This Saturday 25th July 8-9 PM on It’s A Question Of Balance with Ruth Copland we consider ‘Whose Country is America?’ We are increasingly being told that ‘our country’ is falling apart, or that we need to take back ‘our country’. But who are ‘we’ are taking back ‘our’ country from? The website takingourcountryback.net states “We yearn for our country to return to the Founding Principles which made us the greatest country on Earth!” When you think of ‘our country’ – who does that ‘our’ encompass in your mind? Everyone who is a citizen? Everyone who lives here? Or a certain kind of person who represents the real values of America (in your opinion)? In an article entitled ‘Whose country is this?’ President Calvin Coolidge wrote “There can’t be too many inhabitants of the right kind, distributed in the right place. There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. It is only when the alien adds vigor to our stock that he is wanted. Our obligation is to maintain that citizenship at its best.” In rebuttal to this direction of immigration policy congressman Robert H. Clancy stated “My family put 11 men and boys into the Revolutionary War, and I am sure they and their women and children did not suffer so bitterly and sacrifice until it hurt to establish the autocracy of bigotry and intolerance which exists in many quarters to-day in this country. Some of these men and boys shed their blood and left their bodies to rot on American battle fields. To me real Americanism and the American flag are the product of the blood of men and of the tears of women and children of a different type than the rampant “Americanizers” of to-day.” Nearly a hundred years later this debate is still with us. Whose country is America?
What do you think? Ruth Copland gets the views of people on the street for our Out and About feature. Join us on Saturday 8-9 PM! For more info on the show and to hear past shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
