I am writing this in regards to the above mentioned article on your web site.  Here is my rebuttal:

I got this email forwarded to me the other day.  I started reading it and immediately thought, “Yeah!  Tell it like it is!”  I’m sure that’s what a lot of others were thinking as well.  Then, after I’d had a chance to digest it all, I realized how very wrong it is.  “Immigrants, not Americans, must adapt.”  How very sad it would be if the United States had historically taken that perspective.  What wonderful things we would have missed out on.  What amazing sights we would never have seen on our soil.  We are a multicultural nation and I am thankful for it.  Try to deny it all you want, but that is  “our” culture.

What do you consider to be part of the American culture?  Blue jeans maybe?  They were invented by a Bavarian immigrant named Loeb (Levi) Strauss.  I think most people consider the T-shirt to be pretty American.  T-shirts came to America during World War I after American troops saw European soldiers wearing them.

“As American as apple pie? would be better said, “As English as apple pie.”  How about the modern television?  It was invented by a Russian named Vladimir Kosma Zworykin.  We must consider pizza to be part of our American culture.  Of course, we borrowed that from Italy who in turn got the idea from the Middle East.  We all know tacos aren’t an American invention, but that didn’t stop us from putting a Taco Bell across the street from every McDonald’s in the U.S.  And how about pets?  Americans love their pets.  We borrowed most of them from other countries though.  Just looking at dogs here:  the Golden Retriever came from Great Britain, the Collie from Scotland, the Beagle from England, the Basset Hound from France, and the Shar-pei from China.  I could go on for days with that list.  And don’t even get me started on cats and birds!

Let’s talk about a few of our landmarks now “our very American landmarks.  Most of us know that the Statue of Liberty was given to us by the French.  It was sculpted by a French man named Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi.  The Washington Monument was designed by an American named Robert Mills.  However, he designed it that way because he wanted to follow the form of an Egyptian obelisk.  We can’t forget the incredible Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial.  It was created by a woman named Maya Ying Lin whose parents emigrated from China.  Then there is the amazing Mount Rushmore.  Anyone who knows the name of its creator knows it’s certainly not an American name.  Gutzon Borglum was the son of a Danish immigrant.

Then what about that English language the author spoke about?  I must say that not only are we Americans multicultural, but we are also multilingual.  Thousands of words we use everyday in the English language came directly from other languages.  I’m not talking about words that we adapted and changed.  I’m talking about words that we use exactly as they are used in the countries they hail from.  The word “baby” is Dutch, “squirrel” is French, “cotton” is Arabic, “safari” is Swahili, “sauna” is Finnish, “kindergarten” is German, and “pajamas” is Indian.  Was it un-American of us to adopt these foreign words, along with thousands of others, into our language?  I certainly hope not because it would be a real shame if we had to give them all back.

The “In God We Trust” motto was not adopted “because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation”.  If you truly want to talk about what this nation was “founded on” then you need to recognize that the motto “In God We Trust” wasn’t adopted until 1956.  It started being used at the height of the cold war when we feared communism and its association with atheism.  That’s NOT the motto our country was founded on at all though.  For the first 180 years of our nation’s history our only national motto was “E Pluribus Unum”, which means “one from many parts”.  This not only emphasizes the unity of America, as formed from many states, but also the creation of a single, peaceful state out of a diverse group of people who differ in matters of religion, race, language, gender, ethnicity and other factors.

One of the things that made our forefathers so remarkable was even though they were devout people, they were exceedingly fair and accepting regarding religion among other things.  They gave us the freedom of choice and the freedom from persecution.  In their incredible wisdom they separated church from state.  We Americans have the right to choose whichever god we wish or to choose none at all.  We have the right to be Jewish or Catholic, Buddhist or Muslim, Wiccan or Atheist.

The author says, “we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle”.  In reality what we have here is an amalgamation of hundreds of different cultures, societies, languages and lifestyles.  That, my friends, is why our country is as incredible as it is.  We have taken a little bit of the best from all over the world and made it part of our own.  We’ve taken ideas, principles, inventions, and styles from all over and combined them, improved on them, modified them to make them part of our world.  Where would we be if we had stuck by the attitude that our way was the right way? the only way?  “America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity.”  I think not.  That is who we are and who we have always been.  And I hope beyond hope that it is who we will always be.

I love America.  I also love all of her people.  While I may not like all of the things that are said or done, I know that I have to accept these things as part of living in a free country.  What I do when I encounter things I don’t like or don’t agree with is to use my voice and speak MY opinion in rebuttal, as I have done here.  That is also a part of living in a free country.  Saying to people “if you don’t like it, leave” is just about as un-American as it gets and it is certainly not the attitude that this great nation was founded on.

“Remember that when you say ‘I will have none of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange,’ you have denied America with that word.” - Stephen Vincent Benet

“Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.” - John F. Kennedy

--Written by Kara as a rebuttal to the article "Immigrants, Not Americans, Must Adapt"

FOLLOWING IS A LETTER I RECEIVED ON 1-18-06 CONCERNING SOME OF THE STATEMENTS MADE BY KARA IN THIS REBUTTAL AND HER FOLLOW-UP RESPONSE TO MY DEFENSE:

Dear Kenny,

I have recently read the debate you and Kara had concerning "Immigrants Not Americans Must Adapt".  I would like to make a correction to something that Kara said.

She claimed that the phrase "In God We Trust" was added to our money in 1956, so that we could differentiate ourselves from the Communists.  This makes a speech given in Congress by Williams Jennings Bryant in the 1920's rather interesting, for he specifically pointed out that we have the words "In God We Trust" printed on our money.  I cannot remember why he considered it important, but it was an arguement in his "God Cross" speech to try to convince us to move our money from the Gold Standard to Silver.

Second, later on she said that "So help me God" was added in the 1950's as well.  It was George Washington who added that to the oath of the president when he first took the oath at the beginning of his presidency.  It has been said by every president since then...and likely added to other oaths of office as well.  It is not, however, a part of the Constitutional oath, so every president has the option of leaving the phrase off if he so desires.

The only thing that is correct is that the phrase "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1956, to emphasize our differences from the Communists.  I, for one, will leave it in there, regardless of what any Supreme Court will say about it, and I would hope that athiests who disagree with it will do as they ought to do with the oath, and leave the phrase out when they recite the Pledge, but allow others to say it as they will.

In any case, I just wanted to clarify these things.  It is a pet peeve of mine that, in debate involving these phrases, it is taken as fact that these phrases are recent additions rather than the continuation of traditions that, in at least one case, began with our Founding Fathers. 

Thanks!

sincerely
A.M.