AMERICA’S HISTORY OF INTOLERANCE

A prominent American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English…..The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages…Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin.  And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750’s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”

And still earlier in Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish had bred discount, as their penchant for squatting on choice real estate ran headlong against the colony’s founders, the Penn family, and their genteel notions about who should own what.

Often the disdain for the foreign was inflamed by religion.  …