When Smart People...

Comment!

It's amazing to me how many smart people read this blog. A case in point...(responding to this)

“We are either going to prove that we believe in the ideas enshrined on the Statue of Liberty or the American people will go looking elsewhere.”

I get so sick of polticians who confound the poetry of Emma Lazarus with the intellect of our founding fathers. I think the problem for Pence is that his "American Story" begins and ends with his grandfather's arrival. Nothing that happened before matters: Our founders' warnings about the numbers, scope and compatability of immigrant groups cannot be heeded because Emma Lazarus wrote a poem for a newspaper publisher's promotional contest in New York City (which as a city has never been representative of America's general character).

On the other hand, nothing matters to Pence if it happened subsequent to April 1923, so things like the immigration restrictions in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 may not be discussed even though they led us an assimilated, united Citizenry in December 1941 rather than a gaggle of squabbling German and Italian diasporas.

Pence gives us a glimpse into his heart of hearts here: the romanticized version of his grandfather's arrival in 1923 renders irrelevant the cherished ancestral stories my family has handed down since 1608 on the land that became these United States.

The effing asshat dismisses my obligation to pass on a nation to my child that my ancestors would recognize and take pride in because their efforts came before his ancestors arrived to take advantage of what my ancestors had created.

Screw him. And I'm being polite as I can possibly be in writing that.

Found here.

Oh, and his most excellent blog can be found...here! Thanks KD.