> perhaps then the USA should stop preaching to the world and exporting its "values" and "freedoms" and taking the moral high ground in pretty much every conflict around the world.
As a Gore/Kerry supporter I agree. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a broad repudiation of George W. Bush’s vision for an evangelical role for America in spreading democracy among his own party.
I think Americans have many great virtues. But they’re not aliens, and America isn’t a science experiment. I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
> I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
Setting aside the fact that your reply had no relevance to OPs argument, I have other questions.
Do you consider your presence in this country impugning on an Americans desire to have a country of their own? Just like Bangladeshis do? Perhaps there is a more appropriate country on this planet that you should call as a country of your own. Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
This clayton bigsby schtick is only funny the first time around.
> Do you consider your presence in this country impugning on an Americans desire to have a country of their own? Just like Bangladeshis do?
Of course! My presence changes the country, because I can’t help but bring my foreign values and beliefs with me. People who were already here; and maybe like things the way they were, are entitled to not like those changes.
People back in Bangladesh would certainly complain if my wife’s family headed over there and brought with them all their individualism, social liberalism, notions of gun rights, antipathy to social hierarchy, etc! Different societies around the world are different, and in particular the differences between immigrants and native born go much more than skin deep, because even the ones born here are typically raised and socialized by parents who come from a different culture.
Under international law, distinct peoples are entitled to say “I want a country for people who look like me and have my culture and speak my language.” My home country of Bangladesh exists because of that principle, as do many other countries. Why should I begrudge those Americans who feel the same way?
> Perhaps there is a more appropriate country on this planet that you should call as a country of your own.
As an ethnic Bangladeshi my kids and I have a right of return. I can obtain Bangladeshi citizenship any time I want.
> Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
I try not to! My family was invited here by Americans on certain terms, and nobody has ever really complained. But I think they have every right to complain if they wanted.
> This clayton bigsby schtick is only funny the first time around.
I point out that I hold Americans to the same standard as people from my own country, and you respond by accusing me of self hatred? I hope you realize how incredibly racist that is.
> I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
Neither do I, but between "open borders let everybody in" and the Kafkaesque legal immigration process highlighted in the article above, pretty sure we can come up with something in a happy medium that is more useful and less stressful to everybody involved.
> Anyone who is a citizen is already an American. Or do you mean only white Americans are "real" Americans?
Who said anything about white people? I’m talking about distinct cultural communities with roots in the country, who live in places which are deeply reflective of the culture of those people. Some of those people are white (like my wife’s family who settled the Oregon coast), some are Hispanic (Mexican Americans in Texas), many are Black, many are American Indians. Conversely, many white people lack deep roots in the country, and no part of the country really reflects their cultural heritage.
One of the most fundamental aspects of democracy is drawing the boundaries of the body politic. My parent’s generation went to war to create a country where the body politic would be mainly Bangla-speaking people, instead of sharing a body politic with Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Why would I begrudge a descendant of Germans in the Midwest or a Tejano in Texas for having the same impulse?
When you mention Germans below are you talking about the Chinese origin Germans?
>One of the most fundamental aspects of democracy is drawing the boundaries of the body politic.
You're conflating legal immigration and demographic shifts to open-borders. Those are not the same.
>My parent’s generation went to war to create a country where the body politic would be mainly Bangla-speaking people, instead of sharing a body politic with Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Why would I begrudge a descendant of Germans in the Midwest or a Tejano in Texas for having the same impulse?
I don't know what impulse you're referring to. Please expand on that.
> When you mention Germans below are you talking about the Chinese origin Germans?
I gave several examples of people who could point to a part of the country and say that their ancestors built those communities and those places reflect the unique culture that’s been handed down to them from their ancestors.
Some of those examples were “white” and others were not: Mexicans in the southwest or Black people all over the south.
What Charles Blow talks about in the article above is an especially poignant example of a universal impulse: the desire to live among and be governed by people from one’s own cultural community. Nobody suffers more for not having a “country of their own” than Black and indigenous people in America, but the underlying impulse to want that is universal.
> You're conflating legal immigration and demographic shifts to open-borders. Those are not the same.
I’m not talking about “open borders.” I’m talking about having to share political power over your own community with people from a different cultural background. With the example of Bangladesh and Pakistan, there was no immigration involved. My parent’s generation fought a war against Pakistan because we didn’t want to be in the same body politic as Pakistanis.
> I don't know what impulse you're referring to. Please expand on that.
The impulse for people from distinct cultural groups to govern themselves. Bengalis didn’t want Pakistanis to have control over the laws that applied to them. They wanted their own country that they could run the way they wanted.
Notions of governance are deeply intertwined with culture, and having people from distinct cultures try to govern each other leads to tremendous animosity. One concrete example: my family comes from a part of the world that’s had government and civilization for thousands of years. We’re farmers going back to before anyone can remember. My wife’s family, by contrast, settled the frontier of the United States, living off the land, and not being able to count on established governments to help them (because there were not any).
This leads to extremely divergent world views between my dad and my wife. My dad said the other day that he doesn’t see why anyone needs a gun because “nobody hunts for food.” This is true to him—nobody has hunted for food in Bangladesh as long as anyone can remember. Meanwhile my wife grew up hearing people refer to “store bought meat” because it was the exception until her parent’s generation. She grew up eating meat that her grandfather had hunted. It’s a completely different acquired understanding of not only the role and purpose of guns, but more generally the relationship between and among people, the land, and authority.
I look at those interactions and think: if someone from rural Oregon is mad at people like my dad coming to America from Bangladesh, who thinks “nobody hunts for food,” and voting to take away his guns, why isn’t that justified? Why can’t he be mad that people who aren’t acculturated into the cultural underpinnings of his community have so much power in deciding how that community should now be governed? Why would I begrudge him that sentiment when my uncle fought in a war over the same exact impulse?
>The impulse for people from distinct cultural groups to govern themselves. Bengalis didn’t want Pakistanis to have control over the laws that applied to them. They wanted their own country that they could run the way they wanted.
Americans of German, English, Irish, Italian, Swedish origin are not all seeking to maximize the number of individual ancestral cultures being represented in the government. Inside Europe, the Italian culture is completely different to German culture. Being American is not the same as being Italian or being German. Which is why I asked if you were lumping everyone seemingly white as having the same culture.
>if someone from rural Oregon is mad at people like my dad coming to America from Bangladesh, who thinks “nobody hunts for food,” and voting to take away his guns, why isn’t that justified? Why can’t he be mad that people who aren’t acculturated into the cultural underpinnings of his community have so much power in deciding how that community should now be governed? Why would I begrudge him that sentiment when my uncle fought in a war over the same exact impulse?
If people can't convince others and get consensus on their ideas, then those ideas should die out. Tough shit. We managed to clear out the idiots objecting to giving civil rights to minorities and voting rights to women. A country is not static, the laws are not static and should never be. The laws are something we made up to serve our needs. It's a democracy, and all citizens get to vote and make decisions. What you're describing sounds anti-democracy.
Edit: The guns issue is a hot-button but you can draw parallels to anything that one group of people want to "preserve". Well if you want to preserve it - go make the effort of convincing people who aren't convinced. I can appreciate guns from an engineering perspective, but I think owning guns and killing defenseless animals from a distance is not something I would personally do. But I am not "taking it away" from anyone I am simply exercising my right as a citizen.
As a Gore/Kerry supporter I agree. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a broad repudiation of George W. Bush’s vision for an evangelical role for America in spreading democracy among his own party.
I think Americans have many great virtues. But they’re not aliens, and America isn’t a science experiment. I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.