One of my favorite movies - and a high-ranking member of all-time underrated comedies - is the brilliant 2008 Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott film Role Models.
One of my favorite scenes from Role Models is a moment at Chipmunk Charlie, a royalty-free stand-in for Chuck E. Cheese to which two underemployed elder millennials take their Big Brothers Big Sisters-style littles as part of a community service sentence for an ennui-fueled rage incident involving a Mintoaur-themed energy drink promotional monster truck. I'm sorry, but if you need a clearer explanation for any of this, you'll have to watch the film.
At the restaurant, Paul Rudd (Danny) asks a simple question, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Augie), his "little', delivers a classic line:
Danny: So, uh, do you like Coca-Cola?
Augie: I like the idea of it more than I actually like it.
I thought about this bit this weekend after watching one of the growing number of "Heritage American" types hop onto social media to do their I'm-an-11th-generation-American gripe about how many brown people there are in a major American city. Houston, to be more specific. As it happens, our family thinks of Houston as our hometown. My wife and I went to high school in the area, our extended family are all there, and they've been there for a long time. We are also pretty big fans of the idea of a western canon and the idea of "western culture." Our library is full of Harold Bloom and we homeschool around the spine of a Susan Wise Bauer classics curriculum. My wife is a Shakespeare scholar with a Master's Degree in theater history - from the University of Houston, no less! - and I have championed Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler on these pages as a former semi-professional hornist for more than a decade since I found it, shall we say, non-economic to keep playing.
And my God, do I find this bullshit tiresome.
The point he's making is that Houston has clearly done Something Wrong for there to be so many first generation immigrants here. The truth, of course, is that Houston's limited regulations, reasonably priced residential real estate, thriving economy, and wonderful people are a magnet. Immigrants cross the border because of an always-changing mix of good conditions here, bad conditions at home, and bad policies. But they come to Houston and other cities in Texas for the same reason that a lot of other people have - because you can make a good life for your family here.
To this guy and others like him, this is A Problem. And look, I'm a borders guy, too. It's good to have rules for coming into the country and it's good to ensure that people follow those rules. I also think facilitating assimilation matters, but Houston is an almost hilarious success story in assimilation. By and large, the kids of Mexican immigrants here speak English, want what Americans do, believe what Americans do, and are American in almost any discernable way unless you're laser focused on melanin density uber alles. But this guy's an Augie, the kind of person who likes the idea of Western Culture™ more than they actually like western culture.
For the people who LOVE western culture? American Culture? My God, a problem? Are you kidding me? What an opportunity! You could invest in the Houston Youth Symphony, whose Coda program brings orchestral music education and performance opportunities to low income and districts dominated by first-gen immigrant student bodies. You could invest in the Houston Shakespeare Festival, which puts on free Shakespeare in the biggest park in the city for a month of summer evenings. It's a festival where a massive percentage of attendees are people who are watching Shakespeare for the very first time. A festival where a huge percentage of those people are first gen or second gen immigrants. You could accelerate assimilation and celebrate what makes western culture so beautiful for a mere pittance.
Our family does both. We've done so for more than a decade.
But you know what? These Heritage American types who reject the old stories of America find it a a hell of a lot easier to grumble about brown people on the internet. The "oh, are you saying western culture is superior" leftists wouldn't be any kinder.
I don't care. Because I don't like the idea of Shakespeare. I don't like the idea of Brahms.
I love them. Not the idea of them.
And I want to share them with everyone. If we're going to win the argument against the people who hate our old stories AND who the ones who think they have to be changed to make them exclusive to people of European descent who's families have been here since the Mayflower, we have to tell them everywhere we can. All the time.
