There can be no divided allegiance here.

[G2099]

President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to the American Defense Society in 1919, 10 years after his presidency.
--Lou Dobbs

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/27/quote.roosevelt/index.html

[Faygo Kid]

1. There is always room for dissent. Absolutes are not our way.

My grandparents came over from Sweden and Norway, respectively, around 1910. Even two generations removed, and with them gone, I still follow Scandinavian holiday traditions, eat the food (lutefisk excepted), and enjoy the music, and root for the Swedish women's curling team (OK, more going on there). Is that wrong? I think what we are involved in now is solvable. I really do, but it is time to come up with leadership and solutions. Teddy was great, but that was then, and this is now. Under Bush, we have lost our hope of solving difficult problems, but we used to roll up our sleeves and try to do it, and eventually get there (no matter how inept or long along the way). We can do this on immigration today, as well. Dammit. Tach Sa Mychet.

[prolesunited]

2. Let me see

In 1910, we didn't have civil rights for African-Americans and women were treated as property without the right to vote.

Do you think perhaps some of those narrow-minded ways of thinking, such as the Roosevelt's, are just a bit outdated? I would hope that we would have evolved more as human beings since that time.