Fourth of July weekend: assimilation at the park
I’ve written before (here and here) about the park near my house, where I so often walk.
Fourth of July weekend is a big holiday there, especially when the weather is lovely, as it has been this year (and, after all the rain we’ve had lately, it seems almost miraculous). Not only is it a beautiful vista–ocean and rocks and lighthouses and waves and boats and islands–but there are picnic tables and spots to barbecue, and the park is big enough that it never really seems very crowded, even on holidays.
Saturday I was walking there, and when I got to the picnic area I saw that there were at least seventy people there, an unusual but not-unheard-of number. I couldn’t tell whether they were all part of one big group or whether they represented a series of unrelated groups. But almost every picnic table was in use, and there were fires going in the grills and the luscious smell of cooking wafted across my path as I fast-walked by, making me want to stop, sit down, and beg for a bite.
I noticed that all the people there seemed to be foreign, but not all from the same country or even area of the world. There were vaguely Mideastern-looking people, a well as some who seemed to be from Eastern Europe; others undoubtedly hailing from Africa, as well as Asians of different persuasions. I could hear language after language, none of them recognizable to me, and the smells of the grilling meat contained spices and herbs that seemed especially exotic and alluring.
And children–lots and lots of children. There were bikes and frisbees, laughter and shouting, smiling parents watching fondly, older teenagers looking standoffish and cool. As I passed the younger people, I noticed they were all speaking unaccented English, and even their body language was different than that conveyed by their parents–less constrained. You might say they seemed more free. Of course, part of that is the difference between children and adults. But part of it seemed to be something more.
Who were these people, and why were they all here at the same time? Was it a coincidence, or had they been bused in together, members of some society for immigrants? I have no idea, but it struck me that the group was an especially appropriate one for Fourth of July weekend.
We’re a nation of immigrants, as it’s often said. Lately, immigration has become far more controversial, but we forget that it’s often been so. Each new wave encountered some antagonism, especially beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the country was getting more crowded and there was increasing arrivals from countries that seemed especially “foreign” to the predominantly Western Europeans who were the earlier settlers.
In those days, immigrants faced the dilemma of assimilation, as they do today. But back then most people who came to this country were eager to assimilate–or at least they thought they were. The process might have been difficult, and they didn’t like all the changes that occurred when their children dropped the old ways and became Americans, but it’s my impression that there was a certain widespread acceptance that this was almost inevitable.
The parents didn’t always manage to learn English all that well–in most families, we know of tales of children translating for parents who never really did make the full transition. And the older generation had to deal–sometimes with great difficulty–with the intermarriage of the children, and their dropping of the old ways.
I remember an incident I observed many years ago. I was sitting in an Indian restaurant, waiting for my food, and noticed a family group nearby. The parents were clearly from India–I could tell by their accents–but the two children seemed to have been born in this country. There was a girl of about six and a boy of about eight. The boy was wearing his baseball mitt on one hand and throwing a ball into it with a little repetitive thwack! with the other while he waited for his food.
When the dinner finally came, he started whining. “I don’t like this stuff!” he said, although I must say the restaurant was fabulous and the food especially delicious. “I want a hamburger!”–the refrain of the American-born child of immigrant parents.
And this age-old process of acculturation and assimilation continues apace. I could see it in the park the other day. But it seems to me that, for many immigrants lately, it’s been arrested and stunted by programs intending to respect cultural diversity that discourage the transition to a new language by making it too easy to cling to the old.
There’s another relatively new factor, as well. Although I’m not aware of any statistics on the matter, it appears that more of today’s immigrants (and/or illegal aliens, who are growing in number) consider their move to this country to be either temporary or conditional or both. The goal is not necessarily assimilation at all, but sometimes the establishment of a sort of “separate but equal” enclave in which the cultural mores (and even traditional dress) are retained intact at the same time the economic benefits of being in this country are reaped.
You might say that was always the case–new immigrants would cluster in certain neighborhoods when they first arrived, and stick to their own. But it’s my impression, at least, that it used to be considered more of a practical and temporary situation, and not the ultimate goal of the immigrant experience.
If I were to have taken a poll of that group on the grass and under the tall shade trees at the park the other day, I wonder what I would have found. How many of the adults were in basic acceptance that their children would become part of American culture? How many were hoping–and taking strong steps to ensure–that their children would resist? How many of the adults were determined to learn English? How many were legal, how many illegal; how many expected a temporary stay, how many a permanent one? How many were happy to be here, how many not?
I don’t know the answers. What I do know is that they looked happy–but of course, it was a lovely day, and a vacation time at that–and the children were all speaking unaccented English. And I know that the vista, to me at least, was a pleasant one, and part of what I consider to be the age-old American dream, on this Fourth of July weekend.
I think you’ve got to be a pretty dogmatic conservative to find only “sadness” in the transition to the language of one’s freely adopted country. After all, it’s not just immigrants who are finding their children “dropping the old ways” — it’s all of us. It’s the modern world.
Furthermore, the notion of the “melting pot”, which has been maligned on the left for a while now, has also been commonly misunderstood. It’s taken to mean that immigrants simply lose their cultural identity in adopting some other, “American” culture. But in fact the melting pot mixes the cultures of all who contribute to it. In the process, certainly, immigrant cultures are transformed, as they come in contact with other, both earlier and later, additions to the mix; but they also transform the mix themselves. In this sense, America, as indeed a nation of immigrants, has a culture that is partially owned by each immigrant group, and each immigrant individual, that’s contributed to it. By contrast, in countries where “multiculturalism” is the prevailing doctrine, immigrants are left in a kind of permanent and official minority status, nursing old and new grievances without ever being able to take full advantage of their new land.
Part of the reason why less assimilation happens today is because it is much easier now to stay in touch with one’s “old culture” through fast and cheap telecommunication (phone), the Internet, cheap air travel, etc.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Instead of becoming monocultural English-speakers, if the second and subsequent generations grow up bicultural or even polycultural, that can only be a gain to the country.
In sheer practical terms, imagine how much advantage there is in the business world today to someone who speaks Chinese and English with equal fluency.
Americans are notoriously insular and have a reputation (deserved or not) for knowing rather little about other countries. This can be dangerous, as the world is increasingly well-connected today and the more cultures one is comfortable in, the more flexibility and richness one will have.
And, in any case, one’s primary allegiance should not be to one’s nation (too narrow) but to humanity as a whole.
My two cents (or is that two pesos !!)
– Pedro.
Neo, I think your stories are rather sad. Truly.
Some years back – my daughter was in her last year at school – we went to a luncheon arranged, prepared and presented by the senior school. Each prepared a dish from their parent’s country of origin.
There was New Zealand (ranging from fish and chips to roast lamb) Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Malay, South African, Afrikaans (quite different), Thai and Indonesian. One small piece from each and I had one of the best luinches ever.
We as a community celebrate the lunar New Year with cultural presentations from a wide range of performers.
The Festival of Lights this last year was one of the best – the third I have attended.
Unfortunately the “This is Africa” festival last summer was a flop. Not because it was bad. They shifted the venue to a park, and held it on grass. It rained.
I rejoice in the variety and splendour of our many cultures.
[O]ne’s primary allegiance should not be to one’s nation (too narrow) but to humanity as a whole.
I’m torn by this sentiment: on the one hand, it’s perfectly lovely–it fits in with Christ’s admonition to love one another, for example. Should I not hope for the well-being of all? Of course I should!
On the other hand, there are too many people who care nothing for the well-being of their neighbors, and in fact work for their suffering and destruction. How should I react to such people? Toast their health? Send them blankets and medical supplies?
Furthermore, Being An American doesn’t necessarily mean being loyal to a geographical area; it means being loyal to the Enlightenment ideals that built this country: government by the consent of the governed, God-given (rather than state-given) human rights, etc.
Patriotism in the United States isn’t mere nostalgia (though there is some of that) or tribal allegiance. It’s gratitude for being in a country that embodies those Enlightenment ideals. It’s the hope that we can continue upholding those ideals. It’s the hope that other countries can also embrace those ideals and likewise prosper.
My allegiance to the US is principally allegiance to its ideals, not some jingoistic feeling that We are better than They. Not that US popular culture ought to rule the world. Not that English is the Only True Language. Not that people who have no desire whatsoever to emmigrate to the US are Lost Souls. None of that at all.
My loyalty to the US is, in my mind, loyalty to humanity as a whole. And if in another country they can achieve prosperity and freedom using methods that differ from ours, well, more power to them.
If the United States ever rejects the Enlightenment ideals that built it and embraces totalitarianism or anarchy or some other loathsome system, I will not continue to be loyal to that United States, even if it is my homeland. I will seek out the country that comes closest to the Enlightenment ideals and go there.
A bit of moral superiority here.
Neo, I think your stories are rather sad. Truly.
I rejoice in the variety and splendour of our many cultures.
I wrote all I needed to concerning the Left’s moralistic superior position at my blog, here. It’s not very healthy.
http://ymarsakar.blogspot.com/2006/07/so-called-moral-high-ground-life-of.html
I did check, and last time I did that, the world was not going to guarantee protection of the families of “world citizens”. A nation does that, and the United States has the most power to do that consistently. Love of one’s nation is directly connected and in proportion to love of one’s family, and the need to protect that family.
There’s a big problem when people move to a country, then have mass telecommunications still shackle them to their “culture”, that they were trying to escape from in the first place. Young Muslim women go to Europe to be free, yet their families force them to marry men from the “old country”, which then procede along the cultural brutality and abuse that is culturally the norm in the Arab world.
I don’t care to work with people who can speak 5 languages, when they have the vices from 3 cultures to go with it. On any common sense analysis, that’s not going to make a very smooth working environment.
I’m probably less concerned about assimilation than most. Becoming an American isn’t embracing a culture, but embracing a set of ideas. That’s why anyone can become an American. Indians and Chinese seem to assimilate almost immediately, at least the ones I’ve encountered at the university.
If we are going to deport anyone, it should be the cynical, angry hipsters in Hollywood, the press, and academia who preach that America is a sham and collectivism is the true path. If their views ever become mainstream, America will be dead, no matter how much baseball we continue to play.
probligo,
I am sorry to tell you , but the food and lunar festival version of multiculturalism is the easy part. The hard part is not knowing how to prepare your kids to thrive in a world you don’t know very well. It is suddenly becoming incompetent in things you’ve done all your life because the systems are different. It is knowing that your grandchildren will likely know your homeland only through vacation visits. It is knowing that your homeland is changing and that your relation to it is frozen at the time of your immigration. And yet assimilate you must, a little at a time, or you risk depriving your children of the opportunities of their home.
Neo’s picnic description sounds great to me. The younger generation will have values, memories, and emotions to take with them as they go through a life we cannot predict.
Expat, I agree with the opening but then we part company.
It is not easy for new immigrants to find their way in a new country. It is not easy coping with new culture, new language, new customs. It is difficult to leave behind old friends, old memories, old family, old ties, and especially old culture.
But then, why should immigrants be required lose their old culture? Yes, learn the new. The old has its place as well.
Does America expect a Scotsman to not wear his kilt, play his pipes, or participate in Highland Games? Is a Scotsman considered an outsider if he eats haggis at Hogmanay? If he addresses the haggis before its ritual slaughter?
Does America expect an Italian family to celebrate a wedding without their traditions, their family participation? Or a Croatian family to not dance their traditional dances?
Why is it expected that anyone should leave their old language, leave their old traditions?
I can recall hearing Maori English and Croat being spoken in the street in Kaitaia when I was a teenager. Not just the old people, young as well (I confess less frequently). In Howick today you will hear English, Mandarin, Canotonese, Urdu, Afrikaans, some Korean and perhaps Japanese… I regret no Maori. That is a sad reflection of where I live.
That is what I think America has lost. That is why I feel sad at neo’s joy.
If there is a difference here it is the fact that we are much younger as a nation than the US. We have not lost the history that we are all immigrants. I hope that as this country ages, none of its people lose touch with their heritage, culture, religion and language. The worst I can imagine is any nation, not just NZ, becoming so homogeneous that there is only one culture, one politic, one language, one religion…
That is what Russia tried to achieve.
(And do you notice something? I have not once mentioned collectivism, or that America is a sham.)
Every American expects people from different cultures to lose the part of their cultures that are mysogynistic, destructive, violent, and anti-human liberty based.
Well, maybe not every America, the fake liberals seem to love violence from other cultures.
The pining for a world that joins hands and sings along, is diametrically different from the vision of harmony. It might seem the same, but it isn’t. Harmony is where you take destructive threads and form them into constructive and self-reinforcing elements. Everyone joining in a circle holding hands, has no room for someone not part of the circle.
Harmony can adapt to discord, but people in a circle dancing cannot really mount a defense against invaders.
I prefer American harmony than the circle sing along others prefer.
I had an experience 2 years ago involving a mass of diverse (and legal) immigrants. They had just taken the oath as US citizens.
It touched me deeply to see it, so I couple of years ago I posted this .
h
The goal is not necessarily assimilation at all,…
I think some of the educated Europeans that come over do it for the money and jobs that they can’t find at home. They aren’t “…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” rather, they are the snooty looking for position and money. As in this bit I stole from Luboš.
On the plane, I was sitting next to a tall German left-wing inorganic chemist from the University of Michigan (and originally from Cologne) who designs materials for the linings of the power plants, among other things. He complained that the airplanes are produced for dwarves and explained me that he did not like America (except as a place for a job) because the country did not care about the environment and because of similar issues. You can guess whether your humble correspondent agreed with most of his points.
Takes all types, no? But I rather prefer those who see value beyond money in this country. The payback may take a generation or so, but it is lasting.
I think we perhaps underestimate how long it took some immigrants in the past to assimilate, particularly the Germans. I know my ancestors were here before 1730, and in the 1820s were still using a mixture of German and English because the area of PA where they lived was mostly German speaking.
But I agree that “diversity” programs have Balkanized our school children. Studies show that children of Asian immigrants are much more likely to use English at home than do Hispanic. And which group moves more easily into the mainstream?
I dont mind people bringing in part of who they are culturally, as long as it can be assimilated along with our culture. This has happened over the history of this nation. As long as the ‘melting pot’ remains just that and we as a nation does not end up as separate little ethnic enclaves without connection to the nation at large. Then you end up with France.
Come in, learn the language, learn our culture, adapt your own to ours.
probligo,
The US has always given lots of space to immigrants to eat what they want, marry whom they will, live together in neighborhoods, and worship in any church they want. We also don’t have language police listening for Croat or Urdu. But it is necessary for immigrants to learn English and to learn something about how our society functions. Many people do hold on to certain traditions from their homeland over generations, but they have to integrate enough to read schoolbooks, describe their symptoms to a doctor, and understand the contract they sign. We simply can not offer an MIT or Julliard in all the languages of the earth, nor can we prevent the offspring who attend one of these institutions from wanting to marry a fellow student from a different ethnic group. People can stick together as much as they want so long as they are functional members of the society. When they become dysfunctional because of language limitations or cultural traditions such as forced marriages and ethnic crime syndicates, then we have a right to step in.
I still think you have a rather romantic view of multicultural.
Expat, just read the post prior to yours – says it all…
Some people don’t not necessarily have a romantic view of “multiculturalism”. In fact, they know exactly what it does to a nation state. It fragments it and causes internal friction and internecine strife, eventually destroying the host nation. Assimilation avoids this. In the US ethnic self-identity classically reappears in the third generation after assimilation; thus Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc.
Multiculturalism, in its’ current incarnation was composed from a series of trends in our history that came together in the Left during the early 1970’s and gained a foothold in Leftist circles because it implicitly, given full realization, would bring down a nation state. A Marxist goal for generations.
In the US its’ genesis event was the coalition between the remnants of the New Left and the Reconquista advocates in the American Southwest. It was touted both as a “soft revolution” and a way to cause the US to have to deal with internal strife, in theory, curbing its’ inherent “imperialist urges.
Since that time it has become a key doctrine of the left, replacing “Class War” to an extent.
The only thing that says it all is that probligo doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Here’s The prob: Neo, I think your stories are rather sad. Truly.
And here’s what neo actually said: I could hear language after language, none of them recognizable to me, and the smells of the grilling meat contained spices and herbs that seemed especially exotic and alluring.
Do you think The prob might be doing a little moral posturing — oh, what a good multiculti am I, sort of thing? I think he might. Even if he hasn’t (yet) invoked the joys of collectivism, or started asserting that anyone who disagrees with him is a racist.
The point in all this, as others have noticed, is not merely some abstract loyalty to one’s country — even though that country has given you opportunities you wouldn’t have elsewhere or otherwise. It’s loyalty to an interrelated set of values — such as individual freedom and equality of status — that undergird those opportunities and that aren’t found everywhere. People from little countries that enjoy the protection of the strong, can feel free to preen their moral feathers only because others have accepted the responsibilty of ensuring that those values are passed along to all who come to avail themselves of the opportunities.
And here’s what neo actually said: I could hear language after language, none of them recognizable to me, and the smells of the grilling meat contained spices and herbs that seemed especially exotic and alluring.
It makes sense if probligo thinks Neo was annoyed by all those foreign sounds and smells and feeling lost in her own land. I thought Neo was enjoying the variety but I suppose if you are convinced she is some sort of brutish American jingo you might read it the other way. Racism is a master of disquise and New Zealand is probably home to parochial varieties of a leftist sort.
It makes sense if probligo thinks Neo was annoyed by all those foreign sounds and smells and feeling lost in her own land.
As we seem to be with the UK, “…separated by a common language” so it may be with NZ. It also may go deeper than that and we are also seperated by an ideology as well.
It makes sense if probligo thinks Neo was annoyed by all those foreign sounds and smells and feeling lost in her own land.
Well, she said that the smells were “expecially exotic and alluring”, and just above she’d spoken of the “luscious smell of cooking”. It may be that the prob doesn’t understand English very well himself, but I doubt it. I thin instead that he came to the entry with a preconceived notion and wasn’t about to let a little thing like what is actually says stand in his way.
By the way, the prob’s problems don’t necessarily generalize to all kiwis.
Sally, No.
The thing that is truly sad is that those kids are growing up with a diminished sense of their culture, language and history.
THAT is what is sad.
“Who were these people, and why were they all here at the same time? Was it a coincidence, or had they been bused in together, members of some society for immigrants? I have no idea…”
And so sad that she did not find out.
“When the dinner finally came, he started whining. “I don’t like this stuff!” he said, although I must say the restaurant was fabulous and the food especially delicious. “I want a hamburger!”–the refrain of the American-born child of immigrant parents. ”
THAT is sad.
“And this age-old process of acculturation and assimilation continues apace. I could see it in the park the other day. But it seems to me that, for many immigrants lately, it’s been arrested and stunted by programs intending to respect cultural diversity that discourage the transition to a new language by making it too easy to cling to the old.”
The inference being (to me at least) that neo does not think retention of the old to be a “good” thing, though this does seem to conflict with her enjoyment of the smells and the sound of the languages as you point out.
And to MHW, I hope I have not c&p’d too much, nor taken more than my share of the bandwidth to clarify what I said.
Racism is a master of disquise and New Zealand is probably home to parochial varieties of a leftist sort.
Actually, from what I’ve read, NZ is rather socially conservative.
Can’t find the blog site, but I heard from a New Zealand blogger that she and other women like her there still expect to be married off by 25. That’s about 1950s era for the US, in terms of cultural expectations. In 1950s, 7% said women should not be married by 21 years old.
Neo, I have some super prints of American life in 1880’s, reproduced in a book form to show how the America of that time saw herself. Your word portrait could join those views as a representative of the early 21c.
Thank you.
NZ is a odd little country. I have quite a number of relatives there who immigrated from Nova Scotia quite a while ago. They are, for the most part and so far as generalizations can take us, throughly middle class with all the self righteousness that this infers. They are naive, again for the most part, about the larger world and as insular as their fore bearers.
They have a high degree of conformism which expresses itself as a sort of reverse snobbery, known in both Oz and NZ as “the Tall Poppy Syndrome, taking someone down a notch or two is practically a national past time; along with the three R’s, Rugby, Racing and beerR. They all believe themselves to be can do, hard workers and rugged individualists. A perfectly lovely country peopled by perfectly lovely people, both best enjoyed in small doses.
Not to turn this into a essay on Kiwi culture, one can say that in the world they suffer from “small man syndrome”. Leaving after an extended visit can be as pleasurable as arriving.
Sally wrote:
“The point in all this, as others have noticed, is not merely some abstract loyalty to one’s country — even though that country has given you opportunities you wouldn’t have elsewhere or otherwise. It’s loyalty to an interrelated set of values — such as individual freedom and equality of status — that undergird those opportunities and that aren’t found everywhere.”
Equality ???
“A separate study by the Economic Policy Institute found that in 2005, with the pay of top corporate executives up sharply, and with the minimum wage falling further and further behind inflation, “an average chief executive officer was paid 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner.”
“That C.E.O., according to the study, “earns more before lunchtime on the very first day of work in the year than a minimum wage worker earns all year.”
“During the 1950’s and 60’s, the minimum wage was roughly 50 percent of the average wage of nonsupervisory workers. It has now fallen to 31 percent — less than a third — of that average.”
Read the report (and see the graph) at the website of the Economic Policy Institute:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060627
“It’s loyalty to an interrelated set of values — such as individual freedom and equality of status — that undergird those opportunities and that aren’t found everywhere.”
Equality ???
[economic arguments follow]
I don’t think that Sally was talking about economic equality: she was talking about equality under the law. And the fact that in America, there is no fixed concept of class. (Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t spent time in a society where class distinctions are made.)
One thing about reading, Adam, is that you have to include modifying phrases to understand the point. In this case, it looks like you stopped at the word “equality” and disregarded the phrase “of status”. But “equality of status” is a different thing from equality of income or wealth — it refers to the idea of equality before the law, and of the respect due to the individual.
I would never, by the way, claim that the US was a society of equality of wealth, since I think even aspiring to such a condition is a great moral and political evil (as we’ve seen from some of the totalitarian projects of the last century).
Somehow “equality under the law”, the only constitutional guarantee, has morphed into “equal opportunity” and lately into “equal outcomes”.
Hi –
Probligo:
“The thing that is truly sad is that those kids are growing up with a diminished sense of their culture, language and history.
THAT is what is sad.”
Uh, if they *really* wanted to have their culture, language and history, they wouldn’t have come here: they wanted instead to live the American dream.
I’m a third generation American who is also an expat: my grandparents on both side of the family came here from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and Scotland. I live in Germany, married to an Austrian woman and my kids have joint US-Austrian passports, but not German ones, despite having been born here.
You are lamenting a natural process of people adapting to their environment. If you’re looking for windmills, I guess that’s a fairly good one.
Multiculture doesn’t work: we are not all citizens of the world, but of where we were born or where we live (in my case definitely both). Mixing cultures works fine if the cultures are mixable: TexMex is a nice example. But try mixing cultures that are fundamentally opposed: it’s like being a Christian Fundamentalist living next door to a mosque or a buddhist living next door to a meat packing plant in the middle of August.
Somethings mix well: other things don’t. When you assimilate, you assimilate those things that work well and you breed out those things that don’t. Hence the incredible popularity of Mexican, Chinese, Indian food, but not the repressive behavior of those cultures to girls. You pick and take the important things. The bad things should be left behind.
But it sort of sounds like you dislike our culture so much that you’d really rather that people who come here should really keep theirs. But why did they bother to come then? To get a better paying job? That’s the smallest minority: most come because they can be ***free*** to do what they want. They can work their tushes off to afford the house and car(s) and vacation home, to send their kids to college and a better life than they ever expected to have, and to be left alone and be happy.
Try talking to some of those immigrants sometimes and ask them why they came. The reasons are usually banal and simple, and it’d be good if you were to listen to them instead of lamenting the inevitable.
Resistance is, after all, futile…
🙂
Sally wrote:
“But “equality of status” is a different thing from equality of income or wealth — it refers to the idea of equality before the law, and of the respect due to the individual.”
But the two are not as separable as you think. For example, given the lack of teeth of campaign finance laws, if you have more wealth, you can influence the outcome of elections much more, because you can spend more money (yes, I know you can’t do so directly through hard money, but you can indirectly, through PACs and soft money).
So the wealthy end up having the legislators more and more in their pockets. (“Those who pay the piper get to call the tune”, remember?) And so the legislation (the laws) that get written more and more favor the big guy over the little guy.
And so, yes, everyone continues to remain “equal before the law”, sure enough — but the laws themselves end up becoming more and more advantageous to the more wealthy rather than to the less wealthy.
You are treating “the law” as an abstraction seemingly impervious from economic and social pressures. But it is not so — the law is concretely expressed through specific legislation by elected legislators; the law is enforced by law enforcement agents appointed by elected governing bodies (such as city and state government); and upheld and interpreted by judges (either elected or nominated by elected entities).
So, in so far as economic (in)equality affects the electoral process, by making people with differential levels of wealth and contributing ability have different levels of ability to contribute to campaign financing, it significantly affects the writing, the enforcement and the interpretation of laws at every level.
So, though in an abstract, formal sense you still have “equality before the law”, in real terms high and increasing levels of economic inequality translates to the the law itself becoming unequal.
So, though in an abstract, formal sense you still have “equality before the law”, in real terms high and increasing levels of economic inequality translates to the the law itself becoming unequal.
It doesn’t work perfectly, but it works. Places where the idea of social justice holds sway, as opposed to equality before the law, seem to end up as tyrannies. Parts of Europe — Belgium, Sweden, maybe France and the Netherlands — seem to be slowly drifting in that direction with free speech falling by the wayside, discarded as a cumbersome baggage that hinders the utopian ideal and causes trouble. Once institutions are given the power to suppress speech they never stop extending their reach until everyone speaks as they should or keeps their mouth shut. So I prefer what we have. YMMV.
Brian Dixon–
If money ruled in American politics, we would be witnessing the end the of the second Forbes term, following the two term Perot administration. Raising money is a necessary condition for a candidate to play, but not a sufficient condition. One has to do the work and form coalitions with interest groups first.
probligo–
The difference between the two views here, I believe, is essentially the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. In Star Wars, the planets are very cosmopolitan, and all aliens mix in and interact freely in a one-on-one basis, like the United States.
In contrast, modern Star Trek franchises have a leftist philosophy and don’t treat sentient beings on an individual basis. Cultures are what is important in Star Trek, which is why they have the prime directive– if Saddam Hussein– ahem, I mean some alien race is slaughtering its own people, we have no right to intervene. Star Trek preaches ethnic diversity, which is just another term for ethnic balkanization.
chuck wrote:
“Once institutions are given the power to suppress speech they never stop extending their reach until everyone speaks as they should or keeps their mouth shut.”
By Jake Tapper
Sept. 27, 2001 | WASHINGTON —
On Wednesday, tensions between the White House and its media critics, real or imagined, threatened to rise even higher. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer took a slap at “Politically Incorrect” host Bill Maher, who called U.S. military strikes on faraway targets “cowardly.” Fleischer blasted Maher, claiming it was “a terrible thing to say,” and didn’t stop there, noting “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say…”
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/27/spin/print.html
“Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act permits the FBI to seek records from bookstores and libraries of books that a person has purchased or read, or of his or her activities on a library’s computer. This change puts people at risk for exercising their free speech rights to read, recommend, or discuss a book, to write an email, or to participate in a chat room, and thus could have the effect of chilling constitutionally protected speech.”
— Bill of Rights Defense Committee
http://www.bordc.org/threats/speech.php
The counter argument to Brian Dixon is a simple illustration of how the American system is a system of checks and balances. The rich people have more influence over laws than the poor, because the rich pay more taxes and contribute more to campaigns. The more you attempt to prevent the rich from having influence, like using the government to tax them, the more the government is beholden to the rich (via the money) and the more the rich are motivated in controlling government (more tax loopholes).
Economic inequality is defined as the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. But in America, everyone gets richer, they just don’t end up in the same tax bracket.
If you truly wanted economic equality, you’d support a flat tax, which removes the motivation of the rich to interfere with the laws (since they can’t get any richer with a flat tax through legislation). In the end, you’ll have rich people spending millions of their own money on their own campaigns, rather than a bunch of rich people trying to buy politicians so they can make tax loopholes like Ted Kennedy did for his oil assets.
Either Dixon favors a flat tax or he doesn’t. One way or the other, this affects the context of his positions on economic inequality and the law.
Btw, Brian, you’re not a mouth piece for the quotes of people you use. Why don’t you like, for example, come up with your own arguments in your own words instead of copying and pasting whatever you think proves your (translucent) point?
Let me just elaborate on what I mean with my last sentence to Brian.
If it is true that the Patriot Act and the Campaign FInance Reform Act is limiting free speech, then people like chuck would be against them same as the point they made in Brian’s quote of chuck.
However, that is a different debate, and you can’t bring irrelevant evidence to trial here. Chuck’s point about Brian’s freedom of speech limiting positions or other people’s freedom of speech limiting positiosn that are related to Brian’s, is not countered by quotes of the Patriot Act or any other American policy. There’s two separate logic pathways operating here.
Brian should stop using tu quoque, Brian is not right just because he believes there are other people just as wrong as him.
There really is no comparison between the limitations of free speech in such places as Holland, when Hirsi Ali was threatened with death and mutilation by Muslims, to Ari I wanna write a book Fleitcher telling people they need to be “careful”. These threats to Hirsi Ali were real, Van Gogue died from a threat carried out. Who has died because Bush was pissed off? Osama is still alive. Saddam is still alive. Chirac is still alive. Joe Wilson alive.
What kind of a maroon pigmented person with no common sense believes Ari Fleitcher and the Patriot Act is more or equal to the threat of intimidation in Europe that prevents free speech?
Objection, the question has no relevance to the guilt or innocent of my guilt, sir.
This change puts people at risk for exercising their free speech rights to read
You wanna know what really limits free speech? Being dead, that’s what. It’s kind of hard to speak up after you’re dead.
Ymar wrote:
“The rich people have more influence over laws than the poor, because the rich pay more taxes and contribute more to campaigns. The more you attempt to prevent the rich from having influence, like using the government to tax them, the more the government is beholden to the rich (via the money).”
Contributing to campaigns gives influence over laws (via influence over legislators, because legislators owed their victory to the campaign financiers). What is the mechanism of this influence? If a legislator or party failed to allow its benefactors the asked-for influence, the benefactor will stop (or threaten to stop) contributing to him/it it and take its support to another candidate. So there’s a big incentive for the legislator/party to legislate in favor of the contributor.
However, paying more taxes does not by itself give influence over laws, because the above mechanism does not hold. If the government refuses to allow those taxpayers who pay more taxes (i.e. the wealthy) the influence they expect to have, what can the wealthy do? It’s not like they can stop paying taxes, or threaten to stop paying taxes. If they do, they’ll be in jail.
So, the undue influence over laws that the wealthy enjoy comes entirely from campaign financing, and not from the fact that they pay more taxes.
Again, there’s a big incentive for legislators to not get voted out because they were bought by special interests.
The Founding Fathers already knew about all this, it’s human nature. That’s why they set up the checks and balances in the first place. It is one of the reasons the President has the pardon and the veto, but it is not the system’s fault or America’s fault, that Bush won’t use them.
You’re not addressing the logic, Brian. The logic is that rich folks want influence becaus rich folks wanna keep their moola, and the only way to do that is to buy off legislators. Make the tax code something the rich can’t engineer, and the rich will spend most of their money to get themselves into power, rather than buying a bunch of politicians. There is no limit to the amount of money a person can spend on his campaign, if it is his money. There is a reason for that. We want rich people to waste all their money on campaigns, for themselves, and the only way to get them to do that, is to make sure that they have as few motivations as it is humanely possible to rig the system.
So in the end, nothing you’ve said, Brian, counters the logic of human nature and human behavior.
Rich people use their money to buy influence because that influence allows them to make more money. By fixing the tax code so that it is transparent, this allows the rich to keep their own money without cheating.
Human nature dictates that people with money are not going to spend that money on things that don’t return more money to them. The rich don’t get poorer, unless they are retarded that is.
When the top 10% pays for like 80% of government taxes, the rich are basically bankrolling the payroll of the government. If you don’t believe that this gives them undue influence, then you’d have to reengineer human nature.
Flat tax reduces the need for the rich to spend money rigging the system, cause it produces no dividends. And the flat tax makes the government beholden to the people, not just at the polls, but also at the pocket book.
Here’s another point. Why do big companies and special interests donate to parties and candidates? Because they want favorable legislation, in the form of tax breaks and so on.
The power plants wants favorable tax cuts and deregulation, cause it allows them to make more money, and the more money they make the more they can expand their business.
By making government more transparent and the tax code more efficient, much of the motivation for special interests do longer apply.
The big companies that donate to Democrats, they want more regulation, since it cuts out the small business competitors by raising taxes and the cost of business. A 50% jump in fixed costs can bankrupt a small business, getting rid of competition for the corporations, since the corporations have the money to stay in business with a 50% increase in fixed costs.
Prevent regulation, prevent tax hikes, and prevent government surcharges on business costs, and what you get is a human nature psychological solution that works.
You haven’t provided any solutions, Brian, but I don’t believe those solutions are anywhere near as workable as mine.
Brian,
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer took a slap at “Politically Incorrect” host Bill Maher, who called U.S. military strikes on faraway targets “cowardly.” Fleischer blasted Maher, claiming it was “a terrible thing to say,” and didn’t stop there, noting “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say…”
Yeah, so what. You seem to have confused criticism with suppression of free speech. The President and his representitives are perfectly free to criticize the press, why shouldn’t they be? Because they are Republican? As one of the folks who helped elect them I would hope they continue to criticize the press. This tendency to cry repression when criticized is one of the unlovely traits of the left. I think it shows that they are not ready to debate, but rather wish to suppress free speech, limiting it to fulsome praise of their own views. That would certainly be consistent with past history.
John Opie writes:
Hence the incredible popularity of Mexican, Chinese, Indian food, but not the repressive behavior of those cultures to girls.
It’s not quite so simple, and you can’t make such blanket assertions. Yes, women are mistreated in many ways in India, but consider also the following:
“A central issue in the United States has been American women’s continuing under-representation in mathematics, science and engineering, hereafter referred to as MSE (cf. NSF 1987, Oakes 1990). Despite striking increases in female MSE participation, women still constitute only 16 percent of employed U.S. scientists and engineers and only 4% of all
engineers [NSF 1992:4].
“Recent
Indian educational data showing surprisingly and increasingly high rates of female participation
in MSE, especially in the “pure” sciences, including physics, chemistry and mathematics, and
especially relative to the proportion of women actually attending college. These figures show
that Indian college women are no more under-represented among college engineering science
students than are their American female sisters (Mukhopadhyay, forthcoming).”
Source: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF GENDERED SCIENCE:
AN INDIAN CASE STUDY by
Dr. Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Professor of Anthropology,
California State University
http://www.wigsat.org/gasat/papers1/27.txt
Vivek, women don’t like engineering or science. Did you ever take an ASVAB? I scored 77% above my male counterparts, in coding, while with women I scored only 44% amongst women test takers.
Women and men’s minds are built differently, they choose to focus on different specialities. It has “nothing” to do with American culture, given that women now no longer are limited at stay at home jobs.
When you start bringing in the chemical and bio-chemical differences between women and men brains as a way of discussing American cultural standards for treating women compared to others, sure it’ll get “un-simple”.
Brian: But the two [formal and substantive equality] are not as separable as you think.
Well, I didn’t say how separable they are, I simply said that they’re different concepts. Formal or status equality is an ideal that, like any ideal, is always compromised to some extent in practice. But, first, there are other things than inequality of wealth that compromise it. And second, some proposed fixes may be worse than the compromise. I take it as obvious that attempting to force everyone to be equal in wealth would be worse, for example. Less obvious, but no less concerning, are various attempts at “campaign finance reform” that end up stifling legitimate freedom of speech while creating new opportunities for corruption. It’s not that we can’t find ways to do better vis-a-vis equality of status — it’s just that we should be careful how we do it, and in particular, careful to distinguish it from the false ideal, the false idol in a real sense, of equality of substance.
Chuck, I agree largely with what you say, but I’d always want to put phrases like “social justice” and “utopian ideal” in scare quotes just to indicate the irony of such usages in this context.
Ymar wrote:
“Who has died because Bush was pissed off? Osama is still alive. Saddam is still alive. Chirac is still alive. Joe Wilson alive.”
By Peter Ford
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD – Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country.
[..]
Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.
[..]
US and British military officials insisted throughout the war that their forces did all they could to avoid civilian casualties. But it has become clear since the fighting ended that bombs did go astray, that targets were chosen in error, and that as US troops pushed rapidly north toward the capital they killed thousands of civilians from the air and from the ground.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p01s02-woiq.html
I knew never Bush was so dumb. Adam is trying to tell me he(bush) had the ruthlessness to order the military to blow up all those civilians, but then decided to leave dangerous thorns and agent provocateurs like Joe Wilson alive.
Any sensible assassin would look at this and be completely stunned by the utter inanity of the assassination problem.
Adam, you’re not an assassin, you don’t think like an assassin, and Christian Science Monitor sure as heck don’t understand the methods of extermination and elimination.
Again, people like Adam are not mouth pieces for mass media articles, but they sure put a lot of effort into acting as if they were.
Ymir,
The Christian Science Monitor is merely reporting what groups such as Human Rights Watch have found. For example:
“Dr. Brigety and his colleagues in Baghdad say they are especially concerned by the wide use of cluster bombs during the war in Iraq.
“They say they have found evidence of “massive use of cluster bombs in densely populated areas,” according to Human Rights Watch researcher Marc Galasco, contradicting coalition claims that such munitions were used only in deserted areas.
“Dispersing thousands of bomblets that shoot out shards of shrapnel over an area the size of a football field, such weapons become indiscriminate and thus illegal under the laws of war, if used in civilian neighborhoods, Human Rights Watch has argued during past conflicts.”
Source:
Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/05…01s02- woiq.html
Vivek: “A central issue in the United States has been American women’s continuing under-representation in mathematics, science and engineering, hereafter referred to as MSE (cf. NSF 1987, Oakes 1990). Despite striking increases in female MSE participation, women still constitute only 16 percent of employed U.S. scientists and engineers and only 4% of all
engineers [NSF 1992:4].
The fact that there are fewer women in the hard sciences in the US is an obscene comparison to a state & a culture not only allowing, but legalizing, girls forced into arranged marriages at age 9, female rape victims killed to protect the “honor” of their families, female genital mutilation, etc.
Western women have choices in their lives that are not enjoyed by women in Islam dominated countries & cultures. To complain that my life is ruined or somehow stunted because I was discouraged from entering a math or science field is beyond ridiculous.
Becky,
You will notice that I wrote the following in my message (emphasis added):
“Yes, women are mistreated in many ways in India, but consider also the following”
In short, I never claimed that women aren’t mistreated in India, in fact quite the contrary.
You are also factually wrong when you say that “a culture not only allowing, but legalizing, girls forced into arranged marriages at age 9″. Legislation in India made underage marriage illegal in India a long time ago. The laws are quite enlightened in India, as a matter of fact. (It’s a different matter that they are often difficult to enforce on account of lack of resources), but your claim that “marriages at age 9” are “legalized” in contemporary India is blatantly wrong. Such marriages do happen today, mostly in remote rural areas, but they are illegal.
“Indian law sets 18 as the minimum age for a woman to marry and 21 for a man. When India’s Parliament adopted the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1978, legislators hoped that the statute would curb child marriages and the social ills they perpetuate.”
— John F. Burns, reporting in the New York Times, May 11, 1998.
I don’t think people are all that worried about India or Morrowwind gods like Vivec. India is America’s friend.
When it’s the whole world, the classical example of misogynistic practice is tribal politics in the Mid East.
So Betty was more likely to be refering to mid east than India.
viagra for kids viagra for kids viagra for kids // beverly johnson diet pills beverly johnson diet pills beverly johnson diet pills
Pingback:the money store
Pingback:Taryn
Pingback:Brandon
Pingback:Lolita Sex Videos