I doubt I can express this well, but I am going to try.
When one set of my ancestors came to the U.S. from a land where they were hated and oppressed for their religion and their ethnic origins, they found signs here saying “No Irish Need Apply”. They found lauded pictorialists like Thomas Nast, who viciously vilified their religion. But they also found that if they worked, often at dangerous, body-wracking work, and accumulated a little money, they could buy a farm, animals, a house, and no one would say them nay. No one could. When they gathered, with others, money to buy a bit of land and build a church on it, no one would say them nay because, despite everything, in the end, no one could. And when they raised their families to be faithful to the Church and direct their lives to God, no one would say them nay. No one could.
Another set of my ancestors came here not speaking the language. They were vilified for being “guineas”, “wops”, “spics” (yes, originally applied to Italians, not Hispanics) When they worked in the deep mines, stripped absolutely naked for the heat, and where draught ponies that lived their whole lives underground would occasionally go killer mad, one would think them deprived of everything, and yet, when they got their coal to the mine head, they held out their hands for their pay and got it. No one could say them nay, and no one did. And when, after years of “polenta, polenta, polenta”, they saved enough to move; to buy livestock and raise fruit and sell it to whomever found it pleasing, no one would say them nay. No one could. And when they taught their children to play instruments and sing, and go a dozen miles to Church in a horse-drawn wagon and cherish each other and aid each other, no one would say them nay. No one could.
And when, despite the KKK and anti-Catholicism that was almost official, my own father worked hard at his profession to provide for his family, and some of those very people who carried torches in the street came sneaking to him at home for his services because they couldn’t be seen coming to his office, and paid him good money to provide them because he was the best at what he did, no one said him nay, because no one could. And when he raised his family to be faithful to the Church and to care for each other and educated them at great sacrifice to himself, and to have their own families and support them and treat them well and raise them to reverence God and their Church, no one said him nay, because, in spite of all, no one could.
And today, when I look at some of the political horrors we are facing; the moral corruption that is touted as “enlightened”, when I look at the scoundrels who want to take more of the fruits of my labors so they can buy constituencies for themselves and do more evil and perhaps laugh at me behind their hands as they do it, and I think “this is terrible” “What is this country coming to?” I think, well, with a little more work I can send this child to college, that one to law school. And I also think: But when was it different? If I try a little bit harder, I can pay that pound of flesh to those who want to buy power and fame with it, and still provide for my family. They can have their lives and I can have mine. And no matter what awful things are on the media or in the schools, I can still tell my own children and grandchildren the old stories and the old truths and impress on them the importance of providing for themselves and their families, come what may, and inculcating in their children the reverence for the faith, the importance of learning, the loyalty to and care for each other that makes a family a universe all its own. And my money spends like anyone else’s, and I can maybe buy a lot for my daughter here, and make a down payment for my son there. And in this country, one is often considered strange for all of that. But nothing more than that. One is sometimes going to miss opportunities because of that, but nothing more than that. One may even be obliged to keep his head down at times because of that, but nothing more than that. One is still obliged to swim upstream in many ways, but nothing more than that. One can always still fight the currents that from time to time shift this way and that, and make his own universe in this country. And no one can say any of us nay in doing those things, because no one can.
And no one can say “nay” to any of those things because in doing so they would be saying “nay” to themselves; know it, and will not abide it.
