Having been knocked off my TV viewing rut, last night I wound up watching Insp channels rerun of one of the early “The Waltons,” which you could tell was an early on since all the kids were young. Long story spun, the episode was about a small German family that showed up on Walton’s Mountain in a paranoid state. Professor Hanson, his wife and twelve, soon to be thirteen, year old son. It dealt with the struggle of the father to retain his Jewish heritage and his son’s rebellion against his father to get Bar Mitzvahed.
It was a reminder of the struggle that all immigrants face when coming to a foreign land, but the thing that struck me was how accepting we as a people are of other cultures and faiths. We need to get that back.
The thing about America is that it is an idea, based on ideals, and that immigrants whether documented or not, cannot take away from those ideal, cannot debase that idea, but only add to it, because those ideals based on the idea of America is internalized by both native and naturalized citizens, and is in fact the basis of our being a beacon to the world.
It is something worth reminding ourselves about from time to time.
(fixed cliche)
Terraformed 