The Voice of New Rochelle: Made in America

Things are good. You have a well-paying job, the kids are doing great in school, and you have a nice house. All these things accrue to you because you live in a unique town that combines manufacturing and farming in an uncommonly successful way. 

In the north end, the mills and tool plants hum with productivity driven by the wealth of the agrarian king-pins on the other side of town. The factory owners, managers and workers do their part, as well, to drive this vigorous economy.

Something, though, is not right, and you know it. But all your life you have been taught to go along to get along. 

Those farms in the south end are staffed with people who have no rights, get no pay and are beaten if they don’t do what they are told. Worse still, those “workers” are not allowed to learn to read or write lest they develop the power to understand the system that binds them, and possibly rebel against their masters. Incredibly, these darker-skinned human beings are even bought and sold as property, often resulting in the permanent separation of man and wife and/or children from their parents.

Your parents, friends and neighbors have told you to mind you own business, that things are quite fine the way they are, and you are one of the beneficiaries of the system. What is more, they tell you that those black beings are not fully human, so you don’t have to worry about how they are treated. In fact, some say, they are better off in bondage where they have food and shelter.

You have also been told since you were young that this town you live in, America, is a place where all are created equal.

As you grow, and learn how to think for yourself, you realize that your town is not living up to its ideals, and that it is a sin before God, and a moral abomination, that people are treated this way, and that you and everyone else not in bondage is living off of their enslaved existence. In righteous anger, you vote in a mayor who is committed to stopping the injustice in the south end and giving freedom to those oppressed victims. Ultimately, you are even willing to risk your life and fortune to bring that freedom about.

In the eyes of God and mankind you are a hero. Your mayor is, himself, martyred in the struggle.

In the wake of this pared down and simplified story of our civil war comes one Jim Porter, the newly elected president of the National Rifle Association. Using a term that should have been long dead in this country, he has called the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression” insisting that what people of conscience did was wrong. He said this a few days ago.

Think about it—I mean really think about it. 

This is who the members of the NRA choose to lead their ranks. Now think about one of their recent rallies. In attendance were Sarah Palin, who once was involved with an organization that wanted Alaska to leave the union, and Rick Perry, he from the state that is always threatening to secede. By all accounts, they were surrounded by fatigue-wearing, flag-waving, gun-toting crowds. 

I really wish they would not involve the flag in this. These people don’t seem to have the slightest understanding about what it really stands for. But long ago, they internalized an image of America that is both an embarrassment and hateful.  These are also the same people who are pleased that we do not have effective background checks for gun owners.

I support the Second Amendment, but I cannot abide these people. Shame on the NRA.

And so, once again, we are back in the town square. Do we continue to go along to get along? Or do we speak out against the cynical and small-minded who want America to be something the founding fathers never intended.