Francis Fukuyama has written a superb article for the Wall Street Journal in which he discusses the phenomenon of immigration and the challenges to assimilation it poses in Europe. He offers brief historical notes on assimilation in Germany and France and how those two nations have differed in their treatment of immigrants:

Europeans differ among themselves in the way that they approach assimilation. The Germans for many years never tried; until their citizenship law was changed in 2000, a third-generation Turk who grew up in Germany and spoke no Turkish often had a harder time getting citizenship than an ethnic German from Russia who spoke no German. The German state, moreover, recognizes the communal rights of religious groups, collecting taxes on behalf of the Protestant and Catholic churches. The issue there, as in the Netherlands, is whether to add an Islamic pillar to the existing Christian ones, one that would have control over education and other issues. Such a policy would tend, of course, to enshrine rather than diffuse cultural differences over time.

The French by contrast have always accepted the principle of assimilation. French citizenship, like ours, is not based on ethnicity but is universal. The republican tradition recognizes only the rights of individuals, not groups, and its commitment to laicite or secularism remains strong. French schoolteachers in particular are heirs to an anticlerical tradition stemming from the French Revolution, and have looked askance at expressions of religiosity in public schools.

In a way, without saying so, Fukuyama lays the case for assimilation as ultimately being more accepting and inclusive of immigrants than are the hollow shibboleths of political correctness and its insistence on a diversity of ethnic enclaves that do not join the society at large. Just as ultimately, non-assimilation, in the name of countering the ills, without naming the gifts, that Western civilization has imposed on the world over the past 500 years, will only keep immigrants in ethnic ghettos, unable to be part of the societal norms, habits, and attitudes that would allow them to be successful and full- fledged citizens. Western guilt, sometimes called "white" guilt, fuels this strange kind of justice against historical grievance in a way that will hurt the very descendants of ancestors who were often traumatized by the intrusion of the West. Fukuyama:

Europeans have only recently begun to confront the problem of assimilation, and continue to suffer from a stifling political correctness in talking honestly about the issue of immigration. In 2001 the German Christian Democrats gingerly floated the concept of Leitkultur, or "leading culture," the idea that immigrants would be accepted as Germans but only if they in turn accepted certain German cultural values. The idea was immediately batted down as racist, and never raised again.

You really can't blame the Germans given their recent history that they would be paranoid about issues of a "leading culture." But historic guilt among Germans has done real harm to immigrants who should be full members of German society. That means, as Fukuyama implies, that assimilation, contrary to Leftist claims that it is a racist or ethnocentric imposition, is more reliably color-blind. What about that third-generation Turk who doesn't speak Turkish? Is he not German? And if he is not is it because being German is something in the ancestral "blood"? And we know where that kind of thinking had led.

The United States and France are instructive. Though there is certainly societal prejudice against immigrants, their best chance is to assimilate. That means they must face the hurdles of rejection and hostility in their quest to belong. But once they do so, as for the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and, now increasingly today, Hispanics, in the United States, they will suffer less and be rewarded more in successive generations.

But what about the validity of retaining one's culture? Jews have always had to struggle with maintaining their identity as an ancient people with a far-reaching religious tradition while seeking to unite with, contribute to, and benefit from, the larger society outside their ethnicity. Their particular historic path is deeply rich, creative, instructive, and at times terrible. Can one, then, be true to one's culture, as belonging to a minority group, and still assimilate?

The example of Jews would have to answer that question affirmatively. Hispanics are another, if historically different, example. It is my anecdotal experience living in New York City for twenty years, in a neighborhood where "Anglos" are a minority, that Hispanics are assimilating, much more so than the xenophobe Pat Buchanan would have one believe. Second generation Hispanics speak fluent English as a native language and develop successful lives that enshrine American values while many of them are also fluent in Spanish, eat Hispanic cuisines, know how to dance (most white Americans forgot how since the 1960s), and have cultural perspectives uniquely their own.

Jews and Hispanics (and, yes, sometimes they are one and the same) are largely proof that assimilation does not mean that one's distinctive past and cultural heritage become extinct but lives on in a way that adapts to the dominant culture which, in ways difficult to quantify, is in turn influenced by the assimilating minority. Yet one thing must be clear: assimilation goes in one direction:

The ultimate success of assimilation depends not just on policy, but on the cultural characteristics of the immigrant group being assimilated as well. Europeans are right to say that they face a bigger problem with their Muslim immigrant populations than Americans do with their Hispanic immigrants.

Fukuyama is referring to Muslims in France who are not assimilating and pose a real threat to France's historic and cultural traditions, its unique contribution to the Western values of liberty and democracy. Many Muslims in France are sympathetic to Islamism or are outright Islamists. Unassimilated Muslims are responsible for the rise in crimes against Jewish French citizens. In response to this resistance to assimilation, France has decided to outlaw the headscarf worn by Muslim daughters attending public schools. While liberal Americans today may find that unsettling, Fukuyama believes otherwise. For him the issue of headscarves is central to the crux of assimilation: out-marriage.

Individualism within the family--i.e., the right to marry whomever you want--is the mother of all individualisms, and it is the denial of this right that allows traditional social structure and culture to be transmitted across the generations. Traditionalist Muslims are thus more astute than they are given credit for when they insist on marking their daughters with headscarves that signal their sexual unavailability to outsiders. The girls themselves who want to wear the headscarf as a symbol of their identity do not understand the long-term threat to their individual freedom it represents.

Unless, of course, you despise the concept of an individual having rights as guaranteed by the state, outside the customs of family and tribe, and resist those rights' attendant freedoms so unique to the West. So which is it? Will France and Germany bow to the multi-culturalists who denounce assimilation as post-colonial, outdated, and oppressive and give way to the anti-individualism and anti-democratic seething of unassimilated Muslims? Or will they take stock of those values, reject multi-culturalism, and press on with the insistence that conformity to values be of paramount importance?

Assimilation is a real dilemma to liberalism as it is misunderstood today: we must make a choice between excessive cultural sensitivity, usually the result of self-doubt among Westerners in the post-colonial era, and the preservation of values that are everyone's birthright, whatever their ethnicity. With the "Other" who do not wish to assimilate, the majority should take an intolerant line—in the very name of liberalism.