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One of the tragedies of today’s world--since the last
third of the twentieth century--is that we have become adversarial
towards one another regarding issues and values that used to
be common for all of us. It used to be that the ideas we now
fight over were once givens; and on some of those "givens," our
foundation as a nation was built.
The below isn't about obliterating original family,
culture, religious heritage, and/or customs. Our
ancestral traditions and beliefs give us history, tradition, and personhood. The
below is about patriotic unity and duty. It is about chauvinism
and nationalism--love of one's country.
American society also consists of an ancestry of families,
culture, heritage and customs that matter; we must not forget that America
itself is an entity with traditions, a language, schools,
literature, style, values, societal norms and mores that represent
our own culture. These attributes of our everyday life are
equally as important as those that we inherited from past generations
across our borders and the seas. If we want to preserve
our nation and all it stands for, American values must matter most to
each of us.
America
is and always has been the leader of the free world. While not perfect, it
stands alone in protecting the rights of others, everywhere. This is a
part of who we are as Americans.
Nowhere in the world has a society/civilization existed
where revolution was led from within--the colonies against England--and
where, when the battles ended and leadership taken, was power then
given to the people in an orderly fashion, to rule with laws.
George Washington, our first leader, was president for
8 years; he stepped down willingly in order to let others serve--unheard of
until that time and still unique in most countries of the world,
today.
America
has laws: a constitution, with a bill of rights for every citizen in
this country. Our entire framework is built on the holiness
of law. To defy the law is to defy a major premise of western
civilization, and one of the major defining differences between humanity
and the animal kingdom.
Many countries have followed our lead; very
few have had the spirit, the determination, the know-how to reach the
potential and achieved greatness of America.
We are by definition a society of immigrants, and we
are multi-cultural in origin. However, when immigrants and
multi-culturalists become more invested in themselves and their
separate individual rights with regard to their own personal practices,
rather than the collective meld of our American heritage, then we are
no longer a country with a united common purpose, but a pool of undefined
rudderless riff-raff, instead.
Assimilation is a slippery slope. The good news is
that we learn to get along with others, and appreciate an array of habits and
perspectives. The bad news is that it allows us to become ripe for
others to conquer; for us to become another identity under another flag--with
other values and other foci. To deny or ignore this reality is to deny
and/or ignore all of human history and human nature. It will always be
about the survival of the fittest.
The price of freedom is responsibility--not only to us, but
to our nation and fellow Americans who, despite so many challenges and
imperfections, all these years have fought, worked, and kept our
country whole. Our national motto: E Pluribus
Unum—out of many is one; not the other way around.
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907: "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But, this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
