How is this not just pure, racist nationalism? Where you live is not a family. If you are born unlucky geographically it seems like you should absolutely have the right to improve your lot.
> If you are born unlucky geographically it seems like you should absolutely have the right to improve your lot.
You absolutely have the right to improve your lot, if by lot you mean the portion of land you were born in. I would even go as far as to say you have the duty to care for it. However, you don't have the right to take other peoples lot, their identity and society from them just because you were born unlucky and they were in your opinion born unfairly lucky. What you are advocating in practice is the destruction of all smaller ethnic groups, local traditions and cultural diversity of the world by overriding everything with unstable and internally conflicting pseudo-culture (or maybe a bit more politely worded pop-culture) and identity policies promoted by the wokeist Americans. This modern, woke American imperialism hiding behind the cover of liberty and personal freedoms is in practice almost as evil and destructive as the reactionary imperialism of Russia.
What can I say, man? History is absolutely chock full of examples that show that other identity groups can represent existential threats, including very recent ones: Chinese genocide of Uyhgurs, Burmese genocide of Rohinya, Russian agression in Ukraine.
Let me pick at specifically Russia/Ukraine. A short time ago, these countries economic ties were vast. There were many Ukrainians whose personal wealth stemmed from e.g. the country's ties to Russian petrochemical industry.
Others, seeing that, said "You are accruing personal wealth by strengthening a foreign power's hold on our nation." To which the response was occasionally "Are you racist? Are you nationalist?" We see now how this turned out.
The dirty secret is that history vindicates all forms of identity group tribalism, in principal. That includes racism. There is no shortage in history of examples like the above, nor of examples of destroyed nations.
If anything, I feel the problem is that contemporary countries do not represent the nations the purport to.
I would say you only have (limited) influence over the nation you are born into... so, you should somewhat naturally favor that nation's well-being over others. You can only influence the acts/actions of other nations as strings attached to trade/treaty. And can only assume those that you trade with will be making the same emphasis, which is their own nation's well-being.
Why is family any different, but identity viewed through a evolutionary/genetic rather than geographic lens? Both are pure chance that you have no control over.
“Racism” is where southern white people don’t like southern black people despite being from the same place and sharing highly overlapping culture, religion, and values.
When you’re talking about different groups of people from different cultures that’s not “racism.” My parents, who grew up in Bangladesh, an extremely hierarchical and traditional society, couldn’t be more different from my wife’s parents, who are descendent from frontier pioneers. Like they can get along as individuals but neither would want to live in a society built by the other. And that’s exactly what happens when you introduce large scale immigration into a democracy.
No, racially-motivated prejudice in either direction between your parents and your wife's parents is, in fact, also racism, despite the fact that neither group was born in the south or has "overlapping culture". Xenophobia is a form of racism; globally, it's probably the most common form.
Incorrect. It’s totally fine to not get along with other people—and certainly to not want to share a democratic polity with them—based on cultural differences. There’s no reason why people who escaped west to get away from elites should we to to share a polity with foreign elites who think the “common people” need to be carefully managed. Conversely, there’s no reason why folks who believe in rigid social hierarchy and norm enforcement should want to live around people who are pathologically individualistic.
That’s entirely unrelated to “racism” or “xenophobia,” which is stereotyping or prejudice based on superficial rather than substantive differences.
No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism. Much of your argument here is probably best directed to Publius, who disagrees with you directly about, well, all of this.
There's a benign version of the argument you're making here, the one that protects cultural and religious tolerance while establishing some set of core values (pluralism, the rule of law, representative government, separation of church and state) set above all other concerns. But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.
> No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism.
It’s not “racism” at all because it has nothing to do with “race,” which is a superficial construct. It’s about substantive differences in people’s worldview, beliefs, values, etc., which are relevant to living with people in communities and sharing a government with people.
> But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.
Whether the founders envisioned it or not has nothing to do with whether it’s “racism.” There is no moral obligation to allow people with different values into your community and allow them to vote on the government that you live in. To the contrary, that notion violates the human right of self determination.
Besides that, the founders were not multiculturalists. America at the time was a collection of mostly monocultural communities. Massachusetts and several other states still had an established church. The founders created a framework where those disparate groups could cooperate in a limited fashion through a federal government of limited and enumerated powers.
That ship, however, said long ago. If a federal Department of Education exists and says what kids learn in schools and the federal government says that 99.9% Protestant communities in Iowa can’t have prayer in schools you can’t invoke what the framers thought about how pluralism should work.
Madison, in considering whether the legislature should be limited to native-born citizens, had this to say:
"[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith."
There may be countries in the world that don't have a moral obligation to allow people from different cultures and religions (I'm avoiding "values" here, since it's a squiggly concept). But we're not one of them.
The moral obligation to allow equal participation of different groups who are already here follows from the concept of democracy. But that does not imply anything about how people within a country should view prospective immigrants. That the founders embraced certain principles because they were dealing with a union that already included disparate groups. They never confronted, much less addressed, the prospect of immigration changing the culture of already established communities.
The moral question here is more fundamental than your over-generalization of the founders’ intent. Human beings have a right to self determination, and they have the freedom of association. You don’t lose that right just because you were born in America.
This isn't an over-generalization of the founders intent. It is the founders directly, clearly stated intent. I'm doing literally no extrapolation at all: you can just crack open Federalist 52 or whatever and read away.
Show me where it says there is a moral obligation to accept immigrants who will move into your community and change its culture? You’re reading all that into a single sentence:
“A representative of the United States must be of the age of twenty-five years; must have been seven years a citizen of the United States; must, at the time of his election, be an inhabitant of the State he is to represent; and, during the time of his service, must be in no office under the United States. Under these reasonable limitations, the door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.”
The sentence is saying that elected office should be broadly available to all citizens, which is a point nobody is disputing.
> The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
> I've got the founders on my side of this argument.
The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population." [3]? Or Benjamin Franklin, writing "the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small [..] I could wish their Numbers were increased [..] But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind." [4]?
As an American you were probably exposed to much propaganda about how the US is a "nation founded on an idea", or similar nonsense. But as a foreign observer, let me assure you nothing could be further from the truth. Did you never ask yourself, if the founders were such racial egalitarians, how is it that, aside from the descendants of Black slaves (10%), the US was nearly entirely white (87.5%) until 1950? That leaves just 2.5% for immigration from the entire rest of the world.
I honestly don't care what foreigners think about our fidelity to the ideas of the founders; I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders.
I've sourced my claims, so could you likewise show me this clearly stated goal? You mention Federalist 52 in your other comment, but wikipedia's summary says nothing about racial egalitarianism:
I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care about the premise of your question, so there's not much for us to productively discuss here. I've been careful about the concepts I'm talking about ("culture" and "religion", both being Rayiner-provided examples of legitimate forms of discrimination). I'm not interested in doing comparative studies on this between different countries; that discussion will be a total mess.
Again, I don't think you and I are having the same conversation Rayiner and I are, and I don't think it's worth the effort for us to sync up at this point.
> Incorrect. It’s totally fine to not get along with other people—and certainly to not want to share a democratic polity with them—based on cultural differences.
I like how Republicans act as master and judge and issue the judgement "incorrect" and go on to adopt a blatantly racist stance under the currently fashionable republican sound bite of "unacceptable cultural differences", while immediately switching to the directly opposite sound bite "diversity of ideas" without flinching. Republicans have a reputation for being racist for very good reasons.
The actual conservative position, at least my interpretation of it, is something like, the whole point of civilization and being alive is to reach the height of human potential, build great things and make new discoveries. Cultural homogeneity and intellectual diversity are two sides of that coin. When everyone has the same basic values and assumptions in a high-trust society, it frees everyone to have the tolerance of eccentricity and the tolerance of the scariness of exploring new positions that you need in order to do anything great.
Liberals reading into this and seeing racism is itself an example of this phenomenon. They hear something like "diversity of ideas" and instantly a big red moral stop sign shows up in their head. It shows how when everyone has fundamentally different values, and everyone's different sets of moral landmines are overlaid on the same map, it becomes basically impossible to walk through the space of ideas without sooner or later stepping on one.
Who said anything about republicans? I’m an immigrant from a country that exists because it split off from another country due to cultural differences (even though nearly everyone in the story was a “brown” Muslim). It would be hypocritical as hell for me to complain that Trump voters in Wisconsin feel the same way.
Nearly all the people immigrating to the US come from countries that believe the same thing as republicans: one cultural group has no moral obligation to invite another cultural group over the border to share democratic governance of their country with them. Indians believe that, Chinese people believe that. Japanese people, Koreans, everyone in the Middle East. Mexicans would flip out if mass immigration from Guatemala was flipping elections in their country.
Ironically, the liberal American view of this reduces to the assertion that a handful of mostly European descended people in the developed world are correct about the nature of nationhood while everyone else is wrong.
> I’m an immigrant from a country that exists because it split off from another country due to cultural differences
Dude, stop bringing up Bangladesh as context for anything and everything. What you are calling "cultural differences" in 1971, was simply called genocide because of racism by everyone else.
But you are going for the racism and genocide is A-ok, as it's just an expression of "cultural differences". You can continue with your word play in your replies again.
I don't even think liberal Americans believe that. People who advocate for unrelenting immigration would probably be very upset if Russians were coming across the border (or some European, culturally conservative Christian-esque group) by the millions. I would argue those liberals are lying when they talk about what nationhood is. They believe in it, just not the one they live in.
Every now and then you can see glimpses of that. After Muslims went for George W. Bush in 2000, The New Republic of all places wrote an article accusing Grover Norquist of having ties to radical Islam because his wife is Arab: https://newrepublic.com/article/83799/norquist-radical-islam...
If Hispanics and Muslims were coming here and voting their social values instead of their economic ones you can bet the narrative would be different.
