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Entry: Benedict on the Border--A Showdown over Church and Nation-State Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/benedict_on_the_border_a_showdown_of_church_and_nation_state#24962 Post contents: I agree with Mr. Roberts. Moreover, the Melting Pot was always a myth. Assimilation did not occur within a generation or two; at best, what occurred was an "Americanization" that was pushed in the early 20th century at the time that the Melting Pot myth was being spun. Those who were "Americanized" (Central and Southern Europeans, for the most part) were forcibly shorn of their historic European identities, only to have put in their place an abstract "proposition nation" understanding of America. It was thin gruel, and it left those European immigrants thoroughly unprepared to resist politically, a couple generations later, when the floodgates were thrown open to non-European immigration in 1964/65. They would have had a better chance of resisting if they had retained their European culture and ethnic identity while slowly becoming Americans. But, as I've discussed recently on another thread, we always want what we want <i>right now</i>--and the proponents of Americanization in the early 20th century weren't willing to wait. What we ended up with was something much worse than a multitude of European ethnic identities slowly evolving into a common American one. Sent at: 2008 07 20