Kevin's Khronicles

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The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin,

of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all,

would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

Growing up, I always thought my ethnic background was interesting... my London-born English, Irish, Welsh father came to America in the late 50s, met and married a woman of Italian, Spanish, Jewish (yet raised a Catholic) decent of parents who spoke English with an accent, arriving in their adopted country from Italy around the turn of the century for a better life for them and their heirs.

Aside from learning Italian and broken English from my maternal grandparents, I was taught by the family (the aunts, uncles, cousins...) that I should be proud of being an Italian-American, while with my father there was the pride of being an Irish-American (how did the other nationalities get lost in the shuffle, I’ll never know).

We showed off the flags during the Knights of Columbus and Sons of Italy events, as well as always having to wear something green for Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17^th, with my mother driving me out of the house from the stench of boiled cabbage and ham for my father.

Aside from the last three holidays of the year (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve), my other favorites were Memorial Day when the town would gather for its annual parade, beginning at a house George Washington would use as a regular resting place during the Revolutionary War, marching all the way to the town green where veterans and politicians would make speeches, and there’d be hot dogs and hamburgers for everyone. This was the one time of year all us kids who wanted to participate in the parade could decorate our bicycles in red, white and blue finery and ride along on part of the highway, as it was closed off for the event.

And then there was the ultimate Patriot Day, the 4^th of July, Independence Day. This is when I would really bask in the stars and stripes, being surrounded by the history our forefathers had given us, doing the picnics, dressing up in red, white and blue colored clothing, and being awed by the spectacular fireworks that lit the night sky.

For obvious reasons, my father was not too keen on this celebration of his adopted country’s day of Independence from the motherland of Great Britain, but he liked watching those fireworks just like the rest of us, even if he would scold me at times for being too American.

During my youth, I could see a difference between the immigration of my maternal grandparents and that of my father. Where one was proud to be known as Americans; had profound respect for their newly beloved country, and gave their children to fight for their inherited freedoms in countless wars (my relatives were in every war since World War II and are still serving), my father was just the opposite. He became an American for financial gain (less taxes to pay here than in England), and because there was simply nothing in his birth country to go back to. There was absolutely no loyalty or pride in his decision to become an American citizen.

Whenever he didn’t like something this country was doing (especially around Independence Day), he would bellow throughout the house and many times during dinner, Damn the Colonies!... to which I, being a first generation born American, exploded one day within arm’s reach of me, heatedly replying, If you don’t like this country so much, why don’t you return to England!!!

That remark cost me a good beating and being sent to my room for the weekend, as well as being ordered to take down the American flag that hung in my bedroom as well as my poster of Jesus that hung beside it (but I was allowed to keep the flag of the Union Jack that hung on the opposite wall). Usually it would be my mother who would smooth things between my father and I, but from childhood, I now saw him as a coward and a traitor who should be deported.

Fast forward to the madness in today’s society where color of race is gone from our vocabulary, replaced with African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American... and what are the whites called again? European-Caucasians? No, that would make us racists. I suppose we’ll have to be left out of the hyphenated names Teddy Roosevelt mentioned nearly a century ago.

But it does give one thought as to where our loyalties truly lay within our hearts.

Not long ago I was in the Los Angeles area working on the documentary I’m currently producing, when entire areas were blocked off because of thousands of Mexicans protesting laws the united States was considering against their fellow countrymen and women who are in this country illegally.

The first march by the protestors gave the wrong message because they came in droves through the streets, smiling and yelling before the cameras, proudly waving the flag of their heartfelt nation. When a second march was planned not long after, the people of Mexican descent were told and taught to keep the flag of their beloved country at home and only carry the American emblem to show that they really did love this country. Many did as they were told; some were defiant, but the message was already clear to the public... we knew where their true hearts and feeling lay.

This is the growing problem we have in today’s society, in which foreigners who come to this country may be seeking a better life (as well as better government handout benefits that not even native born Americans can receive), but are taught to continue to be loyal to their native country.

We have come a long way in the last century, when Theodore Roosevelt was president, where he consistently peppered his speeches with his views on immigrants and immigration in general. Here are just some of those quotes, spoken honestly and fervently this Republican had to say...

Roosevelt knew and understood that the country he was in charge to lead could not handle a multi-language system as we have in today’s society; that it would be too costly. America was not here to bend to the immigrant, nor was it to be the other way around, but more like a meeting in the middle; one helping the other as he stated...

Roosevelt was also against those immigrants who would support politicians that would, in turn, support the interests of the immigrant’s native country, calling it treason and an anti-American alliance. He used the motto: America for Americans for all Americans, both native and immigrant, and addressing in one of his many speeches on the subject....

Roosevelt hated the use of the hyphen for immigrants because it, represented an effort to form political parties along racial lines and to bring pressure to bear on parties and politicians, not for American purposes, but in the interest of some group of voters of a certain national origin or of the country from which they or their fathers came.

In his last public statement, Roosevelt had many comments to make about his beloved country that he devoted much of his life to serving, and about the immigrant, in general, when he mentioned...

We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one 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 an American and nothing but an American.

If the immigrant tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American.

We have room but for 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, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house, and we have room but for one soul, and that is loyalty to the American people.

Roosevelt died a short time after penning those words, on January 6, 1919, when surrounded by his family, he uttered his last words, Put out the light...

Sometimes I wonder if America’s light is being put out by a melting pot of multi-linguistic nationalities. Where product instructions, everyday goods, voter registration and other government forms are now being written in so many different languages to accommodate immigrants, both legal and illegal, that English seems to be getting lost in the translation.

Even where I live in Central California, I find it difficult sometimes to ask a sales person for help in locating an item because they don’t speak English, and once, after asking four store employees for an item and getting the standard reply of shaking heads and the familiar, No habla Englees... I finally resorted to desperation when I yelled out in the middle of the aisle, Does any employee in this store speak English?...

I may have received a lot of strange looks from other customers, but I can tell you that help, in English, came running to my attention.

I still believe in the strength of my country and I’ll fight to preserve its ways through my time, my writings, my finances, and any other way possible until I no longer have breath in me, because as an American, I believe my country is worth fighting for, which values were instilled in me by my loyal, American-loving immigrant grandparents.

For outsiders to come here with the sole purpose of destroying us; for our spineless politicians who fret and worry about what their constituents will think (and, more importantly, how they’ll vote for them in the next election) and decide to vote to allow the public to burn this nation’s flag; a symbol of everlasting freedom in which an ocean of blood was spilled, we are in sad shape, and the only way to turn this country around is for all of us, Americans for America, to speak up once and for all and say enough is enough, and not be afraid that your lifestyle may be changed because you have a voice.

It’s one of those freedoms that was given to you. Someday, you may not have a voice to speak with.

May God continue to bless this country, on this, her 230^th birthday. 

Until Next Month,

Kevin