Heh. Thanks Anne!

A blackbelt in TaeKwonEeyore. Hah! I love that!

The choice between melting pot and cultural mosaic is, to adapt a phrase from our beloved Community Organizer, a "false choice". America has always been both a cultural mosaic and a melting pot. The question is how the two fit together. It is unrealistic to ask people to forget the Old Country, nor is it necessarily good. It is also unrealistic to allow citizenship to people who will take the rights but not the duties. In any case some of my dislike to multiculturalism is that it feels forced and awkward and it's chief proponents don't feel like they have a knack for understanding the type of cultures they are "multi-ing". When they talk about any culture outside of the upper West Side they feel like they are analyzing it it and not understanding it, their sympathies feel patronizing and shallow and so on. Victorians despite their not undeserved reputation for snobbery seem to have had a better grasp of other cultures. While they often romanticized them and presented them in an overheroic light just as they often made the opposite error, Victorians never really feel like they considered themselves to have a godlike stature above the mass of mankind. They seem to be studying people not labrats.