Readers; Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States
We ought to be very careful about some of the impressions that we are
forming just now. There is too general an impression, I fear, that very
large numbers of our fellow citizens born in other lands have not
entertained with sufficient intensity and affection the American ideal.
But the number of such is, I am sure, not large. Those who would seek to
represent them are very vocal, but they are not very influential. Some
of the best stuff of America has come out of foreign lands, and some of
the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of
the United States. I would not be afraid upon the test of "America
first" to take a census of all the foreign-born citizens of the United
States, for I know that the vast majority of them came here because they
believed in America; and their belief in America has made them better
citizens than some people who were born in America. They can say that
they have bought this privilege with a great price. They have left their
homes, they have left their kindred, they have broken all the nearest
and dearest ties of human life in order to come to a new land, take a
new rootage, begin a new life, and so by self-sacrifice express their
confidence in a new principle; whereas, it cost us none of these things.
We were born into this privilege; we were rocked and cradled in it; we
did nothing to create it; and it is, therefore, the greater duty on our
part to do a great deal to enhance it and preserve it. I am not deceived
as to the balance of opinion among the foreign-born citizens of the
United States, but I am in a hurry for an opportunity to have a line-up
and let the men who are thinking first of other countries stand on one
side and all those that are for America first, last, and all the time on
the other side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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