摘要：美国在成为一个国家之前就开始吸引移民。早在17世纪末和18世纪初，就有来自德国、阿尔斯特、法国等地的新移民。是什么使他们成为移民呢？他们自愿搬到一个地方，在本例中是由其他人建立和定居的殖民地。
作者 迈克·冈萨雷斯 @Gundisalvus 安赫莱斯·T·阿雷东多 E Pluribus Unum 高级研究员
COMMENTARY BY
Mike Gonzalez
@Gundisalvus
Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow
迈克是传统基金会的安赫莱斯·T·阿雷东多·E·普鲁里布斯·乌纳姆高级研究员。
Mike is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
美国在成为一个国家之前就开始吸引移民。尼森·休斯 / 美联社关键要点。
道路规则是由那些建立殖民地的人制定的，即英国人。
没有必要为殖民过程辩护，就可以观察到这是地球上每个国家的情况。
这个国家的习惯、做法和法律只有在极端左派和右派的疯狂思维中才具有种族和民族成分。
美国在成为一个国家之前就开始吸引移民。早在17世纪末和18世纪初，就有来自德国、阿尔斯特、法国等地的新移民。是什么使他们成为移民呢？他们自愿搬到一个地方，在本例中是由其他人建立和定居的殖民地。
为了成功，他们大致适应了欢迎他们的社会结构。这是在一个明显准备接纳移民的增长国家中的最佳解决方案。
显然，这些新来者经常帮助那个定居点。我们所知道的“宾夕法尼亚德意志人”是来自德国（德语！）的虔诚信徒、门诺派、阿米什人和其他新教徒的后裔，他们从1680年代开始前往那个贵格会殖民地。他们帮助开辟了现代的基石州。
但道路的规则是由那些创立殖民地的人确立的，即英国人。因此，政府的语言是英语，合同和争议由盎格鲁-撒克逊普通法裁决，而习俗和习惯则是拿破仑所贬低的“商人国家”的人民所适应殖民地条件的。、
>>> 阿布雷戈·加西亚：左派对无尽“法律程序”需求的典范
这就是为什么当已故的塞缪尔·亨廷顿等人写道美国不仅是一个“移民国家”，而更像一个“定居者国家”时，他们有其道理。自1840年代移民潮真正开启以来，已有超过1亿移民来到美国，他们显然帮助塑造了这个国家。
但美国更像是一个“定居者国家”，而这些定居者是英国人，他们不仅是新教徒，而且是异议者，或称“抗议的新教徒”。正是这个核心永久性地影响了美国的性格。
正如埃德蒙·伯克在1775年所做的“与殖民地和解的演讲”中所言，宗教有直接的影响：“人民是新教徒，并且是那种最反对所有心灵和观点的盲从的类型。这种信念不仅有利于自由，而且是建立在自由之上的。”
巴克补充道：“所有新教，甚至最冷漠和被动的新教，都是一种异议。但在我们北方殖民地最普遍的宗教，是抵抗原则的一种精炼；它是异议的异议，是新教宗教的新教主义。”
这种对自由的关注——一些对美国的批评者称之为一种痴迷——不仅产生了政治自由，还有经济繁荣，这是移民来到这里的两个主要原因。
现在，这种自由的体验正在我们的教室和博物馆中被扭曲和腐蚀。“定居者”这个词本身已经变得有了污点。“定居者殖民主义”，这个在高等教育越来越受到文化左派掌控的背景下我们听到的越来越频繁的术语，并不意味着亨廷顿所说的意思。
“殖民定居主义可以被定义为一种基于种族灭绝和殖民主义的压迫体系，旨在取代一个国家（通常是土著人民）的人口，并用新的定居者人口取而代之，” 康奈尔法学院如此表示。“殖民定居主义的基础是由定居者维持的权力体系，该体系压制土著人民的权利和文化，通过抹去和取代他们的文化而形成。”
提出这一论点的人将他们对美国的仇恨归结于从印第安人那里夺取土地的行为。他们假装这一行为排除了观察，更不要说庆祝美国作为自由实验的独特性质。这使得美国不值得被同化。
然而，一个人不必为殖民过程辩护就可以观察到，这实际上是地球上每个国家的情况。
例如，西班牙是凯尔特人征服伊比利亚人的结果，形成了凯尔特伊比利亚人，他们又被罗马人征服，而罗马人遭到西哥特人和苏维人入侵，随后阿拉伯人和柏柏尔人又占领了伊比利亚，最后在收复失地运动中失去了该地区。英格兰经历了类似的过程（凯尔特不列颠人 - 罗马人 - 萨克逊人 - 丹麦人 - 诺曼人）。印度各部落之间也发生了斗争和相互位移。
这是人类状况的内在特征。没有人会理智地为“土著不列颠人”做土地承认，除了讽刺网站《巴比伦蜜蜂》来表达某种观点。
在美国，这一过程形成了一个特殊的社会，因为它是唯一一个扎根于自然法和自然权利的社会，宪法的目的是限制政府，而不是增强其权力，而这个政府存在的目的是保护个人权利。对新移民来说，融入促进这些思想蓬勃发展的理念和实践至关重要。合法移民是一种政策工具；希望选出的民众代表能够正确理解公众意愿，决定他们是否想要移民。埃利斯岛入境点于1892年开放，以处理涌入的人潮，这一实验伴随着强烈的同化主义精神，包括国家机构、纽约市和私营部门。
>>> 自由派法官试图阻止特朗普，因虚假的拜登时代为无数非法移民提供假释
确保移民合法有序，同时伴随强有力的同化努力，并且移民同意这种同化，是让人们放心他们的文化不会被毁灭的关键。即使是合法移民，若缺乏同化，也代表了对文化延续的威胁。至于非法移民，尤其是大规模和混乱的移民，如我们在拜登执政下所见，更类似于上述的入侵——尤其是当移民在官方上被劝阻去同化到国家的风俗时。
那些设计出非法和无序移民系统、并且让同化受到阻碍的人，试图摧毁曾经存在的美国。他们才是真正关注种族灭绝——文化灭绝的人。
“E Pluribus Unum”这个词在我们与德国人、苏格兰爱尔兰人等民族交往时被选为国家座右铭。这是一种持久的方法。而且，尽管那些总是对康奈尔大学和其他常春藤盟校的“定居者殖民主义”发出警报的人不断呼喊，这并不是一个使一个种族保持权力的系统。该国的习惯、做法和法律在左翼和右翼的边缘人群的狂热思维中，仅仅有种族和民族的成分。
亨廷顿最好地表达了这一点，他说：“我相信，美国最大的成就之一，或许是最大的成就，是它在多大程度上消除了历史上曾是其身份核心的种族和民族成分，并成为一个多民族、多种族的社会，在这里，个体将根据其优点被评判。我相信，这一切发生是因为几代美国人对盎格鲁-新教文化和开国定居者信条的承诺。如果这种承诺能够维持下去，美国将会在其创始人的蛮族后裔成为一个小而无影响的少数群体之后，依旧保持美国的本色。这就是我所知道并热爱的美国。如这些页面中的证据所示，它也是大多数美国人所热爱和渴望的美国。”
此文最初发表在《华盛顿观察者》上。
America started attracting immigrants long before it became a country.
Nisian Hughes / Getty Images
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The rules of the road had been established by those who founded the colonies, namely the English.
One does not have to be an apologist for the colonizing process to observe that this is the case of every nation on earth.
The habits, practices, and laws of the country have a racial and ethnic component only in the fevered minds of the fringes on the left and right.
America started attracting immigrants long before it became a country. Already in the late 1600s and early 1700s, there were newcomers from Germany, Ulster, France, etc. What made them immigrants? They willingly moved to a place, in this case colonies, that had been established and settled by others.
To succeed, they roughly assimilated to the societal structure that welcomed them. That was the optimal solution in a growing nation clearly primed to take immigrants.
Obviously, these newcomers often helped in that settlement. What we know as “Pennsylvania Dutch” are the descendants of German (Deutsch!) Pietists, Mennonites, Amish, and other Protestants that went to that Quaker colony starting in the 1680s. They helped carve out the modern Keystone State.
But the rules of the road had been established by those who founded the colonies, namely the English. Thus, the language of government was English, contracts and disputes were adjudicated by Anglo-Saxon common law, and the customs and habits were those of a people Napoleon disparaged as a “nation of shopkeepers,” adapted to colonial conditions.
>>> Abrego Garcia: The Poster Child for the Left’s Demands of Endless “Due Process”
This is why, when people such as the late Samuel Huntington write that America is not so much a “nation of immigrants” as a “settler nation,” they have a point. More than 100 million immigrants have come to America since the 1840s, when the immigrant spigots really opened, and they have clearly helped shape the nation.
But America is more a “nation of settlers,” and those settlers were Englishmen who were not just Protestants, but dissenters, or “protesting Protestants.” It is this nucleus that has permanently influenced the American character.
As Edmund Burke put in his 1775 “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,” religion had a direct impact: “The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it.”
Added Burke, “All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement of the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”
This focus on freedom—some critics of America have called it an obsession—has produced not just political liberty but also economic prosperity, the two prime reasons that immigrants have come here.
Now this experience of freedom is being distorted and corrupted in our classrooms and museums. The word “settler” itself has become tainted. “Settler colonialism,” a term we have heard with increasing frequency as higher ed has fallen more and more into the grip of the cultural left, does not mean what Huntington meant.
“Settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population,” intones Cornell Law. “Settler colonialism finds its foundations on a system of power perpetuated by settlers that represses indigenous people’s rights and cultures by erasing it and replacing it by their own.”
The people who make this argument base their hatred of America on the taking of lands from the Native Americans. That act, they pretend, precludes observing, let alone celebrating, the unique experiment in freedom that the United States has been. It makes America unworthy of assimilating to.
But one does not have to be an apologist for the colonizing process to observe that this is the case of every nation on earth.
Spain, for example, is the result of the Celts taking over the Iberians, producing Celtiberians, who were themselves taken over by Romans, who were invaded by Visigoths and Suevi, who were then overrun by Arabs and Berbers, who lost Iberia in the Reconquista. England went through a similar (Celtic Britons + Romans + Saxons + Danes + Normans) process. Indian nations fought and displaced other Indian nations.
It is intrinsic to the human condition. No one in their right mind would make a land acknowledgment for “indigenous Britons,” except for the satirical site the Babylon Bee, to make a point.
In America, this process has produced a society that is exceptional because it is the only one rooted in natural law and natural right, where the Constitution is written to limit government, not enhance its power, and that government exists to protect individual rights. It’s vital that incoming immigrants assimilate to the ideas and practices that enable these ideas to thrive.
Legal immigration is a policy tool; the elected representatives of the people, hopefully reading the public will correctly, decide whether they want immigration or not. The Ellis Island entry point was opened in 1892 to handle the inflow, and that experiment was accompanied by a strong assimilationist ethos that included national institutions, New York City, and the private sector.
>>> Liberal Judge Tries To Block Trump Over Bogus Biden-Era Parole for Countless Illegals
Ensuring that immigration be legal and orderly, and that it be accompanied by this strong assimilationist effort—and that the immigrants agree to this assimilation—is what reassures people that their culture will not be destroyed. Even legal immigration, devoid of assimilation, represents a threat to cultural continuation. As for illegal immigration, especially massive and unruly, which is what we saw under Biden, it is more akin to the invasions described above—especially when immigrants are officially discouraged from assimilating to the mores of the country.
The people who designed a system of illegal and disorderly immigration, where assimilation is discouraged, sought to destroy the America that existed. They are the ones interested in genocide—cultural genocide.
The term E Pluribus Unum was selected as the national motto when we were dealing with the Germans, Scots-Irish, etc. It is the durable approach.
And it isn’t, despite the cries of alarm from those constantly baying about “settler colonialism” agonistes at Cornell and other Ivies, a system to perpetuate a race in power. The habits, practices, and laws of the country have a racial and ethnic component only in the fevered minds of the fringes on the left and right.
Huntington put it best when he said, “I believe that one of the greatest achievements, perhaps the greatest achievement, of America is the extent to which it has eliminated the racial and ethnic components that historically were central to its identity and has become a multiethnic, multiracial society in which individuals are to be judged on their merits. That happened, I believe, because of the commitment successive generations of Americans have had to the Anglo Protestant Culture and the Creed of the founding settlers. If that commitment is sustained, America will still be America long after Waspish descendants of its founders have become a small and uninfluential minority. That is the America I know and love. It is also, as the evidence in these pages demonstrates, the America most Americans love and want.”
This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner
来源：非常道
