We are often told by those who advocate for the dissolution of American heritage and the remaking of America in their own globalist image that diversity is a great American strength. Unfortunately, what they mean by diversity is not the minestrone soup with which I once perceived America as the son of a German immigrant father and a first generation American mother with Dutch and German ancestry. The idea, when I was much younger, was that America, although filled with different races and ethnicities from around the world — the chunks of the soup, if I may — was united in the broth of the American system of governance that placed the individual and the consent of the governed before the state. In effect, diversity was an outcome; it was the symptom of an underlying strength —namely, the belief in the freedom of the individual, voluntary free-markets, and the American philosophy of governance that made it possible for people of any and all backgrounds to live in harmony in one society despite their important cultural, linguistic, racial, and religious differences.
The chunks of soup were cultural nostalgia of a past to which one would likely never return, but upon careful reflexion could be used to better understand why one was so very different from one’s neighbor. Some of these chunks were better preserved than others depending on the feeling of alienation, or alternatively pride, associated with each group and its members’ ability to assimilate into mainstream America — the majority culture that most defined our nation’s founding and growth.
I was raised as a Lutheran — a protestant Christian with an established church hierarchy that is modeled, in part, after the Catholic Church. At the several American universities where I studied social science — in particular anthropology and economics — I was labeled a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) by my professors. At the time, the term “identity politics” was not a part of my collegiate vocabulary. Although I did pretty much feel like I was being massed produced with each new term of university course enrollment, I never thought of myself as an insect of the Hymenoptera order with an ovipositor, and I felt little or no cultural affinity to the British Isles. Yeah, I liked the Beatles, but they were just one of many rock bands, and I knew nothing about Liverpool, England. At the time, I would have been troubled to find the city on a map of England. My father did not like the British, and today I view Winston Churchill as a well-read, highly accomplished, British socialite and scoundrel who helped draw Germany, the United States, and all of Europe into war during the early 20th century, and who failed in his effort to strengthen and preserve thereby the British empire through the instigation of two world wars and massive world-wide destruction. Sorry Larry, I do not agree.1
Successful immigrants were those who assimilated best into the American mainstream, for these were the most well-liked by those who could look back proudly on their own ancestry and say, “My family was here at the founding”. I respected their claim, and as the son of an immigrant, I made an effort to make friends with such families. Certainly, I did not reject them as part of an archaic past.
When we broke away from Great Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries — it took two major wars — colonialism ended in America. Immigrants no longer came to America as colonists; they came as immigrants with a willingness to shed their past and assimilate to their new home in exchange for economic opportunity and political and religious freedom. Nobody found it easy, but some found it less difficult. One made important sacrifices in order to adapt and thereby earn one’s right to his new homeland. And, those who raised a family knew in their heart that their children would have it easier than they, for the children of immigrant parents would be born and raised in American society and culture. Their children would speak the language of their native land, understand well its values, and as they grew up they would eventually come to understand the “quaintness” of their parents’ and grandparents’ origins. I was blessed by my parents in this regard.
If you came alone as did many immigrants, finding an American-born mate with a similar cultural ancestry, was probably the most comfortable path toward assimilation.
Becoming an American was the task of the immigrant. No immigrant expected that American government — federal, State, or local — would provide him with what he needed to become American. No American felt that he should be taxed to make immigration to America easier. No American felt the need to provide new immigrants with anything more than an occasional friendly smile and advice about how to get around. We, in America, appreciated those who helped themselves. Showing kindness and expecting individual responsibility for the self was the Christian thing to do.
As a first generation American on my father’s side and a second generation American on my mother’s side, I was against imperial behavior of any kind. This attitude was emphasized by my father’s participation in the Pacific War, and the pending communist threat that followed in its wake. Then too, during my college years I learned that there were two sides to every war, and I demonstrated against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War — a war whose draft I was fortunately able to escape with a medical waiver during formal conscription and a Mom who cared about the well-being of her sons.
My father rarely spoke to us about his war experience or even his work. When he was home he focused on the family. We did stuff together, and my brothers and I got along whether we wanted to or not. Although my father was prideful of his military service, America was eager to put two world wars behind us. Then too, my father’s work consumed nearly all of his time. He was an ambitious man who climbed the corporate ladder of one of America’s most prestigious firms — Ford Motor Company.
There were calls to us, protestors: “America: Love it, or leave it” — calls that surely emanated from the parents and grandparents of today’s MAGA movement. They were calls that I heeded then, and they were calls that I can easily utter myself today to others who feel as I did, when I left my homeland for a second time. The first time was for adventure and a summer job; the second time was for professional opportunity and an innermost disgust for my own government’s imperial, military engagement in Vietnam. What business did we have there? Was the mess that we made on the Korean peninsula not bad enough? Both the German and the Korean peoples were now divided; whole families were split in two because of our government’s lack of military resolve and/or bad diplomacy.
I was raised to be a free, adventurous spirit like my immigrant father, and I had associated at the university with Vietnamese refugees who had fled their homeland. Loving America was becoming increasingly difficult. What is more, my first overseas experience had been personally rewarding. This time, however, I would test what I had been taught by my liberal minded, mostly American professors on four of the seven college campuses in five different American States where I would eventually attend.
My father and my mother were not one in their religious faith, and as a child I sensed the division. Then too, while I was away at school, my father suffered a heart attack, and soon thereafter my mother nearly lost her life from a debilitating stroke. On top of this there was the war and America’s growing drug culture. If this were not bad enough, my grandparents on my father’s side of the family died within two weeks of one another. It was devastating. There was just too much heartbreak all at once, and I became estranged from my family, my country, and my intended professional career as an engineer. My solid upbringing was shaken to the core, and I found myself suddenly adrift — very able, very knowledgeable, but without direction.
I would have to find my own way, and so I did, in eight countries on three continents for three decades.
In liberty,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle, Washington 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money
p.s. Next time I will cover the racial divide.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn has served as the President of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan since 2000. Hillsdale College is a well-respected Christian College in Southeastern Michigan located fairly near to where the Republican Party was founded in Jackson, Michigan back in 1854. Larry Arnn is a Churchill scholar who promotes Churchill’s legacy at Hillsdale College.