AMERICA: Pluribus, and Unum

National Review, Jan 24, 2000 by Richard Brookhiser

AS with a wedding, the next century holds for America something borrowed, something old, and something new. There are reasons that all these developments could make us blue, but, since they seem unavoidable, we should try to make the best of them.

In 1814 British and American diplomats, trying to end the War of 1812, were deadlocked over a British proposal to reserve a North American homeland for London's Indian allies. John Quincy Adams was indignant: The population of the United States was already over seven million. Was it "in human power to check [the country's] progress by a bond of paper?" The idea of an Indian homeland was "opposing a feather to a torrent."

In 2000, the population of Mexico has broken, or will soon break, the 100 million barrier. That is less than the population of the United States, and it will probably never be greater than the American number. But the Mexican birthrate is higher than ours, and proximity and prosperity will continue to draw Mexicans north. If our immigration policy is prudent-- Pat Buchanan's proposed five-year pause is sensible, even moderate- Mexicans will come more slowly. If it is feckless, they will keep coming at a brisk pace. One way or another, we can count on more of them. Millions are already here. The largest ethnic groups in the United States are, as they have been for over a hundred years, English, German, and Irish. But Mexicans are vaulting up the Top Ten. This is happening not just in California and Texas. The Rio Grande flows through every restaurant kitchen in New York City, and every upstate orchard.

Government policy can shape the effects. If we persist in multicultural race-mongering, as every politician from George W. Bush to the average left-winger is bent on doing, we will have monoglot Tammany Halls, corrupt and probably gang-ridden, demanding handouts as the price for ignoring radical calls for reconquista. This will be partly the fault of the culture the Mexicans bring with them, partly the fault of the way we handle them. At best, we could get communities like the one in south Texas that invited me to an annual reenactment of Washington crossing the Delaware; the event was accompanied by a prom whose king and queen smiled below Aztec cheekbones.

However the politics works out, there will be a shift of gravity within the American Catholic Church. As Mexicans become one of its largest ethnic groups, Americans will get a chance to meet Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patroness. Until recently the Mexican government was ferociously anti-clerical but, as the Mexican-American essayist Richard Rodriguez has pointed out, Mexico's Virgin always remained the most important figure in the culture of ordinary Mexicans. She appeared in a vision to an Indian in 1531 and verified her presence by pouring roses into his cloak. When he emptied them, her image was left on the cloth. The relic has been displayed in a cathedral outside Mexico City ever since. The one time I saw it, it had been moved from a structurally unsound Baroque building into an ugly modern church resembling a bomb shelter. Heedless of the architecture, Mexicans moved down the aisles towards the altar on their knees. Greater than my Protestant dislike of their manners was my astonishment at their boldness: If the image was what they thought it was, I would be too abashed to approach it in any fashion. Without much shopping around, you can already buy palm cards with the Virgin's picture at big-city American newsstands; if your cabbie is Mexican, you might see her stuck to the meter. You'll be seeing more of her. In the wider culture, we may see a touch of Mexican mordancy coloring Halloween- skeletons playing musical instruments, skeleton wedding ceremonies, and so forth. At least those things are funny; they will be an improvement on the slasher-film gore and homosexual paraphernalia that have already swamped the holiday.

So forget the Cuban boy and the Dominican drug dealers: They affect only the East Coast. Mexico abuts our two largest states, and Mexicans will be the Hispanics visible in many other states besides.

A NATION OF BOLINGBROKEANS

One reason cultural movements are so important is that, once established, they can last a long time. Consider the staying power of our forgotten Founding Father, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke.

I first read Bolingbroke while trying to understand 18th-century America. I was first struck by his relevance to 20th-century America during the stillborn presidential campaign of Colin Powell. Who was Powell, but an aspirant to the throne of the Patriot King, one of Bolingbroke's fantasy figures?

Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) was a talented rake and Tory politician who peaked in his thirties, during the reign of Queen Anne. Marooned by the Whig ascendancy that followed, he cobbled together a political theory to fit his resentments and expressed it in brilliant, if tinselly, journalism. His writing had only a marginal effect on British history, but, although he never set foot in the Thirteen Colonies, he was wildly popular in America. Edmund Burke, jibing at him after his death, asked who any longer read Bolingbroke. Who ever read him through? John Adams gave the American answer: "I, I, myself, I have read him through, more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in my life, and once within five years past." By now, no one reads him. We don't have to: He's in our hard drives.