Teddy's Opinion

[TexKan]

I like the way he thought...... what happened????? Geesh look at the dates these words were spoken........... how come it applied then and not now???



IMMIGRANTS—ASSIMILATION OF. Where
immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily
and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to
the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits
of thought of the Old World which they have left, they
thereby harm both themselves and us. If they remain
alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests
separate from ours, they are mere obstructions to the
current of our national life, and, moreover, can get no
good from it themselves. In fact, though we ourselves
also suffer from their perversity, it is they who really
suffer most. It is an immense benefit to the European
immigrant to change him into an American citizen. To
bear the name of American is to bear the most
honorable of titles; and whoever does not so believe has
no business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes
from Europe, the sooner he goes back there the better.
Besides, the man who does not become Americanized
nevertheless fails to remain a European, and becomes
nothing at all. The immigrant cannot possibly remain
what he was, or continue to be a member of the Old
World society. If he tries to retain his old language, in a
few generations it becomes a barbarous jargon; if he
tries to retain his old customs and ways of life, in a few
generations he becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut
himself off from the Old World, and cannot retain his
connection with it; and if he wishes ever to amount to
anything he must throw himself heart and soul, and
without reservation, into the new life to which he has
come. (Forum, April 1894.) Mem. Ed. XV, 26; Nat. Ed.
XIII, 22.
____________. We should insist that if the immigrant
who comes here does in good faith become an
American and assimilates himself to us he shall be
treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is
an outrage to discriminate against any such man
because of creed or birth-place or origin.
But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in
very fact an American and nothing but an American. If
he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin
and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't
doing his part as an American. There can be no divided
allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language
here, and that is the English language, for we intend to
see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans,
of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a
polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one
soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.
(To President of the American Defense Society,
January 3, 1919; last message, read at meeting in New
York, January 5, 1919.) Mem. Ed. XXIV, 554; Bishop

IMMIGRANTS—RIGHTS OF. The Americans of
other blood must remember that the man who in good
faith and without reservations gives up another country
for this must in return receive exactly the same rights,
not merely legal, but social and spiritual, that other
Americans proudly possess. We of the United States
belong to a new and separate nationality. We are all
Americans and nothing else, and each, without regard
to his birthplace, creed, or national origin, is entitled to
exactly the same rights as all other Americans. (July 15,
1918.) Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 180.
IMMIGRANTS—TREATMENT OF. Never under
any condition should this Nation look at an immigrant
as primarily a labor unit. He should always be looked at
primarily as a future citizen and the father of other
citizens who are to live in this land as fellows with our
children and our children's children. Our immigration
laws, permanent or temporary, should always be
constructed with this fact in view. (December 1, 1917.)
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 58.
____________. The immigrant must not be allowed to
drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our
object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but
to maintain a new American type and then to secure
loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty
unless we make this a country where men shall feel that
they have justice and also where they shall feel that
they are required to perform the duties imposed upon
them. . . .
We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of
thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets
while they remain social outcasts and menaces any
more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the
black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a
human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial
plant and herd men and women about it without care for
their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid
overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes
impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We
cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely
seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both
individual and family life and morals to the industrial
machinery. (Before Knights of Columbus, New York
City, October 12, 1915.) Mem. Ed. XX, 468; Nat. Ed.
XVIII, 402.
II, 474.
IMMIGRANTS — DISCRIMINATION AGAINST.
Any discrimination against aliens is a wrong, for it
tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to
cause him to feel bitterness and resentment during the
very years when he should be preparing himself for
American citizenship. If an immigrant is not fit to
become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come
here. if he is fit, he should be given all the rights to earn
his own livelihood, and to better himself, that any man
can have. (Before Knights of Columbus, New York
City, October 12, 1915.) Mem. Ed. XX, 464; Nat. Ed.
XVIII, 398.
IMMIGRANTS—OBLIGATION OF. We should
provide for every immigrant, by day-schools for the
young and night-schools for the adult, the chance to
learn English; and if after, say, five years he has not
learned English, he should be sent back to the land from
whence he came. . . . We should demand full
performance of duty from them. Every man of them
should be required to serve a year with the colors, like
our native-born youth, before being allowed to vote.
Nothing would do more to make him feel an American
among his fellow Americans, on an equality of rights,
of duties, and of loyalty to the flag. (New York Times,
September 10, 1917.)

[Detector]

Because a generation of ingrates whom themselves hate what America stands for but have not the guts to go elsewhere abound.

I think they call them Liberals