Has a successful multi-cultural nation ever existed?
America was founded by white Christian Europeans. They were not the original settlers but neither was there a nation when the Europeans arrived. The inhabitants were divided into different tribes and while some of those tribes thought of themselves as part of a nation most didn’t. Some tribes were mortal enemies of other tribes.
Nor were the founding Europeans one culture. England has a different culture than France. The English hated the French and vice versa. Add in the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedes and Norwegians, with the different religions and languages and it’s clear they were not only different but some hated some of the others.
Yugoslavia is another case on the point of a multicultural nation. The Croats are mostly Roman Catholic. Croatia also has Muslims who have never accepted Catholicism of the Roman or the very different Orthodox variety. Serbia, home of the Serbs is Orthodox Catholic. The two Catholic cultures hade a violent split in the year 1054. The Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed. In 1517 the Roman church was again split by Martin Luther. The inability of the religious leaders, arguably the most moral types of people to remain united offers some guidance about the ability of different cultures to become or remain united. America at it’s founding was in denial, perhaps defiance of that fact.
Fast forward to the existence of slavery in America mostly along the difference in the Caucasian and Negro races, a difference that’s lately been exacerbated by President Obama’s actions with a lot of help along the way from mono-racial leaders and it’s clear that America is divided in not unexpected ways by race. Add in the Democrats and the Republicans, the Christians, Jews and the Muslims and the divisions are seen as deep, wide and mostly unbridgeable. Yugoslavia is further along in the division into separate nations than America.
Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and South Africa have successfully removed the white Europeans from power. The Middle East will never assimilate Israel. In America a bi-racial President has set the blacks and the whites against each other more than the Civil Rights blended them. America balkanized itself.
The single reality that has stopped America from spinning itself into separate nations has been the smallness of the different cultures compared to the vastness of the country, geography more than race and some places have become no-go zones for different cultures. Philly after dark is a different place than Philly in the daylight. Camden New Jersey, Southern LA, Ferguson and Detroit are virtual black cities in white America but America’s whites are under attack from the Liberals who want to get the white people into the minority and they’ve made significant progress at the expense of indivisibility.
The political battles between the Democrats/Liberals who want bigger government, higher taxes and more regulations and laws are opposed, albeit softly, by Republicans who want a bit smaller government. America is far from an undivided nation as the Pledge of Allegiance proclaims. Which way is America going? Who would say America is becoming more united? No one and they would be correct.
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