The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has Undermined the Assimilation Ethic

Will today's immigrant population become the first in American history that fails to assimilate? If so, the United States threatens to collapse into disunion. Much of the blame for this state of affairs can be laid at the feet of multiculturalists, who have undermined the concept of Americanization by attacking it as racist and advancing in its place a divisive agenda of group rights and bilingual education. Unfortunately, many on the right have responded to this crisis by viewing immigrants themselves as their mortal enemies -- instead of the entrenched native-born liberal elite that has declared war on the American idea itself. In The Unmaking of Americans, John J. Miller breaks this standoff with a commonsense call for a new Americanization movement based on fundamental American principles. He draws on lessons from the Americanization movement of the early 20th century, which helped the Ellis Island generation of immigrants adapt to their new home. In doing so, Miller makes the first modern defense of a patriotic social crusade that many "tenured radicals" have come to scorn as nothing more than a gentrified form of ethnic cleansing. Miller sets out to convince conservatives concerned about immigration that the real threat to American unity is not the huddled masses of hardworking newcomers, but longstanding left-wing policies that actively inhibit assimilation. Proponents of bilingual education refuse to teach children in English, racial preferences encourage harmful group loyalties, welfare rules threaten the work ethic, and the citizenship process is under constant pressure from people who want to dumb it down. The Unmaking of Americans reveals where and how the system of assimilation fell apart -- and lays out a specific plan of action for correcting the problem that conservatives, libertarians, and sensible liberals can support.