immigration - both legal and illegal - is a major crisis in America right now is that immigrants are neither expected nor required to assimilate to American culture.  I believe that's a grave mistake.  As I wrote when I became a U.S. citizen, just a few short weeks ago:

I think that perhaps one can be a more dedicated citizen of the USA if one comes to it from outside, as it were:  jumping through all the legal and administrative hoops, having to earn the right to be assimilated into a new country and a new culture, rather than born to it.  I've tried hard to assimilate already.  I don't want to hold on to past loyalties and be what Theodore Roosevelt would have called a "hyphenated American".  In a speech to the Knights of Columbus in New York on October 12, 1915, he said:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

That's the kind of American I shall strive to be.

So, for once, I won't argue with Ann Coulter.  Instead, I recommend her article to all concerned about this subject.

Peter