From the Shining City on a Hill to a Great Metropolis on a Plain?: American Stories of Immigration and Peoplehood

Americans have always been divided over whether to welcome or to discourage immigration. But virtually all American leaders have rested their views on notions that the United States has unique providential or world-historical significance-as an asylum for the world's oppressed, as a model to the world, or even as the world's leader. Today, it is normatively desirable for the U.S. to view itself not as the world's "city on a hill" but simply as one worthy political society among many others. Whether such a view can be made politically appealing to most Americans, however, remains in doubt.