Jerry Klein -- Columnist with the Journal Star

On Sunday, April 28, Jerry Klein wrote “U.S. is becoming its own worst enemy.” Mr. Klein talks about the freedoms we have given up to accommodate the sensitive people who are immigrating to our country. “We drop names like the “Crusaders” for nicknames that might be more appropriately named the Wimps or the Weasels.” Jerry says “Strange, because I do not see Muslims making any attempt to abandon their traditions to conform to ours. The evidence so far is that they would require us to conform to their traditions. My assumption is that they have no intention of assimilating at all, but will remain Muslims first and Americans (perhaps) later.”

“It hardly bears repeating, but at one time immigrants to America had a few basic goals. Get a job. Become an American. Learn English. They soon stopped wearing lederhosen, tassel caps and layers of ornate petticoats and dressed and acted like everyone else. True, they kept their own societies, sometimes even preserved their native language at home, and attended ethnic churches. They inter-married and became a great melting pot.

So what will become of us? Will the United States become balkanized, like so many parts of Europe, with powerful minorities setting up their own enclaves, keeping their own languages and resisting all efforts to participate with all ethnic groups as the multicultural crowd looks own approvingly? Can we afford to be inclusive and sensitive as our values are siphoned away one by one and those of other cultures are imposed on us?”

Many of you read Jerry so I won’t belabor the point but Jerry is correct. We are letting an easily offended group of minorities tell us more and more how wrong we are and how we are letting multiculturalists insist we allow these recent arrivals to our country to live in the manner they lived before arriving on our shores. He suggests that our president (despite his many mistakes) might be one of the few in government to recognize that a threat to our civilization exists, that we are a nation at war and that our American ideals are under assault here and abroad. Giving in to the suicide boomers and beheaders is not a solution for us.

I commend Mr. Klein for saying what many in the community say to me and occasionally write in letters to the editors and books of warnings. He confirms what I have been saying for a long time.

My Dad emigrated from Switzerland and never wanted to go back saying “if it wasn’t good enough for my (his) dad, it is not good enough for me.” Both Mom and Dad spoke German but wanted us to speak English which they did speak, communicating to each other occasionally in German so we kids didn’t know what they were saying because they did not want us to spread gossip.(Or talk about sex?)

Those who occupied this country before the arrival of the “whites” were so greatly outnumbered and overwhelmed that their choices of being excluded or included were limited. Tribes spoke different languages and organized and disorganized in different ways so many times that the outcome was inevitable. The early settlers learned from them and in the end the Indians learned from us and gained a tremendous amount of wealth through gambling casinos exempted from competition except with each other. Many across the United States carry on their own traditions as do many other ethnic groups but most all have an extended welcome to all “other” to participate freely. That’s the way most of us want it to be. Jerry and I and others worry greatly that inclusion as our forefathers knew it, is changing and not to the better.
There were humans here before the Indians. I doubt if these first ever settlers treated new arrivals with love and inclusion. I suspect differences were settled much the way they were settled when the whites arrived except today all mankind has fearful weapons that could destroy all aggressors or pacifists. This country and its lawful inhabitants must be among the survivors.

I don’t want to write another history of how the early and late settlers and early poor and late wealthy original inhabitants came to eventually live together peacefully. The point is we did do reasonably well up until the 60’s and things seem to be slowly sliding in the wrong direction since then.

The early inhabitors of what is now our section of North America are not a problem to the well being of our country but the newest arrivals could be a far greater concern than the Indians ever were for the early white settlers emigrating on territories claimed by the Indians.

Mr. Klein is one of many who are saying we better be paying attention.