Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

An immigrant from Liberia, a legal resident of Woodbridge for six years, Brown had as his only regret the fact that the Army considered him disabled, so he could not get back in the fight.
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During wartime with a volunteer military, most born-and-raised Americans can remain utterly cocooned from any sacrifice. Immigrants are playing a small but striking role. The presence of about 37,000 noncitizens on active duty and in the National Guard and the Reserves points up the quandary of what anyone owes to his country.
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The young, wounded veteran speaks the language of patriotic idealism. These days, it can sometimes sound tired, overused, cheapened by self-interest or self-righteousness. But not when it bursts forth so unself-consciously, from someone so young. Maybe it makes a difference that Brown speaks it with a foreign accent. Maybe this soldier can remind Americans of something they never had to think twice about.
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He does not agree with those who doubt the war. He cannot imagine the United States could commit an error as large as starting a war without good reason.
"I believe America always kept their word," Brown says. "If I were going to die, I believe I was going to die for the right reason, for a country that always kept their word."
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Joseph, the second-youngest child, carried a feeling in his heart, a restless sense of indebtedness. He became a cadet with the Prince William Volunteer Fire Department, but that didn't make the feeling go away.
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"People like us coming from disaster to a peaceful land, we should give back," Joseph Brown says. "I didn't have money to give. I gave myself."
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As of last spring, 142 noncitizens had been killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, 8 percent of the total -- a higher proportion than their representation in the military, according to the AP.
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Now he is an American, too. In August, he and another wounded soldier recited the oath and became citizens in front of a two-star general. Because of his bad leg, Brown was told he could sit while swearing allegiance to the United States, but he insisted on standing. He leaned on a cane gripped with his left hand while he raised his right hand.

Compare and Contrast

From the Southern Poverty Law Center's compilation of recent anti-immigrant statements:

"America is not just a geographical entity. It is a nation with certain values. I'd go beyond the proposal of a zero immigration moratorium and say we should begin deportation. Deportation now!"
- THE SOCIAL CONTRACT PRESS

"[T]he very underpinnings of America are being gnawed away by hordes of aliens who are transforming America into a land where we, the descendants of the men and women who founded America, will walk as strangers... . Unless we act now ... we will be helpless to halt the accelerating dispossession of our folk."
- NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR EUROPEAN AMERICAN RIGHTS

"Forced integration and unrestrained immigration destroy schools, neighborhoods, cities and ultimately nations."
- NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE

"America becomes darker - racially darker - every year, and that is the direct result of our government's immigration policy. ... We White people, we descendants of the European immigrants who built America, will be a minority in our own country. ... [M]alicious aliens [European Jews] came into our land and ... spread spiritual poison among our people, so that our spirits became corrupted and our minds became confused."
- NATIONAL ALLIANCE

"[T]he meaning of this massive increase in non-white and non-Western populations groups within U.S. borders is that the United States is not only ceasing to be a majority white nation but also is ceasing to be a nation that is culturally part of Western civilization."
- COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS

"America's culture, customs and language are under assault from foreigners who come to live here and, instead of learning the American way of life, choose to impose their own alien cultures, languages, and institutions upon us... . [E]thnic cleansing ... may seem a harsh term to apply here in America, but it accurately describes the expulsion of Americans from their communities by illegal aliens."
- AMERICAN IMMIGRATION CONTROL FOUNDATION

"[Even] beyond immigration, legal or illegal, the very numbers of non-Whites already here, and their high birth rate, are enough to plunge North America into a banana republic status within two decades or less. ... [After America is split up into racial mini-states, if] an area like Florida wanted to accept the dregs of the Caribbean, let them, with the understanding that the second this mud flood oozed into the sovereign state of Georgia, it would be 'lock and load' time."
- WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE