taking a break from ugly political landscape that is our current existence to share with my readers something of much greater importance. this week marked the birth of my first grandchild. miss laela noel joined us in this world at 22:48 on 24 august 2009. she weighed 5lbs 14oz and was 18" long.
she looks so much like her mommy, miss katerina scarlette, that it made my heart ache. she DOES have her daddy's nose and ear lobes, but other than that, she's pure katerina.
here are some pictures of here first few days of life. she is one very loved baby and her grammy could not be more proud.
i hope you enjoy the pictures as much as i am enjoying this little angel.
laela is the hope of my future and the promise of tomorrow.
today marks the passing of a man i was honored to have known for the last third of my life. scott allan bowron was 64 years old and passed this morning around 4am. what he died is of little consequence; how he lived and what he lived for, that is what is important.
i met scott at a training class in florida for the software product that both of our firms represented at the time. he arrived just a few minutes late and took the last seat in the room, next to me. we spent five days together learning, talking and laughing. by the end of the class i knew that i had made a friend - i just had no idea what that meant in scott's world.
while in florida for and in the class we discussed cooking - a favorite topic and past time of both of ours - and i was bemoaning the fact that where i lived in l.a. i was unable to find old bay seasoning. and trust me, having grown up in southern maryland, the bay and its bounty - including that seasoning - was a big part of my cooking! scott commiserated with me and that was pretty much it. then, less than a week after the class ended and i had returned back to california, a package arrived at my office - it was two cans of old bay seasoning!
i know this seems a silly story, but it is really a great of example of who scott was. when he knew what someone needed/wanted and he was in a position to provide it for them, he did. no strings, no questions it would just show up.
since that time in florida, scott has been a constant presence in my life and the life of my children and husband. scarcely a week has passed without telephone contact between us. rarely have two days passed without personal emails being shared. and he was the largest supplier of blond jokes to my inbox, too!
many hours were spent with scott in his condo in new jersey and on the porch at the lodge on square pond lake in shapleigh maine. the lodge is a magical place where everything is serene and there are no strangers. it is a place where love and food and relaxation abound. it is a place that is totally and utterly scott.
in 2001, just a few days after 9/11, scott wrote an essay titled "after 9/11" and sent it to his friends and several his customers. i had lost it when my email crashed a couple of years ago, but thankfully was able to get another copy of it from one of his customers.
it was an amazing article and one that i may post in full another time. but for today i wanted to use some of his words to express how those of us who knew and loved him may be feeling. i know it's an accurate description for me.
in his essay he was comparing his memories of the assassination of john f. kennedy and the attacks against our soil on 11 september 2001. in this passage, he had just described watching the caisson for jfk pass and a particular serviceman who had been present:
"I have come to know, though, that neither I nor that serviceman I see in my mind's eye feel the shock and sadness of JFK's assassination to the depth that we felt it that dark November day. From this, I am able to realize that the uncertainty and pain that you and I, our nation, and the world feel at this moment will diminish over time. We shall never forget, but time will heal our frayed souls and fractured hearts. I also know that my life, that serviceman's life, and the history of the world are somehow different than they would have been had JFK lived., although no one can say precisely how."
i know that he is right in all that he says here and it is accurate, also about his death today. right now, the pain is raw, it is fresh and it hurts. no matter that we knew he was going to pass in "days rather than weeks" as his oncologist warned us. no matter that we've been preparing for this moment, this day for the better part of a year. none of it mattered when i got the news of his passing this morning.
in response to the notice of his death sent via "lodge mail" for all "friends of the lodge", his (and my) good friend lee had this to say:
"We all experienced the love and magnificent generosity of Scott, a very extraordinary man. Isn't it totally in keeping with his nature to express that same love and generosity in death by donating his body in service to humanity. He had a special presence, and I'm confident that his continuing physical presence, his body, will be treated with dignity and love. At the internment service of a very dear friend/client who did a similar thing a couple of years ago, there was a wonderful feeling of thanksgiving and admiration as well as pangs of loss and finality. There will be no less than that for our Scott. And the memory of Scott's presence, his spirit, will live on in all of our hearts. We have a little pine tree baby from the lodge planted in our garden. It's both a bittersweet and a totally positive reminder of what was and what is. -with love to all, Lee
you see, in keeping with how he lived his life, scott has donated his body to science in the hope that by studying it there will be some help for others later. he thought of others first always.
i know that much is uncertain now, however, if any of you are so inclined to honor scott's memory with a monetary contribution, please know that the money will be used solely for the perpetuation of the lodge. if it is your desire to help, please mail checks payable to "friends of the lodge" to:
friends of the lodge c/o domus international 1919 piedmont road n.e. atlanta, ga 30324-4116 usa
scott will be well missed. but i do not mourn his passing so much as i celebrate his life. he has left us with a beautiful daughter who will be our rallying point. she is his blood and a great tribute to him as well. he has left us the lodge to gather at in remembrance of him and to move forward with those memories. with the help of all of us (and others we may not yet know) the lodge will forever be scott's place. and we will be with him there always through the love, the food and the beautiful sunsets. i hope to see you there!
i'm going to preface this by saying that i have no way to prove that this was written by a real marine. i have checked snopes and they have nothing on it, but i am posting it regardless.
Message from a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
7 April 2008
It's (expletive) freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles. I also glance at the area around my a$$ every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but them (expletive) scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a ba$tard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement. It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit a bloody ear into his face and plunge my nickel plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me, I'm a romantic! I've said it before and Ill say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rockpit (expletive) ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs. Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army That's it. Those are your options.
Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those "tent cities of the walking dead" is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day. And let me tell you something else. I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbek's and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns.... actual, living Huns!
They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. Its ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. (Expletive) cavemen with AK 47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm freezing my (expletive) off on this stupid (expletive) hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, write a letter to CNN and tell Judy and Bernie and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban "smart." They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is "cunning."
The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart. They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it. OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good at it.
Please tell my fellow Americans to turn off their TV sets and move on with their lives. The story line you are getting from CNN is utter (expletive) and designed not to deliver truth, but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here because you have no idea what we' re doing and, really, you don't want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
You wanna help? Buy some (expletive) stocks, America!
i posted this message because it's important, and from the guys i've known who have been there it fits with their thinking and experiences. i believe it is also all the more timely because of whom our choices are between for the next potus.
i hope you enjoyed reading this and that you'll help to spread the message.
over the weekend i attended a send off program for the daughter of my most liberal friend. her daughter, we'll call her holly (20-year old soon to be college senior), is every bit as liberal as her mother - possibly more - and she is heading to sierra leone to work with the school sisters of notre dame on their long-standing education mission to that country. i think this is a wonderful move for her and should be very humbling in terms of what we have vs. what "they" have.
holly and i had a long conversation on monday when she came over to get a long silk/linen scarf to take for her head covering (to help keep her hair out of her face and keep her cool) and a travel pillow. i love this girl for so many reasons, but one of the things i love most about her is her ability to debate logically. one of the things that so infuriates me is her ability to take a rational point in a debate and fail to see or understand how it can and should be applied. it's the liberal thing.
in our conversation we were talking about the places i've been and her previous two trips to italy and the places we'd both like to go. somehow (i'm not sure how) the talk turned to the "plight" of immigrants here, there and everywhere. because, let's face it folks, it is NOT just the united states that is having a tough time with illegal immigrants.
anyhow, holly said something fairly profound that really got me thinking. in talking about the instability all over africa, she said "do you know anything about tanzania and how it got things mostly stabilized?" to wit i had to answer "um, no, not really." so she told me to look it up because they had done something "so amazing" to help engender a feeling of nationalism that was working on a grand scale.
for those of you who don't know a whole lot about politics and stateism in africa, suffice to say that a great deal of the strife and fighting on that continent is caused by age-old tribal rivalries. the fact is that imaginery borders were put into place and countries named and tribes were told to "you now belong to this country or that country" with told disregard of the status of relations between the various tribes being sent to this country or that country.
many of these countries were "founded" in the 1960's or even later. a majority of people in those countries don't think of themselves as somalians or sierra leonians or even tanzanians but as members of the various tribes. for instance, tanzania is made up of more than 125 tribes and each has its own language and identity. not only that, it is actually two separate countries (tanganyika and zanzibar) combined into one with a unified republican government formed by the governments of the two countries.
there is quite a bit of interesting information here if you're interested. it talks of the differences between the tribes, between women and men, the economy and just about everything else you never wanted to know about tanzania. it also mentions a few times that the national language is kiswahili (go here to learn about it); english is the language of the government and higher level jobs. apparently the "amazing" thing they did in tanzania was to establish the national language to elevate a sense of country.
what a concept, eh? so i said to holly "this is the exact reason intelligent, logical people in our country are pushing for english to recognized as the official national language of the united states." and she said? "well our situation is a bit different and we need to honor the different cultures of those who immigrate here by not forcing them to speak the language of the majority."
huh? if there is anyone out there who can make sense of that convoluted statement, please comment and explain it to me. i surely don't get it.
but the whole conversation and my subsequent reading on tanzania got me to thinking about how similiar the united states is to those african countries. we're every bit as much of potpouri in terms of our cultural make up as any of those countries - the primary differences being that our states (and country on the whole) were self formed and the majority of the people here are here because they choose to be so.
think about it. we're a melting pot. we have people here from all over the world. each comes with his or her own language and cultural identity. each is looking to do more than merely survive - seriously folks, why would someone move to a new country if they don't have any hope to do better there than in his or her country of birth?
when this country was in its formative period as colonies, it was primarily a subject of england. thus the majority of people here spoke english as their first language. as new people moved here from germany, italy, china, japan, mexico, france, spain, greece, russia and so on and so forth they arrived speaking languages that were not english. but because the majority of people spoke english and business and government were conducted in english people learned english. this was true even BEFORE we became an actual independent country.
this doesn't mean that some of them didn't continue to speak spanish or german or italian or mandarin at home, but it wasn't a language they could use in the outside world of the united states (previously american colonies). they may have kept some of the traditions from "home" but they didn't expect the rest of the population to adopt their traditions or eradicate traditions that had come into existence (or accepted) here.
today, in the united states, the majority of people still speak english as their first language. business and government is primarily conducted in english. and yet english is not our official or national language. but why not?
in our schools we teach (or attempt to teach) those whose first language isn't english in their language. officially we call it "english as a second language" (or esl), privately i call it sheer stupidity. people can't learn a language by getting a new word each day ala sesame street. people learn a language by using that language.
but here in our country the pc crowd has determined that immigrants will do better if we help them to hang on to the national identity of their former country. huh? this is just illogical and devoid of all common sense.
nearly 100 years ago, in 1919, theodore roosevelt penned these words:
"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 for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
these are sage words even today. but too many think they are passe or ancient thinking or maybe it's simply that they are unapologetic in their sentiment that is good to be an american. one other thing that teddy said that sticks with me is this
"We want to make our children feel that the mere fact of being Americans makes them better off... This is not to blind us at all to our own shortcomings; we ought steadily to try to correct them; but we have absolutely no grounds to work on if we don’t have a firm and ardent Americanism at the bottom of everything."
and this statement emodies everything that is emotionally tied to being an american. we are better in that we welcome more people of more cultures and nationalities than ANY other country in the world. we recognize that there are things we need to work on and we do. we work at our weaknesses at the personal, local, national and international level. and we are, for the world's elite, the most reviled nation in the history of the world.
even the elite of the world want to come here. even they recognize the opportunity and freedom available here. so why do they want to change that?
i don't know anyone who is against all immigration into our country - i'm not saying those people don't exist, i just don't know any of them. i do believe that the media, some immigrant support groups and some of our friends on the left, are trying to portray those of us against illegal immigration as being against all immigration. but this is simply isn't the case.
i realize that it may be scary to come to a new country and leave behind all that you know and all that is familiar. but how much worse it must be to come to a new country and still try hold on to everything you knew at "home". i guess that is the primary motivation behind those who refuse to assimilate, but they are truly missing the point of coming to the united states.
people coming to this country - from anywhere else - and not becoming fluent in the language and the history of the country is a bad thing. it lessens the immigrant's chances for an excellent, successful life and it weakens the fabric of our country.
when i was halfway through this post, i found a post on this subject over at my good friend donald's place (american power) and asked if i could crosspost a portion of it here - thankfully he acquiessed. you can read his whole post here, and it's well worth the time to do so, but here are the important parts:
"The media offers up a steady diet of data about current immigration from Mexico, and much of it consists of "averages" regarding English-language skills, income, home-ownership rates, education and so forth. But while digesting these figures, it's important to keep in mind that Latino immigration is ongoing. These averages are snapshots of a moving stream and therefore of little use in measuring assimilation. To properly gauge assimilation, we need to find out how immigrants in the U.S. are faring over time. Only longitudinal studies that track individuals can provide that information.
"Just looking at averages can give you a very distorted view of who's learning English or dropping out of school or climbing out of poverty....
"The reality, however, is that the longitudinal studies show real socio-economic progress by Latinos. Progress is slower in some areas, such as the education level of adult immigrants, and faster in others, such as income and homeownership rates. But there is no doubt that both assimilation and upward mobility are occurring over time. With respect to linguistic assimilation, which is one of the more important measures because it amounts to a job skill that can increase earnings, the historical pattern is as follows: The first generation learns enough English to get by but prefers the mother tongue. The children of immigrants born here grow up in homes where they understand the mother tongue to some extent and may speak it, but they prefer English. When those children become adults, they establish homes where English is the dominant language. There's every indication that Latinos are following this pattern. According to 2005 Census data, just one-third of Latino immigrants in the country for less than a decade speak English well. But that proportion climbs to 75% for those here 30 years or more. There may be more bilingualism today among their children, but there's no evidence that Spanish is the dominant language in the second generation. The 2000 Census found that 91% of the children of immigrants, and 97% of the grandchildren, spoke English well."
donald also quotes from a u.s. news article, "mexican immigrants prove slow to fit in" which shows that the question maybe a bit more complicated than huntington purports:
In the heart of California's iconic Orange County—home to Disneyland and the bourgeois teens of MTV's Laguna Beach—is troubled Santa Ana. The county seat of 353,000, where nearly 6out of every 10 adults over age 25 lack a high school diploma, suffers from crippling poverty and an explosion in crime. In 2004, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government placed Santa Ana at the very top of its Urban Hardship Index—officially dubbing it worse off than Miami, Detroit, Cleveland, and Newark, N.J. With 76 percent of its population Hispanic, mostly Mexican immigrants, Santa Ana is the poster child for the troubles of the country's immigration policies and of Mexican immigrants in particular.
Now, a new study lays bare what sociologists and others have long argued: Mexican immigrants are assimilating to life in the United States less successfully than other immigrants. Sponsored by the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, "Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States" by Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University, introduces a novel assimilation index that uses census and other survey data to measure how similar select immigrant groups are to native-born Americans. Using such factors as intermarriage, English ability, military service, homeownership, citizenship, and earnings, Vigdor assembled a 100-point assimilation index. The closer to 100, the more assimilated an immigrant group. Overall, the report shows immigrants are weaving into the American fabric at a remarkable clip, despite arriving poorer and knowing less English than immigrants of a century ago. And they are gaining speed, with new arrivals assimilating faster than those who came more than 20 years ago. With a score of 53, Canadians are the most assimilated, followed closely by Filipinos, Cubans, and Vietnamese. The main outlier: Mexicans, with a score of 13—followed by Salvadorans.
Why Mexicans are faring so poorly in the United States is complicated, experts say. But the root of the problem is no surprise: Many Mexicans are here illegally, depriving them of rungs on the economic ladder and the opportunity to gain citizenship. "There are certain jobs or certain services you just can't get [as an illegal immigrant]," Vigdor says. "There are plenty of indications here that for those Mexican immigrants who are interested in making a more permanent attachment to the United States, their legal status puts very severe barriers in that path."
this may explain why the actual immigrant is failing at assimilation into americanization, but what of their children - even the "anchor babies" who are american citizens? what of the children of the anchor babies? thanks to the vagaries of esl, we have second and third generation americans who do not speak english fluently - in some parts of the country even naturally born americans of hispanic (primarily mexican) origin speak poor english with a spanish accent!
how do you explain this with anything other than they value their association with mexico more than with the united states? how do you see theese results and still cling to the notion that esl is the best way to educate these people?
"Mexican immigrants tend to be segregated somewhat from the rest of US society; some 42% of Hispanics lived in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods in 1990 (Chiswick and Miller, 1999). This is probably because of choice; immigrants feel most comfortable living with those who speak their language and share their culture. However, in choosing to live with other Mexican immigrants, they are choosing to live with people who have, on average, relatively little education, low English language skills, and scant earning power. Thus, employers will be less likely to open businesses and stores in Mexican neighborhoods, and simply by choosing to live among other Mexican immigrants they are choosing to live in economically depressed neighborhoods. Even the best and the brightest of the Mexican immigrants may be “pulled back” towards the 'average' Mexican and may earn less than they might have had they not been Mexican."
however, further in the u.s. news article the author posits:
Indeed, in a unique multigenerational study spanning four decades, Generations of Exclusion, sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz found that many immigrants and their children had made slow progress assimilating for cultural and economic reasons. A large community means a large dating pool: Only 17 percent of third-generation Mexicans studied had married non-Hispanics. The authors found adult Mexican-Americans in the third and fourth generations lived in more segregated neighborhoods than they did as youths, largely because of the many new immigrant arrivals. Educational levels, meanwhile, lagged behind the national average. However, English ability was nearly universal, even among first-generation immigrants, which should ease the concerns of some lawmakers who want to make English the natural language. Significantly, though, 36 percent of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans studied could still speak Spanish.
i have been unable to ascertain what standard is used by the sociologists, edward telles and vilma ortiz, to determine "...english ability was nearly universal even among first- generation immigrants..." i have been unable to find any other study or author who puts forth this notion.
still further in the u.s. news article:
Perhaps most telling: Of the approximately 1,500 surveyed in two distinct immigrant communities—Los Angeles and San Antonio—most identified as "Mexican" or "Mexican-American" even into the fourth generation. It's that kind of cultural signifier that has so many white Americans concerned that this is a group not interested in becoming American.
wow - ya think?!?
donald continues in his post that as santa ana's "city's population is 76 percent Hispanic with 53 percent foreign born - the city's literally a classic microcosm of the phenomenal sub-national trends in demographic diversity giving way to ethnic homegeneous-hegemonic dominance."
but, as donald observes, should just talking about this stuff get you branded as racist?
is not my favorite. He's a political opportunist and grandstander on immigration, and his "war on the middle class" segments are unhinged on issues of economic mobility and trade. But some of his reports on immigration are indeniably accurate in detailing the problems of local commuities around the country in tackling out of control immigration .
And because of reports like these, the nihilist left-wing of the open borders operation is up in arms about the media's "
This idea of America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language, and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become a part of our society, learn the language!
The Velazquezes speak fluent English and cherish their middle-class foothold in America. Maria and Carlos each earn about $20,000 a year as a school administrator and a graveyard foreman, respectively, and they own a simple three-bedroom home. But they remain wedded to their native language and culture. Spanish is the language at home, even for their five boys, ages 6 to 18. The kids speak to each other and their friends in English flecked with "dude" and "man," but in Cicero, where 77% of the 86,000 residents are Hispanic, Spanish dominates.
The older boys snack at local taquerías when they don't eat at home, where Maria's cooking runs to dishes like chicken mole and enchiladas. The family reads and watches TV in Spanish and English. The eldest, Jesse, is a freshman at nearby Morton College and dreams of becoming a state trooper; his girlfriend is also Mexican-American. "It's important that they know where they're from, that they're connected to their roots," says Maria, who bounced between Spanish and English while speaking to BusinessWeek. She tries to take the kids to visit her parents in the tiny Mexican town of Valle de Guadalupe at least once a year. "It gives them a good base to start from."
based on the information further down in the article this is fairly typical of the mexican immigrants. it's a great article and one i highly recommend anyone concerned with the effects of unbridled/illegal immigration read.
essentially as mexican immigrants are coming into the states at an estimated 400,000 persons per year. i say estimated because we really don't know what the actual number is because of the illegals. additionally, they are reproducing at a rate of 3% per annum vs .8% by all other groups except muslims who are reproducing at a rate 5% - but that's a whole other discussion.
assimilation for mexicans and other hispanics is not really aided by the american society in general. from mandated esl classes in the public schools, to street signs to government forms (including voting ballots) to private industry "selling in spanish", we are enabling an entire segment of our society to "opt out" of being/becoming american.
america was not founded as a "nation of immigrants" but rather as a nation of freedom and independence and self-sufficiency. she (and we) have always welcomed those who yearn for freedom and want to be americans. but freedom isn't free - along with the rights afforded by our constitution, there is the duty of being a active and productive member of society.
how productive or active can you be as a member of american society if you have broken the law to get here? how productive or active can you be as a member of american society if primarily honor only the traditions of the country you left to come here to better yourself - from flying the mexican flag to eating primarily mexican foods to surrounding yourself with spanish speakers from your home country? how productive or active can you be as a member of american society if you don't actively seek out relationships with people outside of the hispanic community?
unless we act decisively and soon we will fulfill the words of one other thing that teddy roosevelt said:
"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of it continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
what a great sentiment. i snagged this from goat and although it's not part three of my latest series i believe it ties right in.
one of his readers wrote this song and taught it to her church's childrens' choir. it's a beautiful tribute not only to our troops but to all of us who stand against tyranny every day.
be certain to have some tissues ready before hitting play - don't say i didn't warn you!
as i told goat, we need to make this one go viral. it is all the more beautiful for the beautiful children pouring their heart and soul into.
there are not enough words to say how incredible the woman is who wrote this song - i wish i had a talent such as this.
before i get into the lesson (next post, i promise), i want to take a few minutes and recognize a few people.
yesterday, uncle joe over at grandma is an idiot honored me with his blog of the week award. i have long been a fan of webb sloane, grandma and uncle joe as this is a big deal for me. for those of you unfamiliar with the family, stop on by and check out his site. it's perhaps the best satirical postings you'll find; be certain you are not trying to swallow any liquids while reading over there.
on saturday, fu manchu dad found my site - still not sure how - and (in a comment on my scalia post) said:
You have no idea how awesome it is to find a well-informed right winger like yourself. You are now my favorite right up there with Michelle Malkin. And that's saying something. Keep it up and I've blogrolled ya'.....Totally!
i have blogrolled him, too, but that's not the point. through his site i have been introduced to just scads of people - not all to my liking, but all are nice and genuine.
my blog is just a little thing and mostly it's just for my venting. it warms me beyond words to be considered as someone who is an enjoyable read.
thank you to all of you who visit and especially to those of you who comment. i am in awe of all of you.
