American Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Listed in a Brochure in 1955

One of the proud moments in my life was the day when I became a naturalized American citizen, following a long journey of four years which included tons of paperwork, interviews, expensive fees I could barely afford, and many trips to the Immigration office at a time when I was a mom, a wife, a daughter, and a student.

I was not lucky to be born in the United States, but I became a naturalized American as soon as the authorities allowed a legal immigrant from a communist country to become one. I was properly vetted, vaccinated, employed, checked for communicable diseases, studied America’s history, its founding documents, and underwent at least three hours of interrogation to make sure that I was not a communist. It was a bit strange, I admit, since I fled communism.

Things have changed since I became a citizen. Immigration laws are no longer respected or followed, politicians keep telling us that laws are “broken,” winking to each other, allowing any flotsam and jetsam of the third world to walk unimpeded across the southern border, and thousands and thousands are flown and dropped into small, conservative communities in the dead of night, carrying U.S. or U.N. debit cards, Medicaid insurance cards, and brand-new cell phones. American citizens are even asked to donate as much as they can for the settlement and care of unvetted and unvaccinated illegals dropped overnight into their midst to increase the voting rolls for the Democrat Party.

A naturalization brochure from 1955 came across my desk recently. Published in 1955 as document M-76 by the Department of Justice, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, it is titled “Welcome to the New Citizen on the occasion of Naturalization.”

Printed in blue are the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer, during the bombardment of Fort McHenry and adopted by Congress as the National Anthem in 1931.

Today, the woke leftist America objects to our National Anthem as an outdated, bellicose statement. They are trying to change it to reflect their values, just as they are changing everything else remotely connected to our history that offends them. The easily triggered left is running the country into the ground and destroying our history, replacing it with their manufactured version of past events and persons.

The 1955 brochure also contains a brief congratulatory letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower who welcomed the new citizens “to a new way of life with rights and privileges, blessings which include a solemn responsibility – the duty to help maintain and advance the principles and ideals upon which our Republic was founded and built.”

Today the meaning of our Constitutional Republic has been lost in the leftist narrative swamp of their brand of democracy, complaining about our “outdated” founding documents that must be replaced by their woke ideals of Marxism and collectivism.

The 1955 brochure contains the words to America’s Creed. William Tyler Page, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote America’s Creed in 1917 which was accepted by the House on behalf of the American People on April 3, 1918.

“I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People, whose just powers are derived from the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.”

William Tyler Page would be saddened by the state of politics today as American citizens are being governed by a political class so powerful that their powers are no longer derived from the governed. He would be disappointed to see what is happening to our country’s sovereignty on the southern border which is overrun by millions of illegals from around the world, breaking our laws and signing up for welfare and the voting rolls.

None of our founding documents mention the latest leftist buzzword, “equity,” equality of outcomes, the latest demands from the American Marxist contingent.

The founding documents of our country are written in cursive handwriting which is no longer taught in schools. American students cannot read their country’s original founding documents anymore. The decision to stop teaching cursive handwriting came from educators in America and around the world, even though research has proven that cursive handwriting develops certain parts of the brain, enabling memory and further learning. Frontiers | The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults | Psychology (frontiersin.org)

J. M Swing, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, wrote in the 1955 brochure about the Meaning of American Citizenship:

“Today you have become a citizen of the United States of America. You are no longer an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian, a Pole. Neither are you a hyphenated-American – a Polish-American, an Italian-American. You are no longer a subject of the government. Henceforth, you are an integral part of this Government – a freeman – a Citizen of the United States of America.”

J. M. Swing might also be disappointed to see that in 2022, American citizens who were lucky to have been born on American soil, have become strongly hyphenated, polarized, and divided by skin color and ethnicity, and have become subjects of their powerful governments.

Frances Cavanah and Lloyd E. Smith outlined the rights and privileges of an American citizen in the same 1955 immigration brochure:

1.      Think freely as a unique person. Today unfortunately “groupthink” is highly encouraged in the main stream media. In the vein of collectivism, uniqueness is seen as selfish and undemocratic.

2.      I may speak or write as I please if it does not interfere with the rights of others. Today you may speak and write if the left allows you a venue in the mass media, and the technocracy elites allow you to be seen or heard on social media platforms.

3.      Exercise the right to vote. You vote but, as soon as you leave the voting booth, your vote may be nullified by a person voting illegally.

4.      I have the right to choose my work. You may choose your work today if your views and resume are acceptable to those doing the hiring.

5.      I have the right to improve myself through hard work and education. Higher education today has become a joke as universities are now bastions of leftist Marxist groupthink. No diverse thinkers need apply and no divergent opinions are allowed.

6.      I have the right to a prompt trial by jury if I should be accused of a crime. I wonder if those labeled “insurrectionists” have had their days in court yet.

7.      I have equal rights with others when seeking justice in the courts. Do we really have equal rights today in the courts?

8.      I can share in the benefits of many natural resources of my country.

9.      I can educate my children in free schools. They are tuition-free for those who do not pay property taxes which fund public schools. Schools and universities are controlled by a leftist cabal of teachers, administrators, and professors indoctrinated in America’s colleges of education and now even colleges of arts and sciences.

10.  I have the right to worship in the religion of my choice. Have you really been free to worship in church in the last two years during the forced lockdowns? How many churches and priests were fined and arrested for holding church services?

11.  I have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We can hope and pray for this right, but we have had a lot of unhappy, broke, and bankrupt Americans in the last two years, unable to pursue their dreams due to government lockdowns and unconstitutional mandates. We have experienced at the hands of our federal, state, and local governments, home detention, forced masking, vaccine mandates, election fraud, food and necessities shortages, supply chain disruptions, school closures for extended periods of time, censorship, and forced small businesses and church closures.

The duties of an American citizen were outlined in the 1955 brochure as follows:

1.      Obey the country’s laws. Currently, the socialist Democrats only obey the laws they like and approve of. The rest of us obey the laws.

2.      It is our duty to vote so that our government may truly represent the will of the people. Unfortunately, the leftist wing that runs big cities allows illegal citizens of other countries to vote thus diluting and destroying the votes and the will of the rest of the American voters.

3.      Keep informed on the honesty and ability of candidates for public office. It makes no difference that we know how dishonest some candidates and politicians are, they suffer no consequences, and they are well-funded by donations from the leftist elites who run the country.

4.      Correct injustice through voting. Seldom injustices are corrected through voting anymore since the advent of the electronic voting system which is easy to manipulate and hack.

5.      Pay taxes. The middle class is heavily taxed and so are individuals in the upper class. The rest have little skin in the taxation game.

6.      Serve on juries when called upon.

7.      Hold a public office for the efficient functioning of government. Is our government truly functioning efficiently when you look at the trillions of dollars in debt that has been accumulated in the last five years?

8.      Defend our country if necessary.

9.      Unite in times of crisis and support our government.

10.  Respect our national flag. How many Americans have desecrated our flag, burned it, stepped on it, and destroyed it? How many Americans were forbidden to fly the American flag and were fined by homeowners’ associations (HOAs) and municipalities under the excuse that it offended others?

The goals listed in the citizenship brochure from 67 years ago are majestic and admirable. We should all strive to be better citizens, whether natural born or naturalized.

Those of us, who were not lucky to be born in this country but were lucky enough to be able to immigrate here legally, support this country and its opportunity to succeed guaranteed to everyone. We do not support the woke equality of outcomes. The collectivist idea of “equity” has never worked, and it is never going to work except by coercion and oppression.

To me, my naturalized citizenship carries with it the highest privilege and the highest responsibility to conduct the oath taken on the day when I became a proud American. Freedom is never free, and we must cherish it and protect it from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

 

Rationing Electricity, A/C, and Heat

A lot of humans have died from heat exposure, in freezing temperatures, in wilderness, in war trenches, frozen on Mt. Everest, marching in war convoys, marching to concentration camps, inside concentration camp barracks, in gulags in subzero temperatures, submerged in icy water, in crashes on mountain tops or jungles, hiking, mountain climbing, and many other horrible conditions.

Angel, a Jew sent to Auschwitz in Nazi Germany, witnessed an entire ward freeze to death overnight, without beds, heat, and food. She alone survived with an old man because she spent all night trying to warm him up, rubbing his hands, legs, face, and neck. When the sun came up, there was an eerie silence around them, they were surrounded by frozen corpses. Nobody should suffer such inhuman conditions.

Nobody should suffer extreme heat or freeze to death in their homes because they cannot afford heat or air conditioning from whatever source or because they cannot pay their utility bills.

Nobody should be forced by the global elites’ U.N. Agenda 2030 to achieve “net zero” emissions by setting their furnaces to a high of 60 degrees Fahrenheit in winter and their air conditioners to 80+ F degrees in summer.

There was nothing positive about the installation of Smart Meters around the globe starting ten years ago. They are more expensive than traditional meters, don’t last long, the cost per kWh per customer has increased dramatically, it spies on each household without a search warrant, it cuts off power to homes during high demand in the coldest or hottest days of the year, sell the data it collects to third parties, bombards homes with radiation every 12 seconds, and it causes health issues in sensitive customers when the smart meter is attached directly to the home.

The Telegraph has reported on February 8, 2022, that “Smart meters are to automatically send energy suppliers half-hourly updates on their customers’ power use in a revolutionary move that will allow ‘surge pricing’ in millions of households’ bills.”

The energy regulator Ofgem will be granted legal powers in May to charge customers at peak times more for electricity usage and customers must “opt in.”

Smart Meters were first introduced as “opt in” but became mandatory quickly and people had to fight in courts to be able to ‘opt out.’ Claimed price savings and convenience from the installation of Smart Meters never materialized. It only benefitted the utilities because it did not have to store excess capacity for times when the demand was higher. The “surge pricing” is also described as saving customers money whereby said customers would use electricity at times when the charges are lower. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/smart-meter-overhaul-to-open-gates-for-e2-80-98surge-pricing-e2-80-99/ar-AATDUJ6?ocid=uxbndlbing

Customers who live in old homes, use outdated appliances, need electricity around the clock for life-saving devices or more heat will be penalized, and will pay much higher prices on fixed incomes.

Might such individuals who live on fixed incomes and who might have their power cut off for lack of payment freeze in their own homes or die of heat strokes? It has happened certainly in the U.S. and elsewhere during extremely cold winters and very hot summers.

Imagine millions of electric cars, all trying to charge at the same time during the night, and the large economy also pulling electricity from the grid during those times. What exactly would happen to the grid? It will certainly crash, resulting in unnecessary deaths from freezing, heat strokes, or the inability to use life-saving devices.

Imagine so much deforestation to meet the cardboard boxes and paper bags demand that people would be unable to find sufficient wood to heat their homes.

Imagine the prices of home heating fuel escalating due to the anti-fossil fuel policies of western administrations around the world who harmonize their globalist policies to dispense with fossil fuels by 2050.

Imagine being unable to obtain the necessary electricity from solar panels and wind turbines to supply large economies and the population. How many will freeze to death or die of heat strokes due to such idiotic and unworkable socialist regime policies?

It seems that we are not willing to learn from history, not just our own, but the history of other socialist regimes run by the Communist Party into the ground.

Even before the harsh winter of 1984-85, the socialist regime in my former country was not prepared to deliver adequate levels of energy supplies to the people. Winters had power shortages, heat, sudden and arbitrary electricity, water, and hot water cutoffs, and rationing of gasoline at the pumps.

Private cars were banned on the roads, heat to apartments, buildings, and factories was cut in half, in hopes to save energy at the expense of the people. It did not just create misery all around, but it caused so much unnecessary illness and death by freezing. Babies died in incubators in hospitals when electric plugs were pulled to save energy.

Former Ambassador David B. Funderburk wrote in his book, Pinstripes and Reds, that in the winter of 1984-85 “reports indicated that one of every three babies born in hospitals in Romania during the winter of 1984-85 either died or was born severely ill and deformed.” (p. 80)

The extreme cold and snow were gone by April 1985, but private cars were still banned from the roads and highways in order to save on fossil fuels. The lack of energy, heat, and food killed a lot of very young and old people that infamous winter.

Are we willing to suffer such death by freezing and famine in our former land of plenty because the country is run by a socialist globalist cabal intent on destroying the U.S. and bringing it into the dark ages? How much anemic light and darkness, and cold in winter are you willing to tolerate in our stores and homes? And for that matter, how many people are willing to sacrifice who will die in summertime from excessive heat without the benefit of air conditioning, refrigeration, and the electricity that runs them?

 

 

Diet in Socialism or Capitalism

My childhood grocery store in 2015

Thanks to food additives, semi-prepared foods in grocery stores, lockdowns, a more sedentary life in front of a computer screen, larger portions of food in restaurants and burger joints, ever present sugar in every type of food consumed, and less daily walking than the average human, Americans have added more pounds to their frames.

According to most nutrition experts, who constantly push a vegan diet, vegetarian diet, salads, lots of cardboard-tasting kale, low carb diets, and many other restrictive food consumption methods, to be overweight in America is a shame and a severe health hazard.

Food has always been plentiful in relatively free societies if the government does not interfere with the economy through price controls, the supply of goods, or create severe inflation via out-of-control money printing and spending.  

Food is quite scarce in socialist societies ruled by the incompetent and evil Communist Party.

As food becomes scarcer in our stores due to the supply disruption of Covid-19-driven government rules and mandates, as your favorite ingredients to cook meals at home become more expensive due to escalating inflation caused by Biden regime’s disastrous economic policies and performance, people will be thinner. I call it the Biden diet.

I still remember the communist diet Ceausescu forced all Romanians to survive on. Some of us looked good very thin but many were gaunt and pale, far from healthy, and quite malnourished. He called this diet the “scientific diet.”

Former Ambassador to Romania (1981-1985), David Funderburk, wrote in his book, Pinstripes and Reds, “The scientific diet with little or no meat was one of the sickest jokes played on the Romanian people. When the average Romanian was doing without meat, standing in long lines day after day, and scrambling around for scarce rationed items such as cooking oil, coffee, milk, eggs, cheese products, and other foods, as well as shampoo and soap, Ceausescu warned the people of the dangers of overeating. Claiming falsely that Romania was among the world’s leaders in per capita calorie consumption, Romanians were advised to eat less meat.” (p. 78)

Romanians were told that the scarcity of food was caused by greedy black-market speculators who bought out the entire supply and sold it for profit and by other criminals in society. The truth was that there was plenty of food produced but it was sold abroad for hard currency and the Romanians were delivered scraps in stores.

In late 1984 and early 1985 shortages were even more drastic, deliveries of food reduced by 50 percent. I can attest to such shortages during our 1985 visit when for six weeks we had to struggle to find food every day, sometimes taking the bus halfway to Bucharest, stopping in several villages to purchase eggs, milk, cheese, butter, potatoes, or chicken at black market prices as the stores were empty.

Why would Ceausescu order that the food be sold as export to other countries? He wanted to industrialize the country very fast and needed the money to finance monstrous industrial projects that were a drain on the economy but created jobs for the political prisoners who were forced to dig and build Ceausescu’s massive industrial projects for free.

In 1982, Romania’s per capita meat consumption was the lowest in the Western world. At the time, a U.S. Department of Agriculture study showed that “East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, had over three times Romania’s meat consumption. Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union had roughly three times Romania’s per capita meat consumption.” Romania’s annual per capita meat consumption in 1980 was 24.2 kg (53.35 lbs.), the Soviet Union 58.3 kg, East Germany 85.9 kg, Hungary 73.0 kg, while U.S. had 112.6 kg. (The New York Times, August 25, 1981)

People stole whatever they produced in the factories they worked in and bartered it for food stolen by others in their places of employment to survive. Ceausescu dealt with his lies and the mismanagement of the economy by sentencing to death those who stole to survive and were caught.

Funderburk wrote about three workers sentenced to death for stealing meat from a packing plant in Tirgoviste in December 1983 and about peasants who stole corn, wheat, and livestock from forced co-operative farms.

People were told to eat more rabbit instead of pork, chicken, or beef. Never mind that only a few farmers raised rabbits for their own families and high-rise city dwellers did not have that luxury to raise rabbits or chicken. Apparatchiks indoctrinated people that rabbit meat was part of Ceausescu’s “scientific diet.”

Growing up in Romania and becoming an adult, I never recall eating beef at home or in my grandparents’ village at all. Our staple of meat was either chicken, pork at Christmas time, rabbit stew from grandpa’s yard, and sometimes fish from the market. To this day, beef is not in my diet.

We can all stand to lose a few pounds, but do we want to lose them through voluntary diet and exercise, by cutting back on caloric consumption, or the socialist way, because the grocery shelves are bare, and the meat is too expensive or unavailable to the masses?

 

 

The Bolsheviks Sold Imperial Wealth

La Peregrina pearl drop

The Bolsheviks, before they even murdered the Romanovs, took possession of the bank safe deposit boxes and palaces of the Czar's family and other relatives, and began to inventory everything. This stolen wealth became a source of cash to fund their nascent revolution and to launch the new Soviet government's plan of grandiose industrialization.

"Lenin stole treasures for Soviet tractors. The Bolshevik government (early 1920s) looted churches, palaces, museums, and bank vault safe deposit boxes" all over Russia to fund their proletarian revolution with Russia's cultural patrimony.

The Bolsheviks organized special sales where foreigners were encouraged to purchase the imperial wealth. These sales were forbidden to Russians, as the communists became well known for dealing only in hard currency such as dollars or British pounds.

Armand Hammer is the best-known collector of 20th century Russian art. Armand Hammer (the Arm & Hammer fortune) bought many pieces for his art collection and sold the rest to wealthy Americans in his department stores in New York City. Many of the Romanov treasures thus became part of private art collections and perhaps lost to history. 

Another collector was Marjorie Merriweather Post (Post cereal fortune), who, in her position as the wife of U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1936-1938), Joseph E. Davis, visited such salesrooms in Moscow and was able to find several beautiful pieces, and large amounts of tarnished silver and pewter which she bought by weight. Her purchases and those from the 1927 Christie's sale in London are now displayed in her former home Hillwood, now a museum in Washington, D.C.

Malcolm Forbes and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art have built a collection of former imperial valuables as well, as a second generation of collectors. Malcolm Forbes has nine Faberge eggs that had been created for the Tsarinas Marie and Alexandra.

After the "fall" of the Soviet Union, Russian industrialist Viktor Vekelsberg purchased collections of imperial art, including the Forbes collection, and repatriated it to Russia. This may have bought him a special place in the new Russia.

Princess Zinaida Yusupova escaped Russia with her La Peregrina 203,84 grain pearl which, upon her death in 1939, was sold to a Geneva jeweler and then purchased by actor Richard Burton and given to his wife, Elizabeth Taylor. Elizabeth had the pearl set as a drop in a pearl and ruby necklace made by Cartier. This necklace remains today in the Taylor estate.

Lenin stole one of the Romanov emperor’s luxury automobiles, a Delaunay-Belleville limousine, in which he had himself driven around Saint Petersburg. One day Lenin was carjacked and had to walk back to the Duma. After that, he took a more “proletarian” automobile, a Rolls-Royce limo.

Commies are never just about their ideological lies; they steal by confiscation as much wealth as possible for themselves and for their “cause.” 

Note: Research credit to U.K.'s Future, Issue 6.