Teddy Roosevelt was considered a progressive in his day. In fact, he’s still looked up to by progressives in the present day. He forcible split up large businesses, created the original “Square Deal” that would inspire his cousin’s “New Deal”, made conservation a federal-level issue, and pushed the federal government to further regulate business. In short, he was big government.

And yet Teddy understood that assimilation was necessary for the United States to remain a united country. We welcome immigrants, of course. After all, we’re a nation built by immigrants from the start. But we’re a melting pot and not a salad bowl. We must speak a common language and bear loyalty to a single flag. Immigrants are expected to assimilate to American values and culture, not the other way around.

Which brings us to his most famous quote on assimilation:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

The same holds true today.