Posted on 02/24/2004 10:40:36 AM PST by Cacique
Eh, whether I want it or not, history will play out as it does. I won't be here to see it.
I have eight children - not many have done more on the demographic front. We like Mexican better than Italian, but that's just a personal thing, como no?
BTTT.
Very true, same with me.
I have eight children - not many have done more on the demographic front.
I am getting jealous :)
Excellent post! The comparison between your family - German settlers raising a family on a farm - to a near relentless wave of unskilled and destitute immigrants hitting our cities, suburbs and rural zones is a stretch, but well worth the time to think about. I've started to think about the immigration problem in engineering terms of equilibrium, pressure and diffusion. In less complicated words, like human dominoes - conditions in one region degrade which results in an exodus. America's leaky borders and ambivalent citizenry have yet to resist diffusion of illegal immigrants. As noted on this thread, dense enclaves have a destabilizing effect. What happens next? The people moving out of the areas immigrants are moving into become secondary and tertiary immigrants. The more affluent of these "cowardly" movers drive up property value in areas priced out of reach of first and second tier movers. If my domino theory is accurate, where does the last one fall? It's easy enough to pick up and move now... or is it. Our children aren't going to be able to afford a home in the neighborhoods they grew up in, or their neighborhoods will become unrecognizable due to the demographic shift. To approach a solution we have to consider reducing the geopolitical pressure causing the primary wave of immigrants. Secondarily, Americans cannot treat their property and community so casually as to abandon it when their neighborhood undergoes a demographic transition. My fellow Americans, in regions overrun, hold your ground. Do what you must to make your community worth living in.
Once again, great post BlackElk.
Not a fan of Catholics this Sam Huntington fella, eh???
Read later.
Or maybe his point is on a more abstract level - if a Catholic country is overrun by the Protestants (like Ireland was and Poland by Lutheran Swedes) or Muslims (like Spain) it leads to a severe problems.
Nations/cultures/civilization have their distinct characters and they give it up at their peril.
NO, actually the US and the thought behind it was the product of European culture, but not necessarily WASP culture. Many of the ideas in our founding documents were from French thinkers, the concept of natural law upon which it is based is a Catholic concept that was the foundation of rights and law in Europe even among people who rejected Catholicism, and many of our first settlers were not of English descent.
You may be interested in knowing that one of our biggest problems, slavery, was the result of the English influence. The British (it is thought because of their contact with the Muslims in the Mid East and Africa) practiced chattel slavery in their colonies. The Spanish did not; slavery in Spanish colonies was essentially indentured servitude, with slaves retaining personal rights such as the rights to receive religious instruction, be married, be baptized, and buy their freedom or be freed at a certain point. Many African slaves escaped to Spanish colonies such as Florida and Mexico. The British hated the Spanish for this, pursued the slaves to these areas and tried to punish the Spanish heavily for this. St Augustine, Florida, was burned and destroyed several times by English raiders from North and South Carolina.
Furthermore, to broaden your knowledge, check out the history of Maryland and also examine the early Spanish colonization of California, where the Spanish attempted to settle the Indians and not exterminate them.
The structure of our entire country and our entire history is not based on being a WASP, and is also different from that of the Romans, btw. Anybody can become an American by accepting our ideas. The problem is not that immigrants of any type don't want to accept them, but that the intellectuals of this country have rejected them and are not promoting them. Also, the other problem is that many people appear to be ignorant of our history and go for a strange WASP-supremacist version, which automatically excludes anybody else.
Yet the fact of British settlers importing some French or Catholic ideas is VERY different from them BECOMING French. Otherwise New England would the extension of Quebec.
The structure of our entire country [...] is also different from that of the Romans, btw. Anybody can become an American by accepting our ideas.
What do you mean by acceptance of ideas? When Germanic immigrants accepted Roman dress, titles and citizenship, said and thought that they "accept Roman ideas", and styled themselves as Romans, did they become Roman? It is what everybody liked to think at that time. Yet when the ethnic/cultural core or Latin weakened Rome changed meaning.
Despite that the late Roman experiment of melting pot and absorption of mass immigration and of other ethnic/cultural lands WAS MORE SUCCESSFULL than we tend to think about. even with the Latin core being marginalized.
The FORGOTTEN and quite successful experiment was the Eastern Rome - Byzantine Empire which combined Roman statecraft/statehood with Greek culture and Eastern spirituality (Christianity). It lasted THOUSAND years.
The ethnic core group which replaced Latin place of leadership - the Greeks, accepted Roman identity and ideas of state/government. Latin was the official language for a long time in the New Rome by the Bosphorus, the Roman Law (perfected later by Emperor Justinian), Roman institutions and titles were preserved.
But there are two key elements that might be missing in other attempts to emulate Byzantine experiment. First Greeks the people among whom it was implemented were the most talented, creative, lively and curious that walked on the surface of the earth. Second the Roman state in its original Latin form was already imbued with Greek ideas making it easier to perform this transplant.
And what is telling after Eastern Rome was destroyed by the Turks and after centuries of Muslim yoke the people who emerged from ruins are and consider themselves Greek! (Even if they retain some elements of adopted Roman identity.)
the notion of America becoming part of the EU will be in this decade.....martial law is in place, the ID cards, the Patriot act (Old War Powers Act), the World constitution is finished, the world regions are designed, it's ready for the final stroke.
Really? I don't feel like that at all. As a Puerto Rican, I underwent minimal trouble getting it on here. My kids are fully bilingual, as are my wife and I. We speak Spanish at home all the time. We're employed in work where our bilingual skills come to play. My wife answers the phone for Hispanics, many of whom at least attempt to speak in English to her.
Family, faith, love of land. I got that from Puerto Rico and I will not leave that behind, EVER. This is my contribution to the greater American culture, and it is a VALUABLE and NECESSARY contribution. I pity you for spitting on it.
Those who don't know where they came from will not know where they are going.
You might not regret it, but your kids will.
Oh, and Huntingdon is wrong. WE ARE NOT A THREAT.
-Theo
Consider what happened to the Caledonians when the Scots moved in.
Sorry 'bout that. Synapse misfire.
Do not fear, misfiring synapses of the writers match the fuzzy logic of the readers. Caledonians, Acadians - same thing :)
Sorry, but if you think becoming American is the same as becoming a WASP, there's really nothing more to say. This nonsense popped up with the Know-Nothings (the modern heirs of whom seem to populate FR), was disproved then and shown to be the mere bigotry it was, and I think the modern anti-Hispanic hysteria will meet the same fate.
#108, #111, both excellent posts!
I do not think that "becoming American is the same as becoming a WASP". What I think is that the core group defining USA as a culture are Protestants especially of British background. Yet the people of different religious and ethnic origins can integrate with the American society to the degree that their cultural mindset is compatible.
German and Scandinavian Lutherans were integrated rather smoothly with British Calvinists (Congregationalists and Presbyterians), so were the Episcopalians/Anglicans (despite their loyalist leanings), various more home grown groups like Baptists or Pentecostals are in sync by definition.
Integration of Catholics was a difficult process, but somehow went OK at the price of redefining aspects of American culture (Orthodox could find a place in opening created by Catholics).
Harder to integrate were Mormons despite of their domestic origin.
The real question is if Muslims can be integrated in large numbers. Or if the large influx of Latin Americans with a very strong identity will not prevail over British element. If they do, USA will become other Latin American countries.
Buddhist/Confuctionsts tend to conform and to convert. Hindu so long as they adhere to the cast tradition can remain within their own circles avoiding conflict, as they change they will be more willing to adjust or even convert.
The last but not the least the militant secularists cannot fit by definition, but they abort/gay themselves out of existence.
A country whose citizens don't reproduce is headed for the ash-heap of history. They can keep immigrants out - Japan comes to mind - but eventually, all they've got is an elderly population and a great opportunity for a hostile takeover.
One can have all the right philosophical principles, but the real test is in the delivery room and the classroom: Do the citizens have children, and do they bring them up with republican virtues and practical knowledge? If not - no matter what good reasons they posit for avoiding those activities - everyone had better learn to love felafel and frijoles.
If you're referring to the modern country of Greece, they have a birthrate of about 1.5 and a growing number of mosques in the country. European Turkey Redux, anyone?
When you think about the word "integrate" do you consider "merge" or "sustainable society" to be a synonym? IMO The sustainability of humanity is proportional to its diversity of culture and ideas. Cognitive clarity of the - past * present * future - is something that many minds asymptotically approach together. That's the real power of the United States! The philosophical and cultural contributions to our society do come from the Protestant Reformation but what do those ideas actually do for us? How did those ideas transform into Super Power?
The power of Reformation logic is that it makes room for diversity of culture and ideas. Do not give it uni-polar credit for creating new culture and new ideas. Agreeing to disagree opens the doors blocking progress and prosperity for all mankind. Now let's ask the question again, why are we powerful? Americans manage to live through iterative bouts of disagreements, learning from each, and finding new agreements about the mechanics of humanity. The more we know about “us”, the more able we are to face unpredictable challenges to “us”. In America, “us”, can fit any human being you can imagine.
In this work, Huntington has utterly missed the point. Why? I think he's an antisocial sociologist. Somebody needs to remind him that humans are the most social entities on the planet. Between you, me and Huntington, let's make the point clear. WASP logic facilitates society but is not directly responsible for it. WE ARE!
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