Free Associations From All Over

Once in a while the History Channel really airs a program on history, and I recently watched one that offered a most significant insight. The program was on the fall of the Roman Empire, a subject that elicits comment from various  positions on the political spectrum because it seems to offer a lesson for our own times. Social conservatives like to blame the fall on moral laxity. Fiscal conservatives, including no doubt the Me-Party crowd, say the problem was oppressive taxation. The History Channel explanation – which seems to fit the facts much better than any other – is that the Roman Empire fell because it was unable to absorb its immigrants.

The immigrants in this case were barbarian tribes from Eastern Europe and beyond. They wanted in, and the Empire was unable to stop them. But neither did the Empire assimilate them, as it had the people whom it previously conquered. (Remember, St. Paul was a Roman citizen.) Instead, it treated the barbarians as the Other, thus producing an essential conflict between them and the Empire. And in this conflict the barbarian immigrants won out.

There is clearly a lesson here. First we must remember that America’s greatness has always arisen from its immigrants, and there is no reason to believe that situation will change. So the first essential is to set up a rational and adequate system of legal immigration. And then we have the problem of illegal immigrants in our midst. Like it or not, right or wrong, they are here, and we’re not likely to be rid of them. We can treat them with hostility, as the Other, and practically guarantee that they will become a cancerous lump within our society, or we can absorb them and utilize their talents and energy.

A prime example of those talents, and energy too, was exhibited when local girl Anamika Veeramani – hardly a an old-line Anglo-Saxon name -- won the national spelling bee. To be sure, spelling is almost entirely an exercise in rote memorization, not creative or critical thinking, but still it is represents  intellectual excellence, and that is what we need to encourage... We need to encourage it more than, for example, excellence on the basketball court, however phenomenal.

The city has just undergone an orgy of anticipation followed by a deluge of disappointment and anger, the likes of which we will probably never see again. And the anger is compounded by the feeling that we were let down twice, the first time being in the playoffs. When the chips were down, our champion and Lord of the Universe didn’t have what it takes, and the Cavaliers were swept aside by the Celtics, who knew how to play as a team and who used every member of their team to the best possible advantage. And then, in turn, the Celtics lost in the final championship game to the Lakers, whose champion played below par but was buoyed up by his teammates. By contrast, it has become more and more apparent that our Lord of the Universe was driven by little more than egotistical self-promotion. A city must be built on better stuff.

And there is better stuff. Getting over the bitterness, we can look around and see that the city is still the same as it always has been – with a world-class symphony, superb medical facilities, beautiful parks, and . . .      

The schools? What about the schools? I mean the schools of the City of Cleveland itself, always the crux of the matter. Year after year they seem to present an insuperable problem, but some weeks ago I heard the answer, if there can ever be one. It came from the principal of Louisa May Alcott elementary school, Eileen Stull, speaking on WCPN’s Sound of Ideas. She described how the teachers in her school went to great lengths -- for example, staying after the normal school day to help students with their homework. She summed it all up by saying, “We love our students as we love our own children.” That’s what it takes.

All these thoughts converge to one question: What are we? Are we acquisitive atoms, striving to outdo all the others? Or do we recognize others as fellow members of a human community? It is to this that all our experiences, triumphs and calamities alike, should lead us.