Anti-Semitism in the United States : $b Its history and causesLevinger, Lee J. (Lee Joseph)
History
Anti-Semitism in the United States : $b Its history and causes
Levinger, Lee J. (Lee Joseph)
Antisemitism -- United States; Jews -- United States
[130]To hope for a rich, composite civilization in America through
biological fusion merely is to chase a will-o’-the-wisp. Nothing
short of conscious social control of the transmission of the
cultural heritage will achieve the result. [131]The function of
the cultural groups would be to foster through voluntary cultural
community organization their cultural uniqueness, while the function
of the State would embrace the harmonization of these cultural
differences, the unification of distinctive contributions into a rich
and variegated whole. [132]America with her unique experience of
multiform contacts of races and peoples is in a position to invest
the concept of democracy with a broader and richer meaning than any
nation has done thus far. She can, if she will, develop the principle
of tolerance as no people has yet dared to do. She can, if she will,
encourage the search for the unique and the distinctive in social
life, side by side with a strong emphasis on the basic human interests.
But, many will say, does this theory erect conflicting loyalties? Can
they be reconciled? The answer to this is in terms of proportional
loyalties. I quote Professor Miller’s summary:
[133]The real problem of society is the living together of individuals
and groups in such a way that both the individual and the group can
attain the highest degree of self-realization. [134]One of the
greatest obstacles to truth and progress is the preaching of one
hundred per cent. Americanism.... Reality demands that we begin to
advocate ten to twenty-five per cent. patriotism. This proportion
will account for the peculiarly provincial values that our particular
fatherland has contributed to our development.... The seventy-five to
ninety per cent. of loyalty that is left belongs to values in our
lives that are international rather than national.
Among these international values he finds the religious, economic and
cultural ones, all of which transcend the nation, either by being wider
or narrower, belonging to a sub-group or to humanity.
4.
This integration of groups need not stop at the nation as at present
constituted, as is hinted in the last citation. The nation is itself
an integration of groups, and can enter into other integrations, which
include it or which cross it with different lines of interest and of
grouping. In the words of U. G. Weatherly:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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