Wut? Is this something of a Fox News talking point? I only ask because this is the first time ive ever heard it.
Yeah that’s what I was asking about. I’ve heard the exact opposite, that the communites actually at the border are against the wall and know how dumb the idea is because they live there. I’m open to a cite to the contrary though.
Ah, I misread the post I was replying to. That said, there are border people who are in favor of a larger enforcement effort, because their ranches and farms are where the immigrants often come through, and they have issues with robbery and threats from the immigrants.
I’ve heard there are border ranchers that are vehemently opposed because a wall will spoil their land and/or require the government seizing some of it.
Where are you hearing that? I’m interested in a cite if you have one.
I don’t have a cite, because it was some local news stories a while back prior to all this wall business- IIRC, it was in response to the Texas governor dispatching the National Guard to the border. Basically they interviewed some South Texas ranchers who were all for it, because they had big problems with immigrants coming through their land and doing some combination of trashing it out, messing up the fences/livestock, stealing shit from their barns and outbuildings, and in a few cases, threatening them. They were basically not against immigrants per-se, but against their effects on their land and livelihood.
I imagine they’d be against a wall for the reasons you mention, but they were definitely in favor of increased enforcement and presence.
Except no one said it was a ‘positive good’ (as opposed to what - a ‘negative good’?). Just that an individual group of people would be easier to ‘herd’ together. Whether it’s for ‘positive good’ or ‘negative bad’ 
Well, sure. I suppose my larger point was that cultural homogeneity is a myth, and that it’s not something to be desired, since the only even semi-successful attempts at achieving it have been murderous attempts. Rather than try to achieve homogeneity, we’re better off figuring out how to help heterogeneous cultures coexist harmoniously.
Yes, i agree total cultural homogeneity is not possible. I should have spoken more concisely when referring to “cultural homogeneity” and referred instead to degrees of homogeneity/heterogeneity. Societies don’t really engineer the.degree of homogeneity that is present in their cultures. Not at least in successful societies (for the sake of this discussion lets just leave that potential beehive alone for now). But no one can argue that there are many countries more homogenous as a population that the U.S. This is neither a positive nor negative, it’s just observing fact. Pure cultural homogeneity is a myth and has only ever been attempted thru means of murder, oppression, media manipulation and intellectual degradation.
But degrees of cultural homogeneity, from a dearth of such in a multicultural melting pot like the U.S. to a much higher level in certain European countries (which itself is changing fairly rapidly), exist mostly organically, I asked you for examples of cultural homogeneity being achieved thru murder because you stated that that was the only way it was achieved. But then you failed to give me a single example of cultural homogeneity ever being achieved thru murder.
I don’t think that’s correct (nor that cultural homogeneity can’t be reached except via murder)
To give the example of my own country : in the early XXth century it became quite apparent that the country was very fragmented culturally - each corner of France spoke, not French, but its own patois. Which became a big problem in the wars, as soldiers didn’t understand what their officers were saying and vice versa. There was also a notion that the Catholic church had too much influence over education and “kept people dumb” or told them how to vote and think, esp. when it came to worker’s rights the curates were super anti-union.
And so, because we are a very centralized country, remedies were taken centrally. The Education Nationale was founded, non-religious teacher schools were built, and the “black Hussars of the Republic” (so called because of the black suits favoured by the newly minted school teachers) were dispatched throughout the country with a double focus of stamping down on religion, and teaching common values & language. Kids were harshly punished for speaking *any *patois in school whatsoever, for any reason. Other regional cultural expressions or practices were, likewise, looked down on and discouraged. In the space of three generations or so they had more or less ceased to be - there are still some minor differences between the French spoken in this or that region (i.e. stuff similar to the soda/pop/coke divide in the US) but regional languages have more or less disappeared, although they’ve become a sort of resistance in the more autonomist/separatist parts of the country (like Corsica or Brittany). And while private religious schools still exist, in public schools to this day religion is presented as a mere cultural/artistic/historical item - as a result we’re a pretty secular country on the whole. A politician making arguments from religion would be laughed out the room.
Was that all a good thing, or a fair thing even ? Debatable, obviously. And equally obviously, while white folks stamping down the religious or ethnic culture of other white folks (often with the support of part of the stamped down community) is one thing, it becomes more problematic when those principles are used on non-white minorities, especially when the principles of secularity and Frenchness-homogeneity are used to mask garden variety xenophobia and racism. Which they absolutely are.
But the point is : no murder was necessary. Just a strong (if coercive) focus on education.
I think it is rather telling that most Americans who point to the homogeneity of successful European countries also tend to not have a problem with the current decentralized education system we have here–wherein super great public schools can exist within a couple of miles of super bad public schools and the well-to-do can immerse their children in a little bubble of private institutions, from nursery school on up. We act like this is the best system we could ever hope for, so we don’t even think about how it only entrenches the divisions we have in this country. We could promote more cultural homogeneity if we really wanted to, but we really don’t because then we’d be required to embrace the commie-pinko concept of the “greater good”. As in, the personal benefit of having your kid attend a super elite best-of-the-best school is outweighed by the social benefit of all kids attending “good enough” schools and sharing the same experiences. Maybe your kid won’t be able to learn algebra and two foreign languages by the third grade, but at least he will be less likely to grow up totally detached and alienated from people who don’t look exactly like him. And poor folks as well as racial/ethnic minorities will have a better chance of assimilating and having opportunity because they won’t be segregated from everyone else like they have the cooties.
We could also promote togetherness through compulsory service. You graduate from high school and then devote two years to serving the country in some capacity. So if you don’t want to be a soldier, that’s fine. But you’re still going to live communally with people from all over the country and do things that don’t necessarily serve your personal interests or passions. The military seems to do a great job of breaking down cultural barriers among the ranks. There’s no reason to think we couldn’t get the same result using another system.
Im not sure why you’re quoting my post as if I ever asserted such a claim. This notion above of cultural homogeneity only being attainable thru murder was put forward by LHOD. I subsequently questioned this assertion and asked for examples that supported it. He then gave a series of historical examples that did nothing to supportt his assertion but rather did quite the opposite and showed that the attempts at achieving homogeneity were all disastrous failures that never, ever worked.
I think where you may have gotten some wires crossed is when i said, not that cultural homogeneity is only achievable thru murder (i never said that and it’s not that it’s "not only achievable thru murder, it’s that it’s not achievable thru murder st all) but that true cultural homogeneity is not achievable at all, thru any means
Your examples in French history dont disprove any of that. They show more exsmples of differing.degrees of homogeneity and heterogeneity within a society over time. However at no time is any society truly pure, truly homogenous.
Wires crossed indeed. Here’s my full quote:
Now, your claim that all my examples are irrelevant is a peculiar claim, but I’ll let it go, because the key point is that cultural homogeneity is a myth. Given our agreement on that subject, I’m not sure how fruitful it’ll be to argue over how successful Nazi Germany (for example) was in pursuing their goals: I disagree with your framing of that question, but going further in that direction seems to be a garden path.
Fair enough.
Apologies for being unclear, and yeah I was bouncing on you to reply to the whole thread, but you specifically were saying that national/cultural cohesion cannot be engineered (or, in my words, cultural gaps bridged). I think they can, but it does take dedicated, long term effort ; and support on both sides of the divide.
See, i tried to be very precise in my language in order to avoid confusion/conflation like this. I never said national cohesion or greater degrees of cultural homogeneity are not achievable thru social engineering and/or other means. What i specifically said was that a true, ethnically pure homogenous state was an impossibly.
In which case, I mean… yeah ? Obviously there isn’t going to be 50 (or 500) million ideological clones. Does that need saying ?
Um, all of what i posted was in response to LHOD saying that homogeneity was only possible thru murder., and then, when i brought up the fact that even the examples he gave of ostensible instances of murder-induced homogeneity, murder didnt bring the desired homogeneity, he seemed to shift his position to one of “my larger point was that these attempts never really truly work, anf this is evidence of cultural homogeneity as myth” Yet in his original assertion, he left out any mention of this greater point, or even of the lack of success ever for murder induced homogeneity.
In an attempt to air out some of my confusion with the direction of his point, i saw i agreed that whether it be thru violence, social engineering, political propaganda or oppression, true cutural homogeneity simply did not ever and could not ever exist on a large scale.
And now im confused all over again by LHODs position. Based on this quote of his…
[QUOTE=Homogeneity of culture tends to be achieved through murder. Absent murder of minority groups, you don’t get cultural homogeneity.[/QUOTE]
How can cultural homogeneity both be a myth and exist as a state only achievable thru murder? (Which, by the way, seems like a very simplified notion of the purification campaigns of various regimes seeking homogeneity, but thats another discussion). And on top of all this, you acknowledge that murder cannot actually succeed in this quest for homogeneity! I am not attacking an argument, i am trying to stop my head spinning. I’d appreciate some well spoken clarity on what you are trying to say as an entire well- framed idea. Because i am honestly struggling. And i freely admit, the weak link here very well be me.
And yet I’ve seen the very statistic itself called “racist” countless times over the years, ever since the day an instructor brought it up in a Criminal Justice statistics class I was taking and a student immediately replied “that’s racist!”. The flinging of accusations of racism regarding the topic of this thread is more of the same.
To answer your question: the short answer is they seem to commit such crimes more often. Beyond that they may have a greater likelihood to encounter a police presence, they may engage in higher risk crimes that by their nature create an increased likelihood to get caught, they may also such commit crimes in a spontaneous or not well-planned manner that also increases the likelihood of being caught.
As to why they commit such crimes, there are probably a lot of factors. But generally, subculture is an important one (along with related psychosocial factors), plus poverty (economic need, plus more psychosocial elements and possibly biological elements as well that are specifically related to poverty), increased opportunities to commit such crimes, etc.
Like I said, it’s complex and fascinating stuff. But trying to sum it up and dismiss it with knee-jerk claims of racism isn’t going to help solve the issues and needlessly calling someone racist, even when raising the issues in a factual and objective manner, just adds to the general shittiness.
Are you referring to the O’Rourke thread where your very first reply to me implied that my post was the result of bias on my part? Because you could have asked me to back up my position in a neutral manner but instead chose to imply I was biased and did so condescendingly. And then when I explained my position as you requested you dismissed it with the further condescending comment of “Okay buddy.” You also seemed to take great offense by my observation that as a teacher with no general legal background, let alone one specifically in Constitutional Law, that maybe you were insufficiently knowledgeable to appreciate just how blatantly Constitutionally problematic some of the proposals being advanced by those candidates are/were. Not sure why that would be controversial or offensive on my part but here we are.
I appreciate the sentiment of the first part of this reply but, c’mon, surely that second part has to be at least a bit of an overstatement doesn’t it?
As to my prior posting history I don’t think I’ve responded in a personal manner any more confrontationally or disrespectfully than what was first directed at me. As far as pointing where people are mistaken or flat-out wrong I also don’t think I’ve done so in a belligerent way outside one thread in the Pit. And I don’t think pointing out things like the extreme relevance of expertise and a sufficient knowledge base in a particular subject should be controversial. Let alone a reason to take offense or to respond accordingly.