Xenophobia: Human Nature or Character Flaw
By Michael Boyajian
Matt Bai in a New York Times Op-Ed piece makes the claim that anti-immigrant fervor is not an American character flaw attributing it instead to human nature. Well, we Americans are supposed to stand above human nature so this xenophobia of late is indeed a character flaw in many but not all Americans.
I was at a party once where old men were talking of how to keep others down by gesturing backwards with their leg as if to knock someone down who is coming up the ladder behind you. I have seen thousands of St. Patrick marchers teary eyed stepping down 5th Avenue talking of the English atrocities yet in turn forbidding gay Irish from marching in their parade.
The Irish learned from those that came before them, keep those who follow down. Like today we have the hate of Islam which is growing in leaps and bounds leading many out of fear to call Islam the religion of hate and even forbidding Muslims from building Mosques here in the land of the free. It is all a cycle of fear that is sometimes induced by politicians looking for cheap political gain at the expense of humanity.
But then there were the Pilgrims who were saved from starvation by Native Americans yet a generation later the children of the Pilgrims would commit the wholesale extermination of New England Native Americans. And let’s not forget the xenophobia of the American war machine. Today it slaughters Muslim civilians, in the 1960s the Vietnamese and in the late 1800s it wiped out the Plains Indians immediately after the carnage of the Civil War.
So there it is, is this human nature or a character flaw? When compared to say the Roman Empire or Soviet Russia it is human nature but when compared to more peaceful societies without a bend for war it is indeed a character flaw. Yet because we are Americans and have been taught by the likes of Lincoln to rise above human nature that today this is indeed a character flaw unless you accept mayhem and destruction as the uncorrectable human condition in which case it is indeed human nature and not even Americans can rise above that in the mind of some. But isn’t that what our founders taught us, to rise above? Isn’t that what they showed us can be done if you believed in a better way of life?