My Heroes!

It’s been sometime since we had on our show Straight from the Sky a staunch advocate for our language rights. Since my good friend, Atty. Manuel Lino Faelnar (he is the son of our Rotary Club of Cebu’s Mr. Rotary Vicente “Ting Ting” Faelnar) was in Cebu for a week and I never had the opportunity to have him on our show, I got him on board to talk about “Why we should preserve the Cebuano Language?” This is a nagging question that is being asked not only by Cebuanos, but also by Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Warays, Tausugs and all the other people of various cultures that exist within the Philippine archipelago.

Atty. Faelnar explains in detail what is Jacobinism that promotes “One People, One Language, One Country.” Before the era of Communism, Jacobinism was embraced by Napoleon and so many other world leaders at that time. At the height of the Marcos dictatorship, he formed the New Society under the motto “Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa” (One People, One Language) and tried to turn all Filipinos into Tagalog speakers. Even those who hated Marcos embraced his thoughts, which he copied from Napoleon.

The end of the Marcos Dictatorship saw a change in this nation. Alas, even the Sainted Cory Aquino fell into this Jacobinistic thought. While she threw away everything that had to do with the Marcos Dictatorship, she continued with the language policies of Marcos. But it was the Cebuanos who rebelled against this policy and today, we have succeed in the sense that the Arroyo Government have finally embraced a Multi-Lingual Education (MLE) wherein our children are taught their native languages in the early stages of school. MLE is the beginning of the preservation of all our languages.

It is interesting to note that there is no National Language in the United States of America because of their Constitutional right to freedom of expression and of speech. Learn more from our guest Atty. Lino Faelnar on this very interesting subject on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 tonight.

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There is no work today as yesterday, Aug.30th, was “Araw ng mga Bayani” or National Heroes Day and since it was a Sunday, the following day became a holiday. Let me say again; we just have too many unnecessary holidays, immortalizing people whose lives we unfortunately forgotten. Perhaps it is because our nation’s heroes of today have become the opposite of our heroes who died to make this country better. If any, I can only point to the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. as a true Filipino hero for he was imprisoned for his ideals and literally executed by the regime that hated him.

Quite timely, early morning yesterday, thanks to satellite communication, we saw the funeral mass in Boston of the late US Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, whom US Pres. Barrack Obama eulogized as the “Greatest Legislator of our time”. As a young man in the 60’s, the Kennedy brothers had a strong impact on my own life. I memorized the stirring words from the inaugural address of US Pres. John F. Kennedy when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!”

When Pres. Kennedy was assassinated, I followed his brother former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy whose famous quotation is, “There are those who look at things the way they are and ask why, I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?” In my quest to change our present Constitution, I got another speech from Robert Kennedy, which goes;

“The path of innovation is never easy. Change is always painful. But it is the only path with the promise of saving our cities, the only path with the potential of brining forth the resources needed for the task ahead. In our central cities are millions of Americans who have too long been denied a share in the American dream. And the gap is widening. Therefore we must join together—the people of the neighborhood, government, private enterprise, foundations and universities in an effort of unprecedented scope. The future of our nation demands that.”

But Robert Kennedy too was assassinated. Then came Ted Kennedy’s unforgettable eulogy of his brother when he said half-in-tears, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished to others will someday come to pass for all the world.”

I live my life based on the speeches of the Kennedy brothers. Here at home, only Ninoy’s immortalized statement brought hope to our country when he said, “The Filipino is worth dying for!” Ninoy said this when he was in despair believing that the Filipino people had embraced their slavery under the Marcos regime and he died for us. Ninoy and the Kennedy’s are my heroes.

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