Come, Esprix, let’s go watch the sailboats in the Bay. It’s getting stuffy in here.
Usually the people who hate diversity are those who have travelled least. Patriotism seems a little paler whenever you go elsewhere and find that all patriots are those who love that country and not yours, where you are the other.
No, I don’t think I’m owed anything, except the right to life. Unlike you, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.
And no, I wouldn’t be here if not for slavery. Not only does African blood flow through my veins, but also a heapful of Native American and European too. If not for slavery, my ancestors would not have been able to come together and form the beautiful person that I am today. But what the hell is your point?
I’m grateful to my ancestors, not to the evil people who oppressed them for so long and did whatever they could to keep them “in their place”. If I could, I would gladly wipe out my own existence if it meant removing the institution of slavery from our country’s history.
This is ridiculous. First off, no one is stupid enough to believe that Union soldiers were fighting to free slaves. No one reputable teaches this, so you’re setting up a lousy straw man.
Second of all, blacks did not obtain freedom after the Civil War. Their lives continued to suffer under racial oppression well into the 20th century. This reality completely blots out any “gratitude” black people should feel towards the Union soldiers who “died for their freedom”.
Well, this is just as absurd as saying that slavery was dying out prior to the Civil War. See how this little game works when we don’t have cites to play with?
Yes, it is. It’s funny how easy it is to verbally whip your ass. I suppose this is also the fault of diversity.
OK, so what’s the difference between assimilation and brainwashing? Both remove diversity of thought and customs, right? If anything, MTV has promoted assimilation. Everyone dresses the same, talks the same, sings the same, and looks the same. You should be happy.
Can’t let this slide…
Your racial “kinsmen” are screwing you left and right while you’re so busy blaming the blacks and the liberal Latinos for your problems. Chances are you have more in common with the people you loath so much than with the “kinfolk” really ruining this country. While you’re ranting and raving about diversity (just like they want you to do), they’re raiding the hen house. Just like they always have.
This just backs up my cite. Unless you feel that this one official feeling pressure disproves the OIG’s findings.
How does this disprove the findings of the OIG that the motives of the INS were legitimate?
You’ll excuse me if I don’t consider this a reputable source, since it has been posted in a section called “Rants.” :rolleyes:
On Preview, I see that I will not be returning to this thread due to your ridiculous statements that clearly have on basis in fact. I wouldn’t have bothered to post this, except that I wasted my time putting it together.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I…must…go…watch…MTV…I…want…my…MTV…
The people “representing” the blacks represented only rich white land owners. Blacks couldn’t vote back then, remember?
Make no mistake, the south wanted them counted for representation purposes because it allowed them to more strongly keep their hold on the institution of slavery.
Razorsharp you would fit in nicely in Nazi Germany.
Well, from what I gather from what oozes out of the “telescreen”, y’all don’t seem to be too happy of a bunch now.
It’s harder and harder to find a “good” man.
When you do find one, you can’t keep him.
Divorce is epidemic. Lonelyness ensues.
Life is a constant struggle, trying to juggle a career with raising kids.
If ya ain’t got no kids, the ticking of that damned biological clock is keeping you awake at night.
And to top it off, as if them monthly cramps were’nt enough, it seems as though your hemmoroids are givin’ ya a big problem too.
I gots me bigger fish to fry than this.
>This is ridiculous. First off, no one is stupid enough to believe
>that Union soldiers were fighting to free slaves. No one
>reputable teaches this, so you’re setting up a lousy straw man.
You haven’t been in a public school recently, have you? The history teachers are all spouting this kind of rhetoric, as well as emphasizing the accomplishments of minorities (though I am one, I still believe that these are being magnified beyond all sense of scope)
I guess you missed the part that said “both black and white”?
I wish you’d stay on point. Your post about women’s issues is clearly meant to provoke - not debate but anger. It is out of place in this discussion.
Your notion that TV sitcoms are a good reflector of reality is laughable.
Using that method, I’d conclude that in the 1950s husbands and wives always slept in separate beds.
Well, I’d suppose that women have more options these days. They don’t neccesarily have to marry the first guy that knocks them up and be stuck in a joyless dead end marriage for the rest of their life, as was expected back then.
Several posts back, even sven wondered why it makes me “uncomfortable” to think that the grandchildren of the present generation of American Latinos will still be speaking Spanish at home. Fair question, and I’ll do my best to explain my position.
In 1981, I read a newly published book by Joel Garreau, “The Nine Nations of North America,” putting forth a theory that the continent is effectively divided into nine cultural-economic regions that do not match up with existing political boundaries. I won’t get into the details. In the chapter on “Mexamerica,” that is, the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, Garreau included (at p. 218) the following quotation from Maurice Ferre, then mayor of Miami:
"Look, okay, I understand. It was just us Americans before. We had to accept those damn Jews and then we had to accept those damn Catholics, and even the blacks got in. And the Indians made their pitch with Wounded Knee, then came the youth movement, and now we got all those crazy kids and they’ve got rights. And now you got gray power to counteract black power, and Claude Pepper is passing bills left and right that say you can’t discriminate against an American just because he happens to be old.
"Now here come those Puerto Ricans. And they’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. Not only can you not discriminate against me because I’m Catholic. Because I happen to have some black blood in me. And because I happen to be a youngster or female. You can’t discriminate against me because I happen to speak a different language.’ THAT’S the line. PERMANENTLY speaking a different language. And that’s when America really becomes America. Because [many Hispanics] are permanently going to speak Spanish. I mean, we’re all Americans as long as we’re all human beings and born here. And there is no distinction in the Constitution that deals with [language].
“Let’s get the definition. Not transitional Spanish. We’re talking about Spanish as a main form of communication. As an official language. Not on the way to English. What I’m saying is that what color is to blacks, language is to Hispanics. And that’s something that has to be very clearly understood.”
I read that, and my reaction was, no. No, no, no, no, no. I’m very much a liberal, in fact I’m a democratic socialist, but NO. That is going too far. We do not all have to be the same color. We do not all have to have the same religion. But, if we are going to be a national society, we absolutely must have a shared national culture centered on a common language – not because it’s better than any other culture or language but just because it’s ours. If you don’t speak that language you are not a full member and you never will be, regardless of your legal status. The United States is not binational state like Canada, and we shouldn’t want it to be. There should never be a state, or set of states, of the Union that becomes so culturally different from the rest of the country that it turns into something like Quebec and starts agitating for secession. And something like that might happen in the Southwest, if Latinos are allowed to immigrate there in sufficiently large numbers, and relieved of all forms of pressure to assimilate to English-speaking American culture. The Mexican-American War was a war of naked aggression and I hope I would have opposed it had I been alive at the time. But what matters is that we did win, it’s all been over and done with for 160 years, and we Anglo-Americans have taken over the Southwest and made it our own. Anything that threatens that status quo, threatens further wars.
Right now, on the GD forum, I’ve got a thread going: “Should the U.S. expand its territory?” It’s mainly about the proposal of a small organization called the Expansionist Party of the United States, to wit, that the U.S. should annex the whole English-speaking world and then some, as well as extending full statehood to all of our territory possession, such as Puerto Rico. In that forum I argue in support of the annexation of Canada, with some definite reservations: Annexing the English-speaking provinces of Canada is one thing, but if we annex Quebec, or extend statehood to Puerto Rico, then we will be granting full membership in the American polity to regions and peoples that will NEVER be full members of the American cultural community. I’m not saying we must never, ever, do that, but we must recognize it’s something we’ve never done before, and the implications are far-reaching. It goes all the way to our national self-identity: Are we a nation-state, like France, or an idea-state, like the Soviet Union? If the latter, then we can in principle be a binational or multinational state; but it is an unrealistic conception. Most Americans simply do not feel that way about their country.
Having said all of the above, I would like to make it very clear that I am not an American nationalist, despite appearances. Quite the contrary. I am an internationalist. If I had my way, the United States would not be an independent sovereign state of any kind, it would be a dependent region of a global republic. Under such a republic, ethnocultural “nations” would still have an irreducible political importance but, ideally, they would have no recognized political or legal status of any kind, not even the very limited status the surviving Indian nations now enjoy in the United States. There would be a local government that could speak for the people of Japan as a region, but there would be no government or other recognized entity that could speak for the Japanese, including the overseas Japanese, as a nation. Under such a system, every person would have the right to live anywhere in the world, finances permitting, without getting any government’s permission; and any pressure to assimilate to the local culture would be purely social and under no circumstances official.
But that’s not the world we live in. Not likely to be, either. Internationalism, as I have defined it above, is an idea with practically no support in the United States or any other country. Communists and socialists are internationalist in principle, but they always seem to act like nationalists when they come to power; and most other existing political traditions are nationalist in principle. At present, the United States is a nation-state, and that’s all we can be, and we might as well make the best of it. There is no reason why we should let ourselves in for any social or political problems we can prevent.
Therefore, I reiterate what I said above: If large numbers of Latinos come here, and remain so Latino in their self-identity and culture that they are still speaking Spanish at home, unto the third generation, that is very definitely a problem. But, as I said above, it is not a major problem. If they learn to speak English as well as they speak Spanish, then in the long run we can accommodate them. Just so long as they don’t try, don’t ever get close to getting a chance, to turn the Southwest into a Latino Quebec.
Eh… what is wrong with speaking a different language in your home than the one you speak outside?
I live in El Paso, Texas. Now while SPanish is widely heard, being a border town and 80% or so Hispanic, still there are many young people here, with Mexican grandparents, who don’t really speak Spanish.
My experience is that…
Immigrants - favor Spanish, in many cases never really learn English
Children of immigrants - more or less evenly bilingual, maybe starting out as mostly Spanish speaking children but becoming English dominant adults.
Grandchildren (and onward) of immigrants - English speaking. If they do speak Spanish, it is heavily ‘broken’ unless they make a conscious and concerted effort to learn it. Even then it is a second language. I am in this category. I might be Hispanic, but my use of Spanish is mostly due to learning it for school, work, and so on.
Many of my Hispanic friends grew up spoke Spanish with the competency of George W. Bush, unless they had a parent straight from Mexico. Then they really spoke it, but still spoke English outside of the home more. Its really no different than many Italian-Americans or Jews speaking ‘kitchen Italian’ or using Yiddish words every now and then. It might sound to someone else like they are still using another ‘language’, but really they have lost most of their ethnic language.
I have never met anyone who didn’t speak fluent English that wasn’t an immigrant. NEVER. Now the fact that there are many immigrants and they keep coming keeps the Spanish speaking community going.
Now Miami is a different case. Miami is full of ‘exiles’…meaning people who imagine going back to their country someday when Castro is deposed (Castro has just really been holding out on them). So I do know there are families who keep speaking Spanish at the expense of English. But Miami is atypical. The ‘exiles’ have little use for Mexican-American people either.
By no means do all Cuban Americans fit that description, just the former Cuban elite.
I live in El Paso, Texas. Now while SPanish is widely heard, being a border town and 80% or so Hispanic, still there are many young people here, with Mexican grandparents, who don’t really speak Spanish.
My experience is that…
Immigrants - favor Spanish, in many cases never really learn English
Children of immigrants - more or less evenly bilingual, maybe starting out as mostly Spanish speaking children but becoming English dominant adults.
Grandchildren (and onward) of immigrants - English speaking. If they do speak Spanish, it is heavily ‘broken’ unless they make a conscious and concerted effort to learn it. Even then it is a second language. I am in this category. I might be Hispanic, but my use of Spanish is mostly due to learning it for school, work, and so on.
Many of my Hispanic friends grew up speaking Spanish with the competency of George W. Bush, unless they had a parent straight from Mexico. Then they really spoke it, but still spoke English outside of the home more. Its really no different than many Italian-Americans or Jews speaking ‘kitchen Italian’ or using Yiddish words every now and then. It might sound to someone else like they are still using another ‘language’, but really they have lost most of their ethnic language.
I have never met anyone who didn’t speak fluent English that wasn’t an immigrant. NEVER. Now the fact that there are many immigrants and they keep coming keeps the Spanish speaking community going.
Now Miami is a different case. Miami is full of ‘exiles’…meaning people who imagine going back to their country someday when Castro is deposed (Castro has just really been holding out on them). So I do know there are families who keep speaking Spanish at the expense of English. But Miami is atypical. The ‘exiles’ have little use for Mexican-American people either.
By no means do all Cuban Americans fit that description, just the former Cuban elite.
Like I couldn’t see that coming when you admitted that…
Why is it that when one speaks of a hidden political force that has the goal of a global government or “New World Order” if you will, that they are dismissed as some kind of conspiracist whacko?
Umm? Because a person who cannot differentiate between a loose political philosophy and a conspiracy of “hidden political forces” would proabably be sufficiently out of touch with reality as to earn the sobriquet “whacko”?
(This would be especially true when the phrase used to identify the “conspiracy” is one that was popularized by a fairly (not extremely) Right-wing president of the U.S.)
You are a conspiracist whacko, Razorsharp, if you think there is some hidden force that seeks to establish a world government. I want a world government, but that’s just me. There are organizations such as the World Federalist Association, but they have less public influence than the Natural Law Party. As I pointed out above, there is no significant political movement anywhere in the world for a world state, none out in the open and, I am sure, none in secret. If George Bush and his father, who introduced the phrase “New World Order” into modern usage, were really aiming at a world state, then Bush would not have insisted on going it alone in the Iraq war and alienating the international community. If Bush wanted a world government, he would be pushing for the U.S. to join the European Union as a preliminary step, or for an increase in the effective power of the U.N.; this, obviously, is about as far away from Bush’s thinking as you can get. Really, how many Americans are there in government, in think-tanks, in media or in important business executive positions, who can be solidly identified as internationalists, or as favoring a “New World Order” of any kind? At present our government is dominated by interventionist neoconservatives. They certainly don’t want a world republic; what they want is a world where the U.S. is, if not a world-imperial power, is at least the supreme world military hegemon, with no effective rivals.
I don’t think that’s what you want, by the way – the way I read your politics, you would be more comfortable with Pat Buchanan and his nativist-isolationist America First Party, which was dead against the Iraq war. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Please bear in mind, Razorsharp, that while my politics are diametrically opposed to yours, I have argued at length in support of your position in this particular instance. (At least, I think I have; your OP was a little vague about just what question was being proposed for debate.) Why don’t you spend some time thinking about that?
“Old Europe” threw down the gauntlet at the feet of Britain, the United States and the Atlantic Alliance at a mini-summit yesterday, unveiling plans for a new Euro-army with its own military headquarters.
:knock knock:
Hell - LOOO -ooooooo …
Razorsharp when are you going to explain to me how this:
originally posted by NinetyWt
equals this:
originally posted by Razorsharp (bolding mine)
?