In the "Why Don't You Just Leave the Country?" Department
About once every two weeks or so, some enlightened being sends me a private note telling me that if I don't like America, I should go back to whatever damned rathole country I came from.
Well, that's a little hard to do for a few reasons. Whether you look at the Native American part of my family or the English side, we've been in America for a very long time, since the beginning of both the native and the colonial experience here. I could tell you my boring Mayflower story about the female ancestor who came with her husband here and then sent for her brothers, but the point is that this is my country; I have no desire to leave.
Sure, I could tell you about my ancestor who headed as Chief Justice the U.S. Supreme Court after an unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination against Lincoln. He presided over the impeachment of President Johnson and refused to do more evil against those who founded and worked in the Underground Railroad. His daughter, Kate (for whom I am NOT named), was considered the most powerful woman in Lincoln-era Washington politics and is oft-remembered as the most celebrated first lady of Rhode Island. But don't ask me a lot of details because I'm shamefully ignorant about all of this since I figured I'm more responsible for my life and my times than my ancestors.
The point is that I do come from a long line of Yankee horse traders, scholars, and politicians of which I am both proud and embarrassed. The English side of the family really DID escape a time of great religious intolerance (more than a few of my ancestors were executed in England as witches and heretics - in other words, killed for their beliefs that did not correspond to the reigning Church) and worked hard to establish the foundation of this country.
You'll find the name Chase (once "Chaece") goes back a long way in U.S. history. So while I'm not mindful of all the history, I'm cognizant of the fact that my family was there fighting for a new country that did not have all the baggage, the empiricism, the tyranny of "Mother" England.
As a result, I'm not too keen on all the religious intolerance of today or these "born again" politicians who tell us that America was started as a Christian domain and must remain a Christian domain. I know better. I've read a lot of the documents used to help start this country and if anything, they speak to the authors' great resolve to make this a land where God is respected but where religion is not allowed to topple the will of the people or the law of the land.
As both a product of my ancestors and a thinking and caring person of this time period, it is incumbent upon me to:
- * ask.. no... DEMAND that people not misquote our country's founders for their own political and powerful means
* DEMAND that religious tolerance remain
* speak up when I see injustice or hear a lie perpetrated
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