In the DisUniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, Revised and Enlarged Edition Schlesinger provides deep insights into the crises of nationhood in America. A new chapter assessed the impact both of radical multiculturalism and radical monoculturalism on the Bill of Rights. Written with his usual clarity and force, the book brings a noted historian s wisdom and perspective to bear on America s culture wars.
Schlesinger addresses the questions: What holds a nation together? And what does it mean to be an American? Describing the emerging cult of ethnicity, Schlsinger praises its healthy effect on the campaign of multicultural advocates to divide the nation into separate ethnic and racial communities. From the start, he observes, the United States has been a multicultural nation, rich in its diversity but held together a shared commitment to the democratic process and by the freedom of intermarriage. It was this national talent for assimilation that impressed foreign visitors like Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce, and it is this historic goal that Schelsinger champions as the best hope for the future. Schlesinger analyses what he sees as grim consequences of identity politics: the widening of differences. Attacks on the First Amendment, he argues, threaten intellectual freedom and, ultimately, the future of the ethnic groups. His criticisms are not limited to the left. As a former target of McCarthyism, he understands that the radical right is even more willing than the radical left to restrict and weaken the Bill of Rights.
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