Europe Shows What Happens When the Melting Pot Boils Over

It has been long said that the U.S. is the world’s melting pot, a place where peoples of all races, creeds, and national origins coalesce into one successful American culture. That buy-into Americaness is essential, as the unfolding disaster with mass migration demonstrates in Europe.

However, the tide is turning. 

Galvanized by a sense that they’re losing their countries to migrants, Europeans buoyed immigration critical parties to power in the European parliamentary elections. 

German leftists had an aneurysm when the populist Alternative für Deutschland achieved 15 seats in the election, representing a massive gain of 6 seats in the European parliament. The biggest winner was France’s Rassamblement National, which took more than a third of seats in the parliament and caused French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French assembly. 

Europeans are done being sold out by their leaders.

Western Europe has become plagued by repeated clashes between native Europeans and transplants mostly from the Islamist Middle-East. Two weeks ago, an Afghan asylum seeker murdered a German police officer and seriously wounded an anti-Islam activist in a stabbing spree. 

In France, Muslim extremists have repeatedly reacted to critics of Islam with violence. From the mass shooting at French parody outlet Charlie Hebdo in 2015 to the brutal decapitation of school teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, France is menaced by those who would rather violently suppress ideas they dislike than assimilate. 

And these are the more gruesome examples of failure by outgroups to connect with the majority culture. There are daily, banal examples of the unwillingness of Muslim transplants in Europe to assimilate. 

There are parts of major European capitals that Europeans know to avoid. The French call them banlieues, the Dutch call them “dish cities.” They have signage exclusively in Arabic and women draped in burqas or niqabs. Not a word of the host country’s language is spoken. An Islamic call to prayer makes visitors feel like they’ve left the West and landed in a Moroccan souk.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Paris anymore!

Americans are forced to deal with this too, with infinitely increasing amounts of illegal immigrants pouring into the country, sapping American resources and altering the fabric of once proud American cities. While much has been made of the invasion of illegal immigrants at the southern border, the Wall Street Journal named Dearborn, Michigan as “America’s Jihad Capital” in a piece highlighting radical imams and politicians who sided with Hamas terrorists and Iran against Israel and the U.S.A. 

The movement to maintain American values faces threats from both sides of the aisle. Libertarian minded types on the right say there is nothing wrong with unfettered immigration by making an economic argument. Prices are lower and immigrants do the jobs Americans don’t want to do, what’s the problem?

Meanwhile the radical left argues for a perverted form of anti-American fetishism, where the foreigner is considered a positive contributor to society based on nothing more than his exoticism. Without immigrants, where would all the ethnic food be? 

I would hope that American cultural identity is worth a little bit more than cheap goods and tasty shawarma. 

These different approaches belay a common failure in understanding the nature of America; it is more than an economic bloc or a pithy diversity statement. There is an American identity built on economic liberty and multiculturalism. However that identity relies on common buy-in, that at the end of the day America comes first and everything else second. 

The melting pot analogy was useful because ideally everything is supposed to meld together to create one common identity. When the common identity shatters, either at the altar of fiscal convenience or a smorgasbord of ethnic and religious differences, the whole thing collapses. 

Europe has things much rougher because France is not just an idea, it’s an ethnic identity. As are Germans, Swedes, Danes, Spaniards and on and on it goes. America has the advantage as there’s no such thing as an “ethnic” American. 

But that crucial national identity must be maintained. Otherwise the pot boils over and we have to clean the kitchen floor.