Our forefathers rejected race and religion as the forces to form a nation. choosing instead the ideals of freedom and democracy. It was a radical gamble. and ever since we have held It to be an article of faith that those who would be Americans must first abandon lesser allegiances. As Franklin Roosevelt once said. "Americanism ... is not. and never was. a matter of race and ancestry." Succeeding waves of immigrants have been drawn to America by this idea. Lacking the centuriesold. primal bonds of other nations. we have used our language. our history and our code of values to make the American experiment work. We have used them to forge millions of diverse individuals into one people with a common purpose. Language. history and values: these are the strings that bind our hearts to America. These are the forces that have held us togetherallowing us to be diverse and yet united. to absorb untold millions of immigrants while coming the closest any country ever has to the classless. upwardly mobile society of our ideals. But these keys to unity are under attack from our government and from intellectual elites who seem embarrassed by America. What we see as opportunity they see as oppression.
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immigrants