tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post472289944940200409..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: I Am Not My Muslim Brother's KeeperStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-18449919748801980532016-05-27T14:48:58.078-07:002016-05-27T14:48:58.078-07:00The problem is not immigration, per se. Immigrant...The problem is not immigration, per se. Immigrants have been coming to America for centuries. <br /><br />The problem is the motivation of the immigrants themselves. America has a lot of benefits, especially economic opportunity and individualism... the right to pursue your desire. To succeed or fail on your own merits, not because of who your father was.<br /><br />When immigrants are coming to America for economic opportunity -- to succeed or fail -- that's fine. But to come to America for the opportunities, and never assent to other key American values (E Pluribus Unum), we have a problem.<br /><br />My assertion is that Muslims are coming to America because their country of origin sucks. There are many reasons their home country sucks, and I also assert the undesirable part of what they are fleeing is the way Islam itself operates in their culture (read: there is no separation of religion from state -- Islam is everything). <br /><br />That's okay, people have been coming to America from every nation on earth for centuries because their countries of origin sucks, for all the usual reasons that trace back to the human condition. That's fine. What is different now is the immigrant's expectation that America will bend to their cultural desires. It isn't a request, it is a demand. And we've tolerated it for 50 years now, and it doesn't work. Immigration is not a right, immigration is a privilege and WE get to decide what the standards are. I'm not going to feel guilty about it. This is OUR country.<br /><br />Demanding that Americans conform to immigrant wants/desires/preferences is insane and ought not be permitted. Forget the "Ugly American" of tourism lore who is pushy, arrogant and loud because Americans themselves are pushy, arrogant and loud. That's fine. They're visiting, and tourism is an easy way to make some cash from people who are curious to see your country. But it's different when someone chooses to LIVE in your country. If an American goes to Costa Rica, he/she had better figure out how Costa Rica works, and align with the culture. This is the expectation around the globe. You don't go into a culture and demand THEY change. You change.<br /><br />We have to separate those who don't want Muslims in the country because (a) undocumented aliens with no background checks are a security risk from those who (b) just because they are Muslims. We should have a process that deals with the security risks, and I cannot understand why people do not understand this. If people don't want Muslims in the country, I think we have to get clear about why. Is it because they're different? Well, if that's the case, that's silly... we're all different. But if we have Muslims moving into our society and do not want to become a part of American culture and assent to the values of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, we have an entirely different problem, indeed. That's the problem in Europe. I don't much care how it got to be that way, it IS the problem. You don't just move to France and become French. France has a culture, and you're not going to be welcome or accepted if you don't conform. Muslims live in ghettoes.<br /><br />In the United States, we require you assent to our values. If you have no intention of conforming, we don't want you around. If your daughter wants to become a nuclear physicist and has demonstrated she can do the job and an employer hires her, I don't give a $&%# what your culture says, she's an American... she can do what she wants. And we don't do the whole "infidel" thing here, either.<br /><br />Multiculturalism doesn't work. E Pluribus Unum works. We just have to enforce it. Deportation is a tool. That's not chauvinist or smug, that's reality... everywhere. I'm sick and tired of Lefties pretending they're above it all, while acting like the most pretentious, dogmatic people alive.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-58413157379844193122016-05-26T09:15:21.290-07:002016-05-26T09:15:21.290-07:00Human migration, Muslim or not, seems to be the bi...Human migration, Muslim or not, seems to be the big issue of the 21st century, and will keep getting bigger until we figure something out.<br /><br />In Minneapolis there's a local organization called World Population Balance, started by David Paxton, and I first heard his talk around 1996. I remember he had a metronome that ticked for net births minus deaths, now apparently 140 net births per minute.<br />http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/<br /><br />I also remember he talked about immigration, and he had a large jar of small marbles and said each marble represented 1 million people, and then held a handful of marbles and said that's how many new ones were added every year. If we're increasing 74 million per year, that's 74 marbles added to a jar of 7300 marbles. Anyway, so he said the U.S. has about 1 million net immigrants per year, which was one marble. Here's an interesting graph showing we're right at 1 million now.<br />http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents<br /><br />I don't know what the number of refugees are now, this says 60 million 2014, but if people don't find a home in a year, perhaps refugees stay in the count year after year?<br />http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/refugees-global-peace-index/396122/<br /><br />Then we can remember the poem at the base of the statue of liberty, ending with<br /> "Give me your tired, your poor,<br /> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,<br /> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<br /> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,<br /> I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus<br /><br />So as a country, we have two divergent standards for immigrants. We try to have the world's best educational system and invite the top students here to study and many will want to stay, and we can attract and keep the best and the brightest to add to the greatness of America, in the elitist sense. <br /><br />Or we can consider more of the pro-life standard, that all life is sacred, and that we can afford to take all the unwanted baby girls of China, or Africa or the poor in general around the world, and give them an opportunity to have a life here that they'd never have in their native land. And we can justify that in part because our many of own ancestors came from Europe's poor, and other lands, and many like my farmer ancestors were given cheap farm land in Iowa and Minnesota, and no one worried that most only had an elementary school education or lower. We had time to grow in our new land. And many came for freedom of religion as well.<br /><br />So if we assume we still have room to grow, we can be selfish, taking the best, and be altruistic and take the poor, but we can't take ALL the poor, guilt or not, there is a cost involved in integration, and change is scary too for the older generations seeing strange people with strange customs.<br /><br />Libertarians might support "unlimited free immigration", while they might also consider language and skill requirements for residency. <br /><br />And in regards to Muslims, its easy to see both sides - the fear that their culture is degenerate and they won't integrate or the promise that freedom of travel would allow the more moderate Muslims to fit their culture within a larger one, and would be less susceptible to propaganda of the fundamentalists.<br /><br />Anyway so we know mass migration is not a good long term solution to conflict, and in times like now refugees can overwhelm goodwill from all the more peaceful nations, so that reality has to be faced.<br /><br />I started with population because that's the easiest and the hardest problem. And my main answer is to see (1) Family planning is vital (2) Status of women is vital beyond motherhood. And after that its a mess, and while that's still not enough to solve the problems in government, it seems vital to see how each culture value value limiting birth and status of women. And then future refugee problems will be smaller.Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com