American Culture is Being Slowly Erased and Replaced

With my breaking the story of the Soquel High School suspensions, I got my very first Memeorandum page, a blogging milestone.  That was nice.  Lots of local folks weighing in on the Soquel post, some saying the kids deserved their suspensions for past "sins" (like wearing American flag t shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo).

Apparently, someone has been putting Nazi symbol graffiti around the school, and this group of white students is suspected of being the culprits, and suspicion is good enough to want to suspend them.   They couldn't prove the graffiti guilt, so they had to prove something easier, i.e. that the students were wearing white t shirts.

It seems to me that the program and goal of many universities and high schools in America is to erase America, replacing it with something else.  In general, they do this by: 
(1) Supporting and celebrating the culture, traditions, language and history of "the other," that is, nonwhite minorities, while claiming that doing the same for the white majority is offensive and racist;
(2) Instilling in the minds of the white students that they and their ancestors are evil oppressors, and that by the very color of their skin they are suspect and untrustworthy, deserving of shame and repentance;
(3) Justifying anti-American and anti-white attitudes in minorities by giving undue credence to their grievances and prejudices, and by reinforcing their status as "oppressed victims" at the hands of Americans or white people;
(4) Instilling in the minds of all students that it is a crime for any white people to be proud of their race or their heritage, causing knee-jerk reactions against any alleged "thought crimes," e.g. that celebrating Cinco de Mayo may not be appropriate or desirable for a public school activity in America.  (Hispanic kids should be assimilated into American culture and become Americans, instead of encouraged to remain separate and apart from, and hostile to, America.)

As for the white kids who understandably feel alienated by the leftist culture that surrounds them on campus, they should find more effective means of resistance.  Shouting "white power" or adopting Nazi symbols (if that is the case) is absolutely not the way.  Also, being white is something many patriots have in common, but no one should be excluded from a pro-American resistance movement based simply on their race.  Attitudes and beliefs are more important.  We need all the friends we can get.

What is an effective way for alienated pro-American kids to resist leftist indoctrination on campus?  That is a question worthy of some serious thought.  I don't currently have the answer.  Suggestions?

"I Could Smell the Freedom..."

I had lunch with a fellow CPA today, a naturalized American citizen from India.  We went to an Indian restaurant in Sunnyvale that specializes in very spicy dishes, which I love.

While we were chowing down, my friend (whom I'll call Amrik) told me that before he came to the USA, he had worked for a Big 4 CPA firm in the Muslim country of Dubai.  Dubai is rather tame by Muslim standards, but it is repressive compared to the West.  You can get arrested for kissing your wife in public there.  You can't speak your mind and you can't practice your religion -- Amrik is a self-described "born again" Christian.  After a couple of years there, Amrik obtained a visa to visit the United States.  His plane landed in Chicago and for the first time in his life, he sat foot on American soil.

His reaction to the event was something I will never forget, as it is a powerful testimony for America.

"I could literally smell the freedom," he said.

Flower Drum Song

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I went to see a live production of "Flower Drum Song" at the Center for Performing Arts in San Jose, California. I always loved the original production, made into a movie in 1961. "Flower Drum Song" was a Broadway hit in 1958. Fifty years have passed since it first made the scene.

The 1961 film starred Nancy Kwan, an exotic beauty, as well as James Shigeta and Myoshi Umeki.

As a conservative, I am most certainly not into ethnic grievances, but "Flower Drum Song" was not about that. It was a genuine celebration of the Asian experience in America, the culture shock for new arrivals, the striving to know, as new immigrants, what facets of their old culture should be retained and what discarded in their transformation into Americans.

"Flower Drum Song" of 1961 is a bit dated, with the hip young Asians saying things like "hep cats" and calling each other "daddio." Also, it isn't politically correct in our brave new world, where any ethnic theme is a potential minefield of outrage and victimization and hatred of white people. Imagine, Myoshi Umeki's character (Mei-Lei) had to get out of an arranged marriage in the original, and did so by admitting that she was in the country illegally. "My back is wet," she confessed to her would-be mother-in-law. She thus escapes her marriage to Americanized hipster Sammy Fong and marries Wang Ta instead. Poor Sammy has to settle for Linda Low (played by Nancy Kwan). Poor bastard. We should all suffer such a terrible fate.

Talking about "wet backs" today is strictly verboten, so the whole show had to be rewritten. The new story that replaced the old is lame, in my opinion. It features pretty, dancing Asian girls dressed up like boxes of Chop Suey take-out. Mmm, Chop Suey never had legs like those. In any case, I thought the silliness of these depictions was something akin to "The Producers" and their play "Springtime for Hitler," which featured German girls dancing around with giant pretzels and sausages on their heads. However, the latter was supposed to be ridiculous.

The only good thing about the new version of "Flower Drum Song" is that it preserves all of the original songs, songs like "The Flower Drum Song," "You Are Beautiful," "I Enjoy Being a Girl," "Don't Marry Me," and "Love Look Away."

I once was seriously involved with a Chinese woman, an immigrant from Hong Kong, who introduced me to the culture of San Francisco's Chinatown, with its open air markets, weird vegetables, ducks hanging by the neck in store windows, birds nest soup, mooncake with egg and Chrysanthemum tea. Gaudy, cacaphonous Chinatown, with its sights and smells and sounds, was an experience I will never forget. It is here where the story of "Flower Drum Song" unfolds.

Since my Chinese love story ended badly, the song "Love Look Away" always held special meaning for me. In the video below, a star of the modern production, Lea Salonga (a lovely Filipina), sings two songs. The first is "I Enjoy Being a Girl." (I suspect that, if Pamela Geller had a theme song, this would be it.) The second is "Love Look Away." Enjoy.

Obama: On Remaking the United States

Mark Steyn discusses Barack Obama's desire to remake the United States. Barack Obama, in his victory speech, said:

I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation.

Mark Steyn asks a reasonable question: As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it?

Steyn then remarks:

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.

Read it all here.

How true that is for all of us who have no intention of going along with the remake. If America becomes just another European-style socialist/pacifist dhimmitude, we're hosed. There is nowhere else to go.

We conservatives are quite determined, however, that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will not remake America, elected or not. A President is not a dictator and Congress is restricted by laws and the Constitution. We must organize for maximum resistance to the neo-Socialists and their programs.