Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA: A SECOND LOOK
of themselves and in environments where they are not often exposed to
clashes of opinion.
Remember Mr. Dooley’s definition of a fanatic: someone who “does
what he thinks th’ Lord wud do if He only knew th’ facts in th’ case.”
These honest, God-fearing, unsophisticated people who have the arrogance
to think they are executing the divine will are perhaps even a greater
menace to the Bill of Rights than the phoney sophisticates of the college
campus whose arrogance is intellectual rather than theological.
The idea of bringing harmony to the diverse American society through
censorship is an evasion of the real problem. Speech reflects social inequities
and disparities and injustices; it does not cause them. If we are serious
about creating a decent nation, our society must provide decent jobs,
schools, housing and health care; it must provide equal opportunity in
education and employment. The answer lies along these lines. It does not
lie in the amputation of the Bill of Rights. Political correctness, whether
of the left or of the right, is a cheap escape from the tough demands of
social reform.
The great virtue of a democratic society, let us never forget, is its
capacity for self-correction.
I thus undertook the revision of THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA
to deal with the increased urgency of the question how to hold nations
together; and to deal with the rising threats in the U.S. to the Bill of Rights
coming from both the multicultural left and the monocultural right. I have
not forgotten my promise at the outset to say some tentative words as to
how this line of argument bears upon your own future.
I know that last July 25 was the hundredth anniversary of the start
of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States and that
on December 13 next you will vote on the future of that relationship. My
own association with Puerto Rico goes back many years to Rexford G.
Tugwell, the last and best of the appointed governors, and to Luis Muñoz
Marín, one of the great 20th century statesmen of the westen hemisphere.
In my generation I recall Arturo Morales Carrión, Ted Moscoso and Jaime
Benítez with affection and esteem. I recall JFK regard for Muñoz and his
interest in Puerto Rico’s future. I know the pride Puerto Ricans take in
their U.S. citizenship, as shown by the patriotic record of Puerto Ricans in
the armed forces during the Second World War, in Korea, in Vietnam.
Most mainland Americans, I am sure, believe in self-determination
for Puerto Rico. They believe that Puerto Ricans themselves must decide
the future of the island, whether that future should be independence, or
free association, enhanced commonwealth status, or statehood. I have no
intention of entering into that argument today.
Arturo Morales-Carrión used to draw a distinction between legal nationality
and cultural nationality. “A legal nationality,” he wrote, “does
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Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005 • HOMINES •