Friday 17 June 2016

Jefferson and harmony, and immigration













When President Kennedy entertained the American winners of Nobel prizes  at the White House, he remarked that there had never been such a brilliant assembly in the room  since Thomas Jefferson dined  alone. Jefferson was indeed a brilliant polymath, as one can see from the house he built., and  in his first Inaugural Address he set out his views on human society, a society ( one can add) based over the years on the arrival of immigrants from many countries.

"Let us, then, fellow citizens,unite with one heart and one.mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things"

High flown language, suitable to an Inauguration Address, but true. True for high intellects and people of adequate substance,  for whom such harmony and affection are most usually in their own hands. But for those more constrained let us look at the way immigration can affect a society,  in an analysis by Professor Putman of Northwestern University

" Increases in ethnic diversity lead to collapses of civic health. Trust amongst neighbours declines, as does voting, charitable giving and volunteering........As community cohesion weakens, moral norms change. What would have been unacceptable behaviour in a more homogenous national community becomes tolerable when a formerly ascendant group seems itself at risk from aggressive new claims by new competitors"

The aspirations declared  as so central by Jefferson are also there in lives in the poorer streets and in  the less upwardly mobile. The advent of people of other kinds and cultures  makes it difficult to unite with one heart and one mind as Jefferson recommends. And if such people have not yet arrived in every street those living there can imagine what will happen if they do.

The so sadly late Jo Cox MP in her  splendid Maiden Speech painted a picture of multiculturism that has worked. So it can. But the problems need to be understood and overcome.  I am not impressed when Bishops and Barristers and Actors preach that the Government should be humane and welcome more and more immigrants. One could say that they will benefit with better servants and waiters and barmen. That will assist their pursuit  of Jefferson's harmony and affection in their lives, but they should not preach without considering the need to pursue harmony and affection for all of us.

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