Reconsidering multiculturalism

Speaking aloud that multiculturalism strengthens America is trendy, politically correct and shows a regard for the differences in people.

At the risk of angering my liberal friends, I will say aloud "that multiculturalism is not presently making America stronger." When a population of people press their ethnic and cultural interests above the interests of a unified America, we are not moving forward. Citizens who place their ethnic and cultural heritage above being an American are unraveling and weakening America.

During the great immigration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when America was being built, those that immigrated blended into the melting pot and were the backbone of our growth. Sure, they celebrated their natural born heritage but being an American was their priority.

America has been built. We have become idle and have more time to indulge our separatist causes rather than our common interests. Since the late 1960s there has been a movement to obsess about one's natural-born roots and heritage to the point that we have incidents of flag desecration and angry mobs raising the flag of a foreign country above the stars and stripes.

It is all well and good if citizens want to hold their ethnic and cultural heritage in high esteem by the celebrating and displaying of artifacts. When it becomes so passionate that it is destructive to our American culture and divides us, then it has gone too far.

VAN RIEHL, Jackson