Speaking as one who has traveled through Europe and done business in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, I THANK GOD everyday that my great grandparents got the hell out of there.
"I thank G-d every day that my grandparents got out of there."
I do the same. My friend says that although her ancestors were not socially or intellectually superior, they got one thing right. They were smart for the brief time it took them to figure out that if they sold the pig and got down to the dock on time, their grandkids would bless them forever.
She says she heard the "pig to dock" story, or read it, but believes most of us here owe a huge debt to those who made it possible for us to be born here.
The movie "Pelei the Conqueror" is a jolting reminder of how constrained by custom and poverty the old world was and is. I think that this visceral memory haunts most Americans, and that the alien doctrines of the fanatical Left represent to those of us born free, the old, master/slave bondage.
Most, if not all of us here, are not descended from the "masters." We are suspicious of "masters" who will "take care of us."
I think that Kerry seemed to many of us to be an exagerrated cartoon of a "master," of what Europe judged to be best for us. They adored him. And the media powers who gathered in Al Franken's NYC apartment to plot Kerry's primary victory, were, for the most part, children of the Revolutionary Left, the Upper West Side cranks who had imbibed European Socialism from infancy. In the weeks and months after that meeting, the media powers destroyed Howard Dean and elevated Kerry from dead last to front-runner status. They were king-makers.
That 48% of voters thought that Kerry was "one of us" is, to me, terrifying.
I enjoy your posts.