Yes, there will probably be memage later, supposing I don’t get distracted by food (I’m highly food oriented, sorry) or watching the sacred musical, but until then, I woke up this morning with a weird thought, because I read a headline last night (I no longer remember what the headline was) and the back brain fermented it, somehow. If I get distracted, you get memage AND promo tomorrow. It’s a bountiful day.
This is what I realized: I’m not going to say “diversity is our strength”. Diversity as presently understood is a weakness. That’s the old Marxist game of dividing people into separate and mutually hostile groups which compete for benefits from the bountiful teat of master government.
That type of diversity is the polar opposite of the focus on the individual and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our declaration promises and our Constitution ensures (if followed. Look, that’s been a struggle since before the ink dried.)
But besides those secured promises which of course shall remain and be true, even if the sun and the stars pass away leaving the universe in utter darkness (In this I am an absolutist) this country has achieved something quite wonderful and new in the history of the world, something you might not be quite appreciate, unless you were raised abroad and saw how nationality and culture works abroad.
What America managed, before the Marxists got a hold on our institutions, was to seamlessly integrate people of vastly different cultures in two or three generations with barely a hiccup.
Note that what I am speaking of isn’t even what WE consider different races, but what everyone else has considered different races, and definitely since the founding of this country (and before.)
I was reading a story from the settling of the west, and the notable thing was how Swedes, Germans, English, and Americans met, worked together and the foreigners gradually (and sometimes very fast. I mean I’m not unique. Sometimes it happens in a couple of decades for the original immigrant. Leading to our sacred liberties being loudly defended in weird accents) became as American as anyone else. It wasn’t that people were blind to differences, but that they assumed EVERYONE could be American and would become American, because of course that was the superior way to live.
On the way there, Americans acquired the best habits, words and ideas of the foreigners, while subsuming them and using them in the service of being AMERICAN. This happens nowhere else. Or not easily. When I traveled on European trains in my teens and young twenties, you could still not only tell the independent cultural groups, but also there was considerable animosity between them. I don’t know how it is now with the EU, but when I visit I still see the old divisions and animosities. There is no melding together into one people. Which it still happens here, almost without notice, provided we get the Marxist hold off the heads of the “educated” and the laws and institutions of our nation.
This sets us apart from the history of humanity, and makes us something quite new and wonderful, a promise that humans can eventually go to the stars however many and from wherever we need to be, and form a new polity, or more likely be absorbed into the new polity of America In the Stars.
In a hundred years, let’s look forward to the fireworks display to celebrate the historical independence of the Mother Country and the establishment of the Declaration and the Constitution, those words that set people free. This is why people all over the world want to be Americans and either try to move here or adopt a dog in the manger hatred of America that’s not even plausible, much less realistic. They love us, they hate us, they obsess on use continuously, and can’t believe we never think of them at all.
We never think of them, because we’re busy with more important things. To wit, we have great things to do. Because the future comes from America.
Americans: A people on the way to the stars.
It’s already great and it’s going to be glorious!
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According To Hoyt 
Mel Brooks wrote Blazing Saddles, and I think we all know the scene that culminates in the line “…Oh, alright, the Irish too!”
Even the Johnsons can be unified with their hereditary enemies.
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Flashback to a comment from a college English professor in the 80’s. He was on a train in Europe. A German and a Frenchman were arguing about something. They deferred to him not because they trusted an American but because they trusted him over each other. Come to think of it, that sums up NATO. Or it did at one point.
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Yes.
We’re sitting in a family camp on a nameless base in the Northeast, and it is comforting to hear, at the stroke of 8 a.m., the national anthem playing over the loudspeakers. And keep an eye on the sky – I don’t know where the guys were going, but we had an impressive fly-by over the local flea market this morning, including B-1s and B-2s. Did occur to me that having all these flyover here,there and yonder, might have the added effect of giving our cities informal air cover…
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Looking at what’s going on in the State Fair in D.C., I would have liked to be there for the fireworks, but also to see the scheduled 10:36 PM B-1 flyover, using the afterburners. However, I don’t like big crowds, and that is a REALLY big crowd.
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My wife has traced her entire North American lineage to predate the United States, sometimes by generations. She married a guy (that would be me) who personally knew all of his immigrant ancestors. When our daughter went to senior prom, her crowd rented a stretch limo for the six couples, and there among these teens were couples of every mixed ethnic grouping possible. Those first and second generation teens weren’t looking to preserve ethnic divisions. They were all striving for excellence and, on that particular night, to have a good time with friends.
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My husband’s family got here on the second boat after the Mayflower. His ancestor of the same name was an under age enlistee with the Connecticut Volunteers, following George Washington from the beginning of the revolutionary enterprise. His tombstone reads “Daniel Hoyt, revolutionary.” (Interestingly he married a Sarah, which we didn’t know when I changed my name.)
He married me. My kids simultaneously qualify for Sons of the American revolution and are first generation American. They are also, both of them, VERY AMERICAN. Religious USAians you could say. The fourth of July is the major holiday the family celebrates, usually with massive party. And it always concludes with singing the star spangled banner. (Very badly, because I can’t sing, but with ALL THE FERVOR.)
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Applegates, paternal through great-great-grandfather, have not only been in the PNW since 1843, but on east coast since 1628 (? Didn’t make the local family gathering June 27). Not the first or second boat, but one of the early ones. One of George Washington’s young aid (too young for drum, or piper) was the youngest brother. Parked there because the older brothers were enlisted, and no one to leave the youngster with, or safe to leave, on the frontier homestead. No “first natives”, that we know of (although the joke was “How’d they know? So many kids running around, might have snuck one in.”)
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Natives on Dan’s mom’s side.
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I had always believed that my family had shallow roots in this country with my mother having arrived in 1958 and my father’s family mostly early 20th century. I found out recently that I’m eligible to join the sons of the revolution through one, sneaky line of descent. I knew I have ancestors who fought with the French under Rochambeau and at Savanah— he was in Clare’s Regiment Irish Brigade right mess that was. THat would be the Cincinnati but that’s primogeniture and my descent is through my mother. I didn’t know about the Connecticut family who all fought in the war and later left a daughter who bore my great Great grandfather.
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Continuing the family tradition of mixing bloodlines, my daughter is married to a proven Mayflower descendant. Her two sons happen to be named after two of most legendary kings of England, for reasons having nothing to do with them being kings of England.
Although as preschoolers, either of them would probably do a better job than the current king of England.
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One of my favorite statements of diversity is by L. Neil Smith, when he referred to a character as “John Smith, Individual, Unique Product of the Universe”.
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”Cut it out! Cut it out! Cut it out! The hell’s the matter with you?! Stupid! We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi. We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!”
Here’s to the next 250 and per ardua ad astra!
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In this I fit in. I’m a PROUD mutt.
Ad Astra!
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“See? His nose is cold!”
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I thought I remembered something, and checked, and sure enough, Ray Bradbury’s classic short story ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ is set one month from today, on August 4, 2026. The story was published 76 years ago.
Based on current events, I think the prospect of Allendale, CA being nuked in the next month is fairly low. 😁
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I kinda hope the probability is indistinguishable from zero.
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“On our way to the Stars”.
I remember reading a Poul Anderson story where the “Not So Secret” rulers of Earth were secretly putting “road blocks” in the way of space exploration (especially involving finding Earth-like planets for humans to settle).
This was for “our own good” as the so-called rulers believe that humanity would “mess ourself up” without their control and once humanity spread off-Earth, they couldn’t “keep their for our-our-good control”.
[Very Big Crazy Grin]
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Maybe instead, we should offload all the malcontent America haters to the stars? Perhaps, the closest one.
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