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From the mouth of a child, a different kind of patriotism
A female reader writes:
For your amusement, I send you the essay below, written today by my ten-year-old daughter. The assignment in her language curriculum was to write a page on a visit she would like to make to a foreign country. She was to include at least three compound sentences, so it was a simple exercise to get the child to write. She protested that she doesn’t want to visit any foreign country, so I told her she could write her essay instead on her reasons for not wanting to leave the U.S.
I assure you that I’ve cleared up the little matter of whether or not whites in America can be killed “just because they are white.” Living a sheltered life in Midwestern university town she hasn’t fully realized the evil of the world even here in the U.S.A.
I also made her correct some punctuation, and the writing is still not perfect.
Can you imagine the wild-eyed fury of the PC gendarmes if they found out that this is what the pretty little Christian homeschooled girl is writing? Lord willing, they’ll never find out.
Why I would not visit another Country
Going to another country is boring unless you have a very imporant reason for doing so. Just visiting a country is not what I am in favor of. Here are the reasons.
In America we have clean water.
We do not have Moslem terrorists throwing rockets and bombs on our town nearly every day as in some cities in Israel.
Whites do not have to live in fear of being killed just because they are white as in some countries in Africa. If a white was visiting a country in Africa where whites had to live in fear all the time, then the white would be in danger of being carried off. I am a white, and I would definitely not want to go to any of those countries.
The rides on the airplane are dull and boring, and you have to worry about accidentally seeing something crazy. You also do not get very much sleep. I would not worry about sleeping if I was in the airplane and was going to somewhere like Pennsylvania. Then being bored comes in. When I go on the airplane I take a book, but I often find that I cannot really concentrate on the book. I am impatient for the airplane ride to end. Then I get bored and start trying to read and concentrate on the book again, and the process repeats until the airplane ride ends. It is true that I have only gone to another state. I have never gone to another country, but I think that I would get bored even more often.
I would go to a different country only to watch or play in a chess tournament, to play in or watch a chess match, or if there was an important conference and I felt that I had to go.
—end of initial entry—
LA replies:
I’m still laughing, I was laughing all the way through it.
Oh my gosh. So this is what you’ve been teaching your daughter. There’s a future for America after all!
And in the discussion about why she doesn’t want to leave the U.S. and about the discomfort of airplane rides, it’s got that quality of frankness and simplicity that only a child would have, which is so charming.
By the way, Thomas Jefferson would have heartily approved of your daughter’s sentiments. He wrote in letters to his young male relatives that it is best not to travel or live abroad in one’s young years, because then one develops attachments to some foreign country rather than one’s own, and after one returns home, one is always hankering after that foreign country and is not happy where one is.
Ben W. writes:
“If they found out that this is what the pretty little Christian homeschooled girl is writing…”
Quite a few of my friends and co-workers are homeschooling their children these days.
LA writes:
She has this wary awareness that today’s world is not as it should be:
“The rides on the airplane are dull and boring, and you have to worry about accidentally seeing something crazy.”
Hannon writes:
At the risk of sounding like some sort of monster sparring with a 10-year old girl, I am prompted to hand in a few thoughts. Of course her opinions are her own, and impressively formed at such an age, but I don’t agree that macro-provincialism in general should be cheered on. As with many things, conservatives need to do more of what liberals more “typically” do, such as foreign travel, and bring back with them their impressions from a non-liberal standpoint to share with all.
The peculiarities and distinctiveness of different cultures are best appreciated in situ and I cannot see a better way to reformulate the common and distorted notion of “multiculturalism.” By experiencing foreign ethnicities, social systems, etc. first hand, one gains a profound and new appreciation for home and perhaps greater insight as to what can or cannot work by way of mingling the disparate ends of humanity under one roof.
As for what Thomas Jefferson had to say on the subject, I imagine in those days no foreign travel was a casual or brief undertaking. A few months overseas might indeed enamor one of an exotic territory, but today two weeks in Peru is not likely to tempt anyone away from the U.S. for good. One or two trips when young (under 30 and especially under 20) can build an appetite for more journeys later. My own travel experiences have been one of the keys to developing a deeper appreciation of traditionalism and the fact that particular people and their geography are naturally linked.
LA replies:
I don’t think that the girl’s essay, nor my positive response to it, represented a negative view of foreign travel as such. Obviously, if she were 18 or 23 or 30 I would have responded differently, and critically, to her lack of interest in traveling to a foreign country. But I thought that in a ten year old her reaction was a sign of health. Why should a ten year old be interested in a foreign country? She doesn’t yet understand her own. She hasn’t yet developed an individuality that is ready to take in foreign countries. Further, I feel that the essay question itself reflected a certain diversity-speak, trying to get young children to identify with foreign cultures, and she was having none of it, and I got a kick out of that.
It’s not a question of saying no to foreign travel. It’s a question of at what developmental stage young people can profit emotionally and intellectually from foreign travel. I think it would have been absurd for my parents to take me or send me to Europe at age ten. I wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it, it would have been a blur. It would have been a silly indulgence.
As for my own first foreign travel, I spent a few weeks traveling around Mexico with a friend when I was 19, and went to Europe for the first time, for two months, when I was 24. I spend two or three weeks in Paris, then went to the South of France, Aix-en-Provence and other places (I forget the name of the French city with the Roman ruins), then to Barcelona, then a boat across to Milan, then Florence, Pisa, Sienna, and Rome for a few days (which was the high point of the trip), then across Italy and a boat to Corfu, then Athens (the ugliest city I’ve ever seen), then to London (it was a thrill to fly over England for the first time looking down at that green land and thinking this is our mother country), then back to Luxembourg for the flight home.
Hannon replies:
“Further, I feel that the essay question itself reflected a certain diversity-speak, trying to get young children to identify with foreign cultures, and she was having none of it, and I got a kick out of that.”
That makes a lot more sense to me now. It reminds me of an assignment we had in 4th or 5th grade to write to a foreign country to cajole them into sending us a newspaper. All the kids wrote to Britain, France, etc. I wrote to Ghana. I think stamp collecting has a lot to do with one’s interest in geography, and I was getting into it at that time. But TV can’t compete today with video games, let alone stamps. For me, I think stamps had an effect opposite that of universalism.
My first real trip was to Hawaii when I was 7. I have rather faint and very positive memories of it. It certainly wasn’t wasted on me, one with a strong interest in natural history. It all depends.
LA replies:
Yes. My rejection of foreign travel for children was too categorical.
Hannon replies:
Thank you for that, and your more explicit itinerary when you traveled to Europe, etc.
Re Mexico, I similarly went for several weeks when I was 20, must have been at least 10 different states, in the summer. Now that was a memorable trip, formative really.
January 6
The female reader writes:
Yes, that was one reason I hesitated to publish it: It does look provincial.
Some people, of course, just are more adventurous than others, and this particular child is the least adventurous of mine. She has also probably picked up my own stay-at-home spirit, which has grown on me in adulthood.
LA replies:
But I liked the genuineness and individuality of her attitude, the way she was resisting the “correct” notion that you’re supposed to want to travel to another country. Not that everyone has to have the stay-at-home spirit.
Life is funny this way. A person responds to a particular thing or person, like the way I responded positively to your daughter’s essay. He is not intending to make general statement, he’s only responding to that particular thing. But his response is taken by others as the expression of a general rule, and they find that general rule objectionable, and then he needs to make further distinctions and explain that he was not intending to make a general statement.
The same problem comes up in relation to understanding the Bible. For example, did Jesus want all his followers to sell all their property and give all the proceeds to the poor? In fact, he said that to one person, the rich young man. Jesus responded in a unique and appropriate way to each person he encountered, based on where that person was at, what that person’s needs were. In the case of the rich young man, Jesus saw that this man was too attached to his wealth, and that in order to follow Jesus, he would need to give up his wealth. Jesus was not making that a general requirement for everyone. There is a tendency to take each of Jesus’ statements—and each biblical passage—out of context and make it into a general law or doctrine.
Terry Morris writes:
LOL!
I’m just wondering whether we might be able to arrange a marriage with my eight-year old son.
She’s white, she’s Christian, she’s homeschooled, she’s pretty, she loves her country, she cares about her race … she’s perfect!
The reader replies:
I’m glad Mr. Morris enjoyed it. But isn’t his son going to be a little young for her? :-)
January 7
LA writes:
Before posting Mr. Morris’s comment, I altered the wording slightly, as I explain in a new entry, where I consider what language is appropriate and not appropriate to use in supporting and defending the white race.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2009 09:44 PM | Send
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