The End of E Pluribus Unum

Last year, Jerry Pournelle noted that the most important founding principle of the United States was the motto e pluribus unum. He wrote:

But the premise of the United States, the really founding principle, was e pluribus unum – that from many peoples we would create one people, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, and those phrases were not taken lightly. As the late William Buckley observed, you could study and learn to become an American. That wasn’t true of other nations. You could not learn to be Swiss, or a Swede or a German; but you could learn to become an American. 

Diversity was not a goal of this mixture. Certainly you could be an Irish-American, or an Italian-American, and we had parades and lodges to prove it, but you were American first; and while we tolerated various sub-cultures, diversity as such was not a goal. The goal is one people living in harmony. The original civil rights movements understood that: its goal was not a diversity of cultures all to be treated as equally valuable but rather the admission of minorities into the general culture. Some diversities were tolerated – they had to be, given the multiple origins – but nothing like all of them.

But some cultures may be too incompatible to attempt to assimilate. Fred Reed believes so,  and has discussed his thoughts in several articles:

•  "White Girl Bleed a Lot--The Raging Success of American Racial Policy"
• "Riots--Ain't Nobody Gonna Like It"
• "Respecting All Cultures By Allowing Them To Remain Separate"
• "Plinking Cops--The Symptoms Worsen"