Yesterday I talked about Maria as the reason why Democrats are losing Spanish speaking voters. I’d like to touch on another misconception they have by looking at an old and loved piece of fiction.
One of my favorite pairs of books are I Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves which tells the story of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus the 5th Emperor of Rome in the form of an autobiography. The books were made into a mini-series titled I Claudius which made a star of Derek Jacobi in the title role.
In the 2nd book Claudius tells the story of how he as Emperor discovered the location of the final Roman Eagle Standard taken by the Germans in the famous battle of Teutoburg Forest (9 AD) where three Roman Legions had been slaughtered. In the story Claudius tricks members of his German Guard into revealing it’s location in Germany by offering to send them home to Germany “the dear, dear Fatherland about which they nightly sang such melancholy and tuneful songs”. It turns out however that these guards who had a pretty easy life didn’t like that idea too much. Graves writes
These veterans were even less anxious to return to Germany than the Roman’s captured by the Parthians at Carrhae were to return to Rome when, thirty years later Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa bargained with teh King for their exchange. Those Roman in Parthia had settled down, married, raised families, grown rich and quite forgotten their past. And these Germans at Rome, though technically slaves, lived a most easy and enjoyable life and their regret for home was not at all a sincere emotion, merely an excuse for tears when they were maudlin-drunk. They came to me in a body and begged for permission to remain in my service. Many of them were fathers and even gradfathers, by slave-women attached to the Palace, and they were all comfortably off.
Claudius the God page 157
In other words for all the talk of the old country they weren’t anxious to go there.
It’s the same with my own family. My Grandparents on both sides came here in 1906 my own parents were born here in 1921 and 1924 and while over the decades there was a lot of talk about Italy, Sicily and how beautiful it was along with memberships in the Sons of Italy and attendance at various Italian and Sicilian festivals and that we are proud to be Italian / Sicilian Americans in the end we knew that if Sicily and Italy was so wonderful and so good and so wonderful our grandparents would not have pulled up stakes and travelled thousands of miles over the ocean to new country with a different language, a different culture and a different entire way of life to start over.
And that brings us to those folks from below the border and countries like the Dominican Republic who have been coming here who have been collectively been called “Hispanic”.
A lot of folks have gone though an awful lot to get to this country. A lot of effort a lot of cost and a lot of sweat. They do this for something that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Something that was once part of what Democrats talked about. FDR’s four Freedoms.
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Religion
- Freedom from Want
- Freedom from Fear
The ability to say what you think, worship how you wish, make a living for you and your children and do so without fear is a rare thing in history. Most or all of these things are usually missing from places where they come from. If they already had these things, were set and doing well in their own countries they wouldn’t bother to come here and in many cases do jobs Americans aren’t or won’t do and all of these things were the norm here until recently.
Now you see cancel culture sweep over people if they don’t think and express liberal orthodoxly, particularly on gender and race. We see attacks on the religious who dare proclaim and live Christianity which is contrary to all the left is pushing. We see inflation especially in food and fuel taking away the buying power of hard working immigrants and their children and as we’ve already noted. We’ve seen city after city run by democrats descend into crime and chaos with those looting, robbing protected by leftist prosecutors and a media that back them, those who are charged to protect people and property vilified and those who are the victims of these acts ignored at best and demeaned at worst for complaining about their lot.
People who came to escape this type of thing aren’t all that anxious to go through it all again.
The wonder isn’t that the Democrats are starting to lose the Spanish speaking vote, the wonder is that they retain any but a fraction of it.
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