Mexican Heroes On Display

Word! What a great comment and you couldn’t have come any closer to my thoughts. I love the fact that immigrants want to come to this great country but for god sakes, you come here to become American. Being a cop in a ghetto area I go to calls all the time where people call for service but cannot speak english. No big deal for those who have just come over right? But the kicker is that most of them have lived here for 5+ years and do not know a lick of english!

I just find it incredible that they believe it’s ok to come to this country and make NO attempt to assimilate. Would we do the same if we moved to Mexico? No way we could since we would HAVE to speak spanish to get by down there….just like it used to be here.

Greg, I have heard the same thing, never experienced it firsthand but can imagine. Sounds quite a bit like Los Angeles come to think of it….

Maybe they should just rename the state, Texico?

I’m in the beginning pages of Victor Davis Hanson’s Mexifornia.

I understand and appreciate celebrating ones ancestral culture. I like visiting Little Tokyo, and getting a taste of Japanese culture; or Chinatown, etc.

But what I am mortified with, is when immigrants do not assimilate themselves into “American” culture and heritage, which includes “white” history and the traditions that have been established here for several generations. Nothing stays the same, and I know times change and we adapt new cultural traditions into what we already have in place.

Yet there is something unnerving about people who basically are taking over your country by living here, without bothering to learn the language and culture of the country. Instead, it’s like a small little country is being built inside the one we already have here.

I’m sick of those Muslims who feel the need to defend the radical aspects of Islam; the ones who are apologists for the Middle Eastern countries who have expressed anti-American hatred for us. I am disgusted with Chicanos here who wave the Mexican flag in such a manner as to place their loyalties to Mexico over their loyalties to being American. The legal Mexican-Americans who are just as frustrated with illegals in this country get it.

I remember reading a book in high school or college called “Yankee Samurai”, which was about Japanese-Americans who fought against the Japanese, even as their families lived in internment camps. One chapter began with a Japanese-American soldier who’s father wrote him a letter saying “America has disappointed and rejected me, so I am going back to Japan. But for his son, he had other ideas:

“When a tiger dies, he leaves his skin….but when a man dies, he leaves only his name. America has rejected me, and I am going back to my native country, Japan. You, however, are to stay in America. It is your country. Defend it. I charge you not to do anything that will dishonor my name.”

They “get it“. Why can’t people today? Too many have been brain-convoluted with this multiculturalism/diversity kay-rap. Like I said, I enjoy different cultures. but it only strengthens America, so long as we are a melting pot, and not segregated into a big salad. Assimiliation is something we don’t do as well anymore, thanks to the PC-crowd who celebrate all cultures on an equal footing, forgetting that the collective American culture is the most important one we hold loyalty to.

Karen,

I agree with the sentiments expressed in your post. I wonder whether anyone knows that there has been a huge equestrian statue to Simon Bolivar, the South American nationalist a the entrance to Central Park Bolivar was considered the George Washington of the southern hemisphere, liberating not only Venezuela, but also Columbia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia from Spanish rule, instilling democracy as the governing power in the region.
The statue has been there since 1921.

The Statue of Liberty herself was a gift from France.

I don’t know where the rest of you grew up. I grew up in the a blue collar town in the suburban Northeast in the 50’s and 60’s. The largest hall in my town was the Polish-American home. We even had a separate Polish Roman Catholic church. The largest hall in the next town over was the Italian-American home. Both halls were larger than the American Legion or VFW halls in their respective communities. I can recall July 4th and Labor Day parades where my Polish schoolmates and their parents would march dressed in traditional Polish costumes. I don’t think it occurred to anyone to suggest they were somehow less patriotic for honoring their heritages. And if you did dare to suggest that to one of those blue-collar, hard working second-generation Americans, you’d probably get a punch in the nose.

Multi-culturalism is not some liberal program to dilute America’s strength. Rather, it is as American as apple pie.

I’m sure you like being in one.

Oh, we’re being eight years old now?

Webster’s defines culture as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time”. From that I do not see how “culture” can be achieved when a group of people comes to a new country and never learns the language or adapts to the ethics and morals of the new country. As I alluded in my earlier post, not learning the language becomes a serious detriment if not complete roadblock to understanding the culture into which the new citizen has moved. To consider living in the United States while only conversing in a language that is spoken only in a closed circle does not expose that person at all to living in America, nor does it allow them to understand what is going on around them. They live in a microcosm influenced more by their previous culture than by the new culture in which they chose to live. This is only discussing the initial stage of joining the culture.

The second level of joining the new culture is accommodating what the new culture has to offer rather than limiting personal activities to the previous culture. The next level then is accepting that there are legal aspects of the new culture that one must not only learn but accept and obey.

It is bad enough that diversity allows the soft sell on accepting American laws and values, like allowing a woman to go out alone, that other people consume foods considered haram, and so on. With Mexican immigrants it is not dangerous in the long term to allow them to maintain their language. Outside of maybe not knowing what “Do Not Pass” means, when they are driving, most of their ways will not result in any danger. Besides, most folks can get along with a little Spanish. Trouble comes when the Spanish speaking employees start speaking Spanish to exclude the English speaking Nortenos employees. That kind of soft ostracism is a product of diversity that causes problems. As does raising the Mexican flag over a school with the American flag hung under it upside down. Diversity, where does it stop when allowed to wander freely in our country? And finally, speaking a foreign language exclusively, or near exclusively puts an invisible divide between the non-native speaker and the English speaking majority. I don’t feel that people truly identify with other people when they do not have a common language, just a feeling I get from watching it happen for over fifty years.

And now where I went off on burqas. Previous waves of immigration did not include people who have the intent to introduce their cultural values, language, religion, and seek to make them the norm in the new country. Islam has that intent. Previously when people came to the United States the old culture was allowed to remain as is had few serious problems with the new ways of America. That has changed since the influx of Muslim immigrants. Islam is a political system with its own set of law that describes a religion. It is an all encompassing lifestyle. It is antithetical to many of the laws, customs and values of the American way. Previous attempts at cultural diversity were not prepared or did not anticipate that a culture would arrive at our shores with such a strong rejection of such things as freedom of religion and expression. Promoting diversity by accepting Islam lock stock and barrel is simply not going to work. In short, promoting diversity without considering the influx of Islam that is exploiting that very attitude is inviting disaster.

The enclaves of Muslims across Europe who do not assimilate should serve as a warning sign that maybe diversity has a dark side. In fact, to be more direct, the Muslims are being directed not to assimilate. A recent speech by the president of Turkey, presented in Germany and described by Der Spiegel, in fact directs that assimilation is wrong. All over Europe and now England, there are no go zones for police and fire and medical teams because the neighborhood considers them outsiders. Study the problems in France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and now Canada. Diversity set the table and Islamic domination came for the feast.

Perhaps a quick study of the Islamic Academy near Washington D.C. is a good idea. They have been operating without proper certificate for years now. Their text books contain passages that claim Jews are descended from apes and that Christians and Jews are not to be trusted or befriended, in fact they are to be exterminated. Similarly for an academy of Islamic Study in Minnesota. If that is the logical end result of diversity in America, we have big big problems. Don’t take my word for it, I am just some guy posting in a blog, go read about it. Go read the Muslim reporting section in Der Spiegel. Read MEMRI, read, read, read.

My entire point is that under the guise of diversity we are slipping slowly away from what was America, and up to now, maybe that was not so bad. But with a new form of immigration spreading across the land, one that uses diversity to spread a foreign influence that does not agree with our Constitution or our Bill of Rights, maybe we ought to rein in that idea and reconsider what we are doing. If diversity is letting this all in, then I am against diversity.

By the way, did you want that Bertoldt Brecht or Moliere presented in English, or were you quite satisfied with subtitles? American music is blues, jazz and Rock ‘n Roll. American dance is the line dance, square dance and the twist. American religion is free and open to everyone, to the exclusion of no one, and limiting no else’s choices. I enjoy Middle Eastern music on occasion. Something the Taliban and the Wahhabis have outlawed in their own countries, fancy that. I like south Asian food too, but so far they haven’t tried to make that my exclusive fare.