THE MELTING POT, 21ST CENTURY STYLE. James C. Bennett has some thoughts on immigration and assimilation. Concluding point: "These problems will not be solved neither in America nor elsewhere in the Anglosphere until we all acquire the self-knowledge to understand why we have been so successful in past eras, and how we can impart these elements to newcomers now and in the future. For a historical drama of unprecedented scope is now in the making. Immigrants are coming into the English-speaking nations not just from one or two sources, but from myriad sources -- all the world, really. The minimal toolset for making civil society work must be made available to these people, and they must learn the thematic framework that allows them to play their parts, and introduce their own variations, in a way that will make the whole a workable melody, and not a cacophony. We cannot write the score beforehand, for this will be improvisation on a truly grand scale. But we can expect something wondrous if we can pull it off." Insta Pundit gets in a dig at the identity politics crowd, and Hit and Run's Matt Welch reminds people of the bad old days of restrictive covenants and snob zoning. From my perspective, there's something simpler at work. Watch the college kids date across formerly uncrossable lines. Nothing new there either. My mom's mother, an immigrant from Volhynia, was distressed that after several hundred years of keeping the Baptist tradition in Prussia and Russia, in the face of Catholicism and pravoslavie, some of her U.S. born children were marrying ... Catholics.