Democrat Rep. Delia Ramirez (D., Ill.) is locked into a fierce fight with the White House over controversial remarks at the second annual Panamerican Congress held in Mexico, including declaring, “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.” Ramirez does not deny making the remarks but insists that there is a double standard for “my white colleagues [who] identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, or Ukrainian-American to honor their ancestry.”Ramirez was also criticized for her criticism of the United States as being “addicted to war” and threatening the world with its “imperialism, militarization, conquest, control, competition in its attempt at domination.”
The White House criticized Ramirez as well as the appearance of other high-profile Squad members, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA): “These Democrats’ comments are despicable and underscore their commitment to putting Americans last.”
The comments of Ramirez have clearly struck a nerve on both sides. For my part, I am very proud of both my Irish-Sicilian background. My Sicilian grandparents came to this country at the turn of the century. They were deeply proud of their heritage but always insisted that their children identify as Americans first and foremost. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster 2026), we share a common identity of a people who are joined by core principles of liberty and individual rights. This country is unique because it is composed largely of people who came here to embrace a new identity of shared values.
I was surprised that Ramirez did not simply say that ranking was a poor choice of words. There is a difference between calling oneself a Guatemalan-American and saying that you are Guatemalan first and an American second. She has often publicly discussed how she is “the wife of a DACA recipient. I am the daughter of Guatemalan working immigrants,” including a mother who crossed the Rio Grande while pregnant. It is a harrowing story of many who came to this country to seek a new identity and a better life. My grandparents came to this country in the filthy hold of a wooden ship where immigrants died and two gave birth. What drove them was the promise of a new start in a nation based on freedom and opportunity. This country has never had prouder Americans.
The anger over Ramirez is not about how she defines herself, but about what it is to be an American. It is a shared identity, an article of faith that defines us all. That does not mean that Ramirez does not love this country. You can criticize this country and still love it. However, she should also realize how her ranking insults many citizens who cherish their heritage but embrace their core identity as Americans.
““my white colleagues [who] identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, or Ukrainian-American to honor their ancestry.”
what she doesn’t understand is that those colleagues do not declare themselves first Irish, Italian or Ukrainian. they are Americans first who honor their ethnic heritage
And those colleagues clearly do love America. Ramirez et al in that cabal do not. The fact that they are representatives in the highest legislative body in this country is frightening and proof that Jimbo Carville et al created Frankensteins.
“Remember the Alamo!”
Right on target for this discussion.
From the Federalist:
A Texas Democrat’s sudden departure overseas ‘for the foreseeable future’ raises important questions about immigration, assimilation, and American identity.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/05/if-an-immigrant-leaves-the-u-s-indefinitely-how-american-are-they/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-an-immigrant-leaves-the-u-s-indefinitely-how-american-are-they&utm_term=2025-08-05
I live in a neighborhood that has many Jews. I see more Israeli than American flags. There are plenty of people even on the right confused about the nation they live in.
I bet that you think that Christians, around the end of the year, are showing their devotion to Santa Claus above all else.
The Representative cannot uphold her oath of office.
Leftists take “entitlement” to a disgraceful level. Deportation would be appropriate for such an self-acknowledged traitor.
With that one line, Ramirez does more than just distance herself from American identity; she burdens other Guatemalans with her choice. By treating American and Guatemalan identity as mutually exclusive, she feeds the false idea that Guatemalan-Americans can’t fully belong here. That harms others who do see themselves as both, proud of their roots and committed to their country. Her words don’t “empower” Guatemalans; they isolate them.
This, unfortunately, is a symptom of the divide in the US at this time! It seems to be fine for Democrats to push some other identity as an American! I feel that the divide between Left and Right, Urban and Rural, Anti-American and America First. This divide started in the ’60’s with the SCOTUS ruling Reynolds v. Sims that effectively disenfranchised rural voters in state legislatures by MANDATING that the State Senates MUST be apportioned by POPULATION! This means that the population centers control ALL State legislature’s in ALL states. if not NOW then EVENTUALLY! Either the US Senate being apportioned by geography(states) is correct, or STATE Senates being apportioned by Population is correct! Both cannot be true!
The oath of office needs to be updated to reflect one’s love of America.
Oldmanfromkansas and Upstate in agreement:
On August 1st you asked if red-blue will divorce. I think the divide is growing, why I’m not totally positive, but do believe one of the underlying reasons is the interpretation of the Constitution and the laws there under. Lawlessness it seems at every level of government that’s controlled by the left are losing control of their bravura (dazzling display) of their Utopian Universe. The left refuses to look or understand the faults that lay in plain view of the Utopian Hell they propose.
With that said I truly hope that sane minds will take control of the parties’ apparatchiks and cancel out the Moronic Fools residing under cover of their parties’ name.
Though on a different subject what H.L. Mencken wrote in the 1920’s could be as if he were alive today when attacking American Booboisie: “Here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have ever heard of, the daily panorama of human existence… is so inordinately gross and preposterous, that only a man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.”
The bombastic notions of the left are an assured trail to Perdition.
Tuesday 8/5
Today’s subject made me think of a quote I book-marked in John Locke’s ‘On Politics and Education’ No 102 ‘The Second Treatise of Civil Government’: “If it be said that every man there was born subject to his father, or the head of his family, that the subjection due from a child to a father took not away his freedom of uniting into what political society he thought fit, has been already proved; but be that as it will, these men, it is evident, were actually free; and whatever superiority some politicians now would place in any of them, they themselves claimed it not; but by consent, were all equal, till, by the same consent, they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors and form of government.”
Guatemala in around numbers: +/- 3% of citizens own 98% of land, over half of population is living in poverty, and with half of that in extreme poverty. The Guatemalan government is the perfect definition of Plutocracy, and the Representative shows she is indeed loony, just another block of the Democratic Parties dogma of Nirvana and America the Evil.
George W
George W,
Thank you for that very interesting and insightful comment.
Well said about “. . . the interpretation of the Constitution and the laws there under. Lawlessness it seems at every level of government that’s controlled by the left are losing control of their bravura (dazzling display) of their Utopian Universe. The left refuses to look or understand the faults that lay in plain view of the Utopian Hell they propose.”
Seems the Constitution is legal road block that prevents them from seizing absolute power and imposing their so-called Utopian Universe upon everyone else. They keep saying that the Constitution is outdated, a threat to democracy, needs to be done away with but we have yet to see them offer a real, serious alternative. Something tells me it would be some kind of woke leftist ideal that amounts to nothing more than a totalitarian centrally focused government with them in charge and no other alternatives.
Upstate
In the yesteryear these political nitwits may have been called Polecats who run around nipping at the Constitution with their sharp teeth and slinking through judges in their pursuit some far off Paradise.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” H.L. Mencken.
George W
All those Torries also do not belong in our American Congress! Kick them all out.
The Tory story. Quite a contrast to Ramirez.
“WATCH: Kemi Badenoch tells GB News the reason why she no longer identifies as Nigerian”
– By Gabrielle Wilde, Published: 05/08/2025 – 12:05
“The Tory leader explained: “My main identity is British. That is how I see myself.”
“She went on to explain the distinction between nationality and ethnicity, noting: Nigeria is a nationality, not an ethnicity. There’s no such language as Nigerian, there are many different ethnic groups there.
She added: “If you come to this country, you need to be very focused on integrating. If you’re a politician, you need to be 100 per cent focused on British issues.”
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/video-kemi-badenoch-no-longer-identifies-nigerian
—————————————————————-
-Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people have sensitive feelings.”
Why are the loudest, most disrespectful firecrackers in Congress of the “female” sex? (excepting Booker)—and ethnic/racial minorities? Think: Jasmine Crockett, Rashid Tlaib, Alyssa Pressley, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Maxine Waters, I. McIver, J. Beatty (see below)
watch this clip (you can fast forward it until you see the chairman trying to control her):
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/i-m-not-going-to-stop-house-hearing-plunges-into-chaos-when-rep-joyce-beatty-snaps-at-hostile-scott-bessent/vi-AA1JOrgu?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=fff2c367ce004effebb95f13ada8f861&ei=37
Did they not learn manners, decorum, respect, parliamentary procedure, PROFESSIONALISM?
Yikes, what are we teaching our kids?
(start watching at @ 4:15)
Lin,
That is another display of how those elected to their positions seem to be fueled by not logic, common sense, decency, morals or values but are ruled by their emotions. They very much remind me and seem to represent the ID, lacking both the Ego and the Super Ego.
Lin, it’s about how the selection works. If voters or parties focus on identity: race, sex, or grievance, they’re going to pick candidates who check those boxes. And if that’s all you’re drawing from, then of course the outcome reflects it. If you’re only looking for black cards, you’ll always end up with a black king. The process guarantees it.
I think the rational Americans here will agree the importance of vetting the many who have entered this country other than through appropriate application. I understand that this person was born here from undocumented immigrants as well as her spouse? That not long after she entered politics they were given immediate citizenship? If this is true and proper vetting had been performed as well as eliminating anchor babies, many of the malcontents who are creating issues for Americans wouldn’t exist.
We apparently don’t have enough people here already who hate the country, we have to import them.
She is the poster child for eliminating so-called birthright citizenship. I have no problem with someone loving the country where her parents and ancestors were born, but putting that country above the country of your birth, that you represent in the US congress, is unconscionable.
Jonathan: Stacy Williams, who briefly dated Epstein in the 1990s and was groped by DJT, said this when Maxwell was suddenly moved to “club fed” in Texas:
“I cannot believe again how to do this backroom deal with…a child trafficker…and no acknowledgment of any of the victims. It’s heinous. It speaks volumes of this administration and what they stand for.”
Note: Federal law requires notification of the victims when an inmate is moved from one facility to another. This was not done in this case. The GOP now stands for “Guardians of Pedophiles!
That’s some nice made-up slander you got there. Let us know when you figure out that Epstein was a huge Democrat donor, who only swam among your fellow Democrats. You’re not shaking the stain of Epstein off of the Democrat party, you own him lock, stock, and barrel, sweetie.
Does she even know what she is saying? Please return to Guatemala. The sooner, the better. Take other “Squad” members with you!
@Von
That’s the kicker: no, she does not know what she is saying, so profound is her ignorance and ingratitude. She thinks she is speaking ‘truth to power’, or, ‘standing hard’. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious, and it’s still kind of hilarious.
I hope the dems continue to give younger, indoctrinated idiots like her the microphone; they can drive voters away in even more record numbers. The fact that they continue to triple down is not happenstance; it is a legitimate picture of who they actually are in 2025. Any fool that still thinks they are voting for JFK needs to be slapped upside the head, multiple times. And then slapped upside the head again. Forget Putin: they need it impressed upon them they are voting for Mao or at absolute best, Gorbachev. someone her age doesn’t know who Gorbachev even is.
*. I’m English, English American so the Constitution makes sense to me. It’s an English American document. It’s in my jeans.
Ramirez apparently represents her constituency, so why is everyone mad at her? A majority of mouth-breathers voted her in! As for me personally, if you need to be recognized as a hyphenated-American, I think you’re an insecure, irrelevant individual. I judge others by their character and actions speak louder than words, or in this case, your heritage.
Where’s the criticism for those politicians who pledge to be Israeli First? Is it because AIPAC pays better than other foreign lobbies?
“Where’s the criticism for those politicians who pledge to be Israeli First? Is it because AIPAC pays better than other foreign lobbies?”
Hey, I hear that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian military suddenly have a lot of openings, why don’t you head on over and apply? A person with your level of obsession with Jews and Israel would probably do well. Until the next IDF mission, that is.
Can you cite those American politicians who pledge Israel First?
“Can you cite those American politicians who pledge Israel First?”
That’s going to be hard, since it never happened. Maybe if she just looks harder in her well-worn copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf.
Where’s the criticism for those politicians who pledge to be Israeli First? Is it because AIPAC pays better than other foreign lobbies?
Meh. Rugelach is divine. Guatemalan food is Mayan.
No comparison, bro
Another leftist lie, GOP ‘Divide’ over Israel Is Mostly Fiction
“The real breakdown in support for Israel is on the Democratic side of the aisle.
https://www.thefp.com/p/gop-divide-over-israel-is-mostly-fiction
Maenad, American legislators do not pledge ‘Israel First.’ That slur echoes the same conspiratorial filth that’s been used to scapegoat Jews for centuries, from the Dreyfus Affair to the Protocols to Nazi propaganda. If you don’t know that, you’re not just ignorant, you’re dangerous.
“I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.”
The funny part is, she is not even Guatemalan. She was born in Chicago, IL to Guatemalan immigrants. She is American. So, either she is grandstanding/virtue signaling or cannot see the difference. Hope she gets voted out, by either a Republican or a Democrat.
*. Her parents were undocumented. Are you saying Reagan’s immigration control act 1986 affected their status, upstate? She’s Guatemalan unless her parents naturalized? They didn’t.
^^^ As long as undocumented immigrants and their progeny know they go to hell in their afterlife I’m personally ok with it. They must be informed.
No, there’s no forgiveness for it. Apparently doubling down just increases that reality.
Done with it.
Why do all Democrats hate America? Last I checked, there are a bunch of other (admittedly crappier) countries around the world, why don’t Democrats just move and be done with it?
I hate replying to anonymous commenters but will this time. Maybe they should offer a kind of self-deportation to America loathing Dems who are citizens. Give em a free ride and some cash to somewhere else!