{"id":700,"date":"2006-10-11T07:33:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T13:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-multiculturalism-and-immigration\/"},"modified":"2006-10-11T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T13:33:00","slug":"dendahl-on-multiculturalism-and-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-multiculturalism-and-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"Dendahl on multiculturalism and immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl, so here\u2019s a column Dendahl wrote about multiculturalism and immigration, taken directly from his Web site<\/a>. It was published in the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> on April 7 of this year. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Put All Citizens on Same Footing<\/span>
By John Dendahl<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2018Multiculturalism\u2019 has a nice ring, no? I argue here to the contrary, that this term has been hijacked to cover an un-American trend boding nothing but ill.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>\u201cImmigration talk is all the rage these days in the U.S. Senate. Nothing\u2019s wrong with that; the subject is long overdue on Congress\u2019 agenda.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is an outrageous insult to the rule of law that something like 12 million people are illegally in our country, with every night bringing more.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHowever, illegals are just part \u2014 and perhaps not even the most important part \u2014 of the immigration debate.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMost public conversation centers on two things, security and economics. I propose that non-assimilation is a greater threat to our culture and way of life than either. Further, the implications of this subject go well beyond Americanizing new arrivals, whether legal or not.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAbout the time New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> was becoming a state, President Theodore Roosevelt said, \u2018There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. \u2026 Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>. \u2026 The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities \u2026.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese days, one should add \u2018cultures\u2019 and \u2018religions\u2019 to \u2018nationalities.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cCongress also has under consideration legislation known as the Akaka Bill for its sponsor, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, to enable Hawaii<\/st1:state><\/st1:place> to create a separate government for \u2018native Hawaiians.\u2019 Since I have written fairly recently about this Balkanizing mischief, I\u2019ll be brief here.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMuch rationale for a native Hawaiian government is derived from the so-called sovereignty of American Indian tribes. Sure, there might be a nice symmetry in creating for natives in the 50th state something like those in the other 49.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe problem begging for correction is asymmetry in the 49. Another wrong isn\u2019t going to make an awful situation right. Instead of the Akaka Bill, Congress should be considering the steps necessary to put all Americans, including aboriginals, on the same citizenship footing. That\u2019s a tall order and would take decades to accomplish equitably for all. It is, however, the right direction.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne can imagine how long it would take following enactment of the Akaka Bill\u2014 about a New York minute \u2014 for Chicano leaders in \u2018Aztlan\u2019 to demand one or more separate governments. Aztlan, by the way, is what this crowd calls Texas<\/st1:state>, New Mexico<\/st1:state>, Colorado<\/st1:state>, Arizona<\/st1:state>, Utah<\/st1:state>, California<\/st1:state>, Oregon<\/st1:state> and part of Washington<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNow, while we\u2019re at war with radical Islam, some American Muslims are busy planning enclaves to be governed under Islamic law. We\u2019re all about to get an eye-popping new focus on the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment! See www.meforum.org\/article\/920<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTeddy Roosevelt had it right. America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> is now under the cultural assault that he identified as \u2018the one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin.\u2019 Illegal immigration is but a small, important part.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl, so here\u2019s a column Dendahl wrote about multiculturalism and immigration, taken directly from his Web site. It was published in the Albuquerque Journal on April 7 of this year. Put All Citizens on Same FootingBy John Dendahl \u201c\u2018Multiculturalism\u2019 has a nice ring, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}