Born "Free" in America . . . SamKat Rant!

Born “Free” in America

We ‘born here’ citizens of the USA are widely envied throughout the world.  Legal immigrants who also gained citizenship are envied just as much.

There were ten of us Kegley children, of German immigrant descendancy, born to blue-collar parents in Portsmouth Ohio, a town I call ‘the cultural center of my universe”.

We Kegleys never any felt any serious form of discrimination because of the fact that our large family was not from the more-recognized ‘hilltop’ affluent citizens  in Portsmouth.  But we knew of cliques which were there, even for us, the financially poorer people.  Our family was largely raised just a block up the hill and a few feet above the above the terrible 1937 flood crest.

No one person enjoys a personal slight or condescending manner from any other, but we know it happens and can be personally felt.  A parent cannot want that for their children.

Although the Civil War ended in 1865, my home town had segregated living areas for black and white citizens. I only learned as an adult how deeply blacks resented the separations.

We had a one of the nation’s finest swimming pools which  we kids and adults enjoyed so much. Blacks were unable to attend because it was called “The Terrace Club”.  Much later, the pool was integrated, but not without peaceful demonstrations and a black ‘swim-in’.

The Civil Rights act was passed in 1964.   Still, the blacks felt under-privileged in our country, which many of them had helped other service people in fighting our enemies in order to have the USA remain ‘Free’.

Assimilation didn’t immediately happen for any of the ethnic  groups who legally entered our country; however, it was not dismissed out of hand as people wanted to retain their own cultures even in their newly entered land.  But most eventually assimilated.  It has not been as easiy a path for the black families, as it became for the Irish, Italian, east and west European or Asian immigrants.  Not many of those other groups came as slaves as did the blacks.

Many immigrants have meant so much to the USA.  Werner Von Braun brought his German iingenuity  for American advancement.  Assimlating immigrants or refugees have significantly helped the USA?  Azian Americans brought more of the work ethics we love to recognize. 

Yes, we realize that Tea Party types like me don’t mind at all talking of legal immigrants or ‘accepted refugees’ such as Albert Einstein’, a man so important to the USA’s winning of WW II with its allies over the evils threatening us.

Immigrants who assimilate into our value systems are welcome in the USA today to the extent that they want to be Americans and it is visible in their groups. 

I have been recently been substitute teaching in mainly middle schools and high schools.  For eleven year olds, such as many sixth graders are, I can see some as ornery and some more earnest than I and my schoolmates were back in 1943 while WW II was going strong.  The kids I see and the wonderful regular teachers are just as worthy of being protected as our kids were of that day.

It all causes me to wonder:  Who should want to kill the wonderful children and their hard-working elders who have worked so hard and built this “free” country?  All around us here, we  see faces of very good American people, the psyches of whom God knows even more intimately.

There is wider division between the evil and the good since our 2016 elections, but I continually pray that God’s wishes will continue strongly in All American Christians.

There is world-wide evidence that there are those who would remove all good by their own declarations and actions.

America must maintain vigilance to remain a free and leading country for a free world.

My wonderful Christian voluntary editor cannot fully agree with my anger towards the leftists.  God, please keep my anger subsided and let me practice your Christian love for all of your creation.

I still strongly feel that our countrymen must wake up to the dangers confronting the free world.

Sam Kegley