A Tale of Two Presidents
by Spencer Warren

A number of decades ago, a president commemorated an anniversary of the Statue of Liberty with two speeches. In the first, he spoke of those “who had the supreme courage to strike out for themselves, to abandon language and relatives, to start. . . in a very young civilization. We can say for all America what the Californians say of the Forty-Niners: ‘The cowards never started and the weak died by the way.’” At the time, the President noted, “that stream from abroad has largely stopped. We have within our shores today the materials out of which we shall continue to build an even better home for liberty.”

The President continued that day: “We take satisfaction in the thought that those who have left their native land to join us may still retain here their affection for some things left behind – old customs, old language, old friends. Looking to the future, they wisely choose that their children shall live in the new language and in the new customs of this new people (emphases added).” For all Americans, he said, “there is a unity in language and speech, in law and in . . . general purpose, which nowhere finds its match.” (emphasis added.) The President added: “[I] still hold to the faith that a better civilization . . . is in store for America and by our example, perhaps, for the world.” He then invoked our “melting pot.”

In his second speech that day decades ago, the President spoke of “the steady stream of human resources which the Old World poured on our shores and out of which our American civilization has been built.” Our immigrants “wove into the pattern of American life some of the color, some of the richness of the cultures from which they came. Here they joined in that great process out of which we have welded our American citizenship.” “They have never been . . . half-hearted Americans. In Americanization classes and at night schools they have burned the midnight oil in order to be worthy of their new allegiance. They were not satisfied merely to find here the realization of the material hopes which had guided them from their native land. . . . [T]hey were intent also upon building a place for themselves in the ideals of America. They sought an assurance of permanency in the new land for themselves and their children based upon active participation in its civilization and culture” (emphases added).

Compare these words with a speech in Miami on August 25, 2000 by one of the major party presidential candidates. Little noticed at the time, in hindsight it gives a remarkably clear view of his thinking on the subject as president. “We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world,” he declared. “We’re a major source of Latin music, journalism, and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, or West New York . . . and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.” “For years our nation has debated this change,” he continued. “Some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.”

Who is the liberal, or, to be more precise, the radical? Who is the conservative? The President who spoke of American civilization and welding one people was Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the fiftieth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, in October 1936. The President who spoke of the new multicultural America of distinct, unassimilating groups who are making a “new America” was George W. Bush.

Spencer Warren is ConservativeBattleline’s movie critic.

The text of Roosevelt’s speeches can be read at:
(http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15210&st=&st1= and http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15211&st=&st1=)

The text of Bush’s speech is at:
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/26/195405