Una Storia Segreta

History books are filled with tales of the internment of Japanese citizens and residents of the United States during World War II. Some 100,000 Japanese were forcibly relocated to prison camps on the orders of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. Fully two-thirds of those imprisoned were American citizens

However, there is another dirty, secret little story about which little is known. This story is about a similar fate that befell Italian Americans at the same time. By the same authority that interred the Japanese, (Title 50 of the U.S. Code, based on the Alien and Sedition act of 1798) some 600,000 Italians were forced to carry identity cards branding them “resident aliens during the War. Over 1,000 Italians were sent into internal exile in Montana.

But even more devastating to us as people and to our culture in the U.S. was the government's closure of many Italian-language newspapers and schools at that time. Writer and blogger Lawrence DiStasi says this action on the part of the U.S. government was an important factor in the loss of spoken Italian in the U.S.

While the federal government was clamping down on Italian communities and culture, Italian Americans were enlisting and being drafted in great numbers into the struggle against fascism in Italy and elsewhere. Over one million men and women of Italian heritage served in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War II. That represented 7.5% of all the American fighting forces.

For more information on this sad, but forgotten chapter in American history read Uncivil Liberties by Stephen Fox and una storia segreta, or The Secret Story, with a foreword by Lawrence DiStasi.

Today the population of Italian Americans is nearly 18 million, some 6% of the U.S. population. All of us who are Italian American have felt the sting of bigotry and prejudice at one time in our lives. It might have been as severe as internment or as subtle as a denied mortgage. But for all of that, Italian Americans remain patriotic and strong defenders of this country.

As Italians we don’t dwell on the past. At least not the bad part. Our contributions to this country are never to be questioned again. Unfortunately, the loss of Italian culture because of la storia segreta has left a vacuum that has been filled by movies and TV shows about the Mafia, commercials with cartoonish Italian Americans and ersatz Italian food in every city and hamlet.

The silver lining in this sad story is that we have had 60 years of acculturization. We’ve intermarried with the americani, as my grandmother would call them (us?). We have given the United States towering literally intellects like Gay Talese, esteemed jurists like Samuel Alito, and in sports, the incomparable DiMaggio. But above all else, we are Americans. For us, it’s more important to elect a good president than an Italian one. And that’s a good thing.

Just thought you might want to know.

Dreaming the Impossible Dream

They say that first impressions are often misleading. Probably no more true than in the case of Susan Boyle. Ms. Boyle is a 47-year old unemployed Scotswoman from a small village in the Highlands. Fifty years ago she would have made a good character on The Twilight Zone. Her dream was to appear on Britain's Got Talent, the British show on which the wildly successful American Idol was based.

Ms. Boyle got her chance when she walked out on to a London stage recently to audition for the show. The reaction of the audience and the judges (including the terminally smug Simon Cowell) was shocking, but probably something that the never-been-married country girl had seen before. The reaction after her appearance was something else.

Take a look at her experience on Britain's Got Talent. The video is posted on You Tube. Click here to view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY.

If you can't connect, just copy and paste the link into the address bar of your browser. It's well worth the effort. To date, this video has been viewed more than 3 million times.

After you check it out, ask yourself: Are you are like the audience in its initial reaction to Ms. Boyle? Or, are you like Susan Boyle herself--hardened to the reaction of people and able to succeed, not despite the judgment of those around you, but because of it?

Sometimes we're like the Simon Cowells of the world, judging others we know little about. But for every time in this life we pre-judge others, there's a time when we can have our own Susan Boyle moment.

Despite a world full of Simon Cowells, there is a little bit of Susan Boyle in all of us. Sometimes it just takes a little extra courage to bring it out.

Just thought you might like to know.

Tax Day

Today is April 15. Anyone who's ever worked for a living knows the significance of this date each year. Tom Herman of the Wall Street Journal, who retires today after 16 years as a tax writer, has a funny column in today's paper, citing the quirks of our tax code.

Some 40 years ago, frustrated with the difficulty of filling out his own tax return, he wrote a tax story in which he asked five different tax preparers to prepare a return for a hypothetical family. If you've ever tried to fill out a 1040 you can guess the rest. If you can't, check out the Mr. Herman's column today.

Don't be too hard on the tax preparers. At 70,000 pages the Tax Code is too complicated for professionals, let along average working people. How complicated? This complicated:

• There are 16 different retirement savings incentives in the IRS code. Each has its own eligibility requirements, contribution limits, withdrawals, loans, and taxation of contributions and distributions rules.


• There are more than 100 "temporary" tax provisions, ensuring that if you've figured it out this year, you'll mess up next year.


• The Tax Code recognizes 11 different tax exemptions for saving and paying for education, but each defines what qualifies as tuition and fees differently.

No wonder that more than half of all American taxpayers raise the white flag and trundle down to H & R Block or some other professional tax preparer, according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence.

In a research brief, the Center for Media Research reported yesterday that the remaining 50% of taxpayers meet their tax obligations in a variety of ways:

• Less that 20% of adults use commercially available tax preparation software to figure out their taxes


• Wealthier households (Incomes of $100,000 or more) are 15% less likely to sharpen their pencils and do their taxes by hand than less-wealthy households


• Those wealthier households that do their own taxes are 26% more likely to use Turbo Tax or a similar product to do their taxes, rather than relying on a professional tax preparer (I guess that's how they got wealthy in the first place--saving those tax prep fees each year)


• Only 13% of adult tax filers do it the old-fashioned way: by themselves and by hand.

I think there is something wrong when you need to buy software or hire someone to help you meet a basic civic obligation. We don't hire people to teach us how to vote. Who buys software to show them how to recycle their cans and plastic bottles? And we don't look at people who pay their bills by hand, writing checks, as some sort of antediluvian throwbacks, do we?

So why should paying taxes be any different?

Democrats claim they were elected to clean up the mess that 20 years of Republican rule over the last three decades has supposedly caused. Well, here is one place they can start. If they want to show they're really friends of the "forgotten man," simplify the tax code. Institute a flat tax. Of, if you don't have the moxie to do that, at least bring it down to to two brackets and eliminate most of the deductions.

Look at it this way: If the tax code were simpler, maybe Democrat politicians like Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Charlie Rangel, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilda Solis, and Nancy Killefer might have been able to do what the average American is doing today--paying his damn taxes on time.

With a flat tax, maybe next term Pres. Obama might actually fill some Cabinet positions on the first try.

Just thought you might like to know.

Mutual Respect

Last week was marked by two events: Holy Week, a period each year sacred to Christians the world over, and Pres. Obama's rapprochement to the Muslim world. The two are interconnected.

The President visited a mosque in Turkey and spoke of engaging Islam through what he called mutual respect. "We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground," the President stated. He pointed out that he himself has Muslim roots. Well said. But I always thought that the word mutual meant for the benefit of both sides.

Pres. Obama could be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammed, if he were a Christian living in a Muslim country his life would not be marked by mutual respect, mutual interest, understanding or common ground. More likely, it would be marked by discrimination, arrest, slavery or even death.

The President, as always, was charming and eloquently told his Muslim hosts what they wanted to hear. But here are the facts, which they don't want to admit:

• There are 50 Muslim nations in the world. All of them practice some form of Sharia law. This includes death as a punishment for converting to Christianity. While some of these countries allow the practice of Christianity, worship is restricted, even dangerous.
• In Egypt, attacks by Muslim fundamentalists against Coptic Christians, an ancient sect, are common and not prosecuted by the government.
• Conversion from Islam to another religion is illegal in Iran. The punishment? Threats, arrests, imprisonment and torture.
• A Jordanian court ordered a Christian woman imprisoned because she refused to turn her two young children over to be raised as Muslims.
• The number of Lebanese Christians, once 50% of the population, has been cut in half, the result of endless years of Civil War, persecution and anti-Christian violence. In 1993 a Christian cemetery was desecrated as a warning to not celebrate Christmas.
• Saudi Arabia, the mother of all discrimination, flat out forbids the practice of Christianity--even within the walls of the sovereign U.S. Embassy! Conversion to Christianity is a capital offense. The Saudis, by the way, were granted permission by the Italian government to build a mosque of epic proportions in Rome--near the Vatican, of all places. But the Saudis, who apparently missed the U.S. president's message of mutual respect, have yet to let a Christian church be built in Riyadh.
• Iraq' s Christian community, which dates to the Apostle Thomas, is on the verge of extinction. Apparently the Shia and the Sunnis forgot the six years of Christian blood spilled to redeem the country from the despot Saddam Hussein, to rebuild it, and to make it safe.

And the stories go on. And on. Each summer several men from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity, visit our church to sell beautiful religious artifacts carved out of olive wood from the region. The purpose? To raise funds for the preservation of the Holy Shrines in Palestine. This because the Christian population has been decimated through persecution and can no longer support itself.

The President needs to understand that being Presidential sometimes means telling the truth--even when that truth is uncomfortable to some and displeases your political supporters. The campaign is over. Now is the time to act like a president, not a candidate. And that means more than assuaging the feelings of those responsible for institutionalized religious persecution. It means plain speaking on behalf of a persecuted minority in numerous countries. That's real global leadership. Not a 15 second sound bite on MSNBC.

Just thought you might like to know.

Christianity

Newsweek magazine last week ran a cover story questioning whether we have entered an era of "post-Christian" America. While generally even-handed in treating the question, the magazine trotted out the usual anti-religious suspects who say that man's rational ability is incompatible with belief in ethereal beings.

But if you want to see and understand what Christianity is really all about, next year visit a Catholic church and attend the Easter Vigil Mass. Celebrated in nearly every Catholic church the world over at sundown the night before Easter, the Vigil encompasses thousands of years of Judaeo-Christian beliefs-from the creation of the world up to the modern Church.

The lengthy two or more hours) service, with its ancient and medieval overtones, is loosely divided into four parts:

• A brief service of light. A fire is lit outside the church, from which the presiding celebrant lights the Easter Candle, symbolic of Jesus Christ, the light of the world. The East Candle is born into the darkened church at the end of a solemn procession, and the flame of Christ is transferred to smaller candles held by all the worshippers, much as the first Apostles spread the flame of Christ throughout the known world. A deacon or priest chants the lengthy Easter Proclamation much as it might have been done in the Middle Ages.


• The liturgy of the Word. Worshippers listen to a series of Scriptural readings, beginning with the story of creation from the first verses of Genesis. Intersperse with Psalms, the readings tell the story of a faith community that stretches from the creation of mankind; to God's testing of Abraham on Mount Moriah (later called Calvary) where he was called to sacrifice his son Isaac, and where thousands of years later God would sacrifice his Son to redeem the sins of mankind; to the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt; to the words of the great Prophets; to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, proclaiming eternal life to those who die to sin; and finally to Mark's retelling of the Resurrection.


• The liturgy of Baptism. At this Mass adults who have gone through a lengthy period of spiritual self-examination and discernment are baptized as Christians and confirmed into the Catholic Church. This is one of the most moving ceremonies in Christianity, as adults weep for the spiritual blessings God bestows on us.


• The liturgy of the Eucharist. The newly baptized Christians take their place with the other worshippers at the Table of the Lord for Holy Eucharist, a rite given to us by Jesus Christ himself.

From God's creation of the firmament to the newest Christian believers and the mileposts of belief in between--exodus, exile, crucifixion, death and Resurrection--the Easter Vigil sums up what it is to be a Christian and that for believers in the risen Christ there can be no such thing as a post-Christian world.

Even in a rational world, we who are Christians are not so because we understand. We are Christians because we believe. That's a big difference.

If you have the chance next Easter Saturday, check it out.

Just thought you might like to know.

Happy Easter!