Armed and dangerous Hispanics -- help wanted!

[Gunny]

Aside from the few, I don't see anyone griping one bit about LEGAL immigration, so if THAT is point here, it's moot.

 

[DeadCanDance]

I wonder if any of my white racial brothers could help me out with some research I'm doing?

I'm trying to track down some Hispanics: Mexicans -


Let me take a wild guess: You're a conservative and/or/republican/Bush-voter, right?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I wonder if any of my white racial brothers could help me out with some research I'm doing?

I'm trying to track down some Hispanics: Mexicans -


Let me take a wild guess: You're a conservative and/or/republican/Bush-voter, right?

You are aware he was setting people up to blast them if they did not know these men served in our military and have many awards for bravery?

 

[jillian]

You are aware he was setting people up to blast them if they did not know these men served in our military and have many awards for bravery?

I think it was more than that, RGS. I think he was basically pointing out, nicely, how silly the racists are. ;o)

 

[DeadCanDance]

You are aware he was setting people up to blast them if they did not know these men served in our military and have many awards for bravery?

So, the "white racial brothers" was a spoof? Whew, I see enough of those type of posts on this board as it is.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I think it was more than that, RGS. I think he was basically pointing out, nicely, how silly the racists are. ;o)

Tell Deadcandance that. She seems to think he was actually trying to say these men were criminals.

 

[jillian]

Tell Deadcandance that.

I think I just did ;o)

 

[Gunny]

Tell Deadcandance that. She seems to think he was actually trying to say these men were criminals.

DeadcanDance is a "SHE"? Wonder how that works my addressing DCD as "dude" all the time?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

DeadcanDance is a "SHE"? Wonder how that works my addressing DCD as "dude" all the time?

Well I wouldn't know actually, but somewhere I got that idea.

 

[Doug]

Yes, DeadCanDance, I am a conservative Bush-voter.

I am against illegal immigration, or illegal coming-here-for-whatever-reason. And I am especially against it if it rapidly changes -- as it is -- the racial/cultural balance here. (Yes, race and culture are linked, but only loosely, and the relationship is dynamic and can change over time. )

I do not pretend that I would oppose it nearly as much if the illegal aliens were Canadians.

We should not pussy-foot around this issue. On another thread William Joyce put the cat among the pigeons on this issue, and it evoked a lot of pious evasions.

I don't want to see the Balkanization of the United States. Societies are not just collections of individuals. Social cohesion and the nominal committment of a polity's citizens to an abstract set of principles is not enough to make a healthy nation: you need some mystic chords stretching from every patriot grave into the hearts of its people.

If -- as I hope happens -- over the next few decades, Mexico grows economically, makes poverty an exception rather than the rule among its people, grows a big middle class, crushes the drug gangs which rule Northern Mexico, and most importantly sees the idea of the rule of law really take root in its culture -- if, to put it in a nutshell, Mexico becomes more like Costa Rica, or better yet just a Canada where they speak Spanish -- then my opposition to mass immigration from that country would diminish in proportion.

But having said that ... I have noticed on this Board some pretty ugly stuff about Mexicans en toto, along with barely-concealed, or not-concealed-at-all, sighs for a mythical all-white country which has never existed and never will exist. Not from the great majority of posters, but from some, who may wrongly be identified as conservatives. Conservatives have a duty -- and an intrest -- to repudiate this filth.

People who broadcast this sort of poison are doing far more towards the Balkanization of the United States than someone who comes over to work in a chicken-gutting factory or to look after your children.

The genius of America is that it can assimilate a wide range of people -- including people far more culturally alien than our Roman Catholic neighbors.

This is not some mystical power we have, but rather is a natural process: people come to a country where they are accepted and given the opportunity to flourish, a country where the government is in the hands of the people and not of some oppressive aristocracy ... and it is entirely natural that they will grow to love that country.

But there are other psychological and social realities in play at the same time.

So we must not strain the natural process of assimilation by trying to mix in too many newcomers at any one time, and we have to keep an idea on the prior loves and loyalties of new immigrants. (If the poor Christian Mexicans coming here were poor Muslim Pakistanis, I would be even more worried, since religious loyalties can trump national ones pretty easily.)

Plus there is the fact that immigrants coming here in the first part of the Twentieth Century were coming to a country which was proud of itself and its history.

Today, immigrants come to a country whose liberal intelligentsia is ashamed of it. They have a good chance of being taught in a school whose teachers were trained in an Ed School where Howard Zinn's book is the text.

However, assimilation can happen, and the men above give irrefutable proof of that. They loved their country, warts and all.

Whether they would do the same again if they had been raised in an America subjected to the continuous insidious propaganda of the America-hating Left is an open question.

So consider my post a shot at both the racists and the hard Left.

 

[midcan5]

I don't want to see the Balkanization of the United States. Societies are not just collections of individuals. Social cohesion and the nominal committment of a polity's citizens to an abstract set of principles is not enough to make a healthy nation: you need some mystic chords stretching from every patriot grave into the hearts of its people....

Today, immigrants come to a country whose liberal intelligentsia is ashamed of it. They have a good chance of being taught in a school whose teachers were trained in an Ed School where Howard Zinn's book is the text.

So consider my post a shot at both the racists and the hard Left.

Then why would you vote for an administration whose sole political achievement is divisiveness: taxes, abortion, school prayer, terrorist fear, gays, SS, welfare - is that all there is - seems so.

The idea of civic duty is a liberal idea, the idea of sharing common resources is a liberal idea, the idea of public education to provide a more level playing ground is a liberal idea. This are the things that bind us, not the supply side social darwinism that is so prevalent in the Republican party today.

Howard Zinn is a genuine American hero. I think you are aiming in the wrong direction. I wrote following after having a discussion with a conservative about our melting pot.

http://www.politicalpass.com/2006/04/melting-pot-or-tossed-salad/

 

[Diuretic]

Those were instructive posts Doug and I hope people took the point(s). However, you seem to think that a love of America is only for the conservative right, you seem to think that the liberal left can't love their country, indeed you regard the left as "America-hating." Last time I looked no political grouping owned America, so the left have as much right to critique the society they live in as much as anyone else on the political spectrum.

 

[Doug]

Diuretic: I have never said -- I hope -- that the liberal-left cannot "love their country". In fact, I would rather argue about all of these issues without bringing in the question of patriotism, because it is a complex subject, and is in fact not always a good guide to how to behave towards your government or its wars. What, for example, should have been the actions of a German patriot during WWII? Of a Russian patriot during the Cold War?

I always try to distinguish between the hard Left, who hate the American system of democracy and capitalism, and apply to it the most rigorous standards of perfect morality which they then completely ignore when it comes time to appraise America's enemies, such as the Gulag masters in the USSR, on the one hand,

and

genuine liberals on the other. It is quite possible to be for socialized medicine and affirmative action and gay marriage, and to be a consistent defender of the democratic system. Or rather, it is logically possible, but in fact, a belief in all of these things often goes together with a mixture of muddle-headed semi-pacifism and admiration for totalitarian movements abroad.


Incidentally, "hating America" can be a synonym for this world-view, and if I do use the phrase that is what I mean -- but it can also be an emotive screech used by demagogues, so I try to use other designators instead.

Since the late 60s, many liberals have been infected to one degree or another with the world-outlook of the far Left.

FDR was a liberal. Harry Truman was ... sort of ... a liberal. John F Kennedy was a liberal. Hubert Humphrey was a liberal, a leftwing one in fact. They were believers in and defenders of democracy, and we conservatives had our differences with them, including on how to defend democracy, but that they were defenders of it there is no doubt.

All of these men would be reviled by many "liberals" today, who have learned their politics from Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, who are no liberals.

 

[Doug]

Another uppity Mexican here, who is no admirer of Howard Zinn.

 

[midcan5]

Doug, "If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion." While your writing is reasonable your thought is repetitious right wing jingoism. Comforting to you I guess. Your view of liberal is simply a concoction of the right, reading too much Townhall would cause one to suffer a loss of the real. I have read bits of it to get some sense of how you all come to repeat each other so closely - the lack of imagination astounds, the repetition of wrong interpretations offends, and the attribution of pure fantasy to others is equivalent to the worst kind of propaganda. "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."

Zinn and Chomsky are genuine Americans in the spirit of our forefathers who dissented and argued but cared about the country and especially its people.



"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." Noam Chomsky and the above quotations

"One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression." Howard Zinn

 

[Doug]

MidCan: I sometimes read Townhall, but not regularly. And I'll bet I read more leftwing publications than you do. I think for myself, and if any other conservatives here are reading this I'll bet they can testify that we are very far from agreement on everything. One of the things I like about the conservative movement is that it does not enforce ideological conformity.

Since you have not said where you disagree with what I have written, I cannot reply further, except to say that of course Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are genuine American citizens. So are 300 million other people, including some very wicked people indeed. And some people who, while not at all personally wicked, do some dreadful things. For instance, the atom spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, believed that in giving our nuclear weapons secrets to Stalin, they were fighting for a better world, one where the wealth of society would be owned by the people instead of a few capitalists, and would be used for the benefit of all. (The same collectivist politics as Chomsky and Zinn profess.)

If you want to argue about Chomsky and Zinn, let's do so.

I think their views are perverse and silly, and that they apply double standards to the liberal democracies, on the one hand, and totalitarian slave-societies, on the other. Worse, because both of them are intelligent and well-educated men, is their really amazing continued adherence to the idea of socialism. How to get true freedom: have the government take over ownership of everything.

Politically, they are the equivalent of the poor boobs who believe in Adam-and-Eve, except that they have not the excuse of ignorance.

 

[Diuretic]

Points taken Doug, thanks.

 

[midcan5]

"...to the idea of socialism. How to get true freedom: have the government take over ownership of everything."

You misunderstand socialism if you think it is ownership by the government. I think I disagree with almost every assumption or inference you make above. In other pieces I find you quite reasonable - no patronizing allowed.

Take "...immigrants come to a country whose liberal intelligentsia is ashamed of it." They are? Who are they and where do you read that except in right wing agitprop.

"...you need some mystic chords stretching from every patriot grave into the hearts of its people." Yikes, no need to comment on what that reminds me of.

"...including people far more culturally alien than our Roman Catholic neighbors." interesting show of bias but enough we'll continue to debate I'm sure.

 

[Doug]

Midcan: Okay, good reply. (And I hope that does not sound patronizing, but quite a few folks on this Board, from both sides of the barricades, do not seem to be able to argue politics except by flinging puerile personal insults at each other. What's the point of that? Get a life, read a book, why bring the intellectual level of the playground into a discussion forum for adults?)

Anyway, to your points, which I will make separate responses to over time to give us the chance to look at each one in some detail.

On Socialism and government ownership: Almost every socialist who has ever lived has believed that the way to achieve the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution was to take these means into government ownership. That is a simple statement of fact.

They have differed about the nature of the government that should be doing the owning: some believe that the existing government can do it, others believe that the government (or, in Marxist terms, the "state") must first be smashed and replaced with a different one (say, one based on workers councils).

And they have differed about the feasibility of achieving socialism via the existing political systems, where the country in question had free elections: some believed a gradual and/or, peaceful transition was possible, others believed that a necessarily-violent revolution was going to be forced upon them by people like me who would refuse to accept the verdict of the ballot box. (And they were right about that.)

There are some big problems with a centralized, planned economy -- the relevant phrase is "the socialist calculation problem" -- such as its inability to set prices which reflect costs, a key requirement of economic rationality.

This is an interesting problem which is worth discussing, if anyone is interested. Suffice it to say that various socialists have proposed solutions to this problem, one of the most common of which is some form of "market socialism" -- but even this attempt to square the circle assumes ultimate state ownership and therefore ultimate state control of the economy.

Very few socialists -- in fact, I can think of only one, off hand -- have proposed some form of socialism whereby the workers in a particular industry would simply acquire the ownership of their industry, becoming the sole stockholders in it and electing their managers, setting their own prices, bargaining in the market for their supplies from other worker-owned industries, etc. Although the latter might sound supercially desirable, its grave defects, from a socialist point of view, are obvious.

These debates all took place at the level of theory, in the first half of the 20th Century. (There were other cogent critiques of socialism too, such as those associated with the Austrian school. But the good old common-sense cracker-barrel philosophers who said "It's agin' human nature" said all that needed to be said, without the need for differential equations.)

We then had the actual practice of many variants of socialism, from the Soviet and Chinese and Yugoslav and African models, to Western European nationalizations, to Israeli kibbutzim.

All failed. So the theory of socialism was tested in practice, and found wanting in practice as well as theory.

Sensible socialists who could not bear to give up the name "socialism", became, in effect, liberal reformers of capitalism.

Not killing the capitalist goose which lays all those lovely golden eggs, but redistributing those eggs among the non-owners of industry, yet not so radically as to kill all incentive for the goose. (The wise Swedes have mastered this delicate art best of anyone -- many people are surprised to learn that this very egalitarian country, with its very high rates of taxation, also has one of the most free economies in Europe, if not the world.)

There are still some brave souls trying to create burning ice and come up with a model of socialism that is also economically rational. (I can give relevant links to anyone who is interested, or just Google on "Parecon".)

But most socialists just ignore both the theoretical and practical/historical refutations of socialism, and carry right on with their beliefs, which are actually simply a kind of highly-emotional moralism. They see the terrible inequalities of life and want to overcome them.

Take, for example, Noam Chomsky. An undoubtedly brilliant man, he has written dozens of books, and his intellectual interests range widely.

But I defy anyone to read through the corpus of his thought and find anything but the most banal and vague references to how his "libertarian socialism" (or is it "anarchism"?) would actually work to get bread in the shops. A few references to the anarcho-syndicalists of Barcelona in 1936, or to the socialism of Israeli kibbutzim ... and that's it. He has not shown how his libertarian socialism will work in practice for the same reason he has not shown how to trisect the angle.

Intellectually, these socialists are the equivalent of Young Earth Creationists -- neither group cares one whit about disconfirming evidence because their beliefs are not based on evidence. As the man said, you cannot reason someone out of a belief that he was not reasoned into in the first place.

However, if I have overlooked some school or schools of socialist thought which do not believe in government ownership as the method of reaching collective ownership, I would be glad to hear of them.

Over to you.

 

[Doug]

Well, a day has passed, and neither MidCam nor anyone else has seen fit to reply to the discussion of what socialism is.

Now to another point. Midcam said, quoting me:

"...you need some mystic chords stretching from every patriot grave into the hearts of its people." Yikes, no need to comment on what that reminds me of.

I suspect many conservatives were itching to reply to that one, but their innate courtesy has made them hold back, allowing me to reply. Thank you, comrades.

What awful thing does it remind you of, so obviously terrible that you have no need to comment on it? Something from which all decent people should instinctively draw back in horror.... something smelling of ... fascism? Blood and Soil? The Fatherland? A passage from Der Sturmer?

Here is some context.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." 34
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

And here is the full speech.