The Census Bureau just issued population data compiled from last year's national decadal census. The data reveals that the Hispanic population has grown much faster than anticipated. The reasons attributed are birthrate and immigration - both legal and illegal.

I can already see some readers frothing at the mouth: the word ‘danger' appears in the title of an article citing a drastically increased percentage of Hispanic residents in the US - ergo, the author is a racist. I hope that a careful reading of what follows will allay that fear.

In one decade, the Hispanic population of the US has surged by 43% and now numbers over 50 million. Projections are that by midcentury the white population will decrease to less than 50% and the Hispanic population might top one-third. So what! As long as the new and recent Hispanic immigrants buy into the American philosophy of freedom, rule of law and limited government, they will melt into American society and the grand American experiment in individual liberty can continue. After all, that is exactly what happened with previous waves of immigrants over the last 125 years.

Not exactly! In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the large Protestant white majority of US citizens worried that the incoming flood of southern and eastern Europeans - Italians, Greeks and Slavs; Catholics and Jews - would alter the character of the United States. Then, as now, the argument embodied in the italicized words above was made. And to many, it appears that that argument has been borne out. I would argue not. Those immigrants and their children and grandchildren have been in the vanguard of the progressive movement that has drastically altered the classical character of American society. It may be that progressive/socialist ideas originated in central and western Europe, but the virus was caught and brought by the eastern and southern European immigrants to our land; and it has infected a large percentage of the population.

Much of the progressive program is subscribed to by the Latinos who are cascading down upon our shores. Moreover, while it is also true that the more virulent strains of leftism such as multiculturalism, one world government, denial of American exceptionalism, denigration of Western Civilization and rabid environmentalism did not originate in Latin America; like their eastern and southern European precursors, the Latinos are infected by these philosophies, and by the sheer weight of their numbers, they will help to steer America further away from the historical path established by our Founders.

Most of my grandparents and their friends and relatives who came to America a century ago were good people seeking to escape European Jew hatred and to build a better life in America. But they and most of their descendants were susceptible to the progressive/socialist ideas of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, FDR and LBJ. Unwittingly, they have helped to loosen the moorings of our great American heritage. The current Hispanic immigrant population is also filled with good people looking to escape poverty and, by dint of hard work and dedication, build a better life for themselves and their children. But they are steeped in the ways of Western Civilization and the American creed even less than were my grandparents. It does not augur well for the continued success of the American experiment.