The national sickness in microcosm

Once in a while, I go local at LITD, usually because something I run across has broader implications.

Such is the case with a front-page story in our local paper (disclosure: I write for several of its magazines) today about the upcoming keynote address by the head of the local community foundation at the annual meeting of the local multi-ethnic organization.  She tells the paper that she will say that while our city has made important strides in becoming more welcoming and diverse, much still needs to be done.

She specifically cites two groups - Latinos and the LBGTQ "community" (and I found out that the Q stands for "questioning."  That's how far we have descended into indulging people's self-absorption in post-America.)

My question to the nice community-foundation lady is this: What the hell more would you have us do?

Last year, her foundation awarded grants to twelve groups in town with the intent that they'd use them to make the city more "welcoming." I attended the reception at which the groups' heads got up and thanked the foundation and told a bit about the projects they'd do with the money.  The lady from the Latino group pretty much stated that most Mexicans in our city tend, of their own volition, to stay in their trailer parks when they're not working.   Well, that's their problem.  Nobody's making them not come downtown to Farmers' Market or the summer block party or the Christmas parade or the concerts in the park. I see all kinds of other demographic groups represented at those events - Chinese and Indian folks, hippies, muckety-mucks, and, yes, people whose sexual proclivities are other than hetero.  I don't know why the Mexicans prefer to keep a low profile, but it's their choice.

Speaking of people with other-than-hetero proclivities, just what else are we supposed to do in the way of outreach with them?  We already have a gay-straight alliance for people interested in such things.

I'll tell you one thing.  Christians ought to be concerned. It's not rocket science to see where this is going.  It winds up with busybodies either in the employ of the government or with great influence upon it sticking their nose into what goes on in the area's churches to make sure nothing "judgmental" is being said.

This whole exhortation for us to puke all over ourselves to be ever-more "welcoming" leads to dangerous obscurings of obvious truths.  A recent example is the MEC's statement that "we need to engage communities where people are self-radicalizing."  He was speaking about situations like the Tsarnaev brothers.  Sheeesh!  They were raised in the bluest of blue states, exposed to post-American culture in all its hollowness and glitz, and even lived off the government gravy train.  The reason they attacked the Boston Marathon was that, in spite of the wrestling tournaments, girls, marijuana and college classes, they were jihadists.  They came from a family full of jihadists and kooks.  Of their own free will, they sought out fellow jihadists.

No, here's how it's supposed to work:  You come here as a Muslim, with a goal of someday subjecting the US to dhimmitude, it's you who has to have the change of attitude in order to stay and live among us.  And don't pull that faux-assimilation crap, playing our sports, listening to our music, smoking our weed, and then, when the time is right, turning an American institution into a day of terror, disfigurement and death.

This cultural dare business - the notion that if you hold the same religious and moral beliefs you did fifty years ago, you're some kind of bigot - is a powerful weapon in the hands of the Great Levelers.  How powerful?   That depends on whether our resolve is stronger than their vulgar indoctrination tactics.