She subtitles her essay: I wonder whether my liberal neighbors know how fortunate we are. Well, my dear, this liberal does. I love this country; it gave my immigrant family the freedom to fail and to succeed. As it did your family. I am willing to bet your liberal neighbors love this country as much as you and I do.
Why do people, usually political conservatives, believe liberals hate America?
We liberals criticize people who want to shut the door behind them, refusing to give others the same chance at the American Dream their ancestors got. A hundred years ago it was the Irish, Germans, Italians, the Chinese who were criticized for being unworthy of becoming Americans. Half a century later it was Eastern European Jews. Now it’s poor Central Americans.
They’re criminals, some say. They’re lazy, they want to sponge off the system, they’re uncouth, low-class slobs who should go back to where they came from. It was said of the Irish — signs in store windows said no dogs or Irish allowed; political correctness (mostly) disallows that same hatred being expressed too openly. These days social media provides an outlet for spewing such rancor.
Well, my dear, they want to work. They don’t want a free ride. They’re escaping brutality at home, corrupt governments that sponge off US foreign aid, and lack of opportunity for themselves and a decent future for their children. Salvadorans and Peruvians, Mexicans and Hondurans, they are clamoring for freedom and opportunity. They are willing to do work no one else in our society will deign to do: they pluck chickens and pick tomatoes, harvest lettuce and fruit and milk cows, all for pay no one else will accept, low enough so a gallon of milk, a head of lettuce, a pint of strawberries and a chicken cost little. Just how do you think, my dear, that a head of lettuce costs but a buck?
I’m not sure they can understand what it’s like to live without freedom. They didn’t receive warnings from the KGB, the precursor to imprisonment, writes Ms. Kanzer of her liberal neighbors. Well, no, surely they didn’t, nor did her conservative neighbors. So why single out liberals?
Do you actually think your conservative neighbors were visited by the KGB? The FBI? Were their relatives sent to the gulag? Please.
4th of July, 2019
Ms. Jessie Kanzer makes good points in her column. Freedom to choose is wonderful, in effect a secular miracle.
I’m an immigrant, long a U.S. citizen. I’m a liberal, too, and proud to be both. I’m living the American dream because I’m secure and my children are good citizens who have chosen their careers because of their passions, not a government or political party directive.
Liberals despair seeing people who are fleeing their homelands to chase the American dream treated with cruelty and hatred. We want them to be safe, to have a chance to raise their children in secure freedom. We welcome their aspirations to become U.S. citizens, to work and to contribute to this great nation.
We despair seeing buffoons and haters disparage immigrants as criminals. We fear that inequality and intolerance are becoming acceptable values. We dread what is being done to our wonderful country in the name of fake patriotism.
Yet we are optimistic, because we are Americans. Liberals believe in the inherent goodness of people. We are tolerant. We love humanity. We love our country. We know how fortunate we are to live in this great nation. We believe in diversity, and we welcome immigrants to work with us to make the United States of America a yet greater nation.
And we love that Lady in New York harbor who has welcomed immigrants for a century and a half with the promise of freedom.
Salomon Weir
New York
We liberals love America. You, Ms. Kanzer, should understand that criticizing the government is an inherent right guaranteed to Americans in our Constitution. Being critical of government policy isn’t expressing hatred of our nation, it is exercising the very freedom you say you value so much.