i'm going to...

make a political statement. i know that this (my blog) really isn't the forum for it. for i have always tried to stay away from such banter here. but...

there has been a lot of things going around being said about the issue of immigration. this is a hot topic right now here in america. i believe our former president teddy roosevelt said it best in a nineteen nineteen speech...

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

this was written by president roosevelt ten years after his presidency to the american defense society.

what to take from this...

one flag. one nation.

united we stand, yet divide we fall (don't forget the second half of this)

thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white; there is a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars (top and bottom) alternating with rows of five stars; the fifty stars represent the fifty states, the thirteen stripes represent the thirteen original colonies; known as Old Glory

white for purity and innocence
red for hardiness and valour
blue, the color of the chief, for vigilance, perseverance and justice
the star "is a symbol of the heavens and the divine goal to which man has aspired from time immemorial; the stripe is symbolic of the rays of light emanating from the sun." -the house of representatives; nineteen seventy seven.