I Pledge Allegiance

I have been wondering how to approach this particular blog. I am very aware that my last several blogs and FaceBook posts have been about Citizenship Week and how proud we are of David and what a big deal his becoming a citizen is. This of course has led to the praising of the country. Which has led to the strong awareness that all is not well with this country nor has it been from the beginning.

People who were already living here and who for the most part were nice to the first Europeans who arrived were eventually treated horrendously, moved out of their lands, made to learn a language not their own and treated as “less than”. Slavery thrived and the resulting racism is rampant today as the recent massacre  in South Carolina proves. Political parties are more divided than ever and to differ has come to mean being divisive. Personal attacks rather than debating the issues has become the norm of our political process. 

And so we face the dilemma. While we complain about our government and talk about how bad things are in this country, 881 people on one day last week said, we have worked and strived and been through an FBI check because we want to become citizens of the United States. Why in the world would they do that?

With his permission, I quote the newest citizen I know:

I find that people are indeed very interested in the history of their country and are often surprised to discover it. It is an amazing history that was very nearly, not. Of course call it good timing, an overextended monarchy or even that Twitter had unexpectedly gone down during that time in the 1770s, delaying intelligence, and thus things had surely lined up to favor our intrepid rebels.

I am honored to be among the newest of immigrants, rogues and rebels, to be considered a Patriot at home.

Registering to vote will indeed be my first official act as a full citizen. I have listened to many great ideas from the various political camps and some that are not so interesting which I think just poorly considered. My values lean toward local sourcing with smaller very diverse industry for healthy economies and heavy leveraging of local labor resources. 

Ideology is easier with; equitable access, liberty with personal responsibility for that liberty and protection of the standards that were provided by our founding thinkers. Those things that were and are still necessary for a successful and long lived union.

Thank you, David! May we continue to be aware of our shortcomings and strive to become even better than we were. 

David registers to vote within minutes of taking the Oath of Citizenship