The all-American gun debate

This is another one from Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, but it's not something you would have seen on TV. This is just Noah talking to the studio audience while they're between the scenes of the show.

It's unscripted. It wasn't written by his writers. It's just him speaking from the heart. But it's great, isn't it?

I really don't get it. We are a nation of immigrants! What is the matter with these right-wing bigots?

Five misconceptions about undocumented immigrants

These are good points to keep in mind, don't you think?

Fighting Islamaphobia in the 1780s

I thought this was interesting:

By the time of the American Revolution, a sizeable Moroccan Muslim community—known as “Moors” in the language of the era—had developed in and around Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the community’s members were likely former slaves, but many others had chosen to immigrate from Morocco, with which the U.S. had a so-called “Treaty of Friendship.” Morocco, indeed, was the first African nation to recognize the new United States during the Revolution. Worried about being denied rights due to South Carolina’s system of slavery, a group of Muslim Americans petitioned the state’s courts requesting that they be recognized as white. A tribunal of judges led by prominent South Carolinian Charles Pinckney agreed with their petition, and the state legislature passed the Moors Sundry Act (1790), designating this Moroccan Muslim American community white for purposes of the law.

That law was as complicated as race in American history has always been. It allowed members of this community to be counted more fully for state population and federal representation purposes. It also gave these Muslim Americans the opportunity to vote, to serve on juries and to gain and enjoy the benefits of citizenship, even as Black Americans were largely denied those same rights.

The Revolutionary history gets broader and deeper still. The only passage in the body of the Constitution as drafted in 1787 that references religion at all is the paragraph in Article VI that makes clear that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.” This profoundly progressive phrase, written in an era when every other constitutional government around the world featured an official state religion, was drafted by none other than Charles Pinckney.

After the Constitution was drafted, Pinckney was tasked with taking it before the South Carolina legislature for that state’s ratification debate. During the debate, he was asked by one of the legislators about that exact Article VI paragraph, and more exactly about whether it would mean that “a Muslim could run for office in these United States?” Pinckney’s answer? “Yes, it does, and I hope to live to see it happen.” His words are inspiring, and a challenge to those who say they believe in inclusion today. How many white, Christian elected officials today would say “I hope to see more Muslim Americans in elected office” the way Charles Pinckney did?

Frankly, I wonder if they could even pass that law in South Carolina today. And, of course, it's depressing how important it was to be considered officially "white" in the South back then.

But that's our history, and it shouldn't be forgotten - neither the good nor the bad.

Happy Thanksgiving

(via Pharyngula)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

In many ways, Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. (Shopping is even a part of it these days, as Christmas sales have already started.)

Even in grade school, the myths of Thanksgiving - much more than the history of it - get pounded into everyone. (Part of that is because there's no separation of church and state issues when it comes to this holiday.)

But I was an adult before I heard this, and I can't tell you how profoundly I was affected by it:

From 1616 to 1619, a series of virgin-soil epidemics spread by European trading vessels ravaged the New England seaboard, wiping out up to 95 percent of the Algonkian-speaking native population from Maine to Narragansett Bay. The coast was a vast killing zone of abandoned agricultural fields and decimated villages littered with piles of bones and skulls. This is what the Pilgrims encountered when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Not a pristine wilderness, but the devastated ruins of a once-thriving culture, a haunting boneyard which English libertine Thomas Morton later described as a “newfound Golgotha.”

My ancestors were among those Europeans who settled in what is now Massachusetts and Connecticut in the early 1600s. In school, I'd always heard that they'd found what they considered to be nearly-empty wilderness, but the implication was always that the natives had a hunting and gathering lifestyle which necessitated a very low population level (in other words, that Europeans simply misunderstood when they thought the land empty).

In fact, the native tribes had already been devastated - nearly wiped out - by European diseases before most of them had ever even seen a European. The land was empty - relatively speaking - because so many of the previous inhabitants had already died in horrendous epidemics.

No one is to blame for that. The Europeans had no more idea of what caused disease than the Native Americans did. There is plenty of blame which can be assigned to other historical events, but not to this. It was a tragedy, made even worse because the natives - at the end of a long line of immigration, themselves - were less diverse genetically than other populations of human beings.

Eventually, they would have recovered from that, and from subsequent epidemics, too. But 'empty' land is a powerful attraction to... well, human beings in general. And the surviving tribes weren't given the time they needed.

As that column continues:

The collision of worldviews [*] is almost impossible to imagine. On the one hand, a European society full of religious fervor and colonizing energy; on the other, a native society shattered and reeling from the greatest catastrophe it had ever known. The Puritans were forever examining their own spiritual state. Having come to America with the goal of separating themselves from polluted forms of worship, a great deal of their energy was focused on battling demons, both within themselves and at large in the world. Puritan clerics confused the Indian deity Kiehtan with God, and they conflated Hobbamock, a fearsome nocturnal spirit associated with Indian shamans, or powwows, with Satan. Because of this special connection many Puritans believed that the powwows, and by extension all the New England Indians, were bound by a covenant with the devil. Indians thus became symbolic adversaries, their very existence a threat to the Englishmen’s prized religious identities.

Meanwhile, the Great Migration of the 1630s was bringing in thousands of new colonists, many of them younger siblings shut out of an inheritance back in England, who were hungry for the opportunity to become property owners in their own right. There was a great need for more land. And so, tragically – and not for the last time in American history – self-interest, fear, and deep-seated ideology coincided. Indian-hating became the fashion. Religious piety provided a motive for armed violence.

In May of 1637, colonists from Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, with a group of their Indian allies, set fire to a fortified Pequot stronghold on the Mystic River. An estimated 700 Pequots perished, mostly women and children, and the few survivors were shipped to Bermuda and sold into slavery. On the heels of the virgin-soil epidemics that had decimated the native population, the ghastly specter of genocide had reached the shores of America. In 1675, bloody King Phillip’s War put the finishing touches on what was more or less the total extermination of the eastern woodland Indians.

"Self-interest, fear, and deep-seated ideology." Yup. It's always easy to believe what you want to believe. And we see how well fear works to cause disaster, even today.

I don't dwell on the past. We can't change the past, and it's important to look forward. Of course, I'm a white descendent of those first 'illegal immigrants,' so that's easy for me to say, isn't it? But look at Islamic countries which are still bitter about the Crusades, for chrissake, blaming their lack of progress since then on everyone else but themselves. Dwelling on the past does no one any good.

Nevertheless, we certainly shouldn't forget the past, and we shouldn't disguise reality with happy myths - even on Thanksgiving. We can't be blamed for our ancestors, and our ancestors can't be blamed for those disease epidemics. But there is plenty they can and should be blamed for, and we European-Americans have benefited from some truly horrific acts (including slavery, of course).

We are not to blame for those acts, but we still benefit from them, even today. Even if your ancestors didn't arrive in this land until centuries later, you still benefit from them. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe we inherit the sins of our forefathers. But we do have obligations. It's just that those obligations are to everyone, and that we need to focus on the path ahead, not back.

Use the lessons of the past to avoid making similar mistakes now and in the future. Recognize the horrors which self-interest, fear, and deep-seated ideology can cause. Determine to do right to everyone going forward (recognizing that mistakes will still be made, since we're never going to be perfect).

Above all, we need to reject the approach of right-wing apologists like David Barton and the Texas State Board of Education to just rewrite history so that it agrees with what you want to believe, rather than accepting reality.

However, in America, Thanksgiving is more about myths than about history. And we Americans are very resistant to giving up our myths.


*PS. Given the situation, I don't see how that "collision of worldviews" would ever have turned out well. That's not to excuse anything, but just to recognize that people are people. Self-interest, fear, and deep-seated ideology are powerful motivators. We struggle with them even today.

But that's not to say that a collision of worldviews will always end badly, certainly not. Back then, the native tribes had been - and continued to be - decimated by disease epidemics. That left them too weak to offer much resistance. Plus, we do learn. We aren't the same people as our ancestors. None of us are.

Today's right-wing fanatics look at history - their distorted view of history, at least - and proclaim that Hispanic immigration is going to end with all white Americans - and all black Americans, too, apparently - ethnically cleansed (among other hysterically crazy claims). Yeah, talk about self-interest, fear, and deep-seated ideology, huh?

But how crazy is that? Historically, America has not just survived, but prospered, from wave after wave of immigration. All of our ancestors were immigrants (even the Native Americans, I'd argue). We became Americans. That's one of the great things America has shown the world.

It hasn't always been easy. There were riots in some American cities when my Irish ancestors started arriving here in large numbers. Now, their descendents protest against other immigrants. (It's the American way, huh? LOL)

The fact is, a collision of worldviews is a good thing, if violence isn't involved. We benefit from competing ideas. Of course, new ideas bring change, and conservatives in general fear change. But that's what brings progress. Stagnation is never good.

Democalypse 2014

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The funny thing - or the sad thing, rather - is that all of these racist white people are descended from immigrants themselves. And I really doubt if their ancestors were all wealthy royalty, giving up their pampered, comfortable lives to start over in the New World.

I know mine weren't. My ancestors weren't prosperous, most of them. They emigrated for different reasons, but they all came here hoping for a better life. And through hard work and plenty of luck - including the extreme good fortune of being born white - they generally found it.

This is just bigotry, nothing more. They're racists. Most of them probably don't understand that - they certainly deny it, like almost all of the racists I've known in my life - but it's true.

And those crazy-ass claims about all the free stuff illegal immigrants get, and how they don't pay taxes? Come on! That's just racism combined with gullibility and politics, nothing more. Racists believe it because they want to believe it.

But you know, there's nothing new about any of this. There were riots in some American cities when the Irish started arriving here in large numbers. Other immigrant groups - even those, like the Irish, who benefited hugely from at least being white - faced bigotry, as well. Now, their descendants are returning the favor, apparently.

Incredible, isn't it? This is America.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

No country for little kids

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Could these people be any more mean-spirited, idiotic, and downright... insane? Not to mention bigoted, of course.

We're being "invaded." By child refugees. Thousands of them (which, in a nation of three hundred and fifteen million people, is a drop in the bucket).

Of course, they're brown children, which is what makes them scary, right?

Luckily, we've got these heavily armed lunatics keeping us safe:



Actually, this might not have been a mistake. These right-wingers seem to hate scientists almost as much as they hate Hispanics.

But they're not white!

I suppose this is hilarious, but as an American, I mostly just find it embarrassing.

In an extraordinary -- and extraordinarily awkward -- failure of basic situational awareness, a U.S. congressman apparently mistook American government officials for Indian government officials during a congressional hearing.

As first reported by Foreign Policy magazine, freshman Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL) spoke to State Department official Nisha Biswal and Commerce Department official Arun Kumar as if they were Indian government officials at a House Foreign Affairs hearing on Thursday. ...

When he asked the American officials for cooperation from "your government," Biswal appeared rather confused. "I think your question is to the Indian government," she said, "and we certainly share your sentiments and we certainly will advocate that on behalf of the U.S. government."

This Republican congressman, Curt Clawson, talks to American officials as if they were representatives of the Indian government, apparently because they're not white.

Well, they must be furriners then, huh? I mean, they're dressed as real Americans. They speak real American. But they're not white, so... what else could a good Republican assume?

Do you think I'm being too harsh on this guy? Well, maybe so. It was just a simple mistake, after all. But then I read this:

In a vote likely to exacerbate their party's demographic problems, House Republicans passed legislation on Friday night to effectively require the deportation of everyone in the U.S. illegally, including young people brought as children who attended college or joined the military. ...

The vote marks the third time in the 113th Congress that House Republicans have passed legislation that would, effectively, require the deportation of so-called Dreamers. They are the only immigration-related bills that have been allowed votes in the full House in 2013 or 2014.

The "Dreamers" are young people, overwhelmingly Hispanic, who were brought into this county by their parents, when they were just children. They've been raised as American, they have American siblings, and they often don't even remember their home country.

Furthermore, these are the best of the best - those who stayed out of trouble and, despite that poor beginning, actually managed to attend college and/or fight for America in our military. Yet Republicans insist on deporting them all.

Well, they're not white, I guess (not as Republicans define it, anyway). Who cares if they've fought to defend America? Who cares if they're college-educated? (That just means they're liberals, right? Isn't that what education means to a Republican these days?)

And note that last sentence about "allowed votes." Republicans control the House of Representatives, and their leadership won't even let congressmen vote on most bills. That's because they know that some reasonable bills might pass with Democratic and Republican votes. The crazies can't have that, and unfortunately for us all, the crazies control the Republican Party.

"Where are our hearts?" said Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a civil rights hero, in a fiery floor speech. "Where are our souls?"

No kidding. And, even more importantly, where are our brains? (Not in the GOP, apparently.) We are a nation of immigrants. We've thrived as a nation by letting people from all around the world participate in this melting pot.

As I say, these are the best of the best. The Dreamers are the people who've already accomplished a great deal, people who've risen from poverty to attend college, people who've been willing to fight for our country. (How many of these chickenhawk Republicans can say that?)

But Republican leaders are terrified that they'll end up voting Democratic. (Gee, I wonder why?)

___
* OK, OK, this part is hilarious: "Clawson took office on June 25, replacing Rep. Trey Radel (R), who resigned after getting arrested for cocaine possession last fall." Florida can really pick 'em, huh?

Ann Coulter's 'not racist' death squads

Ann Coulter has, of course, made a career out of being crazy. Without a radio or TV program of her own, she's not even minimally limited in how crazy she can be (not even to the very, very limited extent of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck).

Her career, her celebrity, her notoriety are based on being not just outrageous, but completely over-the-top. She quite literally can't go too far. The only danger for her is if she's not noticed.

And this is CPAC, where crazy is standard. So Coulter really has to work on the crazy to stand out. Well, she did rise sink to the occasion, didn't she? She was so vile I couldn't ignore it (and I do prefer to ignore her).

Even at first, it's crazy enough. Yeah, if you don't celebrate the 'browning of America,' you're considered a racist. Actually, it's more like you're a racist when you have hysterics about it. Who the hell cares? Only racists.

Has she forgotten that we're all descended from immigrants? Arguably, even Native Americans are descended from immigrants, but certainly the vast majority of our ancestors came here from other countries. Did Coulter somehow miss the significance of the Statue of Liberty?

But she just gets worse and worse. Next, she argues that 'brown people' won't want to pay into Social Security and Medicare to support 'older white people.' First of all, if that were true, these right-wingers would be cheering. They don't like Social Security and Medicare anyway.

But second, what different does the color of your skin make? Younger people of all colors pay into these programs to support older people of all colors, and they do it because they can count on the same support when they get older. That's been the social contract in America, and the color of your skin has nothing to do with it!

Still, even that isn't the craziest thing Coulter says here. As I say, it's CPAC. That level of crazy is standard. So if the rest of this hasn't been crazy enough, how about death squads? Yeah, if immigration reform passes through Congress, "then we organize the death squads."

Gee, and people call her racist? Wow, that's hard to believe, isn't it? I wonder why?

Of course, the right-wing hits the ceiling when anyone does call them racist. And even at CPAC, they want minority votes. (They just don't want to do anything to piss off the racists in the GOP base, the people who applaud Ann Coulter, the people they deliberately wooed in their notorious 'Southern strategy.')

So how's that working out for them?



Heh, heh. But why should anyone be surprised at this? Ann Coulter got applause. That's what CPAC is all about.

The same people who think that immigrants won't ever become real Americans if they're not white, the same people who think that 'brown people' won't pay into Social Security and Medicare, because the current recipients are mostly white, the same people who applaud death squads as an appropriate response to immigration reform, those are the same people who think that racial minorities vote Democratic because Democrats give them free stuff.

Insane, isn't it?

Phyllis Schlafly's advice to the GOP

Phyllis Schlafly has always been crazy, and old age certainly hasn't improved her any. But this is really something, isn't it?

There's been a lot of talk in the Republican Party about trying to appeal to Hispanics (71% of whom voted for Barack Obama in November). But Schlafly says they should forget about that and focus entirely on white voters.

"I think the propagandists are leading us down the wrong path. There is not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican."

First, it's blatantly racist to run your political party based on race or ethnicity. (Note that Hispanic Americans aren't necessarily Mexican in origin. And, although 'race' is a very nebulous social concept, anyway, they're not necessarily non-white, either. But we'll go with Schlafly's view of 'white' here.)

So why wouldn't Hispanic Americans vote Republican? What's so different about Hispanics that they wouldn't vote like any other Americans? Indeed, from what I've heard, they tend to be socially conservative. And they tend to be Catholic (which evangelical Protestants might not like, but the Catholic Church itself very definitely favors the GOP).

So why must the Republican Party just write off Hispanic Americans? Well, why have they written off African Americans? Rather, why do more than 90% of African Americans support the Democratic Party, instead of the Republican Party? What's different about them?

What's different, in both cases, is that they're not 'white.' That's it. That's the only difference.

Note that African Americans, at least (I don't know about Hispanic Americans), used to vote Republican,... when they were allowed to vote at all. The white South was solidly Democratic in the mid-20th Century, and had been that way for more than a century. Southern white Dixiecrats were racists, so African Americans tended to support 'the party of Lincoln.'

Not surprisingly, the Republican Party lost that support when it adopted its notorious 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing white racists. Democrats had repudiated the racists in their own party, so Republicans eagerly snapped them up. They filled the GOP with racists, taking the entire South for themselves. Today, the South is the Republican Party base.

Politically, that was a master-stroke. Cynical, yes. Despicable, yes. But taking the South from the Democrats gave the Republican Party the power to dominate American politics in recent decades. It gave them the power to shower tax cuts and other benefits onto the wealthy (which was the whole point - obviously, establishment Republican leaders were just attempting to use those racists for their own purposes).

They lost the African American vote, true. But taking the South more than made up for that. However,... what happens when you fill your political party with racists? Well, by and large, those people don't like anyone who's not white, and that includes Hispanics. As America has continued to become more racially diverse, that's become a problem for the GOP.

Schlafly demonstrates the problem. She's a hero to the far-right Republican base, and like them, she sees no reason why real Americans should have to put up with Hispanics. Why should the Republican Party even bother with anyone who isn't white? And, like many elderly white Republicans, she doesn't seem to have a clue how racist that is.

But Hispanics do notice that. Last month, the head of "Latino outreach" for the Republican Party in Florida switched parties, because:

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Studies geared towards making – human beings – viewed as less because of their immigrant status to outright unacceptable claims, are at the center of the immigration debate. ...

We are not looking at an isolated incident of rhetoric or research. Others subscribe to motivating people to action by stating, “In California, a majority of all Hispanic births are illegitimate. That’s a lot of Democratic voters coming.” The discourse that moves the Republican Party is filled with this anti-immigrant movement and overall radicalization that is far removed from reality. Another quick example beyond the immigration debate happened during CPAC this year when a supporter shouted ““For giving him shelter and food for all those years?” while a moderator explained how Frederick Douglass had written a letter to his slave master saying that he forgave him for “all the things you did to me.” I think you get the idea.

When the political discourse resorts to intolerance and hate, we all lose in what makes America great and the progress made in society.

Although I was born an American citizen, I feel that my experience, and that of many from Puerto Rico, is intertwined with those who are referred to as illegal. My grandfather served in an all-Puerto Rican segregated Army unit, the 65th Infantry Regiment. He then helped, along my grandmother, shatter glass ceilings for Puerto Rican women raising my aunt to become the first Puerto Rican woman astronomer with a PhD in astrophysics (an IQ of a genius as far as I’m concerned). Puerto Ricans, as many other Americans still today have to face issues of discrimination in voting and civil rights.

Note that that discrimination in voting is a deliberate attempt by the Republican Party to discourage and disenfranchise Democratic-leaning constituencies, which very definitely includes anyone who isn't white.

You know, there were protests in America when my Irish Catholic ancestors starting immigrating here in large numbers. I don't know if there were similar issues when my German ancestors arrived decades later, though I wouldn't be surprised. (I know that Eastern Europeans - especially Jews, though not just them - faced a great deal of opposition.)

Certainly, my German ancestors settled together in certain areas of our country. They had German-language newspapers, German-language schools, German-language social organizations. I doubt if that made the "real" Americans of the time very happy.

But all of these groups assimilated just fine. And it's just astonishing to me that their descendants, many of them, are so viciously opposed to immigrants now. Well, Hispanics - 'those people' - are different, right? Obviously, they just want something for nothing, unlike your own dirt-poor ancestors who came here to make a new start.

Well, this is great, as far as I'm concerned. You know that the Republican Party has no intention of changing any of their policies, anyway. They're just trying to find a message appealing to Hispanic Americans. It's just PR, and they merely want to use Hispanics for their own purposes.

Indeed, with a base filled with racists, it's hard to see how the party could change much, even if it wanted to. Well, you reap what you sow.

But sure, forget about trying to appeal to Hispanic Americans. Forget about trying to appeal to African Americans. Forget about appealing to anyone who isn't white, anyone who isn't Christian, anyone who isn't straight. And forget about trying to appeal to women, too (who they're also losing, though not in such dramatic numbers).

Instead, just concentrate on your core demographic:

USA under 'seige'

(Re. Daily Kos)

___
Note: I would have used the following photo, but I think this guy is too young to be part of the GOP's core demographic. However, picture him at Phyllis Schlafly's age and you'd get it exactly right.

(Know Your Meme)

A GOP empathy problem

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Funny, don't you think? I especially like how Jessica Williams points out how this Republican remains dogmatically ignorant when it comes to other issues. "Mostly, you're still not susceptible to reality." No kidding!

But just because he's had some slight insight into immigration - and make no mistake, that is admirable, for all she's making fun of him - he's now called "traitor" and, um, "excrement" by his fellow conservatives.

Oh, well. To tell the truth, I can't tell if he's really that clueless or just a good sport - probably both, I suspect. But it is funny.

More Republican lies

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If only Barack Obama had gone through the legislative process, huh?

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI): "The executive branch has arrogated to itself something that the people's representatives in Congress rejected two years ago."

Just think about that. The Dream Act easily passed the House, and an overwhelming majority, 55 to 41, voted for it in the Senate. But Republicans filibuster everything these days, so it didn't pass.

But that's certainly not Congress "rejecting" it! Unfortunately, we've let the minority dictate legislation in this country. No longer do we have government by the majority.

The legislative process is broken. Republicans broke it. Republicans have pretty well destroyed our institutions of government. (Note that they are busy destroying our Supreme Court, too.)

Yes, Democrats let them do it, and I'm not happy about that. But I'm absolutely furious at what the Republicans have done to our country. (And then they have the incredible gall to lie about it!)

And speaking of lying,... how about that Fox 'News'? Is it any wonder that people who watch Fox are even more ignorant than people who don't watch any news at all?

Scapegoating immigrants

Last summer, I hired a locksmith for a minor problem. He was a young guy, pleasant and personable (admittedly, I think he was cheating on his taxes, because he wanted the check made out to him personally, not to the company he owned).

But just before he left, he got a phone call, which he put on speaker. It was a prospective customer, a guy with a pretty strong accent who struggled a bit with English, wanting to hire the locksmith. So this contractor just hung up on him. "Hey, if they want to hire me, they need to learn to speak English!"

Think about that. As an American, my contractor was the descendent of immigrants himself, some of whom probably didn't speak perfect English themselves. My own ancestors certainly didn't, not all of them. This is America, the land of opportunity. We're pretty much all descended from immigrants (even Native Americans, arguably).

And learning to speak a foreign language as an adult is hard. Here in Nebraska, that might be easy to forget, since we can go a thousand miles in any direction without needing to speak anything but English. But I know how I struggled just as a tourist in Europe, despite my high school Spanish and a some German, French, and Italian in college. Learning to actually use a new language is hard.

As I say, our ancestors went through all that, so if any people on Earth should be sympathetic to immigrants, it should be us Americans. I really don't understand it.

When my mother was a little girl, her great-grandmother lived with them for awhile before her death. The old woman couldn't speak English, despite living in America for most of her life. And my mother couldn't speak any German. They couldn't communicate at all, except with hugs and other gestures.

A hundred years ago, there were German-language newspapers in America, German social clubs, German-language schools. For the most part, that ended when America went to war with Germany in World War I. It wasn't considered patriotic then (and, as usual, we got a little hysterical about the enemy - in this case, even renaming sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"). But today, the descendents of those German-Americans, many of them, just hit the ceiling about using Spanish in America. Funny, isn't it?

My grandfather fought in Germany (for our side, I assure you) in World War I, suffering poison gas damage which affected his lungs for the rest of his life. He was an American citizen, but all of his grandparents had come from Germany. They came here for the reason all immigrants come to America, to make a better life for themselves.

But these days, we're not even willing to grant permanent residence to soldiers who fight and sometimes die for us, if they were brought to America illegally as children. How crazy is that? We won't even reward the very best of them who struggle against overwhelming odds to get a college degree. Yeah, we don't want no furriners here, do we? It's absolutely insane!

When my Irish ancestors arrived in America, there were riots against them in some American towns. I used to hear stories about the discrimination they faced. But their descendants, many of them, are all too eager to discriminate against immigrants now. P. J. O'Rourke once said, "We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners." Maybe that's it.

Sure, the right-wing claims that they're only against illegal immigrants. Is it their fault that you can't tell a legal brown person from an illegal brown person? Besides, they're all just "Mexicans," right? We all know how lazy they are...

Yeah, here in Nebraska, at least, it's all about the "Mexicans." Wonder how that  happened? When I was a kid, Iowa Beef Processors built a big packing plant just outside my hometown. There were a lot of problems with the plant (including a horrible stench when the wind was from the north), but at least it was a union plant and the jobs paid pretty well.

Unfortunately, IBP found a way to make more money. They sent buses to the Mexican border to find workers desperate enough to work for peanuts, then used them to break the union. Nearby towns saw a huge influx of poor Spanish-speaking people, which cost taxpayers more in school and social services costs. Meanwhile, those well-paying jobs had disappeared, so the taxes from them did, too.

And who do the locals blame? Those wealthy executives at IBP who made out like bandits? Not hardly. Most blame the Spanish-speaking workers who were simply desperate for work. Well, it's easy to scapegoat people who seem different from you, isn't it? Those executives were white and spoke perfect English. And we all know how the "job creators" deserve everything they get, right?

Generally speaking, the real hysteria about immigration, here in Nebraska and nationally, focuses on the "Mexicans." But discrimination hardly stops there. That guy on the other end of the cell phone sounded like he had a Pakistani or Indian accent, as far as I could tell from the speaker. But it was enough that he spoke English with an accent. Obviously, he was just another no-good foreigner, huh?

The fact that all of us, pretty much, are descended from "no-good foreigners" ourselves doesn't seem to matter to these people. Well, bigotry is alive and well even in good economic times. When times are bad, that's when you really see the hysteria. And the average middle class American has seen his standard of living decline since the late 1970s (funny, that coincides exactly with the start of "trickle down" economic policies favoring the wealthy).

It's especially bad in the GOP, of course, since the Republican Party has been deliberately wooing racists with their "Southern strategy" for decades. Politically, that was a huge success, since they succeeded in taking the South from the Democrats. But now, the racists are the Republican base. And you know? When you take most of the crazies from one political party and combine them with all of the crazies from your own, you get a lot of crazy.

Now, all of the Republican candidates for president must try to appeal to those people. Mitt Romney, mostly because of his flip-flopping, has to be especially vigorous. And, although Newt Gingrich is holding his own when it comes to implicit racism, Romney is setting a whole new standard for crazy when it comes to immigration.

Mitt Romney unveiled a novel solution for illegal immigration during Tuesday night's GOP debate, saying that he'd rely on "self-deportation" to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the US. ...

This is the right-wing's answer to the question of how you deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants: You don't. You force them to "deport themselves." Although immigration reform advocates would prefer a solution that involves a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already here, Romney and his top immigration advisers believe they can remove millions of people through heavy-handed enforcement that makes life for unauthorized immigrants intolerable. This approach is notable for its complete lack of discretion and flexibility. Unauthorized immigrant parents with citizen children who need to go to school? Americans who are married to an undocumented immigrant who needs medical treatment? "Self-deportation" hits them all with the same mailed fist.

We can see how this concept has been applied in states like Arizona and Alabama, where local authorities have been empowered to act as enforcers of immigration law. Alabama takes the choke point theory even more seriously than Arizona—everything from enrolling in school to seeking health treatment has been turned into a so-called choke point. The moral, social, and economic consequences of the strategy are secondary to inflicting enough suffering on unauthorized immigrants in order to force them out of the country. ...

Alabama's immigration law has actually been such a disaster that the state is trying to figure out a way to repeal parts of the law. But make no mistake, when Romney is discussing "self-deportation," he's talking about creating a United States where parents are afraid to register their kids for school or get them immunized because they might be asked for proof of citizenship. He's talking about the type of country where local police can demand your immigration status based on mere suspicion that you don't belong around here. "Self-deportation" is just a cleaner, less cruel-sounding way of endorsing harsh, coercive government polices in order to make life for unauthorized immigrants so unbearable that they have no choice but to find some way to leave. The human cost of such an approach, let alone what it might do to American society, is viewed as a price worth paying.

Brilliant, isn't it? We're going to make America such a hell-hole that no one will want to live here! Wow! Why didn't we progressives think of that?

And if you're enjoying the "war on terror," then you'll really be in for a treat. We're going to make sure that American kids - children legally American, but born here of illegal immigrant parents - are going to hate America with a passion. Well, at least future terrorist groups won't have to worry about recruiting American citizens, huh? They'll be lining up to attack us.

14-year-old deported by mistake

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deported a 14-year-old American girl - who doesn't speak Spanish - to Columbia! Think about that!

But it's the last part of this that really struck me. Poor people just expect this kind of thing. Spend the weekend in jail because no one gives a crap? Well, poor people don't expect anyone to give a crap.

"If it happened to me, I would lose it! If I spent the weekend in jail for nothing, I'd go crazy." Yeah, no kidding! But we expect to be treated like human beings, don't we?

I remember in college being stopped by the police a couple of times, when a group of us college kids were walking around Lincoln in the middle of the night (for no particular reason - after all, we were college kids).

We were highly indignant at being stopped and questioned. We weren't doing anything! We were just walking down a public sidewalk! Admittedly, it was in the wee hours of the morning. But what business did the police have in stopping us?

Of course, we were white, middle-class college kids. We expected to be treated like citizens. And the cops knew that. I'm not blaming them for doing their job, and I wasn't then, either. (Frankly, it's a tough job that you couldn't pay me enough to do.)

But the fact is, both sides knew what we expected from the police. And we would have been furious if we hadn't been treated well. We knew that and they knew that. But poor people? And especially, poor black people? I suspect that they don't expect to be treated particularly well.

And that's a tragedy.

I know that I would have hit the ceiling if the government had tried to deport me when I was 14 - or at any age - even if I had stolen something. And if they'd sent me to Columbia anyway, I'd have been demanding to see the U.S. ambassador the very next day. I just don't expect to be treated like that.

And if people do expect that kind of treatment, well, there's something wrong here. This isn't the America I know and love. You need to think of government officials as working for you. And if they don't behave that way, there had better be a damn good reason why.

QOTD: Marco Rubio haunted by his immigrant past

Quote of the Day:

Fortunately for Marco Rubio, he is a handsome, up-and-coming star within the Republican Party, whose Cuban roots have a particular appeal in South Florida and assisted his rise to national prominence. Unfortunately for Marco Rubio…

He was the son of exiles, [Rubio] told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after "a thug," Fidel Castro, took power. But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that Rubio's dramatic account of his family saga embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2 1/2 years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year's Day 1959.

...
I think I know why this matters so much. According to some, if you escaped from Castro's Cuba after the Revolution, you're a sexy anti-communist exile, ready to work hard and defend freedom. But if you emigrated from Cuba while Castro was still hanging out in Mexico, you're just another Hispanic immigrant, coming to steal our jobs and take our welfare (somehow at the same time).

In fact, there's one U.S. Senator who has become particularly adept at distinguishing between different kinds of deserving and undeserving immigrants. - Ilya Gerner

A balanced view of multiculturalism

Here's a great post by Kenan Malik that explains why both sides in the debate about multiculturalism are wrong:

What is striking about multiculturalism and the clash of civilizations thesis is how much the two approaches have in common. It is true that there is little love lost between multiculturalists and clash of civilization warriors. The former accuse the latter of pandering to racism and Islamophobia, while the latter talk of the former as appeasing Islamism. Beneath the hostility, however, the two sides share basic assumptions about the nature of culture, identity and difference.  For at the heart of both arguments is a confusion of peoples and values. Multiculturalists claim that the presence in a society of a diversity of peoples limits the possibility of common values. Clash of civilization warriors insist that such values are impossible within an ethnically diverse society. Neither is right.

And that is because both assume that minority communities are homogenous wholes whose members will forever be attached to the cultures, faiths, beliefs and values of their forebears. Being born to European parents is not a passport to Enlightenment beliefs. So why should we imagine that having Bangladeshi or Moroccan ancestry makes one automatically believe in sharia? Multiculturalists and the clash of civilization warriors have different views about the nature of Islam. Both, however, look upon Muslims as constituting a distinct population, defined almost solely by its faith, and whose difference must dictate the way that wider society deals with it. In viewing cultural differences in this fashion, both sides have been led to betray basic liberal principles.

In reality, of course, there are more than two sides to this complex issue. And certainly we're all likely to disagree on the details. But Malik's thinking is much like mine.

Oddly, Malik is a determined foe of multiculturalism, while I tend to focus my opposition on their right-wing opponents. But this, I think, is mainly because Malik is British, while I'm American. "Multiculturalism" in Europe tends to be a far different thing than in America. And here, the greatest danger, overwhelmingly, is from extremists on the right, not the left.

Well, this is a problem when arguing generalities anyway. That's still what we must do sometimes, but it's frequently misleading. I tend to avoid the label "multiculturalism" - partly because it tends to result in a knee-jerk response, and partly because it sounds more benign than it is, at least in Europe. So why not just talk about "diversity," which really should be the key issue for progressives?

As Malik also understands, it's individual freedom that's the important thing. You should not gain or lose any rights just because of your religion, your ethnic identity, or your cultural community. A woman from a patriarchal culture still has the exact same rights as any other woman - indeed, any other person. And although your religion may demand certain behavior, (1) it must always be voluntary and (2) it can't infringe on the rights of anyone else, member or not.

Now I have absolutely no interest in cultural preservation and no concern about "cultural imperialism." Cultures should change with the times. But a culture doesn't change as a unit. It's always a matter of individuals. Those individuals have the right to choose for themselves - not just in choosing a particular culture, but in continuing to make their own decisions, whether they consider themselves to be part of a particular culture or not.

At the same time, diversity - including cultural diversity - is a very good thing. "Multiculturalism" in that respect is great. It makes us all richer, as it leads to a vibrant, creative society. But it's the individuals who are important, not the cultures. It's the individuals who have rights, the individuals who make choices, the individuals who matter. Cultures don't have rights. It's the individual within a culture who has rights, and those rights are neither more nor less than what anyone else has.

Given the freedom to make choices, many people will make bad ones. That's a fact. It's the downside of freedom. But there are far too many upsides for that to dissuade us. And besides, you will never get all of us to agree on what really is a bad choice. You may think you know, but you could be wrong. And what gives you the right to decide for everyone else?

That's the essence of a diverse, pluralistic, democratic society. In this, America led the way, with our strict separation of church and state. Above all else, that was our gift to the world. Now we just need to live up to our own ideals.

DREAM Act

(Lalo Alcaraz)

It's a simple idea behind the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. It allows children "of good moral character," brought into this country illegally by their parents (i.e. no criminal act of their own) to obtain legal residency status within the United States by serving in the U.S. military or successfully attending college.

These are the cream of the crop, young people who have a great deal to offer America, youngsters willing to serve our country. How could this be anything other than a slam-dunk? And yet, it's been nine years struggling through Congress against Republican opposition. And it's still struggling to overcome a Republican filibuster (of course) in the Senate.

(John Branch)

Opposition to this bill is about nothing but bigotry. Republicans have whipped up hysteria about Hispanic immigration as part of their general hysteria about anyone who isn't both white and Christian (actually, most of these immigrants are both, but they're still not accepted by the GOP).

This nation was built by immigrants. We're all descendants of immigrants, if you go back far enough. And while maybe it's understandable that a general agreement on illegal immigration is hard to get - I must admit, I don't know the solution myself, though I'm not in hysterics about it - this bill only affects young people who've grown up in this country and who've overcome huge odds to attend college and/or are willing and able to fight our nation's battles in a time of war.

Are these the kinds of people we're going to abandon? How can we Americans be this stupid?

(Mike Keefe)

Are we Americans this bigoted. Are we this frightened of competition? (Then we are really, really doomed in today's global marketplace.) Are we this foolish? What has happened to us?

By any standards of decency and common sense, the DREAM Act should be a slam-dunk. The fact that it's not tells us much about America these days - and none of it good. I'm deeply embarrassed for my country.