Did you know Hillary Clinton, while still only a Rodham and a college coed, clandestinely met with Cuban president Fidel Castro at a club in Havana to plot the slow, but sure socialist take over of America? And, did you know it was there she first learned of a smart, but gullible country boy, turned Rhodes Scholar, who had been chosen by Moscow to be a president of the United States. It was at this meeting she learned her mission: To meet, marry and ‘guide? William Jefferson Clinton to and beyond the White House.
You didn’t know that?
Neither did I, I just made it up to illustrate a point.
It is interesting, this modern world in which we live. Technology — in particular computers, internet and e-mailing — has really changed communications. I say this as a guy in the communications business (who really can’t communicate verbally), it is amazing the amount of information that in a nanosecond can be spread around the globe.
Cool, yet scary, too. You get the picture. Lots of stuff gets bandied about on the internet as fact, when in fact it is pure poppycock. So, when I get ‘facts? via e-mail, I follow President Reagan’s lead. I want to trust the information, but I feel the need to verify first.
So it was when I started receiving the following quote of my favorite president, Teddy Roosevelt.
‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
‘But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.?
The e-mails claimed Roosevelt spoke these words in 1907. Interesting, this quote coming to light nearly 100 years after first being heard. Interesting, for here in today’s America we still grapple with immigration and what to expect from those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
I ‘Googled? Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and came up with the name, Wallace. F. Dailey of the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Dailey is the head honcho in charge of the largest collection of T-Rex information outside the Library of Congress. Name and number scrawled on a pad in front of me, I called him.
Dailey suggested I go on-line and checkout the Theodore Roosevelt ‘clyodpedia.? So I did, and I found the quote in an address from Teddy to the American Defense Society on January 13, 1919 (not 1907).
I also ran across this quote of Roosevelt from December 1, 1917 in regards to the treatment of immigrants.
‘Never under any condition should this Nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit. He should always be looked at primarily as a future citizen and the father of other citizens who are to live in this land as fellows with our children and our children’s children. Our immigration laws, permanent or temporary, should always be constructed with this in fact.?
Interesting how (today) elected elite are considering laws looking at immigrants primarily as a labor unit — doing the things ‘real? Americans won’t do — and for a lot less in wages. I wonder if we should send this to our congressmen and women?
Also interesting in ye ol? e-mail bag, was an Ad Council promotion encouraging folks to speak more than one language. The spot showed a lonely gold fish being eyed by a hungry looking cat. The cat gets ready to go fishing, when the gold fish barks like a big, bad dog. The cat ran away.
If you want to look up info on Teddy Roosevelt, go to www.theodoreroosevelt.org.
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And, here are some other TR quotes I found.
‘A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.?
‘Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.?
‘I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.?
‘Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.?
‘If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.?