E pluribus unum?: Out of many, one.

"That was the national motto proposed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1776. Both simple and elegant, it embodied the notion that all who had come to America's shores, and all who would come, must be united—must all form one front—in defense of freedom and liberty. For 200 years, we were, largely, one people united behind constitutional republicanism. But soon after the social turbulence of the '60s and the economic woes of the '70s, that unity began to crumble. This was the era in which multiculturalism emerged—the era in which ethnocentricity became chic.

Arthur Schlesinger, a former Harvard professor and senior advisor to JFK, published a retrospective on this era in 1991 called "The Disuniting of America." Schlesinger wrote primarily about the orthodoxy of self-interested hyphenated-American citizen groups—who, rather than unifying to become one, were diversifying to become many. He warned that the cult of ethnicity would result in "the fragmentation and tribalization of America," the natural consequence being that these special-interest groups would be co-opted by the political parties."

From the Federal Patriot.

"Instead of a transformative nation with an identity all its own, America increasingly sees itself in this new light as preservative of diverse alien identities—groups ineradicable in their ethnic character. Will the melting pot give way to the Tower of Babel?"

--- Arthur Schlesinger, 1991