Mongrel America

It's an interesting period as we see what is best described as a rear guard action by naïve people who think they can roll back the clock.

Its also a common occurrence in certain subdivisions where people want to be the last one to move in.  Similarly each time a new wave of immigrants appear the people already here felt they were ruining things.

In the first few hundred years they at least could make them go west and deal with the frontier, but reactions in the established cities was pretty much the same.  The new group worked cheap so while the business owners and wealthy  people liked the cheap labor (they didn't have to mix with them of course) the working people resented them for taking jobs.

Of course after a generation or two the sons and daughters of immigrants became the ones resenting the new comers.

Over the years we passed restrictive immigration laws that managed who could come here to some extent as we wanted to keep our country pure.  Since we are the most mongrel nation in the world, its really an odd concept, but we seem to forget that our great grandparents hated each other as different and repulsive.

The greatness of America is that it has always been a place where immigrants and refugees could start over, not easily, but by working hard and becoming part of our mongrel community after a generation or two.  If we want to make America great that is what we need to do.

Of course it was always accompanied by inhabitants decrying how the newcomers were ruining everything and corrupting our values.

So maybe we are exactly where we have always been in that respect.