A nation of immigrants has forgotten its roots.
And history.
We have outsourced the battle against tyranny and autocracy to Ukraine. But our stomach for financing the fighting is waning under our ages-old selfish streak of isolationism.
“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Congressman Jim Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”
Perhaps Jordan, who aspires to be the next Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency, just has not been paying attention. Or he is just stupid.
The goal for Ukraine is to recover territory Russia has stolen. It is fighting for the principle of territorial integrity, that no country has the right to invade another without provocation. Ukraine is in a war that, if Russia wins, could lead to its total control by Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is the first line of defense against Putin’s plan for the eventual re-amalgamation of Eastern Europe under Russian hegemony.
One wonders if Jordan paid attention during class when the history lesson of World War II was studied.
From the anti-Irish immigration crusades of the mid-19th century, through the anti-Asian immigration and anti-citizenship laws of the late-19th-early-20th centuries, continuing into the anti-Eastern and Southern European immigration quotas of the first half of the 20th century, “America is for Americans” seems to be the mantra of those already here.
Like Jordan, they seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never realized, that, in the words of Liev Schreiber, “America is a nation of grandchildren” of people who came here to build for their children and grandchildren a new, freer, more economically viable life than in their origin lands.
Schreiber is an actor, director and writer, but also the co-founder of BlueCheck Ukraine, which “identifies, vets, and fast-tracks urgent financial support to Ukrainian NGOs and aid initiatives providing life-saving and other critical humanitarian work on the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine.”
Speaking on a recent PBS “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” Schreiber described Russia’s actions as an “attempt at genocide. To wipe a people and culture off the map.” Schreiber’s Jewish maternal grandfather emigrated to America from Ukraine.
America had a chance 100 years ago to parlay its late involvement in World War I into global leadership. Woodrow Wilson championed the League of Nations but Republican isolationists torpedoed our entry into the global parliament. In less than two decades, without the United States flexing its muscle and influence inside the League, Europe descended into another world war and the resulting Holocaust of European Jewry.
Now, eight decades later, Jordan and too many Republicans do not recognize that failure to learn the lessons of history dooms us to repeat the sad consequences.
Civics Classes: Our Constitution permits free speech, even of animus thoughts. It is a price of liberty. So is the right to vote for all eligible citizens. Before any immigrant can achieve citizenship status, he or she must pass a civics test on U.S. history and government.
Much like outlawed poll taxes in Southern states that sought to restrict voting by Afro-Americans, it would be unconstitutional to require any voter to pass a test before being allowed to cast a ballot. But the necessity for greater knowledge of our history and values cannot be denied, at least by any rational mind.
Over in Britain, Bernard Trafford, an educator and journalist, writing about Ukraine’s battle with Russia, opined, “We Brits, enjoying an old democracy, too easily take for granted things that to those nations which, until only thirty years ago, suffered under totalitarian regimes controlled by the Soviet Bloc, were new, exciting, but also challenging. Their citizens, their parents, their grandparents and, in many cases, generations far further back, had no previous experience, and therefore no inherited grasp, of what living in a democracy means and demands.”
Trafford is not just a keyboard intelligentsia. “Following the collapse of Soviet communism, then, the Council of Europe identified the need to prepare children for becoming active, engaged citizens, particularly in the new democracies. Accordingly, it launched its Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education Project (EDC/HRE).” The Council of Europe enlisted Trafford to co-author a manual for students.
A deeper knowledge and understanding of civics is required. Sadly, civics classes have mostly been eliminated from school curricula, though Stanford University should be applauded for requiring all incoming freshmen to take a civics course.
The war in Ukraine is another example of why we need presidents who understand foreign affairs, presidents who, like Biden and George H.W. Bush, know how to cobble together international coalitions to combat evil.
Leaders are supposed to lead, not be led by the nose as Kevin McCarthy was by a handful of Republicans who would like nothing more than to tear down the last 125 years of progressive government laws and institutions advanced by Democrat AND Republican lawmakers and presidents.
Whether it be Jim Jordan or another conservative Republican as Speaker, let us hope for a wider view of their responsibilities than just obstructing President Biden’s agenda, particularly as it applies to defending freedom in Ukraine and throughout Europe.
