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So I know that some people did not like that Bad Bunny (whom I knew nothing about and still don't know much) was to be the featured performer. Apparently, some people were offended that he performs in Spanish. (Can you imagine! I mean, who speaks Spanish in America?) I'm also aware that Turning Point USA held a rival halftime show featuring 50-something "Kid" Rock doing a bad lip-sync in the Bermuda shorts my father donated to Goodwill in 1975.
I bring this up only because this controversy is loudly related to immigration, which I do care about. It should be pointed out, however, that Bad Bunny, being Puerto Rican, is as much an American citizen as I am, unlike many past, presumably acceptable Super Bowl halftime headliners. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. That's not the Mayflower era, of course, but it's more than a century ago. My paternal grandparents arrived in America from Lithuania and Belarus around that time.
All signs point to cultural insecurity (at best) as to why so many people are uncomfortable with the prospect of free, or ever freer, immigration. A few moments' reflection is enough to show why that's silly, especially in the United States. Trying to control a culture is like (my apologies; I can't improve on this) trying to nail Jello to the wall. Ain't gonna happen.
Thomas Sowell, who regretably hasn't seen the light on open borders, nevertheless has a reality-based view of culture. (See my "Culture without Romance.") In a 1990 speech (video) titled "Cultural Diversity"(transcript), Sowell said:
Cultural features do not exist merely as badges of "identity," to which we have some emotional attachment. They exist to meet the necessities and forward the purposes of human life. When they are surpassed by features of other cultures, they tend to fall by the wayside, or to survive only as marginal curiosities, like Roman numerals today. [Emphasis added.]
He also said:
Cultures exist so that people can know how to get food and put a roof over their head, how to cure the sick, how to cope with the death of loved ones, and how to get along with the living. Cultures are not bumper stickers. They are living, changing ways of doing all the things that have to be done in life. [Emphasis added.]
And more:
[Some "advocates of 'diversity'"] seem to want to preserve cultures in their purity, almost like butterflies preserved in amber. Decisions about change, if any, seem to be regarded as collective decisions, political decisions. But that is not how any cultures have arrived where they are. Individuals have decided for themselves how much of the old they wished to retain, how much of the new they found useful in their own lives. In this way, cultures have enriched each other in all the great civilizations of the world.