This is the end of a horrid day. It started so well. I met a friend for breakfast. He’s a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and he’s what I believe America should be and was all about. He served his country well as an Executive Officer with the Thunderbirds and later at the Pentagon liaising with Capitol Hill. He’s from Ohio, the home state of the Wright brothers, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. The home state of the Taft family and Paul Brown.

I managed to get to the Long Neck Diner early because I didn’t waste the customary time after getting out of bed today. The morning was calm. The sky was clear and just before 8:30 A.M. I stood outside the restaurant and looked skyward and could see the moon still lingering in the blue of the morning sky. The air was still and the temperature in the high 40s and it was the type of morning you admire because you still have your memory and the image will sustain you when the wind blows and it rains and snows.

Following breakfast I went to the bank and then to work. Many friends had gone to Washington today for a demonstration and during the early afternoon I checked some websites and found pictures of the noon event at the Capitol. It was jacket weather but the skies were clear and there were smiling faces in the crowd. Some of them would be calling me after visiting members of the House and Senate and petitioning for a return of the country they long for. Sure enough, they obliged me from buses during the return trip. Folks called me from Route 50 during my show.

It was getting dark outside when I learned about the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Talk radio is partly about taking a snapshot of a portion of the public’s thoughts during any moment of crisis. There was great speculation about Texas and I was worried about a close friend stationed at the base. It’s 10:00 P.M. and I still haven’t had him reply to a message I sent his way. He’s a man with bedrock convictions. Several years ago he got booted out of graduate school for writing a paper (graded A) in which he suggested multi-cultural education was ripping the country apart. In his words there is just one American culture. It’s the one I remember about the Wright brothers and Robert Taft and the early men in space. I’m a Western New Yorker and as a kid Ohio and its shared Great Lakes culture was just a hop-skip-and-jump away.

Scott eventually was reinstated and graduated with a Masters degree in Education. During his trials he was upbeat and even finagled an invitation to dinner with Michelle Malkin. When his wife had to work late that day, Scott took me along as his guest. During one of his vacations he went home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which I think is a lot more like Ohio versus Myanmar, Botswana and Paraguay. He spent his vacation at a T.D. Jakes revival meeting. Then Scott went off to a teaching career but he missed his first family, his fellow soldiers. He went back into the U.S. Army and served in Afghanistan. We last spoke 2 weeks ago when he was listening to the show on the web. I don’t remember if I insulted his Dallas Cowboys, which is a sure way to get him to pick up the telephone and call.

It’s too early to consider the ramifications of a Muslim soldier killing his fellow troops. It happened in Kuwait in 2003 and it had nothing to do with an argument about faith.

We live in an “open society”. It’s what the brilliant men we call “Framers” designed, however. In the 1780s the culture was definitely European and Judeo-Christian. Yes, I understand elements from Africa played a major influence and we still hear it in music today but those Africans and their descendents are very much members of the larger American culture. We’ve been sharing the same home for a very long time. The same with the indigenous people who were nothing short of supermen during our nation’s 20^th Century wars.

A guy telephoned me today and praised the troops of Japanese ancestry who fought magnificently for this country in World War Two. They were Americans. Like so many arriving before that desperate time they wanted to be Americans.

I’m never been at all sure about these new folks. In the Southwest they shun English. In Lackawanna, New York they spend vacations at terrorist training camps in Asia. Some folks in our cities live in a parallel universe and shun the traditional bonds of trust and ignore law enforcements offers of protection. Membership in a polyglot culture is always tenuous. It appears we’re headed for 305 million independent countries within one nation. Everybody has a grievance and everybody is a victim.

Then, of course, cooperation can be imposed. Look at history and the man known as “Tito” in Yugoslavia or the man in Spain called Franco. The academics can spin in circles suggesting we can cure ills by enforcing politeness or printing more money to throw in the directions of our problems. I’ve grown old and lost faith in academic institutions as much as I’ve lost faith in churches and government institutions. May God help us, where we’re going?

Frequent readers know the weather is often a metaphor when I write. It was cold and raining when I came home.

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