A dumping ground......

“Give us your poor, your huddled masses.......”

I’m thinkin’ that Americans take independence for granted....well, why shouldn’t we? We’ve been an independent nation for a couple hundred years now and more than that, we are a nation of independent people. It sez so in our Constitution. Taught to us in our schools and celebrated in our daily lives.
Started out as a bunch of hardheaded misfits and miscreants...English, German, bullheaded Scotch Irish, French adventurers...allegiance to England wore thin over the distance of the Atlantic Ocean and the yoke of taxation by a heavy-handed King George who barely spoke English.....
Starvation is a very effective tactic when used in warfare or when dealing with a disaffected populace. The starving nations of Africa bear witness that it is as effective today as it was when the English used it against the Irish over a hundred and fifty years ago. Out of a population of nine million, over a million Irish died of starvation and over four million migrated. Many of them to America where the streets weren’t really paved with gold.....and America needed them. We put them in uniform and sent them to war. They fought and died on both sides of our bloody civil war. That war took the lives of three quarters of a million men decimating the United States forever changing the face and culture.

America is a large country and the westward expansion policies of the American government required people. Someone to do the work. The gates of America were thrown open to emigration from eastern Europe. And the european powers were eager to solve their own overpopulation prolem by encouraging the emigration of what they considered the dregs of their society. Well, heck, England had long considered America and a few other choice spots around the world as a dumping ground.
So, America got the Slavs, the Poles, the Russians, and the Italians and became a melting pot. No matter that melting pot was a derogatory term like mongrel.
America took pride in being the melting pot where no matter your country of origin, you became first and formost...American.
Richard Lamm gave a speech wherein he declared that diversity would destroy us; that our strength lay in our homogenity. I don’t believe it. We are diverse and always have been. But it’s our diversity under one roof that provides the anchor for our strength. We are diverse but we are Americans. All of us. Ever’ damned one of us, black or white or purple.
Today is the Fourth of July in the most mongrelized country in the ‘hull damn world. It’s our Independence Day! The day we all of us stand up and shout, "Hurrah for the red, white, and blue."