Why It Is Hard to Learn from History

Since the foundation of the United States as an independent country, the task of defining a singular unifying cultural identity has been extremely challenging. The difficulty in proclaiming an American identity, is the fact that the United States was founded by immigrants; therefore, any attempt to create a unified identity, will always draw a certain amount of influence from the culture and identities of other countries. When addressing the issue of immigration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt exclaimed: "Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists." Besides reminding Americans of their lineage, President Roosevelt is making the argument that same fighting spirit found in immigrants naturally resides in the psyche of every American. With the potential Immigration Reform Act presented by President Barack Obama this year; now, is the best time to ponder the role of immigrants in American society and the American identity as a whole. The increasing trend of immigration has brought into question how the American identity will adapt to this new diversified society that exists today - based on previous historical evidence of the United States - it can be concluded that the American identity will do so by assimilating some of the incoming cultural influence (from immigrants) into its own identity. Additionally, the American identity is highly adaptable considering the founding fathers established a national identity focused on a set of shared beliefs and ideals, not based on culture, gender, ethnicity or religious beliefs.

For the last decade immigration reform has been a hotly debated issue in political settings all over the United States. Speaking on the potentially negative impact of immigration reform, American constitutional lawyer Phyllis Schlafly warned in 2006: "Immigrants today present a threat to our cultural norms, including economic norms and the rule of the law." Schlafly is provides an interesting opinion concerning the potential influence of immigration, but she fails to establish why or how it will threaten American cultural norms. Coming from an openly conservative perspective (Born and raised in Missouri) Schlafly provides what seems to be an extremist perspective on the issue of immigration - such as overemphasizing the influence a minority group of immigrants can have on the American identity as a whole. Regardless of the political stance on immigration, political leaders such as Schlafly or writers like Erica Werner of the Associate Press, often times rely on providing extreme interpretations of the issue. In a column reporting of the potential Immigration reform of 2013 presented by President Obama, Werner identified several issues with the Republican opposition of the reform bill, such as citing these individuals largely to be: "inactive," (Werner, 2013). The flaw in Werner's thinking, is primarily that she is using her pro-immigration reform act thinking to sway readers into thinking that because a certain Republican group does not want the reform bill to pass; therefore, they must be considered inactive or even ineffective, as her article incites. Often times, pro or anti immigration supporters attempt to identify a single group or individual as the opposition or even enemy - when there truly isn't a single authoritative opinion on the matter.

Objectively analyzing the growing trend of immigration and its impact on the American identity, requires a thorough understanding that this country was created by immigrants. Directly addressing the role of immigration in the formation of an American identity, former New York Times editor Tamar Jacoby wrote in 2004: "Already at the beginning, the emphasis was on ideas rather than ethnicity. Not only did the Founders emphasize the ideological dimension of what it meant to be an American, but so apparently did the first generations of settlers" (298). Jacoby is arguing that the American identity was established early on, emphasizing not a certain culture but a set of ideals that unite all these different immigrants into one country. The American identity seems better understood as a metaphorical umbrella, encompassing the different ideologies of millions of immigrants into a set of identified beliefs. Critically analyzing the American Constitution, it can also be inferred that there is no American identity based solely on ethnicity or culture. The argument that the growing trend of immigration is actively challenging or altering the American identity is in itself pointless, because the American identity is not comprised of cultural or ethnic ideals.

Further exploring the American identity as comprised of a set of ideals, University of Pennsylvania Professor Rogers M. Smith wrote in his 1997 book Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History: "Americans have always officially defined full membership in the American civic community in terms of readiness to embrace