Mark K., what you write is nothing short of absurd. The notion of a “nation of immigrants” was not to delegitimize America before 1880. It was to imply a connection between those who settled the country coming from England and Scotland and Germany and Holland and those who came to the country in exactly the same way those settlers did — on boats, across the seas. That is not a delegitimation. It is, rather, an effort to legitimize the more recent immigrations by connecting them to the Pilgrims. To suggest otherwise is really nothing but intellectual paranoia, and it is beneath you.