Posted on 09/06/2005 3:59:21 PM PDT by Crackingham
I wholeheartedly agree with the President, refugee implies homeless, America is their home. End of story. They are Americans who have come through the other side of Katrina. Call them Americans, call them survivors or call them citizens that have lost their worldly goods but they have not lost their home which is the USA.
Yes, but those who own their lot will still have their lot. The presence or absence of a structure on the lot would not have a bearing on the idea of 'homeless'. Those who were renting were homeless to begin with.
Well I certainly can't dispute that...You are correct...
It's wierd. This issue was really bothering me last week and when I saw the term refugees used on this site, I was going to say something. But then I figured I was being petty.
Glad to see I'm not the only one bothered by the term.
A more accurate term would be Internally Displaced Person - a person who seeks refuge somewhere within their own country. But even IDP doesn't apply to victims of natural disasters.
But of course! Most refugees are guilty of treason against the leftist regime they fled. Jesse is a commie. Therefore, to Jesse, the word implies criminality, most refugees having voted with their feet against Jesse's core beliefs.
Ah, but the Mayor has ordered everyone out and the only way he can do that is to suspend the law of private property. That makes everyone homeless automatically even if they manage to stay in their former house by hiding from the authorities. Imagine being a refugee in your own attic. More of a fugitive without fleeing.
Might as well mention Ethnic Cleansing to go along with the rest of the gibberish coming out of the leadership.
Jesse.... bite me. No, I take that back... bite Nagin.
Bob Dylan doesn't meet my requirements for a philosopher, I'd put him in the same class as the yellow journalists. They both will write whatever they feel will sell, and they both have political agendas fueling their writings. In fact, Dylan is so lost he keeps bouncing from one religion to another like a pin ball, with atheism in between just for variety. He sought refuge from the storm of his own life in a syringe full of heroin.
Providing a safe place for someone who needs it doesn't make one a refugee. Many, many people relocate to seek refuge from danger, from leaving the urban jungle after umpteen muggings to packing up and moving far away from an earthquake prone region. Are they refugees too?
I think the refugees, say, in the Sudan, who are fleeing from genocide into neighboring countries who do not want them might strongly disagree with you and Bob Dylan about who or what is a refugee.
Temporarily homeless hurricane victims works for me. There has already been well over FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS allocated to them by government. This does not include the millions of dollars pouring in from private charities.
Calling them refugees is pure hyperbole to help 'sell' the news. Or to make President Bush look like a leader who has forsaken his own people. Take your pick, my guess is that it's both.
However, the President did concede that the desperate voyeurs and cyberstalking creeps at clownposse could still be considered "refugees," due to the pitiful obsession they have with the website that expelled them.
I don't think that refugee has a criminal connotation at all. Maybe Jesse got the term confused with "illegal alien".
That said, I do feel that the term refugee implies that the people are different than the rest of us, in a demeaning way, like they are somehow, lesser citizens. I think that the terminology is meant to do that, to accentuate the divisions.
I know the etiology of the word, but in this case I think that we should stick to the current accepted usage as someone who flees a country.
Dylan is a rather successful word smith. If you cant understand that refuge from the storm, relates to a safe place from life's troubles, then so be it.
Don't know the song, don't care to either. Dylan never impressed me.
"Critically displaced citizens"
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