Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine is the first senator in history to abandon the English language and directly pander to a minority group in their own language on the Senate floor.

We hear from liberals (and their pro-amnesty GOP enablers) that Hispanics are assimilating. As if to show that they are serious, the Gang of Eight's Sen. Dick Durbin boasts that the amnesty bill ensures immigrants will be "learning English and the basics about America's history."

That's their rhetoric, but we can see what they truly believe by watching how they behave.

The fact is that some Hispanics would not have understood the liberal Senator if he hadn't spoken their language. And why should they learn English? The only absolute truth left in our society is that "our diversity is our strength," a dogma so pervasive that even Republicans repeat it with cultish devotion.

So the immigrant minority is special and valuable precisely because they are not assimilated. Why would any immigrant choose to assimilate in this intellectual climate?

This is what it looks like when a nation undermines its own culture and creates the conditions for linguistic, ethnic, and cultural balkanization.

Sen. Kaine did what all liberals and gullible Republicans do; he explained his decision as a one-time expedient, to help those Hispanics who have refused to learn English to "know what the bill is about." Like the amnesty bill itself, speaking Spanish on the Senate floor is a temporary corrective measure.

The dreadful fallacy is that you can completely surrender your culture or sovereignty just one time, for one purpose, and those you surrendered to won't expect more. 

If Sen. Kaine is speaking Spanish on the Senate floor, then why aren't all DMVs, courthouses, classrooms, or even private businesses required to provide Spanish-language instruction or services? Many localities do. Anyone who knows a single thing about identity politics and the welfare state should understand that pandering begets more demands, and eventually an expanded welfare state. 

This won't stop with Hispanics. Note that Sen. Kaine didn't speak Farsi, Japanese, Hindi, or Mandarin Chinese. But surely other minority groups won't sit by while Hispanics benefit from government services and the intangible benefits of being pandered to. 

Those immigrant groups that are slow or resistant to assimilate now have greater incentive for separatism, and a great model to follow. 

It is already a verified fact that on certain key measures, Hispanics are not assimilating.

In their book Generations of Exclusion sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz found that Mexican-Americans have accomplished "little assimilation" with regard to education and socio-economic status. Even by the fourth generation, they do not have the same educational progress as those of European descent.

That would explain why 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the U.S. for over 20 years are on some form of government benefits, which is actually a higher percentage than immigrants who have been in the U.S. for less than five years, according to a Center for Immigration Studies analysis. Their report found that 57% of Mexican immigrants are on some form of welfare, compared with only 6% of UK immigrants.

We've found the one area where pro-amnesty Republicans are accidently correct when they say Hispanics are joining the mainstream: "Assimilating into the welfare system," according to Harvard economist George Borjas, is a strong trend.

Of course, everyone knows of exceptions -- but those exceptions don't stop the welfare state from crushing the economy and generating mass dependency.

The conservative Hudson Institute put out an important but little-known report in April detailing the total collapse of assimilation as a social trend. Samuel Huntington's essay "The Hispanic Challenge" should have buried any Republican belief that assimilation would ever occur given the historical and geographical tensions between the U.S. and Mexico. Tragically, the GOP appears to be listening to its own propaganda, and placing its faith in bone-rattling political witch doctors like Karl Rove.

America is rapidly losing its identity as a nation and instead becoming an administrative entity for welfare provision. This awful process is sped along by the balkanization incited by Sen. Kaine, and every similar act of pandering, great and small.

It took intense patriotism, cultural pride, and widely shared norms to tie ethnicities together in the past.

Those unifying forces have been demolished by multiculturalism, and the only question now is how to minimize the damage. That starts with preventing amnesty.

John T. Bennett, Esq. (MA, University of Chicago, Master of Arts Program in the SocialSciences '07; J.D., Emory University School of Law '12) is a former Army officer with tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Djibouti. His writing has appeared in Townhall.com, World Net Daily, and The Chicago Tribune, among others