By Andrea Widburg
I grew up on “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” which opened with his gentle voice singing, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” But it wasn’t just Fred Rogers. Throughout the 20th century, pop culture consistently reinforced a strong message: neighbors are good, kind, and helpful people.
But what happens when you have people immigrating to your country who don’t want to be good neighbors but who want to control and even kill you? Americans need to answer that question soon, because radical Muslims are proving to be the neighbors from Hell.
Mr. Rogers was a late entry into the “good neighbors” ideal. In the 1930s, there was the popular song “Love Thy Neighbor. The 1940s began with the “Good Neighbor” policy, aimed at keeping Latin America out of the Nazi orbit, which led to songs (notably, very bad ones) such as “Good night, good neighbor.” The 1940s ended with George Bailey’s neighbors saving him from prison.
In the 1950s, good neighbors were the staple for the family-friendly sitcoms the Baby Boomers grew up on: I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Leave It To Beaver, Dennis the Menace, etc. In the 1960s, a bit of cynicism crept in with Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor on Bewitched, while the kid-centric shows focused more on family or school friends (e.g., The Brady Bunch), but good neighbors still had resonance.
It wasn’t a coincidence that, beginning in the 1950s, State Farm adopted its current slogan: “Just like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”
Across America, good neighbors were a good thing.
But lately, America has been importing immigrants who have no interest in being good neighbors. They come, not to assimilate, but to conquer. That was made patently clear in Muslim-controlled Dearborn, Michigan, when the Muslim mayor announced that a Christian resident should leave the community for daring to protest a city move to name a street after a terrorist: