I did not vote for McCain, I voted against Obama. Having been brought up on the sayings, “birds of a feather flock together” and “you can tell a man by the company he keeps” I considered the anti-American, anti-democratic and corrupt politicians with whom Obama associated in Chicago and voted against him. I had no idea, however, how thoroughly corrupt the Democratic party had become until I read Michelle Malkin’s book, “Culture of Corruption” in which, as is her style, she gives names, dates, cash flow and her sources of information. It is disheartening reading. Now, I have read “Obama’s Moral Leadership Balloon Crashes” by Mona Charon (Townhall.com, Oct. 20). Ms Charon takes a different approach, but, like Michelle, names events and sources in writing about how Obama’s messages of “hope” in his campaign have translated into his support of dictatorships around the world.

Disappointed in the National Football League refusing permission for Rush Limbaugh to become a part owner in the Rams, based on false charges of racism brought by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the president of the players’ union, I decided to stop watching professional football. I quit this past Sunday and was surprised to discover that I didn’t miss it, or even notice that I was missing it.

Perhaps this belongs under “Family Affairs,” but I suspect it is more political. I had a bad night last night, the first in a long time.  Fifty-five year old memories woke me at two and kept me awake.  I know what caused it. While at the hospital yesterday I spotted my friend Jim, an unreformed Democrat, waiting in Dr. Blazer’s office so I dropped in to make certain this was simply a routine visit. Reassured, I traded fun, political, jabs with him before asking if he still liked Obama. He said he objected to Obama having a thirty thousand dollar a plate dinner with people he had just bailed out with millions of tax payer dollars. I didn’t respond to that, but what bothers me, and woke me up this morning, is something different. I don’t like what is happening in Afghanistan.

We have generals and military leaders saying we need more men and equipment, but Obama is too busy to talk with them: busy interviewing five year old children in New Orleans, busy visiting Chicago and Europe to try for the Olympics, busy giving political speeches in New Jersey and attending that expensive donor dinner. All of this while our men and women are fighting, and dying, with a lack of help and equipment in Afghanistan. 

My knowledge of this awoke me in the middle of the night: memories of night after night of explosions and men dying. I laid down to sleep in Outpost Howe on the 10^th of June, 1953, thinking that it was the first night in over a week I could sleep with my boots off. I woke up an hour later with dirt falling in my face as shells exploded on top of and around our bunker. I spent the night working in stocking feet. The Chinese had decided to take Seoul by going through us, and they allocated two divisions to do it. When morning came and life calmed down, three of us were sent to a watching post about a hundred and fifty yards in front of the front line and a hundred or so yards off of the west slope of Outpost Harry, the point of the Chinese attack. I was there for the next three nights. As a point radio scout, I received radioed requests for more men, more ammunition and more medical supplies and forwarded them to headquarters. After the third night, the fourth night of the battle, we three were pulled back and returned to Regimental headquarters for a night’s sleep. I remember being shocked by the supplies and the guns. There were hundreds of cases of grenades and bullets stacked immediately behind the line. Heavy guns had been pulled into the area to support us: forty and fifty caliber machine guns, heavy mortars, artillery of all types including rockets. This was all new. We were in a fight, but our government was supporting us. Over the eight nights of that unknown battle in that forgotten war we lost about 2300 men while killing an estimated 7000 enemy, but we held. And we held with our government’s, President Eisenhower’s, support. 

Where is that help and support for our people in Afghanistan? Obama is too busy doing other things to even talk to those trying to run this war.

I know his work isn’t easy. Any decision he makes, to fight or to run, will be criticized. It wasn’t easy for Truman or Eisenhower or Johnson or Nixon or Bush either, but they were in charge and knew their responsibility. It is time Obama learned his.

Considerably later, but now almost a half a century ago, I had the privilege of teaching a summer graduate course at the University of British Columbia. I had a delightful summer, and I believe the students enjoyed it also after they learned I was serious. At the end, I threw a party for them at my house. I bought five cases of beer and one of soda pop, a student from Scotland brought a bottle of scotch and at least one other student brought more beer. It was a relaxed party. One student came up to me and confessed that she was really upset with her daughter. She was a Cameron; her daughter was marrying a Campbell. It seems that about three hundred years earlier, in Scotland, an army of Campbells had met and slaughtered an army of Camerons. Another, a lady from New Zealand, was distressed that the American colonies had revolted from England. She said the United States was illegal. She meant it!

Only a few years after that, teaching at Drury College in southwestern Missouri, John Goodwin, a friend, former student and the best fisherman I have ever known was introducing me to fishing in the Ozarks, where he had been raised. It interested me that, as we drove through the hills, he identified each family area by which side they had fought on during the Civil War. If I recall correctly, as we passed one group of houses he said, “That’s Smithville, they weren’t on either side. They were just thieves. 

All of these, of course, are trivial, even amusing examples of how long hatreds, fears and concerns can last. What has been amazing is the extent to which such antipathies between groups have disappeared in the United States, a nation built by immigrants from different lands, with different languages, different laws and different moralities. It is only where peoples have been separated that animosities and fears remain. Working in North Dakota I learned that it would be a mistake for a Sioux to wander onto a Chippewa reservation (or the reverse) even if that person were there to help as in the form of a nurse or social worker. 

I believe the unification of the diverse peoples of the United States to be a consequence of public education. It is understandable for established residents to be concerned about new groups, as the people in my community were about the Italian immigrants who flooded The Hill in St. Louis, but when all of the children attend school together, as did Germanic me, Irish Rosie Burke and Italian Ernie Di Amico, where they use a common language, are taught a common cultural history (as opposed to ethnic history) and develop a common set of skills (as well as common complaints about teachers!) those ethnic concerns disappear. 

Recently, however, the great god “diversity” has appeared. Now new groups can demand their cultural “rights.”  Hispanic immigrants can be taught in Spanish, while laws and even advertisements appear in Spanish as well as English.  I suppose if a wave of Turks migrate here, we shall need classes in Turkish and street signs in Turkish.  Where is the logical end of this approach?

Less publicized, but equally important are the demands of Muslim immigrants to be permitted to be judged by their own laws, a demand which was accepted by a judge in Florida who permitted a Muslim woman to have her photograph taken for her driver’s license with her face concealed. Similarly, Muslim taxi drivers, licensed to meet travelers at the airport are permitted to refuse customers carrying sealed containers of alcoholic beverages or “seeing-eye” dogs. A Texas judge even ruled that a divorce according to Muslim law was acceptable in Texas.

Diversity, as worshipped, is making the United States a land of multiple languages and laws based on multiple moral bases. What will be the long term effects of this? Can anyone tell me of any nation or any geographic area in which such diversity exists that the different peoples live together in mutual respect and unanimity? 

Consider the Balkans. Croatians, Serbs and Albanians have occupied the same mountain area for centuries and for at least the last thousand years, having different religions and languages, have spent their time fighting and killing one another. Currently they are at peace, but a peace enforced by United Nations forces. 

Which brings us to “Bush’s war,” a ten year attempt to bring democracy and peace to Iraq, a land of Kurds, Sunnis and Shi′ites – all peace loving Muslims but involving two races, Kurds and Arabs, and two Arabic sects. However, following the “peace” enforced by the United States, these peoples are returning to killing one another. It appears they would rather hate and live in fear of their lives than accept the right of all to exist together. 

Even in democratic and peaceful Sweden and Norway the southerners look down upon, even despise, the Laplanders of the north and don’t tell me there are no problems in Canada between French speaking Quebecers and the English population of the rest of Canada. I’ve lived there.

The United States became a great and unified nation as a consequence of a common language and a common set of laws and cultural goals. It needs to return to being a one language nation obeying laws derived from the Christian principles which have permitted its growth as a single, unified, peaceful nation. Diversities long term consequences are fragmentation and warfare. 

Considerably later, but now almost a half a century ago, I had the privilege of teaching a summer graduate course at the University of British Columbia. I had a delightful summer, and I believe the students enjoyed it also after they learned I was serious. At the end, I threw a party for them at my house. I bought five cases of beer and one of soda pop, a student from Scotland brought a bottle of scotch and at least one other student brought more beer. It was a relaxed party. One student came up to me and confessed that she was really upset with her daughter. She was a Cameron; her daughter was marrying a Campbell. It seems that about three hundred years earlier, in Scotland, an army of Campbells had met and slaughtered an army of Camerons. Another, a lady from New Zealand, was distressed that the American colonies had revolted from England. She said the United States was illegal. She meant it!

Only a few years after that, teaching at Drury College in southwestern Missouri, John Goodwin, a friend, former student and the best fisherman I have ever known was introducing me to fishing in the Ozarks, where he had been raised. It interested me that, as we drove through the hills, he identified each family area by which side they had fought on during the Civil War. If I recall correctly, as we passed one group of houses he said, “That’s Smithville, they weren’t on either side. They were just thieves. 

All of these, of course, are trivial, even amusing examples of how long hatreds, fears and concerns can last. What has been amazing is the extent to which such antipathies between groups have disappeared in the United States, a nation built by immigrants from different lands, with different languages, different laws and different moralities. It is only where peoples have been separated that animosities and fears remain. Working in North Dakota I learned that it would be a mistake for a Sioux to wander onto a Chippewa reservation (or the reverse) even if that person were there to help as in the form of a nurse or social worker. 

I believe the unification of the diverse peoples of the United States to be a consequence of public education. It is understandable for established residents to be concerned about new groups, as the people in my community were about the Italian immigrants who flooded The Hill in St. Louis, but when all of the children attend school together, as did Germanic me, Irish Rosie Burke and Italian Ernie Di Amico, where they use a common language, are taught a common cultural history (as opposed to ethnic history) and develop a common set of skills (as well as common complaints about teachers!) those ethnic concerns disappear. 

Recently, however, the great god “diversity” has appeared. Now new groups can demand their cultural “rights.”  Hispanic immigrants can be taught in Spanish, while laws and even advertisements appear in Spanish as well as English.  I suppose if a wave of Turks migrate here, we shall need classes in Turkish and street signs in Turkish.  Where is the logical end of this approach?

Less publicized, but equally important are the demands of Muslim immigrants to be permitted to be judged by their own laws, a demand which was accepted by a judge in Florida who permitted a Muslim woman to have her photograph taken for her driver’s license with her face concealed. Similarly, Muslim taxi drivers, licensed to meet travelers at the airport are permitted to refuse customers carrying sealed containers of alcoholic beverages or “seeing-eye” dogs. A Texas judge even ruled that a divorce according to Muslim law was acceptable in Texas.

Diversity, as worshipped, is making the United States a land of multiple languages and laws based on multiple moral bases. What will be the long term effects of this? Can anyone tell me of any nation or any geographic area in which such diversity exists that the different peoples live together in mutual respect and unanimity? 

Consider the Balkans. Croatians, Serbs and Albanians have occupied the same mountain area for centuries and for at least the last thousand years, having different religions and languages, have spent their time fighting and killing one another. Currently they are at peace, but a peace enforced by United Nations forces. 

Which brings us to “Bush’s war,” a ten year attempt to bring democracy and peace to Iraq, a land of Kurds, Sunnis and Shi′ites – all peace loving Muslims but involving two races, Kurds and Arabs, and two Arabic sects. However, following the “peace” enforced by the United States, these peoples are returning to killing one another. It appears they would rather hate and live in fear of their lives than accept the right of all to exist together. 

Even in democratic and peaceful Sweden and Norway the southerners look down upon, even despise, the Laplanders of the north and don’t tell me there are no problems in Canada between French speaking Quebecers and the English population of the rest of Canada. I’ve lived there.

The United States became a great and unified nation as a consequence of a common language and a common set of laws and cultural goals. It needs to return to being a one language nation obeying laws derived from the Christian principles which have permitted its growth as a single, unified, peaceful nation. Diversities long term consequences are fragmentation and warfare.