“We've become a very tolerant society, in which we don't judge people by their names any more than by the color of their skin. Assimilation still requires some accommodation by the newcomers  . . .  But it doesn't mean entirely giving up some attachment and affection for one's origins, even distant ones.”

--Linda Chavez, at, http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=whats_in_a_name&ns=LindaChavez&dt=10/30/2009&submitted=true&comments=true&sort=desc#comments

Roughly a quarter of a century ago, when the manager hired me to a much coveted job in the lowest echelons of management in a reputable corporation, I believed it was on the merits of my resume and real time presentation. It was the easiest conclusion to make, having been endowed with a healthy dose of self-esteem by my farm boy upbringing, reinforced by a series of academic scholarships through college and graduate school.

Then picking an “Americanized” name was one of the top three issues he addressed in the job orientation. He opined that most people would find pronouncing all three syllables of my first name, Constancio, as a project by itself, or in his words, “more than a mouthful.”

I was utterly flabbergasted. Only the fact that I already resigned from my previous job, where I was affectionately called “Mr. C” by my manager, constrained me from kissing the new job goodbye.

Again my farm boy instinct for adaptation kicked in and I settled for a compromise. During the first few years on the job I adopted the moniker “C.S.” This was conveniently consistent with the name on my driver’s license and the American Express card I carried at the time.

Moreover, the compromise did not involve any emotional stress. I am the fifth of eight siblings and the fourth of six sons. I have known for a fact that I was named after my father not because he had any special affection for me over his other sons. Rather it was because the Catholic Almanac of Names was not available the year I was born, thanks to World War II. So getting “CS” over “Constancio” did not bruise my ego in any way, shape or form.

I did not bring this up to suggest that the manager was a bigot by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he was one of the finest human beings I was privileged to have encountered in my career meanderings. To date I hold him in high esteem. That I am no longer in contact with him may be blamed on what Spenser calls “The Ruins of Time.” I have that strong tendency to be overwhelmed by the inertia of the banalities of day-to-day existence, to keep abreast with the demands of social networking.

The manager who succeeded him promptly sent me to an accent correction tutor to get rid of my ‘thick’ Filipino accent. The premise being that speaking with a vernacular accent hindered my ability to communicate effectively. It allegedly jeopardized my chances for advancement in the corporate bureaucracy, or so he noted in a subsequent job performance evaluation report.

I must confess that he was proved correct. I subsequently resigned from the job shortly thereafter. I simply could not muster enough patience and forbearance to endlessly indulge in what I deemed the celebration of irrelevance just to stoke some peoples’ ego.

The point that can never be overemphasized is that an obsession with form over substance, as seems to be the norm of late, especially in the age of Obama, produces unintended consequences. One of them is a de facto appearance of bigotry, and its practice by default. It is a fine line that divides the much needed effort at cultural assimilation and the despicable sacrifice of your soul in the altar of multi-culturalism.

The former demands you galvanize all the useful aspects of your background to become viable tools to establish your role in the new cultural setting, thereby enhancing your chances at success. The latter is wont to embellish some of the primitive and provincial reflexes of your background to mystify and mythologize so that they become worthy of worship and adoration.

This is an unmistakable prelude to an historical revisionism which can create an alternate universe or pseudo reality in the lives of the practitioners.  As a first generation American, I am always, and will ever be categorically against the mindset that promotes hyphenated-Americanism.  It is the ultimate promise of meritocracy, inter alia, which makes me unapologetically, uniquely, and unequivocally proud to be an American.

It is this sentiment that makes the POTUS’ practice and inclination to apologize for America unpardonably offensive, and un-American. It is a practice definitely not worthy of his office. America deserves better.

Like fallen leaves scattered on the grass of autumn, the following are bits of comments and rejoinders I posted on some of the columns variously indicated by the associated url’s.  I gleaned them into a separate post as I occasionally found sparks of inspiration sparsely intermingled in the ubiquitous morass of tedious verbosity.

Contrary to popular myth, Al Gore did not invent the internet. I submit that his main contribution is in the field of scientific charlatanism, most typically illustrated by the currency and popularity of what is most conveniently known as the established (by consensus) science of “Global Warming.”

The Tragedy of Hyphenated Americans  

It is regrettable but not surprising that Judge Chen sees himself as an Asian-Pacific person who happens to be an American by a confluence of circumstances probably beyond his control as an individual person.
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/10/16/aclu_pipeline_for_obama_judges?comments=true#comments

It would have been much more wholesome if he saw himself as an American who happened to have Asian-Pacific ethnicity in his biological hereditary DNA.

That he is an Obama appointment to the Bench is no surprise. After all the POTUS' highest profile nominee to the Judiciary is Justice Sotomayor who saw herself as a Puerto Rican first and an American, only attendant to circumstances beyond her control as an individual. This seems to be the pattern in Obama world. He nurtures the most provincial impulses and grooms the baser evils of our nature.

The most worrisome aspect of all these is how long can this American Republic endure this vicious attacks on all the moral fabrics that make us Americans and proud of being so?

It is noteworthy, that the POTUS as he repeatedly pointed out during, before and after the campaign, is the quintessential hyphenated American: the Audacity of his Hope is the Dream from his Father. His face is different from the other presidents you find on the US dollar bills. But don’t point it out else you are definitely race-baiting.

In essence, he is a Kenyan-American, and Alinskyan-American, a post-partisan-American, a communist-American, a trans-racial-American, a transformational, transformative-American, etc., etc.

A Compromise with Iran

Is like a coin toss where heads they win, tails we lose. It's pretty much akin to the Democrats' notion of "bipartisanship," that is what attends when the Republicans embrace the Democrats' position on any issue.

cf,http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=give_war_a_chance&ns=BillOReilly&dt=10/17/2009&page=full&comments=true&submitted=true

NATO has always been an American defense umbrella from the get go. With a toothless America, NATO is as benign as a Sunday Bridge Club of retired housewives.

With a POTUS who is obsessed with unilateral disarmament, you get a world without arms which results in a world without laws.

The fault, my dear Casius, lies not in our stars but in ourselves: we put a communist pacifist in the White House. That was oh, so nice of us:)

Desperately Trying to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? The operative word is desperate. You are trying to recruit an ally in Russia who is obsessed with her grandeur of yore. For Russia, this is understandably tolerable. After all you can only aspire for things or a state that you don’t have or are not already. That we consider the Russians as potential allies on any venture, indeed, is desperation of the first order.

Hamlet in the Oval Office

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SandyRios/2009/10/16/obama_is_sure_about_something

To send or not to send (troops to Afghanistan)?
To tell or not to tell (sexual preferences or orientation in the military)?

Will the winter of our discontent shortly follow this, our autumn of vacillation?

An anecdote popularly circulated in my college days tells of a politician who in the heat of a campaign speech passionately promised the audience that he would make sure to build a bridge when elected.

A heckler in the audience pointed out that there is no river needing a bridge in their locality. So the speaker vehemently insisted that he will also guarantee building a river once he is elected, no thanks for the impertinent interruption by the heckler.

The moral of the story is that Obama is the type of politician who promises anyone anything to get applause. That feeds the baser evils of his nature.

Hope and Hype

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2009/10/16/the_nobler_nobels

If the Nobel Peace Prize to the POTUS were only for Hope and Hype, then we can breathe easier and dismiss it as one misguided Norwegian joke on America.

I submit to you that it is less benign than a joke and more sinister and malicious in intent: that is to declaw America, at least for the duration of the Obama Administration. What with the POTUS’ continuing buzz about unilateral disarmament, ad nauseam, the Prize is an attempt to leverage the rules of engagements that America adheres to in both international relations and domestic policy.

The message is: a pacifist you aspire to be, a pacifist you shall remain, and we even bribe you for it.

That the Nobel Committee awards a prize for bluster is consistent with the historical fact that the wealth which gave birth to the Nobel Prizes was largely derived from the manufacture and sales of TNT, dynamite and other explosives.

In Full Brutal Context

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/10/16/the_democrats%e2%80%99_coming_defeat?page=full&comments=true

If the flood is the 2010 election, don't count the chicks before the eggs are hatched, or even laid. The Clintons also promised the most ethical administration in history. We got, among others, DNA on a blue dress and it was not even deemed an impeachable behavior, just rascally banal and worthy of late night comedy fare.

To prevail in the 2010 off peak elections, we need viable and practicable alternatives, comparable to the "Contract on America." Also, we need bone marrow transplants on the Republicans so that they can exhibit some political spine. Short of that, we get on the "Omitted" side of the Brutal quote.