blueforce's Journal: An open letter to non-U.S. citizens

About 384 years ago, a group of unhappy citizens of sundry European countries began leaving their horked-up countries with their horked-up politics to come to North America and found their own horked-up society.

Fast forward 156 years to 1776 when the United States of America is formed and declares its independence from Great Britain.

It was a little country with big ideas.

By the standards of those days it was a rather poor country and for over a century it had a small, sometimes unorganized, very determined military.

It had a bunch of big thinkers and one key idea - the land of the free. Yes, it took a while to get there and it's had its share of ups and downs. It doesn't always do everything right. It still makes mistakes. It will always make mistakes because it is a country of human beings run by human beings with their big ideas and grandiose plans.

On the Statue of Liberty, which was given to her by France, and which now stands in New York harbor there is a plaque that reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We don't do everything right. We certainly don't do everything wrong. We are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, and we even have our own Communist party. We argue among ourselves. We disagree with one another. We're still a family.

We didn't get to where we are or become who we are on a technicality - it's not a fluke. It took hard work, a lot of foreign immigrants, determination, and the one idea that everyone should be free.

384 years ago, a bunch of people got on a boat and left to start their own dysfunctional society and never looked back.

There are only a handful of Native Americans left. The other 277 million of us are German-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, Norwegian-Americans, Canadian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Iranian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Italian-Americans, Russian-Americans, the list goes on, and on, and on-Americans.

But we're all Americans.

"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

So for you non-Americans that think somehow you should have a right to vote in our election, I have this to say:

You haven't earned the right or the privilege to have a say in what we do, who we elect, the laws we make, or the price we charge for bread.

You don't pay our income taxes, pay for our health care, our social security, our military, our poor or homeless, our schools, our children, our sick, our elderly, our orphans, our cars, our homes, our communities, our insurance, our retirement benefits, our clubs and community organizations, our flood damage, our hurricane relief, our aids programs, or anything else.

You don't put food on our tables, mow our lawns, clean out our gutters, or unclog our drains.

You don't shingle our houses, pave our roads, wait in our traffic, harvest our fields, dig our ditches, or milk our cattle.

You don't rake our leaves, clean up our floods, fix our cars, sit up all night with our collicky babies, or work two jobs to pay our bills.

You don't bale our hay, balance our checkbooks, side our houses, install our windows, or drive our trucks.

No, you don't get to have a say in our election.

If you don't like what we do in the rest of the world, work with your own leadership.

Pack up your own troops and get them out of Iraq.
and the Balkans, and Africa and everywhere else that the rest of you have troops.

"It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home." - Carl T. Rowan

Go fix your own horked-up politics and your own dysfunctional society and stop worrying about what we do with ours. You haven't shed blood or tears here.

If you don't want our money, don't take it.
If you don't like our war, don't fight it.
If you don't like our politics don't move here.
If you don't like our foreign policy, tell your own government to ignore us.
If you don't like, do something about it.

But, for pete's sake do it through your own leadership. Don't write us letters and blog your opinions about it - you're working the system backwards.

There are at least as many of us that think you're just as screwed up as we are - even worse since you can't effect changed through your own government and feel the need to vote in our election.

Bottom line - You don't get to vote here. You don't get to have a say. You don't get to write us letters and tell us who to vote for. You aren't American citizens. Like it or not.

"To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right." - Confucius

Fix your own monarchies, parliaments, and your own lying politicians - set your own lives and your own countries right before you tell us what's broken here. Most all of you judge us by our foreign policy. We have homes, families, brothers, sisters, children, and problems just like all of you.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Ghandi