I wouldn't say all people in my
community are uneducated bigots. But quite a few of them are, or
there not afraid of being vocal.
There having gathering, not to let
Syrian refugees in our area.
They're a group of people wrote a
letter to our county commissioners, local sheriff who is retiring
after his term is done, and local school board.
Here is copy of the letter....
TO
the Boundary County Board of Commissioners, Boundary County School
Board and Sheriff Greg Sprungle:
As a citizen of Boundary County I would like to express my opinion on Middle Eastern refugee relocation as it pertains to our community. For the last three years I have traveled the Middle East, working as a Remote Paramedic in Kabul and Kandahar Afghanistan and throughout the Northern areas of Kenya, and I feel it has given me a perspective on the issue few in our community can share. We all live in our beautiful county because we want to live and raise our children a certain way, not that we are exclusive and do not permit people to worship how they please and live the way they please, AS LONG AS IT IS NOT FORCED UPON OTHERS, I feel this is a key sentence in this correspondence. I would be a liar if I sat here and told you that I have not met many nice folks of the Islamic faith, but, the term “moderate Islam” is a myth, and here is why. In my travels in Afghanistan most people just want to raise their kids and make a living, only about 10% of the population (probably less) are the devout zealots who cause mayhem and are the source of the problem, BUT, the majority will not police the minority and therefor it festers and grows, swelling the ranks, so there is no way to contain it. Here in Africa you never see it on the news, but it is a daily fight for non-Muslims to live free and happy, daily they are found killed in their sleep and for what, because they go to a different church?! Here we are talking millions of people in fear of thousands, but that number is growing, because young people are being brain washed and non “believers” are given the choice to convert or watch their families slaughtered. One very patriotic young man I met in Kabul summed it all up one day when we were out talking by the range he said to me “I love my country and I want to see it great, but the only way we can do that, is to take every one of Afghan descent above the age of 45, put them on their knees and put a bullet in their head”. Let that sink in for a moment, here is a young man who has been shot on three separate occasions fighting Taliban and anti government forces trying to free his homeland, but the kicker is this, when we were discussing all the people fleeing the areas to other countries, he said “Shopie, don’t let them in, you cannot tell friend from foe”, I choose to live by his thought pattern. There are many things I have learned over the last several years. And my eyes have been opened, I have seen firsthand what happens when Islam takes up roots in an area, and let’s not forget that our small piece of heaven is already on extremist’s short list of cities, with our backs to an international border. I ask you to do your elected duty, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America
To the Commissioners I say Boundary County is a wild and wonderful place where for the most part we are safe and secure, I DO NOT support accepting any refugees from faraway lands who will not fight for their own home to come and defile mine, place my family in Jeopardy and make my friends and neighbors potential targets of opportunity for a lone wolf attack on them as they go to church. It is my belief that accepting these people into our communities will demoralize and destabilize our basic core values and nothing good can come of it.
To the Boundary County School Board, our school system is not set up financially, physically, emotionally or culturally to accept the students from other areas around the globe, to provide education to these young people. Also, with the risk so high to our most valued asset, our children you can only imagine the fear and uneasiness felt by the parents, not out of the fear of the children, but of the “parents” of these people. I say “Parents” because we have no way of knowing who the children belong to, there are no real birth records in many areas of the Middle East, for all we know the children can be a Trojan horse for darker intentions.
And last to Sheriff Sprungel, our local department is undermanned as it is, our Guardians of the Thin Blue Line will be overwhelmed with calls for service based upon both paranoia and actual concerns, our officers provide their services for a meager pay, based upon their call to duty for their community, to ask them to accept this increased risk is not fair to them or their families.
yes America is the great melting pot of freedom for all those oppressed, but just like us 239 years ago, if you want your freedom, you have to fight for it, do not put my family in danger because they refuse to fight for it in their homeland, do not bring this black plague to our front door, so “we the people” have to deal with it. And above all please remember this, I do not lock my door at night because I hate what is outside, but because I love what is inside!
As a citizen of Boundary County I would like to express my opinion on Middle Eastern refugee relocation as it pertains to our community. For the last three years I have traveled the Middle East, working as a Remote Paramedic in Kabul and Kandahar Afghanistan and throughout the Northern areas of Kenya, and I feel it has given me a perspective on the issue few in our community can share. We all live in our beautiful county because we want to live and raise our children a certain way, not that we are exclusive and do not permit people to worship how they please and live the way they please, AS LONG AS IT IS NOT FORCED UPON OTHERS, I feel this is a key sentence in this correspondence. I would be a liar if I sat here and told you that I have not met many nice folks of the Islamic faith, but, the term “moderate Islam” is a myth, and here is why. In my travels in Afghanistan most people just want to raise their kids and make a living, only about 10% of the population (probably less) are the devout zealots who cause mayhem and are the source of the problem, BUT, the majority will not police the minority and therefor it festers and grows, swelling the ranks, so there is no way to contain it. Here in Africa you never see it on the news, but it is a daily fight for non-Muslims to live free and happy, daily they are found killed in their sleep and for what, because they go to a different church?! Here we are talking millions of people in fear of thousands, but that number is growing, because young people are being brain washed and non “believers” are given the choice to convert or watch their families slaughtered. One very patriotic young man I met in Kabul summed it all up one day when we were out talking by the range he said to me “I love my country and I want to see it great, but the only way we can do that, is to take every one of Afghan descent above the age of 45, put them on their knees and put a bullet in their head”. Let that sink in for a moment, here is a young man who has been shot on three separate occasions fighting Taliban and anti government forces trying to free his homeland, but the kicker is this, when we were discussing all the people fleeing the areas to other countries, he said “Shopie, don’t let them in, you cannot tell friend from foe”, I choose to live by his thought pattern. There are many things I have learned over the last several years. And my eyes have been opened, I have seen firsthand what happens when Islam takes up roots in an area, and let’s not forget that our small piece of heaven is already on extremist’s short list of cities, with our backs to an international border. I ask you to do your elected duty, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America
To the Commissioners I say Boundary County is a wild and wonderful place where for the most part we are safe and secure, I DO NOT support accepting any refugees from faraway lands who will not fight for their own home to come and defile mine, place my family in Jeopardy and make my friends and neighbors potential targets of opportunity for a lone wolf attack on them as they go to church. It is my belief that accepting these people into our communities will demoralize and destabilize our basic core values and nothing good can come of it.
To the Boundary County School Board, our school system is not set up financially, physically, emotionally or culturally to accept the students from other areas around the globe, to provide education to these young people. Also, with the risk so high to our most valued asset, our children you can only imagine the fear and uneasiness felt by the parents, not out of the fear of the children, but of the “parents” of these people. I say “Parents” because we have no way of knowing who the children belong to, there are no real birth records in many areas of the Middle East, for all we know the children can be a Trojan horse for darker intentions.
And last to Sheriff Sprungel, our local department is undermanned as it is, our Guardians of the Thin Blue Line will be overwhelmed with calls for service based upon both paranoia and actual concerns, our officers provide their services for a meager pay, based upon their call to duty for their community, to ask them to accept this increased risk is not fair to them or their families.
yes America is the great melting pot of freedom for all those oppressed, but just like us 239 years ago, if you want your freedom, you have to fight for it, do not put my family in danger because they refuse to fight for it in their homeland, do not bring this black plague to our front door, so “we the people” have to deal with it. And above all please remember this, I do not lock my door at night because I hate what is outside, but because I love what is inside!
Well
during the election these ultra conservative sure had in my Opinion
time...Have some goofy ideals.
Wanted
to take back a the federal lands and have private or state mange it.
The state has mange there land and did pretty shitty job.
Most
of the state land been strip to bare bone and lumber companies made
exploited profit and clear out.
Out
of this group of people. Some one thought: The federal government is
going to set up an refugee camp and build a mosque, on forest service land.
Opinion
time...I would like to see my community more open to other cultures. But we're not seat up to do any thing like that.
On
a more cheerful note. Murphy and I took a drive out to our property
to cut down an tree. But before that we went to both of the hardware
stores to find an hatchet.
No
such luck.
But
found one at FAR NORTH OUTFITTERS I
even possible found a gift there for the family white elephant
exchange.
I
got a little more exercise in since we went out an got a tree.
Breakfast
was a bowl of cereal, with raisin and banana.
Lunch
was roast beef sandwich, pears with grad cheese, and celery stick
with non dairy cream cheese.
Dinner,
chicken, mac and cheese, and green beans.
Now
for the oops 3 piece of taffy and a slice of pie.
Coffee
is on
I lived in Tanzania for two years, half of it in Zanzibar -- which was around 98% Muslim when I was there (the summer of 1992 and again in 1995-1996). In that part of Africa, I didn't feel threatened by Muslims. In fact, I lived with a Muslim family for the bulk of the time that I was in Zanzibar and was extremely well-treated by them.
ReplyDeleteTo speak of Muslims like they're all the same borders on idiocy or insanity. Yes, you have the terrible, violent extremists. But there are plenty of nice human beings with moderate, tolerant views, who happen to be Muslim too.
I'm amazed that you folks didn't already have a hatchet.
ReplyDeleteBill, we had an hatchet but it broke.
ReplyDelete