In April 1894, Theodore Roosevelt, who later became the 26th president of the United States, cogently and with amazing prescience wrote about true patriotism and loyalty to America.  To read his words is to understand what is happening to our country.

In the latest encounter with balkanized groups in America, at a March for Life event, Catholic students were beset by a number of people.  The vitriol was evident, proving that the latter do not, as Roosevelt stated, "wish to be broadly American and national[.]"  This unabated "unwholesome parochial spirit" comes "at the expense of the great nation."  It is clear that this "provincial patriotism" or "inability to take a view of broad adhesion to the whole nation" is the first step to the unraveling of a nation.

Roosevelt noted that the "patriotism of the village ... is bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse."  He worried that "in the future, patriotism will be regarded not as a virtue at all, but merely as a mental stage in the journey toward a state of feeling when our patriotism will include the whole human race and all the world." 

This is no longer a prediction, but a reality as progressives demand that we eliminate any national pride.  Vicious beatings on people who don hats that read "Make America Great Again" bare the stark truth that the left wants to dismantle America's exceptional values.  Then there is the International Court of Justice, or World Court, which ruled on an Iranian request to order Washington to suspend U.S. sanctions against Tehran.  In the sports arena, football players who benefit from the largesse of America kneel when the anthem is played as they allege problems but offer no solutions.  Clearly, "home" and "country" no longer mean much to these men who throw footballs for a living.

How prophetic that Roosevelt also spoke of the idea that "people will look down upon and disregard monogamic marriage," since, in 1894, "treason, like adultery, rank[ed] as one of the worst of all possible crimes."  How far have we fallen when Vice President Pence is mocked for his fidelity to his wife, and Hillary Clinton skates on serious charges adversely affecting the country – e.g., the Russian Uranium One deal?

Roosevelt would be tarred and feathered by the left for his views on immigration: "it is hard to believe that there is any necessity to warn Americans" that "[w]hen they seek to model themselves on the lines of other civilizations, they make themselves the butts of all right thinking men; and yet the necessity certainly exists to give this warning[.]" 

Roosevelt did not hold back when he chided those "of our countrymen who do believe in American inferiority."  He believed that they should be regarded with "half-impatient and half-amused scorn" by those who "are robustly patriotic, and who have sound, healthy minds."  Those darn deplorables just keep popping up with fervor and love of country.

With European countries bowing to the dictates of Islam and uncontrolled third-world migration, it is instructive that Roosevelt instinctively understood that "[i]t is precisely along the lines where we have worked most independently that we have accomplished the greatest results; and it is in those professions where there has been no servility to, but merely a wise profiting by foreign experience, that we have produced our greatest men."  Likewise, "where our people have striven hardest to mold themselves in conventional European forms ... they have succeeded least[.]"

So when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushes for a socialist America, she shows absolutely no understanding of the true American Dream that has brought so many to our shores.

Finally, Roosevelt emphatically affirmed that it is critical to the health of the country to Americanize newcomers.  "We must Americanize them in every way, in speech, in political ideas and principles, and in their way of looking at the relations between Church and State."

We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as nothing else.  Moreover, we have as little use for people who carry religious prejudices into our politics as for those who carry prejudices of caste or nationality.  We stand unalterably in favor of the public-school system in its entirety.  We believe that English, and no other language, is that in which all the school exercises should be conducted.

Yet Rashida Tlaib drapes herself in a Palestinian flag, Elizabeth Warren puts her alleged American Indian ancestry first, and incoherent English is evident in the following unedited response by a college student:

The essay hoes does the field of construction relate to writing?. it relate to our writhing by taking our time to think what intro we going to do and have patience to do too.

Everything is predicated on identity politics and a deliberate debasing of English, all of which Roosevelt warned about a mere 125 years ago. 

How ironic that migrants from Central America carry the flags of their birth countries as they demand entry to America.  They will come to represent "a loose alliance of identity politics groups prioritizing their own narrow agendas at the expense of everyone else."

Roosevelt had no use for the German or Irishman who had no wish to become American.  German-Americans and Irish-Americans who could not fully embrace America or who voted only on ethnic lines had no place in Roosevelt's America.  Yet he was clear that America is "opposed to any discrimination against or for a man because of his creed.  We demand that all citizens, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, shall have fair treatment in every way; that all alike shall have their rights guaranteed them."

It would behoove Nancy Pelosi and her ilk to comprehend that "[t]he mighty tide of immigration to our shores has brought in its train much of good and much of evil; and whether the good or the evil shall predominate depends mainly on whether these newcomers do or do not throw themselves heartily into our national life, cease to be Europeans, and become Americans like the rest of us."

So instead of insulting Americans with baseless racist charges about "making America white again," perhaps Nancy Pelosi should go back to school and learn about the foundation of American greatness.

Roosevelt threw down the gauntlet when he argued that "where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they thereby harm both themselves and us.  If they remain alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests separate from ours, they are mere obstructions to the current of our national life[.]"  "It is an immense benefit to the European immigrant to change him into an American citizen.  To bear the name of American is to bear the most honorable [of] titles; and whoever does not so believe has no business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes from Europe, the sooner he goes back there the better."

Today, we can substitute the term "European" with "Central American" or "Mexican" or any Middle Eastern country – the effect is the same.  If the immigrant does not "throw himself heart and soul, and without reservation, into the new life to which he has come," then many will suffer.  With one million (legal) immigrants entering the United States annually, we need not apologize to anyone for our immigration policies.

Like Trump, Roosevelt understood that "[i]t is urgently necessary to check and regulate our immigration ... and this should be done both to keep out laborers who tend to depress the labor market, and to keep out races which do not assimilate readily with our own, and unworthy individuals of all races – not only criminals, idiots, and paupers, but anarchists[.]"

Yet inhumane sharia law coupled with leftist progressive disregard of the Constitution is seeping into American law, confirming Roosevelt's dire predictions.

Most famous for his "speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far" attitude, Roosevelt avowed that "it is beyond all question the wise thing for the immigrant to become thoroughly Americanized."  He stated that "moreover, from our standpoint, we have a right to demand it.  We freely extend the hand of welcome and of good-fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so[.]"

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.