Mailbag: Are we still a culture of many?

This is one of those reports that is very uplifting (“Care catered to Asian Americans,” Aug. 29). At first, it makes you feel proud of your fellow citizens. Just how far as citizens we will go to accommodate all cultures and traditions of the known world while paying little attention to our own. We print government documents in various languages for all those to exercise their rights as citizens or permanent residents. Major corporations have several languages you can choose to carry on business, as the common language is splintered into many parts.

Catering to Mexicans in the public school system and through law enforcement or lack of law enforcement has been costly. We have gone from a time when Californians were just the average citizen. With the same problems and joys as the rest of the citizens in California. Fast forward to today and we are almost completely segregated from Mexicans by location, language, culture and flag.

This all started with the poor nurse that thought she was bringing a refreshing dessert — a popsicle — to a new mother. The nurse didn’t expect anyone to be “shocked” for such a simple kindness. Instead the nurse was lectured on how and what she should know before being a nurse. When in reality it was the patient and family who should learn the customs, language and traditions of this nation. Which now seems like a distant dream as to immigrants actually adopting their new nation state as their own.

Does E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one” have any importance or important meaning in today’s culture? If it does we need to work on it a little more. Or, we will continue to become “out of many, the tower of babel of many more” that will not hold us together as a nation state or the several states. A vast waste land, of different areas, where we have nothing in common except the wars between us.

August Lightfoot

Newport Beach

M. H. Millard’s letter to the editor (“Sounding Off: Build an aiport at Camp Pendleton,” Aug. 31) hit a note of reality in recognizing the threat of an expanding John Wayne Airport.

However, there was also the vision of deja vu in thinking of Camp Pendleton as a possible airport site. For more than 20 years people have been asking the Marine Corps/Navy to allow commercial flights at the former Marine Corps Air Station and at Miramar in San Diego. These requests have been adamantly refused. There is no reason to believe that the Marine Corps/Navy would allow Camp Pendleton to cede its land for a commercial airport. Considering the cost and the disruption make this plan extremely unlikely.

A better alternative is the former Marine Corps airport at El Toro. The runways are still there and the “Great Park” is going nowhere. Why not?

Shirley A. Conger

Corona del Mar