I stopped for gas near Smithfield on a crisp day recently and noticed that the dominant clientele were Chinese, which set me to thinking. The next big thing for the US is China, but not necessarily whether or not there will be global confrontation with the ancient culture of the Middle Kingdom and America, but the reality that Chinese immigrants are steadily coming our way. Those I saw in the gas station grocery are here to work in a textile factory, but the region's largest employer, IBM, has sold its laptop business located at Research Triangle Park to a Chinese global computer maker. The Chinese are coming, and soon.
My first thought: to accommodate the newcomers, are we to publish signs in English and Chinese as we now do for English and Spanish? Will we be asked to hit option #2 for service in Chinese? Will English be taught as a "second language" for Chinese school kids?
We opened the Pandora's box of special treatment for Hispanic immigrants over the dozens of other groups that have moved to America, elevating their status and diminishing our pride in our own language. Why did we do this, and what do we next now that we have allowed a cadre of education activists to institute the concept that our language, English, should not be required for citizenship?
Here's my theory. In 1968 Robert Kennedy ran for president as a liberal Democrat, defined back then by opposition to the war in Vietnam and a commitment to overcome racism against black Americans. Behind him rallied a large portion of the hard Left, members of the Movement, mostly campus radicals who hated America (they spelled it "Amerika" to connote a Germanic fascist regime) and sought a "Revolution" to align the US with the one-world concept of government.
This group was pro-union as a matter of natural course as they saw business owners as "capitalist pigs" and sought to elevate the working class to the "vanguard elite" proletariat that would lead the nation to our own American style of socialism, modeled after their heroes in the Soviet Union. "Power to the people" and "Down with Amerika" were the clarion calls. America, they hollered, was run by an international cabal of capitalists, and war, intolerance and racism were the result.
In this charged atmosphere, Bobby Kennedy toured the country seeking the Democrat nomination, a departure from his early days as a firm anti-communist and a truculent scourge of corrupt union activity. After the death of his brother John, and knowing that he had perhaps been a cause of the assassination due to his hard line against union leaders (most notably Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters)-who had delivered Illinois and West Virginia to JFK by unseemly methods-and were then attacked after the election, Bobby became a convert to the Left.
It was in California, where he was later murdered, that he came under the thrall of Caesar Chavez, leader of the grape pickers union. Suddenly, according to the RFK campaign, America was not just guilty of black racism but now responsible for exploiting Hispanic agricultural workers. This was a natural for the campaign activists who could now steer their rhetoric to concentrate on exploitation of the workers, fitting nicely into the Soviet directed world-wide effort to destroy capitalism.
Thus Mexican and other Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, were thrust to the top of the agenda, their travails covered daily in the press and Chavez deified into a trusted savant whose every word became sacred to the Kennedy campaign. Now the fellow traveling activists had what they wanted: actual workers seemingly trampled by the capitalist state. Twinned with the exploitation of black Americans, the potency of the Revolution was palpable-and a Kennedy was leading the charge.
They strived to show "Amerika" that its European roots and English language, the spoken word of "Imperialists," does not dominate. Ironically, now that the world has adopted English as the lingua franca of communication among nations-a necessary tool for economic advancement-these same activists have blocked efforts to make it the official language of the United States. The rest of us sit back in wonder that our cherished language is denigrated in our own country due to the antics of a handful of righteous and deranged anti-American wonks who defended the Soviet model and still hate their own country.
Nearly 40 years later their labors remain imprinted in the American system. Hispanic causes are championed in every facet of government largesse. But the singular victory above all others is the creation of a bilingual America. In a nation comprising dozens of cultures, Spanish is given special status, even at the expense of English. I wonder what the Chinese moving here must think.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
Readers of this column will remember my prediction that soon we will be darting and thrusting through phalanxes of wild animals in suburban America. The "deep" environmental crackpots, relying on junk science and the dangerous notion that human population growth is dangerous and impedes the existence of our animal friends, have "protected" just about any creature in nature, often at the expense of mankind. One example is the dwarf wedge mussel, a microscopic organism plentifully found near lakes and rivers that has held up the much-needed bypass around Clayton on Highway 70 east of Raleigh for seven years. Or consider that deer are now the number one cause of death on US highways, that sharks are now protected, the gray wolf is being re-introduced into Eastern North Carolina, alligators are free to roam around the lower Southeastern coastal regions at their pleasure and the noisy woodpecker tells the Army what to do at Fort Bragg.
Now comes news that the coyotes are lurking about the state, including the Triangle area. At least for now they are classified as a nuisance and are not protected-yet. They are mostly nocturnal and hunt small animals, but, as a family in North Raleigh reported, they can tear down a rabbit hutch and make off with the family pet with little effort. "It makes us very nervous about children being outside. If a coyote could come in and get a rabbit, it could get a child too," said a Lead Mine Road mother.
So what do you do to protect your pets and children from coyotes? A pamphlet by the NC State Cooperative Extension Service suggests "keeping donkeys and llamas, which can be aggressive toward coyotes." I guess they forgot that humans can't keep large animals in the City or shoot predators prowling in the yard. But humans don't count for much anymore.
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Have you noticed that our TV "meteorologists" can't get the weather right even with Doppler radar and all sorts of high-tech equipment and graphics? I have a simple solution. Have them use the business model of reporting performance compared to the same period last year or to the budget. Under this scenario, the next evening they report what they predicted compared to the actual weather we experienced. This format could lead to a little modesty and cease the reference to the actions of nature as "my forecast."
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Now for my Man of the Year for 2004. Last year I chose President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This year it's Bill Cosby, who finally looked his fellow black Americans straight in the eye and let them know that blaming white people is not the answer to their problems. He also pointed out the problems he sees: rude behavior in public, misusing the language, abusing opportunities for education and committing crime far out of proportion to their percentage of the population. It is indeed high time that the black leadership ceases exploiting white guilt and addresses the facts of the matter. The illegitimacy rate among blacks is an unbelievable 70 percent; the education gap is severe and the violent crime issue cripples the public peace.
Bill Cosby is why America is great: the unexpected hero.