What equality?

No one asked Mr. Alexandro Sablan to make reference to his position that “all men are created equal.” He said it and I was just merely suggesting that that is not true. All I said is that the word “equal” or “equality” by itself does not mean anything. I suggested that Mr. Sablan should give precise meaning, referencing “equal to what” or “equality of what” in order to verify and clarify the meaning of what he had in mind. Physiologically and psychologically, no one is equal, and God made it that way. But God certainly made the man equal to himself. In other words, Mr. Sablan is only equal to himself. The God that I know (the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Joshua) created Adam, and from the rib of Adam, created Eve; they were not equal. If God meant to make all men equal, he would have created Adam and Steve instead. I believe that a man a woman is not equal as it says in the Bible.

I don’t like harmonica and I don’t know how to make music with this instrument. Certainly I will be out of tune if I kid around with it. In the same perspective, music with poorly written lyrics, even if the melody is good, is nothing more than noise in the background. Somehow we boast of some deeds that we encase ourselves in but never reflect on the true faults in our ego. That is the curse of all the things that made us all unequal. You see, Mr. Sablan, your music is only appreciated by the indigenous people of the CNMI and others who know your language and accept the art in your music. Do you really think that the expatriates and all the non-citizens on these islands care about your music? Think again and more deeply because all these about you are not equal. Do you think that your music is all good to all people? So some like your talent, but a lot don’t like your music as well, thus it is not equal and frankly, where is the equality you posit?

You postulated the idea that “times have changed” by thinking that it is fatal for the indigenous Chamorro and Carolinian to connect with their past. Out with the old and in with the new, as often referred to by people like you. And yet you are suggesting that you professed and bonded by 1 Corinthians 13. Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians about 2,007 years ago. That is a long time, Mr. Sablan. Now, is it or is it not that our ancestors and elders could provide the wisdom to all of us? If you are one that is abandoning, disparaging, and ridiculing your own ancestral connect, Mr. Sablan you are really unequal to what your past has made you what you are today. I would tell you that in all of St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he was upfront with the people of Corinth, engaging them to be guarded and mindful of the hypocrites, wicked people speaking strange tongues, and the rhetoric of those who boast about themselves.

Are we, as indigenous people of the NMI, wrong to guard and preserve the inheritance of my ancestors by keeping these islands for our generations? You have to remember and acknowledge that your music will only have permanence in the medium it was recorded on. Your name, your ancestral footprints, and future growth of your familial expansion would come to an end in due time, and all of us would be remembered and referenced to only in textbooks if they of future time generation would equally express by heart a real interest to read about what happened on these islands today, and its past.

The Bible tells us the parable about a person being invited to a wedding and how should the invitee behave when he arrives to feast. If you are the invitee, you wait for the host to welcome you into the party of the bride and groom, and when he does he would take you to the nicest place in the house for you to sit and be a part of the wedding. After the wedding, the invitee should depart the venue and go to his house and appreciate the invitation and the good hospitality the host gave him.

All these temporary residents of the CNMI are just that—temporary—and like what the Bible says, once your time is up the invitee should depart and leave. The problem will persist when the invitee turns out to be wanting more by extending his invitation under some rationale that is not acceptable to the host. Now, the host is no good because he wants to keep his house as his house. The desires of the invitee and the host become a dividing line.

In the case of the Irish in Washington D.C., when a large minority overcame the Irish population there, the Irish moved out of Washington, D.C., as apparently the Irish could not tolerate the new migrants. They had to move across the Potomac. The United States has a large habitable landmass and the move was no problem to the Irish. In the CNMI, where would the indigenous people go? This is the only place that they have and, with their small population, they will be subjected to painful domination by outsiders who invited themselves to these islands. The next alternative for the indigenous people is to fight, but that has to be avoided at all cost and cause. Avoiding it is now, not 20 or 30 years from now when revolution is the “just war” to right a wrong of past. And the message to Mr. Sablan is, the pain to the indigenous people would be much greater than death.