Time to count our blessings. And the biggest blessing is that we have maintained order and civility across our country for most of our history. Yes, we have our problems, but they pale beside the problems of other countries. Have a look:
From Zacatecas, Mexico comes the disturbing news from the BBC that seven police officers died in an ambush as gunmen attacked a convoy carrying three suspected criminals. In the mayhem, two of the three suspects escaped--which I guess stamps them as criminals for sure. So I got curious: How far away from the US border is Zacatecas? Answer: about 350 miles. Not too far for a would-be immigrant, or maybe terrorist, to travel.
And what sort of place is Zacatecas? Well, according to the website OurMexico.com, it's a place where Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary bandit, is much admired--see picture above, from the Cerro de la Buffa, overlooking Zacatecas.
So how much of that sort of violence do we wish to import into the US?
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world comes sobering evidence that other parts of the world aren't interested in--or aren't capable of--copying our political model.
About Pakistan, here's one revealing headline from ABC News: "Pakistan Rejects Outside Help in Bhutto Probe." 'Nuff said.
But here's some more news from Kenya, where they just had an "election." Of course, in Kenya, as with most African countries, is cursed with horrendously drawn boundaries inherited from European colonialists--boundaries typically drawn in Europe for thoroughly Machiavellian purposes. That is, divide and conquer: Split the various ethnic groups across different jurisdictions so that none could easily mobilize against the colonizers. Tragically, post-colonial Africa inherited those borders, and those borders have become recipes for perpetual civil war. And that's what's going on, in low-grade form, even in relatively developed countries such as Kenya. Here's the way The New York Times' Jeffrey Gettleman describes the situation, in which challenger Raila Odinga, an ethnic Luo, took an incumbent Mwai Kibaki, an ethnic Kikuyu:
Several foreign observers said they feared that the government was using its muscle to swing the election and stay in power, which could be a recipe for chaos, with the results rejected by millions of people and Kenya’s cherished stability in danger of collapsing.
Kenya is one of the most developed countries in Africa, but this election has exposed its ugly tribal underbelly.
Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a big tribe in Kenya that feels marginalized from the country’s Kikuyu elite that has dominated business and politics since independence in 1963. Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, and the voting so far has split straight down tribal lines, with each candidate winning big in his tribal homeland.
On Saturday, the first signs of a tribal war flared up in Nairobi, with Luo gangs sweeping into a shantytown called Mathare and stoning several Kikuyu residents. In Kibera, another huge slum, supporters of Mr. Odinga burnt down kiosks that they said belonged to Kikuyu businessmen.
“No Raila, no Kenya!” they screamed, with the fires crackling behind them.
The streets were a collage of destruction, strewn with burning tires, broken bottles, fist-size rocks and fresh shell casings from soldiers who fired in the air to scare the demonstrators off. Some men sharpened machetes on the asphalt, vowing to shed blood should Mr. Odinga lose.
Of course, America has had plenty of bloody ethnic feuds in its history. But for the most part, we have sorted these controversies out, and built a wonderful country. Nobody is saying, here in the US, for example, "No Romney, no America!" Or "No Hillary, no America!"
And we should keep it that way; we must solve our problems as Americans, in our own good time, without floods of foreigners who don't know our ways, and without floods of legislation from those who don't like our ways.
The Freedom & Sovereignty Caucus resolves to preserve our Freedom and Sovereignty. We will protect our Constitution, we will protect our liberty, we will protect our country.
If any of us wish to do more than that, politically we will find some other venue to do it. Because the FSC is focused, hedgehog-like on just a few key concerns. And yet if enough of us wish to do less than that--if we abandon our duty to our past, present, and future--then America might well be doomed to share the fate of Mexico, Pakistan, and Kenya.
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