Democracy vs. melting pot
Its form will be that of the federal republic; its substance a democracy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and autonomously through common institutions in the enterprise of self-realization through the perfection of men according to their kind. The common language . . . of its great tradition would be English, but each nationality would have for its emotional involuntary life its own peculiar dialect or speech, its own individual and inevitable esthetic and intellectual forms. The political and economic life of the commonwealth is a single unit and sere as the foundation and background for the realization of the distinctive individuality of each natio that composes it and of the pooling of these in a harmony above them all.
. . . the United State are in the process of becoming a federal state not merely as a union of geographical and administrative unities, but also as a cooperation of cultural diversities, as a federation or commonwealth of national cultures.
Kallen, Democracy vs. the Melting Pot(1916).