I’m doubtless one of the conservative assholes referenced upthread so my opinion may well be ignored by most here but FWIW I’ve never for a moment considered adaher as racist as I certainly do consider some of the crazier right-wing element here.
He comes across as a pleasant, intelligent and articulate fellow who speaks as he finds. He’s definitely got more balls than I have. I’ve tended to shy away from controversy lately having experienced just how powerful the concentrated contempt and venom of some of the libs here can be; adaher never gives ground and I like him for that.
I’ve never seen any racist sentiment from adaher that I recall, but I’m rather troubled by his defense and minimization of racism associated with xenophobia and opposition to immigration based on ethnicity. It’s really not any different than I can see – just the same sorts of racism and bigotry as all the others. It leads to nothing good and lots of suffering, and shouldn’t be tolerated, defended, or minimized any more than George Wallace’s rhetoric.
But given the reality of where we are as a country now, a change in how we think about racism and deal with it is probably in order. The way we fought racism in 2000 wasn’t the same way we fought it in 1960. We’ve entered a new phase, one we really shouldn’t be surprised by given that Europe beat us to it about 20 years ago.
Geert Wilders lost in the Netherlands, but not too long ago it would have been unthinkable for his party to be the 2nd largest party. The mainstream left party in the Netherlands is almost destroyed, replaced by the Greens as the dominant left party.
One of the ways we need to fight racism and bigotry is to not downplay, minimize, or tolerate flavors of it just because it’s associated with opposition to immigration.
:rolleyes: Translation: *"When whites were a secure demographic majority in the US, it was fine to spout pious platitudes about racial egalitarianism and how we ‘don’t see color’ and people should be judged as individuals irrespective of race etc.
“But now that those egalitarian principles may actually result in a loss of white dominance and privilege, we need to start prioritizing what’s really important: protecting the societal advantages of white people!”*
I’m grateful to American conservatives for finally getting their hypocrisy on racial equality out in the open. But I’m seriously pissed off that for the past few decades (ever since they eventually gave up on fighting desegregation), the same conservatives have been dishonestly piggybacking on liberal egalitarian principles and demanding credit for their ethical stance on racial equality.
Well, we now see that they were never actually in favor of racial equality: what they were in favor of was tokenism. They were fine with allowing a few nonwhites to be treated as equals, as long as whiteness remained the comfortable default. But if racial egalitarianism is actually seriously threatening the default of white societal dominance, then egalitarianism has to go.
Speaking as the offspring of a white descendant of white 17th-century Mayflower immigrants and of a white second-generation 20th-century Eastern European immigrant, I say: FUCK THAT RACIST NOISE. :mad:
White-protectionist conservatives are selfishly and hypocritically attempting to destroy American society under the pretext of saving it. They are making a mockery of the core principles that, no matter how dismally we’ve often failed to live up to them, have made the ideal of the American nation the noblest in human history.
The raggedest illiterate refugees fresh off the boat, if they genuinely believe in equality, liberty and democracy, are already better Americans than those conservatives are. An extraterrestrial in a crashed spaceship from Proxima Centauri, if it genuinely believed in equality, liberty and democracy, would be a better American than those conservatives are.
One thing that also needs to be done though is to divide the people who have bought into the hate because of legitimate grievances from those that would just hate anyway. Government policies led to this, and until those policies change, the problem will just grow and grow. How we talk to people has to change too. Lying to the rubes backfired spectacularly. If you’re going to pander to people’s biases, then mean it, and if you don’t, then keep it real. Tell the truth. We can’t have a functioning democracy if we don’t know where people stand.
Are you saying that liberals are in favor of the basic ethnic character of this country being radically changed? Because that’s something voters of all backgrounds might want to know.
Is the problem that the people have failed the Democratic Party, so a new people must be elected?
Not to mention, what you’re talking about is basically the wealthy liberal elite. They want to mobilize the minority masses, but they don’t actually want to share power.
Lying to the rubes has been incredibly successful for the President – he lied far, far more than any Democrat.
Having legitimate grievances doesn’t excuse anyone from being hateful. There are non-hateful ways to express legitimate grievances. People who spread hateful crap really should be criticized by all sides – imagine if non-racist conservatives in Congress regularly criticized Steve King and Trump for their bigoted rhetoric as harshly as they do Democrats they disagree with.
Quite true, but not about the issues that are bugging them. The immigration crackdown began on day 1. He’s not playing around.
That’s fine, but also understand that this is what humans do. When there are grievances, some people will be hateful about it. And our immigration and trade policies were crimes against the entire country. Those are the policy areas where there’s been the most lying and deception, in bipartisan fashion.
As an American conservative, I’m personally happy that Wilders lost, and the current Netherlands prime minister, Mark Rutte, won. They’re both conservatives, with Wilders being more hard-right, but unlike Rutte, some of what Wilders proposed was outrageous and asinine.
He wanted to shut down all mosques and Muslim schools, as well as the completely ban the Quran—which is the absolute wrong thing to do in order to get moderate Muslims on our side to fight against the global war against radical Islamic terrorism.
Mark Rutte ran as a reasonable fiscal conservative with a tough-on-crime approach to criminal immigrants, but he wasn’t an anti-Muslim firebreather who felt the need to shut down Mosques and ban the Quran. His victory was a victory for the Dutch people.
By the way, adaher isn’t a racist, he just seems to be opposed to excessive immigration, and wants more immigration reduction, which is a reasonable position in line with mine.
I don’t think it conflicts with anything I’ve said. People of goodwill can disagree on a lot of things – people of goodwill can even have some hateful beliefs.
I don’t think liberals ( however defined ) could ever be pegged on such a scale. I imagine their views are all over the map on nationalism and ethnicity.
However this specific liberal right here mostly doesn’t give a crap about the ethnic character of countries and has a low opinion of ethnic nationalism generally.
No, what liberals are in favor of is preserving the basic character of this country in its principles, independently of undemocratic and racist obsessing about ethnicity.
Liberals in general believe that egalitarian, democratic, freedom-loving Americans can be of any color or ethnicity, and that in an egalitarian, democratic, freedom-loving America it doesn’t matter what the proportions of different ethnicities happen to be.
Conservatives used to pretend to believe that too, with all their “I don’t see color” bullshit and strategic selective quoting from MLK about color of skin vs. content of character. But now that it looks like America might actually be demographically on track to be no longer majority-white several decades from now, conservatives are rapidly throwing away that egalitarian figleaf and letting their racist white-protectionism shine forth openly.
[QUOTE=adaher]
Is the problem that the people have failed the Democratic Party, so a new people must be elected?
[/quote]
No, that has nothing to do with what I said. I’m not complaining about “the people”, I’m complaining about hypocritical racist white-protectionist conservatives who used to pretend to be in favor of racial equality until they realized that it might actually lead to some real decrease in the unfair privilege and dominance historically enjoyed by white people.
I think most liberals couldn’t care less about the “ethnic character” (whatever this is) of this country. Do you? If so, why? Why is this a reasonable concern for anyone to have?
Actually, I’m more in line with the GOP mainstream on immigration, support more of it, but also support having laws and enforcing those laws. I’m not in the “less immigration” crowd, but where I am unified with them is in the “tired of being lied to” crowd.
I wouldn’t say I’m concerned with the ethnic character of the country, per se, but we should keep the foreign born down to a certain level. Assimilation can’t happen if you have too many, especially if it’s too many all from the same place.
The message I’ve gotten from liberals is that assimllation is not really a concern, nor is the foreign born basically seizing political power from the native born. And maybe it’s not. But here’s the thing. The natives get to decide how many foreigners get to come in.
Liberal policy will result in more, and better, assimilation. People who feel welcome will assimilate much faster and much more willingly. Conservative policy will result in slower assimilation, more ethnic enclaves, suspicious immigrants, and extremists.
We’ve generally had much more liberal immigration policies than Europe, and this has resulted in immigrants who are much more assimilated and feel much more American than European immigrants, in general, from my understanding.