Pick your box.

Let me pick a couple of my boxes

Male

Married

2 kids

Over50

White

Graduate degree

Employed

Scout leader

Elder in my church

By giving you those descriptions, you have probably used boxes to form an opinion of me. Some people call them stereotypes.

People who are regular readers of townhall.com would probably say, I'm probably a typical American, working to take care of my family, supporting my community and contributing to society.

 But those of the left would be using other boxes…

A few come to mind…

Scout leader? Church? Must be a pedophile or a pervert.

White? Male? He's a hater. A racist. Wants to keep women down. Probably spews hate speech.

Graduate degree? Employed? He must be rich and stealing from someone. He is trying to avoid taxes. He hates the poor. We need to tax him more so the government can help the poor he wants to keep down.

Married? He hates homosexuals and wants to oppress them.

2 Kids? He wants to take away a woman's right to her own body.

You get the idea. So what do all these boxes have in common?

Each of the conservative views is a positive view of a good citizen, whereas each of the liberal views is a negative view. According to the liberal world view, each needs laws and governance to control the possibility that I may fall into the expected category. How many people who are in each of my liberal boxes actually ARE what the liberals think? It doesn’t matter. Even if there is one person that meets the criteria, there needs to be a way to check and to control.

Liberals create categories in order to control citizens. Every time a new classification is created, freedom is lost. Whether it be hyphenated Americans, check boxes for skin color or sexual orientation (something that wasn’t even discussed until the past two decades), boxes take away basic freedoms. Some boxes are used to add punishment, e.g., 'hate crimes'. Some are used to redistribute possessions. And ALL are used to divide our country.

In our world of polls based on demographics, this slide is inevitable.

It's time for our lawmakers to stop looking at boxes, and look at the positives that our individual achievements can accomplish. Stop trying to use diversity as a way to pass laws and divide. Yes we are all different, but bottom line, we are Americans. E Pluribus Unum.

 ³They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

 ⁵ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. ⁶ The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

 ⁸ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.    ⁹ That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9, NIV)

We are witnessing the destruction of Western civilization. As the European continent continues to bring in more guest workers, they are experiencing the loss of their culture and heritage. The Western, Christian concepts of freedoms and tolerance are only valid with an overriding sense of social responsibility. Western society and democracy only work if each and every citizen is willing to participate in taking the responsibilities of civilization to heart.

The new standard is "Don't talk about the (insert here… Turks, Blacks, Indians, etc) because they may get upset and riot. Don't force them to speak OUR language. Don't insist if they live in OUR country, to learn and respect OUR ways. Their ways are as good as ours. Who are we to judge?

All cultures are NOT created equally.

The national borders always controlled the diversity of Europe. The culture of Germany is significantly different from the culture of Italy, but within each country, there was homogenization and knowledge that the citizen must respect and support his own country.

Because of wealth and loss of religious faith, however, the core principles of the countries are beginning to collapse. Add to this the unwillingness of the affluent to do "menial" work and the influx of outsiders to do the work.

What does this have to do with the US? Growing up in a German immigrant household, I learned very early that I was expected to learn about the United States, Pennsylvania and I was to embrace my family's new home. I was to become an American. I wasn't becoming a German-American, or a European-American; it was just American.

In school, we learned the meaning of the nation's motto, E Pluribus Unum… One Out of Many. We learned about the many early settlers, coming in and being accepted as a part of the New Land. It was required for EVERY student to learn about our historical traditions and modern civics.

Pennsylvania was known to be the most diverse of all the new colonies, accepting all manners of religions (although most were denominations within Christianity) and people. Differences were put aside in most cases for the good of the colony. They were diverse, but they came together in common cause – Freedom.

During and after the War of Independence, the colonies put aside their differences for the American Cause. – Freedom. In a speech to the House of Representatives in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said the following, "… A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. …" (http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm)

As wave after wave of immigrants came to this country in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, each arrival understood that they needed to take the yoke of America on their shoulders and join their fellow citizens in the perpetuation of "The American Dream" – Freedom.

In the 1960s, a change occurred. It started slowly and initially with good intentions. Blacks were being discriminated against purely for the color of their skin, so well-meaning people suggested they need to get certain advantages to make them economically equal with the rest of American society. We began "affirmative action" programs, a government mandated distinction based on a group.

Then came the Feminist movement. They sought to use another biological characteristic to create an additional "minority" group entitled to special privileges. Quickly behind this, many more people began to characterize themselves, not by the appellation "American", but by a hyphenated version of American; the beginning of our Tower of Babel.

So where are we now? The diversity movement continues to classify people by their groups. As they spout platitudes about diversity and avoiding stereotypes, they automatically use characteristics and stereotypes of groups for classifications. For example, it is still assumed that because someone has darker skin, they are in need of additional help in securing school entrances, loans and jobs. Fat people cannot stop themselves from eating, so we need to legislate against unhealthy food, and so on.

Each classification brings on the ability of government to control another group and another part of life, removing… Freedom.

Hate crimes add additional penalties based on your group. White-on-black crime is deemed worse than black-on-black crime. Saying the wrong word about homosexuals in a joke can get an 81-year-old man who has raised millions to help kids with muscular Dystrophy in trouble. More was said about Ann Coulter's use of a word, which I'm not even allowed to use here, than about how John Edwards' trickery and bad science caused good doctors to lose their practices.

To survive, our society needed to stop this flow to diversity. Stop the use of other languages in general use. Force new immigrants (legal or illegal) either to accept our ways of life, or to return to their homeland. Otherwise, the "Huddled Masses Yearning to be Free" will never know Freedom.