Posted on 07/03/2005 9:59:52 PM PDT by SmithL
Today is the Fourth of July, the star-spangled day on which we Americans glory in patriotism. We hold parades, have picnics and shoot off fireworks.
Perhaps, however, it also is a day we should pause and consider what it means to be American. We have been taught since childhood that America is a melting pot - I learned that concept right here in Knoxville at Chilhowee Elementary School (now Chilhowee Intermediate School) and Holston High School (now Holston Middle School). I don't remember the class or the teacher, and I suspect it was a variety of teachers over a number of years and classes, but I left school with that concept fully entrenched.
Sometimes I fear some of us in East Tennessee are forgetting our melting pot history, forgetting that America has a tradition of welcoming other nationalities. After all, only the American Indians are true natives. All the rest of us are imports, some whose foreign ancestry is many generations removed and others such as Jigsha Desai, our senior online producer for knoxnews.com, whose citizenship is brand-spanking new as of last month.
East Tennessee has a growing diversity of population, and we should be celebrating that diversity. It gives me concern that William Blount High School was locked down in April because of racially motivated threats between students. It concerns me to see that La Lupita Mexican Store in Maryville was vandalized in May, but I am heartened by the fact that citizens in Blount County have rallied around and are holding meetings to say they won't tolerate racism in their county.
It gives me concern to see a movement by a Hamblen County group called the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen to report employers of illegal immigrants to the government. There's a great difference between the majority of our Hispanic population, which is here legally, and the minority of illegal immigrants. I hope the minutemen don't get the two confused.
It's not that the group doesn't have the right to hold its opinions - it's my fear that they will degenerate to uncivil discourse, and I am a believer in being civil to each other. But it's the American way to disagree.
Today we in America argue over gay marriage, stem-cell research and abortion, over whether to keep Terri Schiavo alive and how - or whether - to teach evolution in school. In other generations there were other arguments, equally contentious, equally divisive.
But look how far we've come. Once those arguments were over slavery, and later they were over civil rights - for blacks as well as women. We have settled those disputes for the most part and are moving on to new ones. In East Tennessee, we're even arguing about whether the federal government spent too much money raiding a cockfight in Del Rio.
While there is no shortage of issues and certainly no shortage of sides to take, the one point that remains clear is that we can argue about these things. In America, we can criticize our Legislature for not passing stronger ethics bills, and no one will come to our house in the night to haul us away. It's one of our many freedoms, this right of free speech.
It's easy to forget just what a blessing that right is. But the people who go through our naturalization ceremonies understand. Many of them have made great sacrifices to come to this country, and they do not take lightly the freedoms we often take for granted.
A generation ago, East Tennessee was the destination for many Vietnamese refugees who left behind those now-infamous killing fields for the bright promise in America.
I once interviewed a family who had escaped their homeland in a boat. I have forgotten the details of that interview some 20 years ago, but one thing remains clear in my memory: I met the family late at night in the basement of a Knoxville church, where they were staying briefly until officials could find them more permanent housing. They were visibly exhausted, both mentally and physically, yet they had dressed in their best clothes to meet an American reporter, and they were unfailingly polite in answering my questions. They spoke halting English, at best, yet it was clear they felt like they had arrived home.
One cannot possibly write about our freedoms without taking into account the price that has been paid, from the men who fought and died in the Revolutionary War to the soldiers - both men and women - who fight today to keep us free.
This newspaper has editorialized before that the sacrifice of these men and women - in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in any place where our armed forces protect our country - is not about politics. It is about individual men and women and individual sacrifices for those they know as well as those they don't know. They sacrifice for those who revere the American flag and for those burn it. They sacrifice so we can criticize our government and so we can praise it.
They sacrifice for all of us, and that's a debt that cannot be repaid - only acknowledged.
I am proud that I can walk across our newsroom and see Jigsha at her desk, bringing information to our readers that is uncensored by the government or any other group. I am proud that I live in a country that Jigsha wanted to come to, a country where we are free to speak our minds, a country where we are free to value our diversity.
It is up to all of us to keep it that way.
Jan Maxwell Avent is assistant editorial page editor. She may be reached at 865-342-6251 or avent@knews.com.
One problem with the article.
Wait, hold the phone...you beat me to it.
Legal is not the same as illegal.
LOL - and you both beat me to it!!!
Well, I'm waiting for the day when the US is NOT the nation everyone is trying to enter.
"Bring us your tired, your poor, your emboldened masses infected with TB... The wretched refuse of all other shores... Send these, who work the system, no matter the cost to me... I empty my pockets and open my doors!"
That's the problem, isn't it?
Everyone thinks America is a place where they can go to do whatever they wish, without respecting our OWN laws and without bothering to conform to them. Rather, they want everyone to accomadate them, even if it's the wrong thing to do.
America is no longer a melting pot. Now it's the bed pan of the Left and other nations...and that needs to change.
As Michael Savage says: "From the melting pot to the chamber pot..."
You listen to Savage as well? Read any of his books?
Check your PR box.
OK...I'l bite...who's Jigsha?
Unless the Garden of Eden was just outside of present day Denver, CO or a budding village near present day downtown Dayton, OH, I think American Indians were also imports. If I understand the theory correctly, they just came from the other direction. Wait a second, more recent imports came from that same direction.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.