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A country can have a beautiful culture while still being a bad place to live (cf. Vietnam), and it can have an awful culture while still being a nice place to live (cf. France).
America's current culture isn't even what built the country into the economic juggernaut it is today.
To suggest that we can't learn from elsewhere is the height of arrogance.
I'm an immigrant.
I'm not going to be an American. I have my own culture and my own values.
The only things that a decent person is obligated in USA is to pay taxes and obey the law. All the other stuff... Sorry, you cannot force me to love baseball, eat hot-dogs and to think that two men kissing is not disgusting.
Ha ha ha. I'm as American as you are, and my values line up a lot better with more traditional morals than with what I see in the U.S.
If you want proof that America isn't doing too well when it comes to family, just look at the divorce rate. It's shameful. So many Americans get defensive about their "freedom" to abandon their families at any time that they create their own massive social problems, and these problems get worse generation after generation. Where my family comes from, the idea of having kids out of wedlock or marrying, having a kid, divorcing, marrying again, having another kid, and so on, leaving children passed back and forth between Parental Set #1, Parental Set #2, and maybe the original mother and her live-in unemplmoyed boyfriend, would be considered absolutely shameful. Yes, indeed, Americans can learn from the way families in other countries are constructed.
Where my family comes from, sleeping around with 20 different people to "find yourself" during college is considered shameful. Here, people get defensive about it. Americans could learn a little by seeing how other cultures do things. (Note that this point has some interesting ties with my previous point.)
If you were being honest with yourself, you'd note that people want to come to the U.S. because of economic opportunity and freedom from oppression, not because American culture is so much better than everything else on the planet. Really! My people came here because the Communists ruined our home. We keep our culture alive in California (and elsewhere), and we're generally very successful. It's quite the success story. It turns out people can take the good from America (freedom and opportunity) without diving into the cesspool of broken families, anti-intellectualism, and xenophobia.
American culture isn't the only culture with good facets.
I don't know of any other country that is breeding people who despise their own cultural traditions as we have in the USA. We have a growing anti-cultural left in this country, who seem to want to destroy any of our cultural norms.
I also don't know of any other country that welcomes millions of illegal aliens flooding into their country, encouraging them to ignore their immigration laws, and leech off their taxpayer funded social welfare services.
A few generations ago it was unseemly to sleep around and have sex out of wedlock. Our liberal pop culture celebrates as hip, unwed mothers and their love children.
This is textbook redneck racism. Apparently "assimilation" means "becoming just like typical white people," as if those are the only Americans.
Maybe it's a good thing that newcomers often reject American values. After all, many values held in such high esteem here are rather questionable. (That's assuming we can settle on one representative set of values, which is, of course, ridiculous.) Many of the immigrants here do a better job of living peaceful, family-oriented lives than most Americans do. I think it's about time that Americans learned from other cultures.
No. When people don't even learn the language so they can communicate with Americans what are you to think? I live in an area with two large immigrant populations and when you drive into their areas of town I can't even read the signs on the businesses. I can't stop to ask directions, I can't have a conversation with them. They isolate themselves. Assimilation doesn't mean becoming exactly like those around you but the ability to communicate with them is critical. When I drive on their side of town I'm struck by the fact they don't even want my business. It's as if I'm expected to become like them if I want to get to know them.
I really do wonder why they came here. America is a melting pot but they have isolated themselves and duplicated life as they knew it there as much as they can. They are not joining the rest of society. They have set themselves apart from America. They didn't come here to join us. They don't seem to want to live here but here they are. Why move to a different country and then try to duplicate life in the country you came from other than to exploit benefits and get what you can from someone you don't even like enough to learn how talk to or do business with? If you do not stand with us you stand against us. They choose to not stand with us. I don't expect them to become like me but I do expect them to do what my grandparents did and learn the language so we can learn about each other. It is sad that I have neighbors I cannot carry on a conversation with who chose to come here and NOT learn the local language.
A country can have a beautiful culture while still being a bad place to live (cf. Vietnam), and it can have an awful culture while still being a nice place to live (cf. France).
America's current culture isn't even what built the country into the economic juggernaut it is today.
To suggest that we can't learn from elsewhere is the height of arrogance.
Of course it is. Freedom from oppression and economic opportunity are central parts of American culture.
And what's so great about Vietnamese culture?
No. When people don't even learn the language so they can communicate with Americans what are you to think? I live in an area with two large immigrant populations and when you drive into their areas of town I can't even read the signs on the businesses. I can't stop to ask directions, I can't have a conversation with them. They isolate themselves. Assimilation doesn't mean becoming exactly like those around you but the ability to communicate with them is critical. When I drive on their side of town I'm struck by the fact they don't even want my business. It's as if I'm expected to become like them if I want to get to know them.
I really do wonder why they came here. America is a melting pot but they have isolated themselves and duplicated life as they knew it there as much as they can. They are not joining the rest of society. They have set themselves apart from America. They didn't come here to join us. They don't seem to want to live here but here they are. Why move to a different country and then try to duplicate life in the country you came from other than to exploit benefits and get what you can from someone you don't even like enough to learn how talk to or do business with?
Some people came from countries where shells falling on their heads. So they moved to a place without bombing.
It is funny that today, Chinese Americans are considered the model immigrant yet 100 years ago they were the most loathed and scorned with the same accusations and aspersions being made on today's ethnic immigrant whipping boy.
I don't know of any other country that is breeding people who despise their own cultural traditions as we have in the USA. We have a growing anti-cultural left in this country, who seem to want to destroy any of our cultural norms.
I also don't know of any other country that welcomes millions of illegal aliens flooding into their country, encouraging them to ignore their immigration laws, and leech off their taxpayer funded social welfare services.
A few generations ago it was unseemly to sleep around and have sex out of wedlock. Our liberal pop culture celebrates as hip, unwed mothers and their love children.
You are aware that the highest teen birth rates are among Hispanics right? Some of the very people we're talking about not assimilating. Perhaps they need to.
It is funny that today, Chinese Americans are considered the model immigrant yet 100 years ago they were the most loathed and scorned with the same accusations and aspersions being made on today's ethnic immigrant whipping boy.
The issue today is coming here and making no effort to fit in. I have friends who are teachers who have to deal with kids who enter kindergarten and don't speak a word of English because their parents don't speak English. We literally have a two tiered education system in my city. The English speaking track and the ESL track. Unfortunately, all of the resources go to the ESL track which cheats the kids of English speaking parents.
It's not where they're from that is the issue. It's not trying to join society once they get here that is the issue. What am I to think of my neighbor who has been here for 20 years who cannot speak enough English to say hello to me? Seriously? Why come here and then live in isolation?
The issue today is coming here and making no effort to fit in. I have friends who are teachers who have to deal with kids who enter kindergarten and don't speak a word of English because their parents don't speak English. We literally have a two tiered education system in my city. The English speaking track and the ESL track. Unfortunately, all of the resources go to the ESL track which cheats the kids of English speaking parents.
It's not where they're from that is the issue. It's not trying to join society once they get here that is the issue. What am I to think of my neighbor who has been here for 20 years who cannot speak enough English to say hello to me? Seriously? Why come here and then live in isolation?
I know of some foreigners also that have been here for decades and never even made the effort to learn English. They stay within their ethnic conclaves and businesses are more than happy to pander to them in their native tongue. I can only imagine what our teachers have to deal with when they have kids in their classes that don't speak English either. Must be a nightmare.
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Perhaps they need to.