RANT ON:
They said the same things about the Irish, those horrible subversive catholics, as well as there Italian brethren. Scandanavians, Poles and Czechs were also discriminated against. In fact, I doubt there has been any immigrant wave which did not have an accompanying cry of "God Save America from these people who are ruining our way of life."
My grandfather immigrated as a German in the thirties and they too were considered evil and different at that time.
Some part of U.S. Society has always disliked immigrants but fortunately we have invited them and they have all assimilated.
Why should we discourage people who are risk taking, hard working, and seeking to better themselves and their families from joining our country? This country was founded on immigrants and gains its strength from their pioneering, entrepreneurial, and yes different ways. Each culture brings something.
The reason we have problems in the Middle East and with Islamists is because we are the only remaining superpower and a have rediculously inconsistent foreign policy. This makes us the obvious prime target.
Two examples:
1) China has "most favored nation" trading status but we embargo dangerous and powerful Cuba and we can't even visit without state department authorization. We do this not because it makes any sense but because we have a significant population of formerly powerful Cubans in southern Florida who are pissed off that Castro took their houses and businesses 50 years ago. So we punish the poor Cubans while Castro remains in power.
2) In the Middle East we subsidize a developed country, Israel, and defend their position not because it is objectively correct but because we have a significant Jewish population that has a lot of clout and money, and because we feel guilty for letting the Holocaust happen.
Subsidizing Israel at this point when they have a very educated population and when it is a developed country makes about as much sense as well subsidizing the big companies that grow Corn and Sugar. They all really need the money.
Dohh, I forgot, we do that too...
I'm not sure how we can even pretend to be "free market capitalists" when we are so hypocritical in our own subsidies.
Back to the point, I have travelled around the world quite a bit. For this reason, I have some sense of what the rest of the world thinks of the U.S.
A lot of my friends don't even have a passport. I'd even venture that most Americans haven't left the U.S. except perhaps to venture into that oh so different neighbor to our north, or perhaps a drunken binge in Cancun or some other Mexican resort where they stayed at an Americanized and sanitized hotel and never ventured beyond the tourist sections, or perhaps they took a cruise where they got to visit many countries for about 6 hours at a time, plenty of time to learn another culture.
I'm not criticizing here, America is a big place and other countries are far away and relatively expensive to visit. We also have a very large economy so you can do quite well without ever marketing outside the U.S. for many business.
Europeans can visit other countries for much lower costs. They also have much greater need to expand outside their own markets. The E.E.U. didn't come into existence because the French like the Germans and the Dutch (or vice versa) that's for sure. Asians have a similar issue their own countries are either lacking in resources or are not a sufficient market for individuals not to have a greater need to travel outside their own country.
Americans don't understand the rest of the world but we generally have good intentions, so we should realistically assess our own weaknesses in this regard. So we should have a well-reasoned approach to foreign policy since we are relatively naive about other cultures. Unfortunately we do stupid things and others draw the conclusion that we are against Arabs and for Jews.
Objectively, I can understand how they come to this conclusion. I mean when Cuba went to stir up some political unrest in Granada we invaded and kicked them out but we don't even have the guts to ask Isreal for a ceasefire while they bomb the shit out of their neighbor. One could argue that there are differences but that's missing the point. Reasonable Arabs and Persians in the Middle East could easily conclude otherwise and believe me they do.
We created the islamist power structures in the Middle East now that we were successful we want to end it.
The issue with Al-Qaeda is not that Muslims are more dangerous than any other religion or movement in the past, I don't think they are. The issue is that we are now at a point where because of advances in technology, any radical idiots (remember Oklahoma city anyone?) can do tremendous damage. God knows the world has always had idiots, but with our recent technology we've created a world where we can no longer ignore them.
Hell if we had had the bomb at the time of the crusades there wouldn't even be any Middle East so please don't go on about how Christianity is so peaceful and Islam is warlike. If abortion clinic bombing Christian fundamentalists thought they should blow up Mecca instead of the local Planned Parenthood office we'd see real trouble in the Middle East.
The best way to diffuse these situations and to take power from the radical idiots is to start looking at where they gain that power. It comes from the huge income disparity and miserable conditions which we helped create when we divided up the Middle East like some great big game of Risk (a game from Parker Brothers for control of the world, for you non-U.S. people) at the end of World War II.
So there you have it. We solve problems of Sharia by helping raise the standard of living in the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East. We don't do it by holding 10,000 nuclear warheads ourselves and getting pissed off if Iran want's to build one or two. We don't do it by subsidizing a rich country while ignoring so many poor ones. We don't do it by not understanding other cultures because we've never left the comforts of our own easy chairs.
Educated contented Muslims are much less likely to interpret Sharia literally and start trying to take over the world just like educated contented Christians don't follow the Bible literally.
We can't apply 19th century foreign policy ala Teddy Roosevelt to the 21st century, it won't work!
RANT OFF
- Curtis
