I have voted in every election since I became eligible but one. I have both of my Senators and my Representative on speed dial. I regularly write letters to the editor to my various local papers. I have served on the jury in a criminal trial. I have worked going house to house as a census enumerator.
But I think the most profound and momentous civic milestone I have participated in was the naturalization ceremony for a dear friend. About five-hundred new American Citizens, representing eighty countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe sundered their ties to their homelands and swore allegiance to their new home. It was both humbling and ennobling, mundane and magnificent.
I defy any of the legion of small-minded bigots currently prancing across our national stage to look into the face of any one of those five hundred and say we are not better off bringing them into the fold than we are casting them into the cold. Wankers.
I highly recommend that if you ever have the opportunity to participate in a naturalization ceremony, you do so. It stirs and rouses the latent patriot within us all, no matter how discouraged and disheartened that patriot may be.
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