op-ed Immigration should spark discussion about our rights

Author: Rachel Pagano

On April 2, the Middlebury College Republicans hosted a lecture by Mark Steyn, The New York Times best-selling author of "America Alone," and an internationally known columnist who writes for publications spanning the globe, including The Washington Post, Maclean's, The Jerusalem Post, The Australian, and the National Review. Born in Canada, he was educated in Great Britain and is now a resident of New Hampshire. The lecture was open to the general public and drew an enthusiastic audience from around Vermont and as far away as Boston.

Steyn generously agreed to donate his time and come speak at Middlebury on subjects from his most recent book. He addressed various current issues and trends, including multiculturalism, demographics and the West's decline in cultural confidence. He especially focused on the dropping birthrates in industrialized countries. Most of us are aware of the upward spiral of birthrates worldwide, and the consequent strain on the world's natural resources. What we are less aware of is the equally disturbing downward spiral of the birthrate among many countries in Europe and to a lesser degree in the United States. In Spain, for example, the birthrate has fallen below 1.3 children per couple, the level from which Steyn remarked no civilization has ever been able to recover. The population growth in industrialized countries now comes primarily from immigration. Steyn was not critical of immigration itself. Instead, he directed his criticism at the impulse - which he sees stemming from a fear of offending various proponents of multiculturalism - to bend over backward to respect and leave new immigrants alone, which often results in the total neglect of their integration into liberal democratic society.

In a country founded upon the statement that "all men are created equal," with "certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," we are loath to see any group or person treated in a way that inhibits their equality and dignity. Mark Steyn argued that it is vitally important to ensure that in protecting the sensibilities of certain people, the liberties of all are not infringed upon. He citied examples from Canada and several European countries including Spain, Great Britian, Germany and France where freedoms are slowly being eroded in order to accommodate religious or cultural sensitivities. Steyn's urged that in allowing all groups their unalienable rights we must also ensure that immigrants are encouraged to embrace liberal democratic values and held to common standards of law, and that while respecting other traditions and backgrounds we must resist the trend to twist or restrict our own freedoms and rights, particularly our freedom of speech, for fear of offending others.

Freedom of speech is a right which many Americans take for granted. Because we have the luck to be born into a time and a country where this freedom is an unquestioned part of our daily lives we sometimes forget that it is a liberty that has been granted to us, and what has been granted can also be taken away. Mark Steyn's position concurrs with my own in that he calls all of us to look again at the rights without which our way of life would be nonexistent, and to protect them. This may seem like a theoretical argument, one which has very little bearing on our lives here. But part of protecting our rights is to use them - and they only become obvious when listening to a point of view other than our own. Thus to protect our rights, we must engage in dialogues which cross the lines of political opinions and therefore show the true meaning of our freedom.

Rachel Pagano '11 is from Santa Fe, N.M.