A recent My Turn in the Recorder blamed our problems at the border on a deliberate Marxist-Globalist conspiracy to destroy our country. Many of those who seem to hold these views are descendants of the Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century who were said to be part of a Popish conspiracy of the Catholic church to destroy America. Protestant Americans took a dim view of their new countrymen and resorted to violence against them, including the burning of Catholic churches, convents, and orphanages. We have not progressed very far from those days in that, politicians, including a candidate for the presidency, are more than willing to inflame hatred and fear against “the wretched refuse of your teeming shores.” We used to be proud to be a nation of immigrants, a place where a new shining city on the hill could rise out of the misery that afflicts humankind in other parts of the world. Lincoln called America “the last best hope.” Let us not forget that. Let us keep that faith and not forget it.

David Parrella

Buckland