What If America Said "No"?

by Bob Parks, Outside the Wire: They came here for several centuries for the same reasons - freedom and hope - and then a Frenchman created a statue that embodied their hopes and dreams. And it embodied America's promise as well. "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free."

Is there a point when enough is enough? Not because we have too many people coming in, but not the right kind of people coming in? As "intolerant" as that sounds, "tolerance" is exactly what I'm driving at. As illustrated by the story of Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher in Khartoum who faces 40 lashes for allowing her class of seven-year-olds to name a teddy bear "Mohammed". Different countries have traditions and one is expected to follow them upon entry. The results can be harsh if you deviate.

But America is different. We allow people from many nations to come to America and being the "tolerant", "inclusive" people we are, we are now allowing the new entrants to not only observe their traditions, but to do so in some cases at the expense of our own. Because of political correctness, those traditions found "offensive" by some are being eliminated one-by-one and our national identity is being altered, and not for the good.

Many people come to America because the conditions in their native lands are not what they could be, and that's being nice. Some fled religious persecution, poverty, and came to America (their first choice) to begin a new life of freedom. But once the freedom and PC gets into their heads, things get ugly. These new arrivals make demands. All of a sudden, our holidays are offensive to them. All of a sudden, they have problems with our schools, workplaces, public meeting areas, our traditions and our speech. America is a prosperous nation and to be quite honest, as a person who has seen the Third World, I really wouldn't want to see her become one of those nations.

But it now appears that the very people who chose to flee their homes are attempting to turn America into that from which they fled. That, is becoming the clear reason why some of us believe that unless new arrivals want to become Americans and cherish all that makes us who we are, they should not even bother to come here. If this keeps up, one day America will say "no" and immigrants will have no one to blame but themselves.

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