(08-01-2010 03:51 AM)eslbee Wrote: [ -> ]I guess we'd better take down that silly poem Emma Lazarus wrote about the Statue of Liberty, before someone tries to take it seriously.
Instead of removing the poem, it just needs to be modified to reflect the modern American mentality. Instead of "Give us your tired and poor..", most Americans would like it to be revised to read "Give us your rich, white, gun-toting, war mongering Christian..."
Back on the the land claim issue, if you were to look at the history of other countries in the world (yes, Americans-there are other countries on the planet), many, maybe most, other countries at some point in history had their country conquered by some other country. Many of these countries ended up taking on the language, religion and culture of the conquering nation. Should all descendants of the conquering nation be sent back to their original country, even though the country was conquered maybe a thousand or two thousand years ago and the descendants families have been there ever since. If that were to happen, maybe half of the people in the world would end up moving to some other country.
Quote:Ziggy, I think you are misreading me. I think Native Americans have every right to kick us clear back to Europe. And I don't see how we can say, "It was okay when there were no civil laws, just moral ones. But now our civil laws trump your rights to be." And then quote the Bible and claim manifest destiny or something. When and where do you draw the line? And how do you decide?
Eslbee, there's one small hiccup in that philosophy. Most of the blacks in the U.S. are descendants of slaves who were forced at gun point to be in the U.S. If Native Americans should have every right to kick white people back to Europe, should they have the right to kick black people back to Africa?
Oh, don't forget that the (predominantly African) slaves who were brought here, were brought here with BIBLICAL authorization. The bible broadly authorizes slavery, and encourages slaves to obey their masters. I'm reading a book suggested by CFScorpio right now, called "The Culture of Make Believe" by Derrick Jensen and there is a whole chapter in there about slavery. Slave owners felt it was their GOD GIVEN RIGHT to own slaves, and for any government to tell them it was immoral or illegal would be much like a government telling us right now we can't have electricity. Your business/plantation cannot thrive without these things.
Jensen uses the biblical example of Noah, who, when his son saw him naked, banished him and all his descendants to lifetimes of slavery. God forbid we ever see our captors naked, either literally or figuratively. Thus is the nature of power struggles. The oppressor can never be viewed as anything other than omnipotent and infallible.
Illegal immigrants are the slaves of this time period, as they are considered 'subhuman' with limited or no human rights, because 'they had no right to be here in the first place'. Kinda like a second child born to Chinese parents. I find the whole thing distateful. THESE people get to be treated human, THESE ONES don't. You're legal, you're not. Ugh.
What good is strengthening immigration laws if the current laws aren't enforced anyway? My brother-in-law is a cop who pulled somebody over for a traffic violation. Turned out he didn't have a drivers license and was an illegal. He kept him in jail trying to get somebody from the immigration department to tell him what to do, and in the end they told him they weren't going to do anything so he had to release him. Do we ever deport anybody?
So, there are some 12 million illegals in this country now? And we can't find a single one of them to deport them?
How about when Mexico opens their borders to their neighbors to the south, we open our borders to them? Mexico deports more people than the U.S. does.
(08-01-2010 12:02 PM)Dog Holliday Wrote: [ -> ]Eslbee, there's one small hiccup in that philosophy. Most of the blacks in the U.S. are descendants of slaves who were forced at gun point to be in the U.S. If Native Americans should have every right to kick white people back to Europe, should they have the right to kick black people back to Africa?
They definitely get a pass. They should work with the original natives here to see what would be to everyone's advantage. Naturally, if they prefer to go to Africa, white America should pay for it. If they prefer to stay, they'd have to do it according to what Native Americans require, since they were here first.
The real issue is, how can we live where we are without forcing others into squalor and poverty, since we arranged that situation for them in the first place? Whether we screwed them here, or screwed them in their native lands, we screwed them. It's our fault. They should definitely get a break. Either we fix their nation so they can live in it, or we arrange for them to become citizens here, because we took their stuff.
Since we're phillosophizing...
What about the communities of 'whites' who were really nice to the natives and lived with them? The Acadians got along really well with natives, and realistically have no place to go (they were disowned by the French).
And what about all the new immigrants? Do they have to return to their native countries because your ancestors screwed up hundreds of years ago? And refugees - should they be allowed to stay or forced to return home? How about mixed kids, where the ancestry is so muddled that they wouldn't have a 'home' other than Canada to return to?
As you can tell I think your suggestion is totally impractical, and doesn't begin to address today's realities. The better option is to try and help those who live here, by helping the natives to figure out what they want and help them to achieve it.
(08-02-2010 02:03 AM)Ziggy Wrote: [ -> ]Since we're phillosophizing...
What about the communities of 'whites' who were really nice to the natives and lived with them? The Acadians got along really well with natives, and realistically have no place to go (they were disowned by the French).
And what about all the new immigrants? Do they have to return to their native countries because your ancestors screwed up hundreds of years ago? And refugees - should they be allowed to stay or forced to return home? How about mixed kids, where the ancestry is so muddled that they wouldn't have a 'home' other than Canada to return to?
As you can tell I think your suggestion is totally impractical, and doesn't begin to address today's realities. The better option is to try and help those who live here, by helping the natives to figure out what they want and help them to achieve it.
I'm not sure whom you're addressing, but I pretty much thought that was what I said in the second paragraph of my last post before this one.
On the philosophy of letting descendants of Africans return to Africa -- interestingly, Africans consider black Americans to be white. In other words, black Americans would NOT be getting the welcome they expect, should they return to Africa. (And poor Africa! -- what would such a poor CONTINENT do with all these African-Americans, who expect things like running water and toilets? -- let's please not curse that poor continent with such a huge influx of people, when it cannot afford the people it already has!)