Sorry I Have Not Posted Much Lately, But Here's What The Last Commenter Was Referring To. Courier-Journal: A great American Patriot, Osi Onyekwuluje.

You can read the C-J article.

Here it is:

Lunch with ... Osi Onyekwuluje

A great American patriot, Osi Onyekwuluje

July 4, 2008
When did you come here?

I came here in 1981.

You came from…

I came from Nigeria. About 200 miles east of Lagos.

What brought you here?

I had just finished high school and was a teenager -- an idealistic teenager -- but very independent. I had always wanted, based on what I had read about America and the American Constitution, and what I had seen on TV, I had the notion that I wanted to be an American. That's because of the ideas that caused the founders to put their thoughts in writing in the Constitution.

And I was intrigued by the fact that they all ran away from oppression everywhere and came here to found a country that was free of oppression, where everyone enjoyed all the liberties that were denied them wherever they came from. Having grown up in Nigeria, I could see how the government denied people their rights. In fact government, to the most extent, really felt that the people didn't have any rights, so the government could do anything it wanted to do with the citizens.

And I had learned that here the government was restrained by the Constitution, and that the people had the right to tell government what to do and what not to do. I thought it was a unique concept. So I decided I wanted to be like those folks I had read about.

So I told my parents that I wanted to come to America. And of course their biggest concern was, No. 1, where is America? Do you even know what you're talking about? And then, No. 2, they were concerned that I was too young to be thinking along those lines -- to really go out and make a life for myself just like that.

Now I have teenagers. My oldest boy is 16. He's getting ready to go to Washington & Lee in Virginia Sunday. I relate to him. I told him, "I was only about two years older than you when I left by myself to come to this country."

Is your wife Nigerian?

No, she's from Texas.

America's a big country. How did you decide where in America to go?

From all the reading I had done, I found out -- or I thought I knew -- that the place to go to was somewhere small-town. And I was told to go and get Midwest values, because they were the best values in America: small-town. God-fearing, that kind of stuff.

I knew definitely that I didn't want to go to Chicago. I didn't want to go to New York. I didn't want to go to Houston. I didn't want any of those big cities because I could read the horror stories about all the crime and how people get diverted from their goals.

So then I looked at the map and I found the Midwest and started applying to schools, and I was admitted to Nebraska Wesleyan University. So that made me decide to go to Nebraska. It was primarily because it was impressed on me that you have to go to the Midwest to get the best American values. So I went to Nebraska Wesleyan, where I received my first degree, which was in business administration, personnel management emphasis.

And because of my love for the Constitution, once I was getting ready to finish my undergrad, the question was what would I want to do next. And I thought, what better way to learn more about that document I have heard about and read about than to go to law school, and try to concentrate on the study of Constitutional law. So I went to law school and studied Constitutional law.

And where did you go to law school?

University of Nebraska in Lincoln. And I was fortunate to be selected the best Constitutional law scholar for the school. My classmates shook their heads and said, "How do you come from a foreign country and know more about our Constitution than we do?" And what I told them was I had a special love for that document, and that I was intrigued by it and impressed by it.

There are some limitations. Idealistic folks like myself who knew there was something better out there, and left Europe and other parts of the world to come here: They came here and had those lofty goals "All men are created equal," but then they said, without saying it, really, that women were not part of it and that blacks and Indians were not part of it.

There's something about a document like that that has these lofty goals, and at the same time, I tell folks, it's as if the founding fathers built a beautiful mansion and left skunks at the edges of the foundation. Every once in a while we get a whiff of a dead skunk. And they knew that they didn't need to do that. They knew that they were doing wrong. In fact, if I remember correctly, one of them said that if God knew what they were doing, God would punish them forever. So they knew. It wasn't like they didn't know better. They knew better. But they still did that.

Nonetheless, I thought I was going to study that Constitution -- find out what they meant when they put those words on paper. It was important to me that I knew that.

Do you have a particular person you admire in U.S. history?

Abraham Lincoln. That's my No. 1 hero. In fact, if you look at my cell phone, there's a picture of Abraham Lincoln on it. I have a lot of books on Abraham Lincoln. I've read pretty much every single one of them. My license plate is the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial. I have pictures of him in my office everywhere.

So what is it about Lincoln that you so admire?

He is a man who I consider to be just like I am: an idealist. Also, a man of supreme integrity. He didn't have to do what he did for blacks. He absolutely didn't. Heck, it cost him his life. But he did that because he knew that what was going on in the country was immoral, as far as slavery was concerned. Everybody around him thought, "Just look the other way." But he knew he couldn't do that.

Secondly, he was a man who had love for country. The most patriotic person in the world was Abraham Lincoln. He could have told the South, "Sure. Go away. We'll manage without you." But he loved the country so much he said, "I don't care what it costs. We're going to stay together, because that's the way our country was intended to be."

I still hear people -- historical revisionists -- who try to say Lincoln didn't have to fight the Civil War. He could have just paid for the slaves. And I'm thinking that subscribes to the idea that a fellow man and fellow woman can be bought and sold like chattel. And what if some of those slave owners had refused to sell? What do you do with them? And that is what would have happened.

So Lincoln's love of the country forced him to recognize that the country had to be kept together at all cost. Love of his fellow man and his morality made him understand that slavery was wrong, and he set about to right it. And he didn't care what it cost. And he knew it would probably cost him his life, which it ended up doing. But he went ahead and did that anyway.

Lincoln was a person who didn't check the political winds. He did what he thought was right. We don't have that anymore. I wish God would grant us one wish so we could ask for another Abraham Lincoln, because that's what this country needs.

In fact, he is the reason I'm a registered Republican. It's because of Abraham Lincoln.

So you have this great admiration for Lincoln and you went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and moved to Kentucky -- just down the road from where he was born.

Is that a coincidence?

They are simply coincidences. As far as Lincoln, Nebraska, and being in Kentucky, they are coincidences, really, but I joke that my next move will be to Springfield, Illinois.

Does your family share your admiration for Lincoln?

My kids are still too young. They understand he was the Great Emancipator. But they are still too young to understand the man. But I've got the books so they can read up on him.

Does your wife subscribe to the same views?

She does. She knows I eat and breathe Abraham Lincoln.

You experienced the hope in coming to this country. The reality of being here has to be a little different. Has it tempered your enthusiasm over the years?

It sure has brought a lot of disappointment to me. Some of the things I see happen today make me wonder if the founding fathers are just rolling around in their graves.

What kinds of things?

One example: One of the things they ran away from, of course, was religious intolerance. Here we are. Everyday we've got to fight about whether Obama is a Muslim or whether somebody else is a Catholic before we decide whether to vote for them. This wasn't the idea. They did not want any kind of religious test, and here we are doing it.

And when they said, "All men are created equal," they really meant it in their hearts, even though they didn't live it. Here we are today: racism everywhere. Folks who wouldn't vote for Obama were stupid enough to tell the whole world, "We are hicks over here, and we don't vote for black folks."

Corruption: Africa is very corrupt. When I left, I thought I'd left all that behind. Being the idealistic me, I thought in the United States, you're not going to have that kind of corruption. Well, my sense is that I just left one corruption for another. The only difference is in degree, but not in substance. And I don't think that the founding fathers, when they came here to try this experiment, wanted to drag the corruption they were running away from to here.

And I'm talking about corruption everywhere. It's not just in the executive branch; it's not just in the legislative branch. It's even in the judiciary. If you read the Preamble, they talk about wanting to establish justice. How many of us can claim that every day we establish justice in this country? I work in the court system, and we're not establishing justice. I don't know what we're establishing. But that's not what the founding fathers wanted.

And they first toyed with the idea of having only intelligent folks vote. And they decided that those intelligent folks would have some kind of education and own property. They toyed with that idea: that they were the ones that needed to vote. But now when I think of all the folks that vote and vote for the wrong reasons, I think to myself, maybe they should have put that into the Constitution. We are not very good stewards of what they left for us.

Are you a U.S. citizen now?

Yes, I have been for about 20 years. Soon after I got here.

What besides lawyering are you doing with yourself these days?

I run my blog as a hobby, OsiSpeaks. I figure that's another avenue to try and influence what's going on. I get myself involved in social issues, including political issues, through that. My Republican friends don't like it because I call them out if they need to be called out. Even though I'm registered as a Republican, I'm really more of an independent. So I served on Fletcher's transition team. I also served on Beshear's transition team.

I like to just be myself. If something is wrong, I say it is wrong. If I have suggestions on how to fix things, I make my thoughts known. That's one way I try and improve on the experiment that the founding fathers started.

I do a lot of volunteering. I volunteer for a lot of causes. And my kids are now teenagers, so that's a handful right there.

Do you ever think about running for office again?

Well, I cannot handle the corruption. I've had people tell me, "If you cannot get on the phone and ask people for money, if you cannot" -- excuse my French -- "prostitute yourself, you have no chance." And I can't do that.

And I'm somebody who will go out and tell it like it is. I don't know how to mince words. People tell me, "You're just an idealist." People like me don't make it in the political world. You're supposed to tell people what they want to hear.

That sounds awfully cynical.

But it's true. I've been involved in the political system long enough to see it.

Anyone who's raising money has got to sell their soul to someone. The person who's giving you money isn't giving you money because it's Christmastime and they're Santa Claus. Some of them are giving you money because they expect something in return. So to me, what you're doing is selling your soul, because when they come back to you and ask for special favors, you can't say no. If you tell them no, you're not going to get the money the next time.

I'm very, very uncomfortable with that. And the way our politics works now, if you don't raise the most money, then you're pretty much sunk.

The way Obama's doing it; he's getting money through the Internet. People are basically giving anonymously. Folks are giving him $10 and $25. That to me is palatable. What I don't like is when politicians are actively raising money and know who's giving you money. You get the envelope, but you give something in return.

That's what I don't like, particularly in judicial races. That's very problematic. How do you establish justice if you've got one hand out, getting money from folks who will appear before you? You've got lawyers who appear before the judge giving money and hosting fundraisers for them. Do you think the judge is going to walk into that courtroom and forget who helped him raise $100,000? That's not going to happen.

What do you think of this historic moment where a woman and a black man were serious presidential candidates?

I'm sure Abraham Lincoln is smiling in his grave. And I'm sure the founding fathers, regardless what their opinions were back then, are smiling, too, today, that we have gotten to the point in our history where that can happen.

But it's not over yet, because when folks were talking about how well Obama was doing in Iowa and how well he was doing in New Hampshire, my thought was, "Well, let him cross the Mason-Dixon Line and let's see how well he does." But it's very encouraging to see. Without the framers of our Constitution, that wouldn't have happened.

How did you pick Kentucky?

My wife is a professor at Western Kentucky University. She teaches sociology. She's written a book -- it's with the publisher now -- on Sen. Georgia Powers.

What year did you move here?

I think it was '95.

What did your parents do, and how did they allow you to go so far?

I really think it's because they trusted themselves that they had raised me the right way, and they felt confident that even though I was going halfway around the world that I had enough common sense to take care of myself. When you're a teenager, they've done all that they can do for you. I credit them for giving themselves credit and making themselves comfortable enough to send me.

Of course, I was bound and determined that I was going to come here.

My dad is a lawyer, and he was educated in England. He was certain that I wanted to go abroad. He tried as much as he could to steer me to England to the school he had gone to. I just wasn't hearing any of that.

England didn't have Abraham Lincoln.

Or a Constitution -- a written one anyway.

It was clear that I was going, and I was going to America. He let me go.

What about any brothers and sisters?

I have one brother, and he's a medical doctor. He went to England after I had come here, where he went to medical school. All his children were born in England.

Any sisters?

Five. The eldest died in a car accident a few years back. The next one is a lawyer. She's the general counsel for the Petroleum Corp. All the petroleum that's drilled in Nigeria goes to a corporation before it's sold.

My sisters pretty much all live in Nigeria, except for one, who followed me to Texas. She worked for the government for a long time. Now she decided to work for a business where she travels a lot.

My dad is about 96 years old. He used to come here every year to visit, but not in the past five years.

Is July 4 an important day for you?

Yes, in the sense it celebrates the country I love. But just like everything else in America, it's commercialized. There's no will to celebrate the Fourth of July without having Fourth of July sales. Nothing is sacred anymore, for crying out loud.

We talk about how this is the Bible Belt, and in order to celebrate that, the mall won't be open till noon on a Sunday. Why does everything have to revolve around sell, sell, sell?

Let's just say advertise everyday, but Fourth of July is out of the question. It is sacred.

Or Thanksgiving: You read the proclamation Abraham Lincoln made for Thanksgiving, and you'll think, "Nobody ought to be able to sell anything on Thanksgiving."

Do you put your flag out on the 4th?

My flag is out all the time. But it's a little flag. My wife wouldn't let me put a flag pole in front of the house.

On Flag Day, I put a flag on the mailbox. That drives her insane. She says, "I'm an American. You're a Johnny-come-lately."

I asked her about a flag pole, and she said, "No way."

How do you feel about the talk about immigration today? How does it strike you, as a person who is an immigrant?

I'm one of those who, when they decided to give amnesty, I stood on the rooftop and screamed my head off. I wrote probably 20 letters to Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning and to Ron Lewis and said, "Don't even go there."

I was very, very active because I waited in line to come to this country. I waited until I was called and told, "You can go." And I came the lawful way.

Now I feel insulted, and I feel discriminated against in the sense that America is supposed to be a land of rule of law. I was told I had to follow the law, and I did. Maybe I don't feel discriminated against, but punished. Punished in the sense that I had to wait for a long time.

For you to now tell me that America is a land where law prevails, and allow somebody who is here illegally to now obtain the same rights that I had to wait to obtain the right way, that rubs me the wrong way. Also, if we are not going to follow the law anymore, let's pick up the law books and have a public bonfire so everybody knows the laws don't exist anymore. But don't let the laws exist against me while you let somebody else off the hook.

If we're going to do that, let's tell the whole world that all you have to do is set foot in America and you are legal. Let's tell the whole world. If you start giving amnesty, then you're favoring those who can swim the Rio Grande and those who can trek across the Canadian tundra. People like me from Africa can't swim the ocean, so we're out of luck.

We shouldn't have that kind of selective enforcement of the law. Whatever law we have should apply to all. If we're going to let folks come here and after a while they get amnesty, then let's let the whole world know that so people from Africa, if they can buy themselves a plane ticket, can come over here, too. The way amnesty is set up, it favors Canadians and Latin Americans, and I think that's absolutely wrong. Plus it really promotes a disregard for rule of law.