Tito the Builder

I'll never forget where I was, or what happened, on Sept 11th. I was onsite at a customer's facility, as I usually am. It is a manufacturing facility that is owned by immigrants from South America. As a result a lot of their work force are folks who've recently immigrated, legally, to the US. When we heard about the attack, lots of questions were flying, as they no doubt were everywhere else. A young woman from Chile who recently "raised her hand" to become a citizen asked me, in all shock and seriousness, "Why would someone do this to us?" Not New York, not America, not the folks on the planes or in the WTC or the Pentagon, but us. She couldn't understand why someone, anyone, would hate America so much as to be driven to attack it.

It never fails to amaze me how people who were born and raised here, who never had to live in another country or under a different type of system, turn on their country with such vitriol, such venomous hatred. And many of those that don't are so apathetic, so unappreciative of what we have here in the States. It's the folks who come here legally, folks like Tito, who know what America is and what it's really like living somewhere else. Folks like Tito get it. I'd take the Titos of the world who came over the self-righteous, America-hating schmucks like Bill Ayers, Frank Lloyd Marshall and Jeremiah Wright who were born here any day of the week.