E PLURIBUS UNUM

From many come one-the motto of the United States as inscribed on the great seal of the United States, and what used to be on their bills until 1955 when the United States reacted to the Cold War and the threat of Soviet Communism by redefining themselves for the first time as a “Christian Country” by replacing the accepting motto (from many come one) with “In God We Trust”. The motto E Plubribus Unum embraces the diversity from which the children of many lands have come to the United States to create a new land and new folk that are made strong by their diversity of origin, and shared vision of a singular shared homeland. This is replaced with a motto that defines what it is to be an American for the first time in a way that does not include all who come together to make one great nation, but of those who conform to what the leaders have decided their citizens ought to be. The America defined by the latter motto had no place for those of other origins, and represented a time when the House of Un-American Activity really did believe they had the right to define what right thought was for a citizen of the United States; no room for diversity, only orthodoxy.

 

Canada has little mythology of its origins, we don’t laud our founders as saints, we were a Fur Trading colony, royal charter companies made the resource rich, people poor land a realm in which the brave and bold could make a fortune, but in which all the comforts of civilization were utterly absent, and the climate really spent a fair amount of energy trying to kill you. Our nation was woven together by backroom deals and outright scandals, whose freedoms were granted by England largely to counter the threat of the US to its world wide interests. Canada was not a high priority destination for its immigrants. We were a dumping ground for the unwanted, we were an opportunity for those who had nothing but the drive to walk into the bush, clear and prove wild land as farmed. The meanest serf or debt slave was able to wash their origins and rise to Land Owner if they dared, a thing Europe and Asia had made impossible for generations beyond number. We had no fine pedigreed lords, nor untouchable saints in our origins, but adventurers, crooks and opportunists. Formed from the union of the English and French Canada’s, we were always polygot. The Natives played such a big part in our early wars that the French English conflict could easily and truly be described as the Huron Iroquois conflict just as truly.

Our twin nations were founded by men and women of a hundred lands, and every race. The first “White” baby born in the Yukon would be described today as black, but in the definition of the times white was defined in the Yukon as non-Innu. We have no pedigree beyond mongrel, not a single faith united our ancestors save the faith that in THIS PLACE a man or woman could rise above their origins and the limitations of the stars of their birth. We speak English and French, or English and Spanish in the US, as these are the most common languages of our founders, and became the common tongues of all the folk of the hundred lands, and hundred tribes that forged our nations.

Our culture is naturally emerging from not only the lands that our ancestors came from, collectively, but from our joint experiences together here as a people. E Pluribus Unum; we have created a new thing, well two of them since the US got its ass handed to it every time they tried forcing their revolution North of the 49th. We have created two new things, two lands in which the sons and daughters of a hundred lands are joined together in common purpose.

Don’t trust in god. Not yours, not mine. God didn’t build this land, neither did Ameretsu, or Buddha, Ik Onkar, Krishna, Wolf, Raven, Sedna, Confuscious, or Coyote; but their followers did, so did those who believed in no god, spirit, or will beyond the strength of their own two hands and their need to build something better.

Trust in the people who have come here to seek to build for themselves something better. That is what built both our countries.

Do not create ghetto; the ghetto is the father of the riot, the grandfather of the war. E Pluribus Unum, out of many come one. Create ghetto either actively, or passively allow that to be the natural pattern of an influx of a single large lot of refugees like the polygot group falsely named Syrian Refugees, and you are creating a source of disenfranchised, unskilled, unemployable, angry young men with no ties to anything except a community of the same. If you can’t start a fire with this, then you would be helpless with napalm and a blowtorch.

Out of many come one, only if the many are scattered amidst the one, where they are driven to learn the language of the new culture, forced to interact with the new culture under its rules, not the ones they are used to, and therefore forced to learn to adapt to the ways of this culture. As a result they will be forced to adapt to quickly become functional within that new culture. Place them in groups where only their ancestral language is spoken, shopping in places where only their ancestral language is spoken or ancestral ways are practiced and the ghetto has taken them. Many will not master the new language, because they don’t have to , day to day. They will not seek to understand the new culture they are a part of because they are not a part OF it they are apart FROM it. Lack of loyalty, lack of connection, lack of identity; the former springs from the latter two; those who do not feel connected to or a part of our society feel no loyalty to it. That is a problem, the way that kegs of stacked gunpowder in a kindergarten basement are a problem. They will go boom, and people will bleed, the only question is when, and what spark will be the one that triggers it.

The Taliban killed teachers.

Why is it that NOBODY was paying attention? Why did the radicals of the Taliban target the teachers? The same reason the Green Revolutionaries targeted the Intelligencia of Iran after their Islamic revolution, because the way to wipe our radical Islam is not with guns, or bombs, drones, or billion dollar aircraft, it is with education, and the opportunity to make for yourself and your family a better life through the participation in an economy in which you can win for your children opportunities you never knew.

‘Murica is reachin fer its guns due to the Refugees. Cool beans, when the war comes, you will be ready to make sure it is costly as hell, and leaves no civilization left behind for your kids to inherit. How about we reach for our WEAPONS, rather than our guns?

Don’t get me wrong, I like guns. I am good with them, and will match my ability to kill my fellow human beings against any professional in my age range (not as young as I once was, sadly). While a whole lot of people talk about fighting wars, Canada has a rather odd fixation not on fighting them, but on winning the bloody things. Thing is, the most effective weapons we have in the war on terror are education and opportunity.
I am not afraid of taking in refugees. I am afraid of adding the refugees to the list of the discarded people.

We have lots of native areas in which there are third world conditions; why don’t we use the same skills we plied with our Armed Forces in Afghanistan to do the same sort of Provincial Reconstruction Team work in our own country? Clean water, good road access to the reserves that don’t have it. Connect them to the internet and its resources, make sure that the laptop programs that exist in the suburbs get funded in the hinterlands as well so that we prepare every single citizen for tomorrow’s challenges to the limit of their ability to learn, not the ability of their parents to afford. Get that money spent on education for all the kids of limited economic means to make sure they are prepared to compete not for the low paying unskilled jobs, but for the higher paying skilled trades and professions that actually have the ability to break the cycle of poverty, and turn a huge cash drain and national shame into a tax producing, self supporting, integrated part of our Canadian economy and nation?

I have nothing against helping the refugees. Let’s do it, with two provisions; we kick out any that look to become criminals here. I don’t mean terrorists, I mean professional criminals. Join with our society and be welcome, seek to prey on our society and I will cheerfully drop you in whatever hell hole you came from. We are obligated to deal with our home grown predators and parasites; we don’t have to put up with other peoples. If that means you die there? You should have thought about that before turning wolf against your new nation. Second proviso; don’t drop them in ghetto and hope for the best. That has NEVER worked, is turning the cities of half of Europe into copies of Beirut, and is not the direction any sane human being wants to move here.

E Pluribus Unum: out of many comes one. We can do this. We have done this for our entire history. Check your god at the door, and I will do the same with mine (I have many, so trust me, it’s a bigger sacrifice on my part). Accept that you can be different from each other and share a vision of a nation that is singular, great, and glorious. Together we can make this true. Our ancestors did, and left us the tools to do it again.