Thread: The Creation of the Greatest Generation – Not By Chance

The Creation of the Greatest Generation – Not By Chance

By Frosty Wooldridge & Barbara Vickroy



"The specific object of this volume is to help Americanize the youth of this country, whether of native or of foreign birth." This is the opening paragraph of the preface to a textbook used throughout the nation in the early 1900’s titled, – AMERICAN PATRIOTISM IN PROSE AND VERSE.

This textbook and others were among the ways that our great grandparents dealt with what has been called The Great Wave of immigration. In the late 1800’s and early 1920’s millions of immigrants gazed at Lady Liberty and processed through Ellis Island. Since many of these immigrants were not educated in academics or the basic civics in a free democracy, two coping mechanisms jumped into motion by far-thinking men. They heeded Teddy Roosevelt’s wisdom: “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.â€

[quote]Today, most people are either afraid to speak up about illegal and massive legal immigration because they fear reprisals such as being called names. What they need to fear even more is the loss of their communities to a foreign invasion unprecedented in American history. It happened to the Indians and it’s happening to us. They didn’t stop it—perhaps couldn’t—but we can and we must if we respect the future for our children.

Our country stands at a juncture. We, as a nation, either decide our citizens and way of life are worth maintaining or we may spiral into a quagmire of Roosevelt’s words, “squabbling nationalities.â€