printWhen leftists (centrists, whatever) dissemble or fib about America having always been multilingual and multiculturalism, they usually point to the thirteen colonies that were founded by good old Englishmen and women, speaking different English dialects, later to be joined by … white Christians from Germany, Holland, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, who adopted English as lingua franca. This so-called diversity saw early Americans debate publicly and come to a broad agreement on some highly complex, abstract matters of political philosophy. They had to be pretty tight to do that. Early Americans were not multiethnic or multilignual in today’s way.
The mantra that elicited the comment above is the allusion to America as “a society that is and always has been multiethnic and polyglot,” culled from David Frum’s exposition: “The Great Republican Revolt: The GOP planned a dynastic restoration in 2016. Instead, it triggered an internal class war. Can the party reconcile the demands of its donors with the interests of its rank and file?”