A Problem that Can’t be Ignored
A Problem that Can’t be Ignored
Gary Hunt
November 17, 2009
One of our greater presidents, immortalized on Mount Rushmore, had some sage advice that he gave to us, 92 years ago. For decades, our immigration policy tended toward what he had so wisely suggested.
Then, in the eighties, the Congress, wishing to secure their own future rather than that of the nation, began granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, and lowering the barrier for immigrants to enter the country.
Had we continued to heed his advice, our policy would not be directed to open borders and an ever expanding flow of illegal immigrants, criminals and Jihadists into this country, and, likely, many of those who have immigrated legally, under the two decade old reduction of consideration for our welfare and culture, would still be where they belonged, in their own country.
To put the following in perspective, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States (1901-1909), He was replaced by William Howard Taft. President Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1913, just a year prior to the beginning of World War I. In 1915, a British ship, the Lusitania, was sunk with 128 Americans on board. Wilson refused to enter the war, saying, “America is too proud to fight”. Finally, on April 6, 1917, Wilson asked the Congress to Declare war. Soldiers began arriving in Europe in the summer of 1918. This was written between the Declaration of War and the entry of United States troops into the hostilities.
This is Chapter III from the book, “The Foes of Our Own Household”. I have removed portions of the original, though the entire chapter can be found at: http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/childrenofthecrucible.htm.
It is important to recognize that War had been Declared by the United States Congress. It was, unfortunately, a task that had to be taken on during the conflict, because foresight wasn’t applied to immigration and assimilation before the war began.
During World War II, the Japanese, as a whole, and many Italians and Germans, with specific cause, were interred in isolation camps. This probably would not have been a concern (as the willingness of many Japanese to fight on the American side proved; and, as the minimal problem of German and Italians who were not interred, also supports), if assimilation had been a major focus of immigration laws.
It is important to understand the necessity of assimilation (1. act of becoming part of something: the process of becoming part of or more like something greater 2. integration into group: the process in which one group takes on the cultural and other traits of a larger group of immigrants — from Encarta) into the American culture. This doesn’t preclude immigrants having pride in where they come from, nor does it mean that they cannot continue to practice elements of their heritage and culture, so long as the recognize that they came here to be Americans, and that their allegiance and primary focus should be on that fact.
From The Foes of Our Own Household:
Chapter III
The Children of the Crucible
We Americans are the children of the crucible. The crucible does not do its work unless it turns out those cast into it in one national mould; and that must be the mould established by Washington and his fellows when they made us into a nation. We must be Americans; and nothing else. Yet the events of the past three years bring us face to f ace with the question whether in the present century we are to continue as a separate nation at all or whether we are to become merely a huge polyglot boarding house and counting house, in which dollar hunters of twenty different nationalities scramble for gain, while each really pays his soul-allegiance to some foreign power.
We are now at war with Germany. For three years Germany has heaped insult upon insult, injury upon injury, on our people. We showed a reluctance passing the bounds of ordinary timidity either to resent the insults or to prepare for defense. We feared to resent wrong in the present. We did not even dare to prepare so as to be able effectively to resent wrong in the future. Our supine inaction was partly due to the folly engendered in our people by the professional pacifists. But an even more important factor was the dread many of our politicians felt not merely of the German Army abroad but of German votes at home. The cold, greedy selfishness and short-sightedness of our political leaders were indefensible; and were due to the fact that the men who took the lead in the professional German-American movement sought entirely to subordinate the actions of the country of which they were nominally citizens, the United States, to the needs of the country for which they really cared, Germany.
Now we are at open war with Germany; yet many of these persons ‑ supported of course by the professional pacifists ‑ continue to champion Germany’s cause as against the cause for which we are fighting. This is moral treason to the Republic, and all who engage in it, whether senators, congressmen, editors, or professed humanitarians, are in fact, although not in law, traitors, who have no right longer to be treated as American citizens. The time has come to insist that they now drop their dual allegiance, and in good faith become outright Germans or outright Americans. They cannot be both; and those who pretend that they are both, are merely Germans who hypocritically pretend to be Americans in order to serve Germany and damage America. At the moment, the vital thing to remember about these half-hidden traitors is that to attack America’s allies, while we are at death grips with a peculiarly ruthless and brutal foe, or to champion that foe as against our allies, or to apologize for that foe’s infamous wrong‑doing, or to clamor for an early and inconclusive peace, is to be false to the cause of liberty and to the United States.’
In this war, either a man is a good American, and therefore is against Germany, and in favor of the allies of America, or he is not an American at all, and should be sent back to Germany where he belongs. There are no stauncher Americans in the country than the average Americans who are in whole or in part of German descent; and all these are as stanchly against Germany now as the Americans of English descent were against Great Britain in 1776, I speak of them with knowledge; for German blood runs in my own veins. But the American of German descent who remains a German or a half-German is not an American at all; and a large number of the men of this type are dangerous traitors who ought instantly to be sent out of the country. These men work steadily against America in the company of the native-American professional pacifists, and the pro-German Socialists, and all the anti-English foreigners. Some of these pro-German and anti-American leaders have been advocating that men of German descent should not be required to serve in our armies against Germany. This is precisely as if in the Revolutionary War it had been proposed that men of English descent should not serve against England. Such a proposal should be regarded as treasonable, and all men making it should be treated accordingly.
Many of these German sympathizers, of these foes of the United States (including not only men of German descent but men of Irish descent whose blind hatred of England makes them disloyal to America, and men of native origin, who are conscienceless politicians or who are. pacifists or denationalized and therefore thoroughly unpatriotic) fear openly to assail our country; and therefore they serve our country’s enemies effectively by assailing England, by endeavoring to keep us from effective cooperation with the allies, or by condoning and defending such acts of barbarity as the Zeppelin raids on English cities and the murderous assaults on ships crowded with innocent non-combatants.
In the Revolutionary War France was our ally. Fifteen years before she had been our bitter enemy. Therefore certain Tories endeavored to harm the American cause by reviving the old anti-French animosities. They acted precisely as the men act who to-day seek to harm the United States and help our ruthless and bitter enemy, Germany, by reviving the old anti-British enmity. Any man who during the Revolution stated that although he favored the United States against England nevertheless he also favored England against France, was really a traitor to America. Any man who now announces that although he favors the United States against Germany yet he favors Germany against England is a traitor to America. There can be no half and half attitude in this war, and no honorable man can afford to take such an attitude. We are now bound by every consideration of loyalty and good faith to our allies, and any opposition to them or any aid given to their and our enemy is basely dishonorable as regards our allies, and treasonable as regards our own country.
Weak-kneed apologists for infamy say that it is “natural” for American citizens of German origin to favor Germany. This is nonsense, and criminal nonsense to boot. Any American citizen who thus feels should be sent straight back to Germany, where he belongs. We can have no “fifty-fifty” allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all. We are akin by blood and descent to most of the nations of Europe; but we are separate from all of them; we are a new and distinct nation, and we are bound always to give our whole‑hearted and undivided loyalty to our own flag, and in any international crisis to treat each and every foreign nation purely according to its conduct in that crisis.
This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities. No other nation in the world has such resources. No other nation has ever been so favored. If we dare to rise level to the opportunities offered us, our destiny will be vast beyond the power of imagination. We must master this destiny, and make it our own; and we can thus make it our own only if we, as a vigorous and separate nation, develop a great and wonderful nationality, distinctively different from any other nationality, of either the present or the past. For such a nation all of us can well afford to give up all other allegiances, and high of heart to stand, a mighty and united people, facing a future of glorious promise.
This nation was founded because the Americans of 1776, although predominately English by blood, fought their own kinsmen to establish their liberty and to make this nation the hope of the world. Again, over a century ago, our forefathers once more fought England; and the men in this country who were of English blood stood with absolute loyalty, by America and against England. It is not merely our right but our duty to insist on exactly the same full-hearted loyalty by all Americans of other descent, whenever we are at war with the countries from which their ancestors came. We are now at war with Germany. The offenses committed against the men of 1776 by King George and the England of his day were as nothing compared to the crimes committed against us and against all civilization and humanity by the brutalized Germany of the Hohenzollerns during the last three years. There must be the same unhesitating loyalty shown now, by every American fit to call himself an American, as was shown in the days of our forefathers, when Paul Revere’s ride and the fight of the Minute Men at Lexington called the country to arms.
The obligation of single-minded Americanism has two sides ‑ one as important as the other, On the one hand, every man of foreign birth or parentage must in good faith become an American and nothing else; for any man who tries to combine loyalty to this country with loyalty to some other country inevitably, when the strain arises, becomes disloyal to this country he who is not with us is against us.
On the other hand, if a man in good faith, in soul and in body, becomes an American, he stands on a full and entire equality with everybody else, and must be so treated, without any mental reservation, without any regard to his creed, or birthplace or descent. One obligation is just as binding as the other. It is both weak and wicked to permit any of our citizens to hold a dual or divided allegiance; and it is just as mischievous, just as un-American, to discriminate against any good American, because of his birthplace, creed or parentage.
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We should provide for every immigrant, by day schools for the young and night schools for the adult, the chance to learn English; and if after say five years he has not learned English, he should be sent back to the land from whence he came. We should have a system of labor exchanges and employment bureaus which will enable us to distribute the immigrants to the places where they are most needed and can do most for their own advancement. We should protect them from fraud and rapacity.
And having thus protected them we should demand full performance of duty from them. Every man of them should be required to serve a year with the colors, like our native born youth, before being allowed to vote. Nothing would do more to make him feel an American among his fellow Americans, on an equality of rights, of duties and of loyalty to the flag.
There is no truth, more important than the truth that it is the performance of duty, toward the commonwealth, and not the enjoyment of unearned privilege from the commonwealth, that breeds loyalty, devotion, patriotism. In a family, the father and mother who fail to rear their sons and daughters to perform their recognize an duties neither receive nor deserve the loyal devotion felt for the heads of the household where the whole household is I trained to put duty, ahead of pleasure. It is the same with a nation.
We have believed that we would get devotion to our country from immigrants who came here merely to make money and escape meeting obligations. The belief was ill founded. The man who feels that the country owes him everything and that he owes the country nothing, will pay the country just what he thinks he owes nothing. It is a curious fact that many Germans who came here to avoid military service, and who while here have had to do nothing they did not care to do, yet as soon as the strain came, felt all their loyalty toward the country which exacted much from its citizens, and none at all for the country which expected nothing from its citizens.
The wisest and quickest way to Americanize the immigrant is to make him understand that here in America we have at last waked up to our needs, and that henceforth every man, whether born here or abroad, owes this country the fullest service of body and of soul.