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First-generation citizens such as myself are only ever half-citizens, however much we strive to fit in. You can’t shut off your normal feelings for your motherland unless your motherland was exceptionally beastly to you. Even then, I have known German Jews of the Hitler generation who still thought proudly of themselves as German.

What would be unnatural and undesirable would be for subsequent generations”€”America-born and America-raised”€”to feel that kind of bond for their ancestral nation above what they feel for America. People who urge that kind of thing are doing something wicked and ought to be exposed to public shaming, as ought the politicians who employ them.

I would be willing to cut Lang Lang some slack for liking patriotic Chinese songs even if he’d taken out US citizenship. Since he hasn’t, I’m glad without qualification to know that he loves his country as a person should. When the Olympics are on TV my wife roots for the Chinese teams. Why wouldn’t she? She’s Chinese. She’s a US citizen, sure, and glad to be one, but…Chinese. The kids root for America.

The pathology on display at that White House event was not Lang Lang’s. He’s a normal, well-adjusted human being. The abnormality was in his being asked to play for the visiting ChiComs. At a nation-to-nation event like that, a self-respecting host would put his own nation on display to the visitors. That is what normally happens. When Richard Nixon made his celebrated 1972 opening-up visit to China, he was obliged to sit through a performance of the “revolutionary ballet” Red Detachment of Women.

If the president of the United States pays a state visit to Romania, he will be entertained by a Romanian folk-dance troupe. It would be thought odd if his hosts brought in an American to do a Martha Graham routine. Likewise, when foreign leaders visit the White House, they should be shown something American: a display of country fiddling or square dancing or Delta blues.

Why did Obama and his staff bring in a Chinese national to entertain the visiting cadres? You know perfectly well why. It’s the same impulse that drives Obama to bow to emirs and sultans, to gush in his autobiography about his soulful Kenyan relatives, and to want illegal Mexican residents to have rights and subsidies not available to US citizens. It’s the multicultural cringe.

I applaud Lang Lang as an honest patriot. I only wish our ruling class had half as much love for their country as Lang Lang has for his.