Dear Fred,
Thanks for your email.
I agree.
By failing to control the immigration flow rate, “we” inflame Know Nothing reaponse.
Even so, we must confront the "elephant in the room": "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
Remember. We Americans are flabbergastingly stupid people. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/we-americans-are-flabbergastingly.html
Our cowboy forebears launched The Stupidity Project taking animal delight in Manifest Destiny and thumping their chests in celebration of legalized theft. (Not to mention carnage verging genocide.)
Nowadays, our stupidity is deepened-and-widened by the besottedness of Consumerism. (There's also our National Lunacy but who has time for volumes?)
Do you know if Laura has ever criticized any of Capitalism's fundaments.
Please let me know when/if she weighs in on Occupy Wall Street.
An Unholy Trinity of Vanity, Envy and Greed undergird consumerism.
This Golden Calf destroys peace by propelling the perpetual creation of de novo "needs" out of previously unimaginable "wants."
By inflaming Vanity, Envy and Greed, Cowboy Capitalism has done more to erode the American character (and America's Christian character) than all the "usual candidates" - most saliently the hot button issues of sex and reproduction. (I should clarify that I am not opposed to Capitalism. In fact, the lion's share of my "disposable" income is invested in a start-up biotech company.)
Ponder the energy that contemporary Christians invest in abortion and "homosexuality" - the former a topic never mentioned in the Bible; the latter, an issue on which Y'eshua was silent.
How shall we interpret a mindset obsessed with two religious passions essentially absent from Christianity's foundational texts?
On the other hand, consider the earliest gospel's categorical proscription of divorce - http://www.biblegateway.com/
Now, couple Y’eshua’s flat pronouncement on divorce with the fact that American Evangelicals and fundamentalists have significantly higher divorce rates than agnostics and atheists.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Strict sexual mores serve to distract "authoritarian Christians" from more fundamental issues of peace and justice - particularly economic justice.
Similarly, note that Laura shuns all involvement with decisions concerning war, preferring to leave them in the hands of "the men."
She claims: "God makes me do it."
Hmm.
Convenient.
Predictably, economic justice is despised by authoritarian Christians, quick to dismiss any "social contextualization" as so much "collectivism" - a word Laura herself uses to distort Truth.
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist." Archibishop Dom Helder Camara - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9lder_C%C3%A2mara
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As for the unsustainability of our immigration “flow rate,” I think we need many millions of latino immigrants, and would be better advised focusing the deportation of those who've committed crimes, leaving the others to live in peace.
Imagine the determination and work ethic of latinos who undergo the rigors of border crossing and subsequent settlement in a foreign land where they don't even speak the language!
How many gringos would exhibit this same gumption if unfilled "jobs" suddenly appeared "south of the border?"
I imagine our fellows sitting on the sofa, slurping Corona, preferring to "watch the movie."
Click. Click.
Click. Click.
By deporting the "bad eggs" - or perhaps detaining them a couple years prior to deportation so they think long and hard about returning to even longer sentences await them -- we would incorporate a very remarkable group of "Americans" (most of them Native Americans) - people who recall previous generations of despised immigrants; Polacks, Waps, Krauts, Dirty Jews, Shanty Irish.
If America ever undergoes a textbook "recovery," we will beg Mexicans to return. http://www.nytimes.com/
Pax on both houses
Alan
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But you ignore my central thesis -- it is not the quality or the plain number of immigrants that causes a problem. It is the rate or flow, when too many come at once. It is the duty of wise governance to regulate the glow of immigration, to establish a sustainable rate of absorption -- it's quite a simple concept, and it solves the problem -- you would have far less Know Nothing reaction under a sustainable system.
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On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Fred,
The Irish all staid in America - and it was good for the country.
The East Europeans all staid - and it was good for the country.
In the current surge of Know Nothing fever, we're throwing the Mexicans out.
As paradoxical as it may seem, this expulsion is not good for the country.
Do you know the story of Philoctetes? (Ron Firman first brought him to my attention.)
Philoctetes was the theme most often treated by the ancient Greek dramatists - http://en.wikipedia.org/
It might be fun to co-write a play about him.
My plate is full for at least six months -- more if my book sells (since I've already sketched a sequel.)
But then...
Pax
Alan
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On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
If the Know Nothings sprang up after a massive influx of Irish Catholics in the 1840s, and then the Klu Klux Klan sprang up after a massive influx of eastern Europeans in the early 1900s -- then why did not the wiser hearts in our society not know that a massive influx of immigrants these past 20 years might produce a similar Know Nothing KKK reaction.
It was inevitable. I knew it would happen. When too many people come here all at once, we can't handle it. I know I can't handle it.
This has now happened THREE times in our history, so the solution is to encourage immigration at a sustainable rate, a reasonable pace of assimilation and absorption.
It was inevitable. I knew it would happen. When too many people come here all at once, we can't handle it. I know I can't handle it.
This has now happened THREE times in our history, so the solution is to encourage immigration at a sustainable rate, a reasonable pace of assimilation and absorption.
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On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Fred,
Thanks for recommending Laura Wood's article on "Hostility to Books" - http://www.
I read it with interest and am preparing a reply.
This morning, however, I awoke with a related bee in my bonnet and think it fit prelude to my more pointed analysis to come. ("We Americans are flabbergastingly stupid people" is posted at http://paxonbothhouses.
I also take this opportunity to share the summer reading list which inspired my boy Danny's middle school classmates with tremendous enthusiasm - http://www.orange.k12.nc.us/
Please keep in mind that I live in a small North Carolina town - http://en.wikipedia.org/
Also keep in mind that I have attended Battle of the Books competitions over a period of three years and found them very inspiring.
Much of the opinionization voiced by American conservatives - particularly those who incline toward homeschooling - goes hand-in-hand with substantial ignorance of what really takes place in most public school classrooms.
This ignorance seems to arise from conservatives keeping themselves in relatively "private trenches" where they can "control their worldview" by preventing "The World" from actual intrusion.
Two final notes...
For seven years, I taught at Orange High School (which originated the reading list above) -- and thought its staff was extraordinary gifted. (There were a few misfiring pistons in our corps of 104 teachers, but overall, it was an exceptional group.)
Since "every text without a context is a pretext," let me point out that I have personal involvement with the homeschool movement - having homeschooled my daughter Maria during her second year of middle school, and also taught Spanish to "clustered homeschoolers" for four years after leaving public instruction.
Pax on both houses
Alan
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