Your letters for May 3, 2024
By NewsPress Now
Your letters for May 3, 2024
Not our war
Historically, the British, French and Germans have been fighting each other for centuries. They came to America, and we all got along together. In Ireland, the Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other, dividing along religious lines. That entrenched hatred disappeared like the morning mist in America. Our ancestors learned to leave their political and cultural animosities “over there.” Once established in America, old fears and hatreds vanished, and we adapted to a new cultural standard of mutual respect and civility, and the so-called melting pot of the U.S.A. was a point of pride for the offspring of those immigrants.
Today, however, we are witnessing the transplantation of foreign ideologies and squabbles onto our soil. Conflicts overseas have somehow made their way into our daily consciousness. Television reveals mobs of masked people waving the flags of foreign countries. Demands are shouted at our citizens to support one side or the other in conflicts on the other side of the world. Highways have been shut down by mass protests over the issues in Ukraine or Gaza, as if this kind of civil disobedience in America will somehow alter events somewhere else on Earth.
What we are seeing is the transplanting of other countries’ troubles into our back yard. Ukraine is in Europe, and as such should be a European problem. Gaza and the Middle East are aflame due to ancient hatreds. Leave them over there! Our country doesn’t need and shouldn’t allow these foreign flags and hostile ideas to fester and infect our culture, our young people and our body politic. Those who came before us had it right. Don’t bring your warlike behavior over here to divide us Americans. Put simply, it’s not our war.
Dr. Lawrence Pilgrim
St. Joseph
