Looking back to move forward...

In order for any progress to take place in the intellectual and political realms of Americana, we cannot simply dismiss ideas with which we do not agree by engaging in absolutisms that stifle further discussion. The irony here, of course, is that much of this is done in the spirit of "fairness" whose concept that subtends such a terms seems to have disappeared.

Random thoughts, for now...

As we cross the threshold if yet another year, 2008, well over one hundred years since the onset of the great wave of immigration from southern Italy, in particular, we need to re-adjust our horizons. We need to look backward in order to learn to move forward in a constructive and fruitful manner. Nostalgia, while temporary, is wonderful. When it becomes the driving force in either creative or analytical modes of discourse, we run the risk of remaining in a prison-house of nostalgic recollection that impedes us from moving forward. Ethnicity is surely important in our lives, but it should not become an over-determining factor in all of our pursuits, especially in this period of political engagement.