Here:
Much of today’s debate fails to distinguish between two types of nationalism: ethnic and civic. The former is based on language, blood or race. American nationalism is the latter, civic in nature, holding that the United States is a nation based on a set of beliefs — a creed — rather than race or blood. This understanding of nationalism is equivalent to “patriotism.”
This is a good start, but it doesn't go deep enough. I applaud the distinction between the ethnic and the civic. But American nationalism is not wholly civic. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any nation that could be wholly civic, wholly 'propositional' or wholly based on a set of beliefs and value. And yet the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. I don't see how that could be reasonably denied.
I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation and preservation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition.
This has consequences for immigration policy. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be defined in merely economic terms.
And so I ask a politically incorrect but perfectly reasonable question: Is there any net benefit to Muslim immigration? Immigrants bring their culture with them. Muslims, for example, bring with them a Sharia-based, hybrid religious-political ideology that is antithetical to American values.
So I ask again: Is there any net benefit to Muslim immigration?
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