Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman, and I'd just make this point. When I read the material on this coming back up again, and I so appreciate Mr. Abercrombie's work, and I know his heart and his head are in this. This is in a verbatim email that I wrote up to my staff, and it goes this way. This bill makes a resounding statement that even Native Hawaiians can't be assimilated into a Western society. I disagree. It is a fundamental statement that goes to the heart of what it means to be an American. If, after all these years, Native Hawaiians have to be tribalized in order to function in a modern society, all Americans then must, by the identical logic, be Balkanized. Mr. Speaker, the philosophy is wrong underneath this. However good the thoughts are, Americans should be assimilated, not subdivided. We should not be pitted against each other, and Americans should not have certain assets designated to them because of the ancestry that they claim. We should be all Americans under one flag.”