CP3S said:
I think a no immigration stance is legit enough as well. I love cultures. My career, when I'm working in it, is heavily related to culture. I have a good deal of cross-cultural experience. A fellow expatriate buddy of mine and I used to talk about America being a salad, when you come to America, you are expected and allowed to be whatever you are. It is like the salad bowl in the middle of the dinner table. Everyone dishes a little bit of it out onto their own plates. They have a plate full of their own main course and sides, and they also have a serving of the salad. As an American, when I travel to or live in other countries, I am expected to blend. If I don't know the language, eyes roll. When I do something culturally unkosher or somehow demonstrate my inevitable ignorance of local norms and mores in some way, big or small, people sigh, "silly American" and shake their heads.
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do; when in The United States, do as you would at home." My buddy and I would lament that while everyone else at the table has their own plates of food, we simply have an empty plate in front of us filled with the same salad in the middle of the table that everyone else is dishing up freely. We were stuck in a culturally devoid expanse, looking at all this rich culture at the table around us, but only able to smell its delicious odors and watch others enjoy it as we slowly munched on our bland salad. This is why we were both expatriates, why we both sought out and seized opportunities to immerse ourselves in these foreign worlds. Even if those other dishes could never be ours, we wanted to surround ourselves with people we could live vicariously through; so we could watch longingly with rumbling stomachs as they partook of their exotic cuisines.
I hated seeing Wal-Mart in Germany and McDonald's in France. I wanted to see these cultures untouched. When in Germany, I wanted to see Germany, not Germany with some America sprinkled on top. When in France I wanted to see France. When in England I wanted to see England and English people, not another melting pot like the States. Unfortunately to a degree (but not all bad), we live in a global world climate and the world is shrinking fast. I'd loved to see European countries hold back the night and maintain their own identities. So don't misunderstand me, we have far more in common on this topic than you think.
But there's never been a static culture, and those that try to be (the Amish, the Japanese in the past) are completely defined by their unnatural desire to be static.
The "German" culture we know today is a moment in time, an snapshot of cultures meeting, merging, taking, losing, changing, adapting. Anything we might call the "English"/"UK" culture is a total and constantly changing hodgepodge; the "American" culture even moreso. I toured the beautiful mosques in Spain, and have seen the first Christian monasteries in Scotland; antique signs that no culture ever stays the same.
The idea of "preserving" a culture is completely artificial to what cultures are. It's even a little paternalistic when we apply it to people like un-contacted tribes.
I agree with you that the American culture is a deep, and wonderful thing, and from sea to shining sea I love it (except South Carolina... they know why). But I can't sit listening to my Irish-inspired Appalachian banjo music, eating my tex-mex lunch, sitting in my Tudor style living room, and think outside influences somehow lessens a culture.