Happy New Year
J. D. Pendry
You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Psalm 39:5
I resolve to gain weight and eat greasy fried food while seated helmet-less in the smoking section, be politically incorrect and remain intolerant. There. Like most Americans, I’ve planned my year. I think I can stick with this plan; any other might not last past January 3rd. Sad testament isn’t it? It’s also in line with the rest of the country. We seem to be big on resolve when it doesn’t require follow-through or commitment.
Given that our time here amounts to about a millisecond when compared to the totality of human existence, it is amazing on what most of us choose to focus. Maybe if we resolve in the New Year to let our thinking progress beyond our waistlines, whether Britney is wearing bloomers or Rosie’s imbecilic commentary, we might just begin to solve some of our serious problems. At least, if we’re going to focus on the conduct of imbeciles, let it be the ones we elected and sent to Washington.
How do you reckon the rest of the world sees us? If you’re reading this, you are attuned to the power of instantaneous worldwide communications. Therefore, you know that they see us infatuated with Britney’s missing underwear while people actively plot our destruction. Or, they see us giving national airtime to and debating the ignorant commentary of Rosie and other entertainers. If this is the image we project to the world, and it is, fanatics who believe Rosie and Britney belong in head to toe burlap burhkas must conclude the task they’ve undertaken is an easy one.
What’s more important is how we see ourselves. That requires each of us to reflect some I think. Before Christmas, I was reviewing some documents at my day job. I had to stop and ponder something I saw in one of them. A medical professional described a person as a Euro-American. Head scratchingly, I decided that we’ve completed our hyphenation process. We’ve ran out of Americans to hyphenate. Does that mean there are no more Uncategorized-Americans? Must be. In Ohio, they’re offering college scholarships to Appalachian-Americans. No kidding. Google it. We used to be hillbillies you know. Guess that’s no longer politically correct. Do you reckon I’m now a Euro-Appalachian-American? We haven’t lost our national identity. We are forfeiting it. We face an enemy with a single mind, Islamic Fascism; and a single focus, the destruction of the Great Satan – America. Somewhere in there is the not so subtle message that our survival might dictate that we try to become One-America.
You’d think we could make a reasonable comparison between America and other countries and see that what our founding fathers put together and God has allowed to survive is worth preserving. Since the beginning, we’ve had free elections and peaceful changes of government in the United States. We still have political coups taking place in the world, Thailand being recent. We still have dictators and tyrants controlling the destinies of too many people. Contrary to what the left-out would like us to believe, George Bush isn’t one of them. In the history of our country, we haven’t executed a single President that I recall. Of course, I have a public school education, so I may have missed that history lesson. History is filled with Mussolini’s strung upside down; Ceausescu’s executed by firing squads, Hussein’s hanged; Hitler’s taking the easy way out. History also accounts for millions of their victims. Yes millions. Still, many of our citizens want to call America the villain society. Study humankind and you’ll find, that even with some of the ugly warts we carry as a nation, there has never been a freer, safer or more productive society or one that’s contributed more good to the rest of the world than has the United States. Never.
We need to be able to look to our elected leaders to keep our country great, but when I look toward Washington, I’m not encouraged. As we start the New Year, the majority half of Congress has given itself the mission of ensuring the failure of our President. The remainder stands with spit-wetted fingers pointing skyward measuring the political winds. Those with the courage to stand for something are marginalized to obscurity by a biased and ignorant media and self-serving career politicians. That leaves it up to you and me.
History will not remember our Rosies and Britneys, unless they’re included comprehensively in the chapter on the moral relativism that once again ate a great nation from the inside out. History will remember but a few politicians - the ones that are glaringly successful and the criminals. It won’t be as kind to any of them as is the media that’s now recording current affairs.
History will recall the handbreadth of time you and I are here too. It will remember what we did collectively during our brief time to either destroy or save the greatest nation God has allowed to exist.
What do you resolve for 2007?
Copyright © J.D. Pendry 2007
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January 2nd, 2007 at 3:38 pm
If we are not to lose our national identity we had better follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advise which is even more valid today than in his time:
“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 man’s becoming in very fact 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, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…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.”
Theodore Roosevelt
From: http://about.com/
“Americanization” was a favorite theme of Roosevelt’s during his later years, when he railed repeatedly against “hyphenated Americans” and the prospect of a nation “brought to ruins” by a “tangle of squabbling nationalities.”
He advocated the compulsory learning of English by every naturalized citizen. “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country,” he said in a statement to the Kansas City Star in 1918. “English should be the only language taught or used in the public schools.”
He also insisted, on more than one occasion, that America has no room for what he called “fifty-fifty allegiance.” In a speech made in 1917 he said, “It is our boast that we admit the immigrant to full fellowship and equality with the native-born. In return we demand that he shall share our undivided allegiance to the one flag which floats over all of us.”