Cuban Americans don’t generally vote Republican? Oh, really?
Growing up in Miami in the 1960’s, finding a Cuban American that voted Democrat was as rare as finding a penguin at Miami Beach.
Look at the data in Roscoe’s Post #238. After almost 40 years, Slick Willie was able to smooth-talk himself to a whopping 35% of the Cuban American vote by wooing the younger Cuban American vote. That meant that the Cuban Americans still voted 65% Republican.
Elian changed the numbers from a 65% Republican vote back to an 80% Republican vote and got the younger generation a never to be forgotten “I told you so” from the older generation that has always been “broken glass Republican”.
If high 80% in the 1960’s, 65% at the nadir and now 80% does not qualify as “generally voting Republican” in your book, then what percentage does?
And there in lies the problem, you just stated it perfectly when you said "the Cuban community". I am totally against illegal immigration, and for now I'm against the amount of legal immigration we have. Legal immigration should be reduced to a trickle, until we stop using liberal/socialist phrases like, the "cuban community", the "hispanic community", the "asian community", the "black community", the "anglo community", the "arab community".
Are you also against using phrases like “the Christian community”, “the Southerner”, the “Conservative community”, the “Gay community” and “the Liberal community”?
Whether you like it or not, certain “communities” share certain cultural and political values. There is no such thing as a generic Heinz 57 “American culture” found from coast to coast. There never has been.
In front of me, I have the 1927 book “American Institutions and Their Preservation” by William Cook. Yes, the book described the different “communities” that made up immigrant America during that era: the Scandinavians, the Irish, the German, the Jew, the Italian, the Russian, the Pole.
However, the book also clearly differentiates between the traditional “communities” of the “Old American Stock”: the New Englander, the Southerner, the New Yorker, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Scotch-Irish.
The idea of a single, coast to coast “American McCulture” that is diluted to the Politically Correct least common denominator was a completely alien concept to the pre-Interstate Highway, pre-Television American that fought World War II.
Today, in the year 2002, out here in my very Liberal town on the Pacific Northwest Left Coast, the predominant, so-called “American culture” is characterized by aging hippies and by “wymen” with hairy legs, hairy armpits and a tattoo or two on their breasts that proudly proclaim on their bumper stickers that every problem in the world is “Amerika’s” fault and that they support killing unborn Americans that are too inconvenient to carry to term. The children in such an “American” community think nothing of taking drugs like their “typical American” parents, losing their virginity at 15 or 16, permanently disfiguring their young bodies with rather large tattoos that will be “so Y2K” twenty years from now and going to their “typical American” public school where they are taught little to nothing about traditional American values and American institutions other than that Western Civilization in general and America in particular has a lot to apologize for.
How well do you fit into such an “American culture”?
If you lived here, would you “assimilate”?
That is why this County’s one-family “Cuban American community” has gotten together with others in the “Conservative community” and the “Christian community” in this County to form an eight student school co-op with our own certified Master teacher.
Our separate little “community” raises our children in a culture that is totally alien to the “typical Americans” in our town.
Our kids are raised in the way “typical Americans” used to be raised in the 1940’s with a love of God, a love of America, knowledge and a respect for the traditional Western values that made America great. Our kids are not taught that barely getting by is not O.K. and routinely score in the high 90th percentiles in the Stanford Achievement Test every year while the “typical American” local public schools wallow in Politically Correct mediocrity. Our kids are taught to respect their bodies.
Certain “communities” culturally buy into and preserve certain core values, traditions and beliefs. For some “communities” those values are the traditional American values that made America great but are now Politically Incorrect.
Such is the case with anyone who bothers to call himself a “Cuban American” or a “Southerner” or a “Christian” instead of just a generic “American”.
Being just “just an American” can mean anyone from Hillary Clinton to the “Amerika-hating” Luis Farrakhan to Yasser Esam Hamdi, the Al Qaeda terrorist that just happened to pop out of his mother’s vaginal canal in a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but who grew up with his Saudi parents in Saudi Arabia being taught to hate America and all it stood for. Yasser Esam Hamdi is now loudly protesting that he is “an American”.
Ask anyone who bothers to call himself a “Southerner” or a “Cuban American” besides just “generic American” what should be done with generic American Yasser Esam Hamdi. The argument would boil down to whether to shoot or hang the SOB.
The “typical Americans” of my Left Coast town would be arguing that “Amerikan Imperialism” is to blame for making Hamdi what he is.
Why the difference?
The 1960’s wave of Cuban immigrants had been dealing with “Americans” since the mid 1800’s. They were “Americanized”. However, their “Americanization” was from contact with the pre-1960’s America. You know, the “Amerika” that is sooooooo Politically Incorrect nowadays.
Anyone who bothers to call himself a “Southerner” is also very likely to have preserved that now Politically Incorrect American culture.
If a World War One and a World War Two soldier were magically transported by time machine from the battlefields of 1918 and 1944 and transported to America in 2002, that American would fit right in and feel right at home in a community that bothered to call itself a “Cuban American community” or a “Southern community”.
However, if those two soldiers were transported to the “typical American culture” of my town on the Left Coast, he would be wondering what Planet he was on.
America has always, from the Colonial era until now, had different local cultural “communities”.
If you ever achieve the single, coast to coast “American McCulture” that is diluted to the Politically Correct least common denominator you will find that it will not be the America of past greatness. You will find that it will be Hillary Clinton’s Village.
Viva Dixie and all the other Politically Incorrect “communities” that remember and want to preserve what made America great.
In regards to slowing down or stopping immigration until those that are already here take a generation or two to become Amercanized like the Italians that Mr. Cook thought in 1927 would never be Americanized, that is a separate issue. Selective immigration may be a consideration.
I think I’ll take a break now and listen to a Beausoleil CD, unless, of course, you do not approve because Beausoleil is not “generic American” enough for you.
C’est ca l’esprit de ma famille cadienne
C’est ca l’esprit de ma famille
That’s the spirit of my Cajun family.
That’s the spirit of family.