Many blogs are written by Americans who are witty, wise, erudite and civilized. Here are (RED) links to some of a different kind; they serve to remind us that citizens of our great nation hold a huge variety of opinions and beliefs. In some cases (the BLUE links) we are broadly in sympathy with the views expressed and in others we are ashamed to share citizenship with the authors. We also include a few links (GREEN) to pieces showing how others see us.
The truth about us?
This Welsh writer has some nice and some less nice but truthful things to say about us. I wish I shared her optimism about the way we are changing.
The sites were selected by me, Barbara Hutchinson, writer and political activist, and my husband Juan-Antonio Ortega, attorney-at-law. We live in New York but spend much time commuting to Washington. We have three grown-up children, all of whom are in government service in one way or another.
Sometimes we leave messages on a few of the more virulent smash-Islam, nuke-Iran, lock-up-the-Mexicans blogs, questioning some of their loopy pronouncements and inviting the authors to visit Land of Diversity, but their responses are mostly boring, predictable and daft: one ardent proponent of all-out war with Islam claimed to be descended in a direct line from the eleventh-century crusaders. This sort of thing is amusing but palls after a while, so now we generally avoid contact with bloggers who are clearly demented.
There is no point in Googling to find out more about us because the names I have given are not quite the correct ones.
But to confirm our right to be proud Americans, I will tell you that Juan-Antonio is a descendant of the sixteenth-century historian Diego Hurtado de Mendoza whose family migrated to Massachusetts in 1754, and my family—well, let's just say they arrived only a few years later, in time to become citizens of the thirteen states.
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