No. of Recommendations: 6
Importing your great food and ways to celebrate holidays is great. Importing your religious wars isn't. You would need to outlaw every religion except your chosen one, to prevent religious conflicts. Keep in mind, Catholics are, iirc, #3 on the Klan's hate list.
Did you know that, into the 1960s, Louisiana school kids would be beaten for speaking the French that they spoke at home, in school, even tho the French speakers had been there since before it was part of the US? Did you know that the Klan went into Maine, looking for French speakers to beat up?
More than 100 years ago, Maine outlawed French in schools. We can’t forget that legacy.
Milliken’s law culminated 70 years of anti-French Catholic sentiment, simmering since the 1850s when waves of Québécois immigrants arrived in New England mill towns. Writing about my St. John Valley ancestors — both Québécois and Acadiens — during a visit in the late 1850s, a southern Maine newspaper editor captured the prevailing racist mood: “They are generally ignorant and unambitious … a peculiar people, distinct in tastes, habits and aspirations from the Anglo-Saxon race.” Editorial boards across Maine and beyond, including The New York Times, warned of the need for forced assimilation to prevent what they imagined: an armed French Catholic insurrection leading to the annexation of Maine by Québec.
These absurd fears fueled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Maine. By 1925, Klan membership surged to over 150,000 — representing 23 percent of the state’s population. Beyond hooded ghouls marching through public streets, the Klan pressured school boards to fire French-speaking teachers, lobbied against Catholic officeholders, pushed for restrictive voting laws, and worked to dismantle parish-centered communities.https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/04/10/opinion...You may have learned about the British attempt at ethnic cleansing, after the Seven Years War, by deporting the Acadians from present day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Maine, to what is now Louisiana. Ever notice that "Cajun", the term for the French speaking population of Louisiana, is a corruption of "Acadian".
You could seal every US border, and the people already here would stir up one pogrom after another, over every perceived "difference".
Steve
