DEAR ABBY: You reminisced in a recent column that we used to be more tolerant of each other. A reader, Irma Barragan, pointed out that we really were not all that tolerant -- and the "good old days" were not all that good for everyone. I feel you conceded her point far too easily.
What has changed, regrettably, are our ideals. In some ways, we certainly were not as tolerant then as we are now. (After all, we have made some important progress since, say, 1964.) But we were headed deliberately in the direction of tolerance, of integration into the "melting pot." In those "good old days," when we noticed intolerance, we still believed that it would -- and SHOULD -- disappear with time.
No more. As a country, we no longer aspire to be a melting pot. Now we are satisfied with a patchwork of separate cultures, each with uneasy relations with everyone else: a Balkanized society.
I once heard a politician define himself as a "paleo-liberal" because he still believes in integration, not multiculturalism. That's me: one of the melting pot liberals. Remember us? -- J. MacAUSLAN, NASHUA, N.H.
DEAR J: Indeed, I do, and warmly, too. As the daughter of immigrant parents whose fervent wish was to learn English and become good Americans, those are the values with which I was raised.