“I stand for straight Americanism unconditioned and unqualified, and I stand against every form of hyphenated Americanism.” – President Theodore Roosevelt.
I rarely have reason to quote President Theodore Roosevelt, but with the current events surrounding blacks and our law enforcement communities in Dallas, St. Paul and Baton Rouge, I believe it’s time we end take his advice on the hyphenating of our cultural origins.
In 1916, President Theodore Roosevelt sought the end of hyphenated Americans. (faculty.wagner.edu)
“Americanism is not a matter of creed, birthplace or national descent, but of the soul and of the spirit,” he said, “If the American has the right stuff in him, I care not a snap of my fingers whether he is Jew, Gentile, Catholic or Protestant. I care not a snap of my fingers whether his ancestors came over on the Mayflower, or whether he was born, or his parent were born, in Germany, Ireland, France, England, Scandinavia, Russia or Italy or any other country.”
He referred to the hyphenating of origins – like German-Americans – as “moral treason” to the United States.
Continuing to make his point, he said, “… unless the immigrant becomes in good faith an American and nothing else, then he is out of place in this country, and the sooner he leaves the better.”
In his May 31, 1916 speech in St. Louis, Roosevelt was, of course, speaking of immigrants coming to America from the Old World. He spoke of the division and impotence of our national life and the breaking up of our unity as nation.
But isn’t that what we have been hearing today in all of those post-Dallas pronouncements? A country divided, needing unity? Coming together?
“I don’t know about you, (but) I’m tired of the hyphenated Americans. No more ‘African-Americans.’ No more ‘Indian-Americans.’ No more ‘Asian Americans,’” said Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal during his presidential campaign.
Speaking of his parents who immigrated from India, Jindal said, “They weren’t coming to raise ‘Indian-Americans.’ They were coming to raise Americans.”
Just as Americans have forgotten President Obama’s belief that “there is no black America and no white America,” Jindal’s plea, too, has been lost in the volumes of campaign rhetoric.
Referring to blacks as African-Americans and Asians as Asian-Americans are labels considered to be politically correct and are generally attributed to liberals in America. I understand that there are no hyphenated Canadians, where races are referred to as blacks and Asians, not African-Canadian or Asian-Canadian.
Political correctness and multiculturalism efforts extend beyond the hyphenating of various origins. Liberals advocate multiculturalism by supporting open borders, and they avoid confronting radical Islam so as not to upset Muslims.
The Paris and Brussels attacks by Muslim terrorists are causing Europeans to change their views on multiculturalism. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it “a failure.”
Earlier this year, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.), who served as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, argued that the president’s reaction to the attack in Brussels was “a pretty sad day for U.S. leadership,” and added that “countries are going to have to get off this dime of this multiculturalism appeasement that we are seeing … we apologize too often in this country for going after a political ideology that is hiding and masking itself behind a religion.”
As the rhetoric continues on the need to heal our racially divided nation, think about Teddy Roosevelt’s view, who concluded his speech saying, “I ask them to remember that there is but one safe motto for all Americans, no matter whether they were born here or abroad, no matter from what land their ancestors came; and that is the simple and loyal motto: America for Americans.”
From now on, I will refer to “black Americans” when it is truly necessary to distinguish someone’s race. African-American or other previously hyphenated origin labels have been removed from my vocabulary.
(If you would like a free subscription to kramerontheright, simply scroll to the bottom of the column at right.)
