Tag Archives: melting pot

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility

IMAGINING RESCUE

Leave a comment

WILLING TO BE RESCUED?

Prudence has noted in the past that 2020 seemed to be the year that the globalist, anti-American far left determined that it could overthrow the American system.  The manufactured “pandemic” surrounding COVID-19 and resulting destruction of civil liberties, social structure and logic following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, seemed to be making the long-planned destruction of America possible.  The primary tool to make such a profound change in the direction of history, is managed hatred.

The largest hatreds over the millennia are spiritual, if not identifiably religious.  This is sad, in many ways, but also understandable given the nature of non-compromise at the heart of most organized religions.  The power lies in belief.  Shared belief is the strongest human force.  Rare are they who can listen to alternative beliefs and subsequently change their own.  Beliefs direct the actions of individuals, even to the point of destroying those with opposing beliefs.  When added to “mob” coherence, shared beliefs account for more deaths than any other social circumstance.

To a great degree, religions are – or began as – tribal belief systems, and in the earliest periods they had few alternative ideas to resist.  This fact makes the interesting similarities among early origin stories and beliefs about gods and an afterlife, even more remarkable.  However, fairly small differences between belief systems can spark enormous conflict, like that between Protestants and Catholics or between Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.  The religious differences translate readily into political and military differences, but at their core, they tend to be conflicts between which humans are in charge of the “religions,” not the deep principles underlying the beliefs.

Sadly, some belief systems are based in hatred, such that no form of compromise will permit even suspicious co-existence: the premise of one system being the elimination of the other system.  If success appears to find the “destroyer” system, that system prepares to take on the next system it opposes.  We can see this pattern with Marxism/Communism.  Its basic opposition to private property is enabled by its fundamental opposition to religion of any form.  However, one of the most hateful systems appears to be Islam, the premise of which is that the entire world must become Muslim; there is no workable form of co-respect or co-existence with other religions.  We have become a world governed by competing hatreds.

In a Prudent view, that is not the way any God of humanity would have wanted mankind to develop.

Regardless of the scale of the groups toward whom hate is directed, the act of hating is still a very personal one.  Pressures to convince large groups to direct their hatred at certain targets – politically in purpose and effect – can be successful only if lots of individuals are personally convinced of the “legitimacy” of that hatred.  It’s not the same as “following orders” issued by authoritative leaders.  And it’s not the same as “hating” those who are simply different from oneself – different sounding, looking, acting – which is closer to fear rather than actual hate.  It is fairly easy to learn to stop fearing others, to gain understanding of those differences, to eventually become neutral toward the different and, perhaps, friendly.  Soon, we’re marrying one another and blending our differences in beautiful children who will be less fearful than we used to be.

But to become hateful of particular others is a commitment with oneself.  It’s hard to casually hate, but relatively easier if one can be convinced to do so, whereupon he or she becomes more comfortable in hatred if he or she convinces him- or her-self that hatred is part of a belief system to which he or she is committed.  Soon, the haters are not being led to it, but are pushing for increased purity of hatred, often punishing or rejecting those leaders who seek compromise.  Hatred is an awful way to guide or lead people.  But, it’s cheap and effective.

America was once described as a melting pot.  Ostensibly, people from all places could “become” Americans.  Without offering multiple forms of welfare and help – including taxpayer-financed attorneys – in multiple languages and multi-lingual public education, people came only because freedom was offered.  Everyone learned English and agreed to live within our legal system, one of the most honest… not perfect, but fairly evenly applied under the Constitution.  “Melting pot” was not the most accurate description: “salad bowl” is probably better.  America invited the best of the world to join us.  Despite our mistakes, particularly with slavery, we learned to respect everyone who was willing to make and pay his or her own way.  Things have changed.  American “representation” has, in the past 30 years or so, become the politics of competing hatreds.  From the Clintonian “politics of personal destruction,” we have devolved to the “politics of social and familial disintegration.”

There is a certain ease of slipping into hatred, for most humans, not all.  Hating some one else or millions of someones else, requires justification.  If a person can find justification for hatred, no matter how flimsy, additional scraps of justification will stick to that hate like double-sided carpet-tape, bonding it just as tightly to one’s beliefs – perhaps to one’s soul.  Add in the power of group (mob) psychology and soon a novice hater is leading the charge.  Somewhere or somewhen along the spectrum from distrust to embedded hatred, every individual must decide to continue in that direction or to take another.  Every person, regardless of justifications, is responsible for his or her actions – including hatred.

Every person can choose from evil, which hatred certainly is, whether political or something else.  Every one of us can make that choice.  In spite of decades of public indoctrination, our ability to choose to be responsible still exists.  We are Americans, still able to lead, including ourselves.

Culture, Economics, Education, Immigration, Race, Representation

GHETTO, LIVING

Leave a comment

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”  – Ronald Reagan.


    Into his simple statement, Ronald Reagan distilled the greatest threat and the greatest strength of America: the ideas of it.  We could forget them.  We could become so enamored of the false idols of socialism that we finally fail completely to pass along the meaning and significance of America.  The Prudent observer already recognizes that a large fraction of U. S. citizens are far down that path.

What makes this possible?  Obviously, education is worth examining; so is immigration; so, too, is ghetto-ization.  Let’s look at the last.  Ghettos form somewhat naturally, primarily for ethnic reasons, which is to say, cultural reasons.  They form economically, as well, but where the only shared “norm” is poverty… or substantial wealth.

Religious ghettos are well recorded and well-storied in history.  Most were either harmless or threatening to a power-structure.  Some were left in peace, most eventually destroyed for their “other-ness,” and the implied threat that represented.

Most ghettos engender resentment, or cohere because of it.  Shared resentment is a political tinderbox, to which outside intrusion, however legitimate, can provide the explosive spark.  In and of itself, ghetto-ization is deconstructive of the greater society, corrosive and segregationist.  There is no good reason to encourage the growth or even the existence of ghettos – of any sort, at least not in a democratic, free-enterprise republic.

In its perpetual confusion, religious sectarianism both creates and attempts to integrate, ghettos.  Part of Judeo-Christian teaching is to “…come apart and be a separate and chosen people.”  It is not dissimilar to many other faiths.  The direction seeks purity of body, mind and soul.  When the rest of the “world” is deemed impure and immoral, “sickly” in a sense, quarantine appears wise, and temporarily it is.  Enlightened sects both separate themselves and purposely integrate themselves, hoping to attract some – if not all – of the impure and immoral to adopt their ways of belief and of life.

Mere enlightenment can easily evolve into messianism, causing religious groups to send missionaries out to dissimilar, and therefore, “heathen” lands who are living in sin for no other reason than ignorance of the one, true path.

But ghettos, religious, ethnic, economic, tend to inhibit understanding – understanding which is essential to cultural/social survival based on shared mores and standards, habits and language.  Those “inside” tend to mostly talk to one another, share distrusts of outsiders with one another, hear only opinions from one another and, eventually, for some, reinforce one another’s hatreds for outsiders.

Hatred is unhealthy, especially so for relatively “open” societies, where there is freedom of movement, speech and expression… and where there are politicians.  Hatred spawns a rotten sort of political power… a sort that is happy to ply ghetto hatreds with pandering postulates, even to the point of social revolution.  That is, every form of “establishment” power is besmirched and derogated until the cravings of those seeking votes are but a shade away from the hatreds of the marginalized.

It would seem unwise to spur the creations of more ghettos, and unwise to feed the ones that exist such that they need not integrate and come to better understandings.

In effect, the United States has permitted, encouraged and protected the formation of new ghettos, both through civil tolerance of the rights of homeless people to remain drugged while living animally on appropriated public lands, and by importing enclaves of aliens whose cultures and belief structures are not only unlike our own, but antithetical to our own.  The great “melting pot” of quickly assimilating immigrants is a quaint notion.  Immigrants today come, in part, to show Americans how inferior our mores are to their “superior” ones, from which they have fled to our shores.  This is unhealthy.

At the same time our social welfare industry strengthens and feeds the original, “black” ghettos, feeding their politically powerful support to those in government who feed the welfare industry.  More recent ghettos based on Central and South American attitudes and language(s) actually compete for the support from the welfare industry that was largely delivered to blacks 50 years ago.  The United States literally fights to grow those ghettos in contravention of our own laws.  This is doubly unhealthy since it cements a disregard for law amongst our fastest growing minorities, many of whom reside here illegally.  Very unhealthy.

Very few within the ghettos described share understandings of our Constitution or of our common law and standards.  For these growing sub-cultures, there is no need to forget our heritage: they come or are born without it and there is no requirement to adopt it in order to enjoy our land and protections, legally and honestly or not.

For the rest of us, upon whom the survival of the ideas of America rests, many of our youth are ignorant of, have forgotten or have been instructed away from those ideas.  One generation is all it will take to lose everything.

Governance, Immigration, Responsibility, Trump

(Word)holes, Redux

3 Comments

Many people worthy of trust and respect are seriously upset about the president’s crudeness.  He reportedly asked why “we” should allow people from various so-called “shithole” countries to immigrate to the United States?  For all of its crudeness, offensiveness and vulgarity, it is a very good question – one we should not be afraid to ask.

Well, the circumstance of the comment and the comment itself are both fairly straightforward, even simple.  But the inherent permutations and nuances are profound, sad, and instructive. This requires some parsing and mapping of the “splatter” that has emanated from the splat of a single word into the miasma of politics, hate, government, and the “American Dream… not to mention social media and hate.  Didn’t I already mention “hate?”  We shouldn’t overlook hate as a driver in modern… umm, modern ahhh, well… modern everything: media, news, broadcasting, ‘friend’ships, dialogue, religion, holidays, commerce, advertising, movies, philosophy and casual rumination.  Facebook, too.  Sad.

So, first observation is that every person who has talked about, proclaimed about or even thought about the description of many countries as “shitholes,” could in a few minutes, list a dozen or two dozen countries that fit the description!  Let’s change the term to “backward countries” and each could list three dozen.  What does it mean to make the identification?

It means, generally, that those countries have truly crappy politics.  Our politics are pretty crappy, too, granted, but, as Churchill observed, democracy is the worst form of government ever tried… except for all the others.  Corollary to that gem is this: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Even those who could construct a list of “backward” countries probably cannot describe what is “wrong” with their politics – the system of leaders, laws and lies that govern their populations.  Typically, under the blanket of crappy politics, the economics of these countries are also pretty crappy… sorry, “backward.”  The result is extreme stratification, poor education, low skill levels, limited industrialization and little imagination.  Simultaneously, the BELIEFS of their citizens are likely to be very different from those of the majority of ours.

Changing beliefs is the primal tool for the weakening and subjugation of peoples.

One might reply that “America is the melting pot” and go on to predict that “we” will “make” those unfortunate immigrants “better” and therefore more like ourselves.  Seems like hubris.  This attitude sounds magnanimous and sympathetic but it was never true.  If there is an American myth, that’s it.  We have functioned fairly well as a “salad bowl,” but never as a melting pot.  Americans of every origin and kind learned to live and thrive together, yet they were never forced to change who they were, beyond learning and following our constitution and laws.  But there were very distinct differences about when America “worked” and how things are, now, when so many consider our country and institutions to be “broken.”  The key is a grand misunderstanding of what is “The American Dream.”

The real and enduring “American Dream” can be stated only thus: That all kinds of people can come together in FREEDOM, respective of one another, respective of law and reason, free to follow God as each sees fit, and responsible to themselves and others for the consequences of their actions.  This sentence summarizes the U. S. Constitution’s connection to individuals.  Not connection to groups, cliques, whether religious, emotional or political, but to individuals, much the way that Jesus described individual responsibility to the laws of God.  “America” represents the boundless opportunity offered to every individual to perfect him or her self: the pursuit of happiness.  And no less, or more.

This is not how many view the “American Dream” or “America,” itself, today.  Socialist thought perceives control of individuals as the high point of governance, the exact opposite of the teachings of Christ or of the values and purpose behind the founding of the United States.  To accomplish complete control – and different kinds of socialists have tried many ways to do so – it is essential to place people into groups, or “identities” for whom certain laws will apply, whether to control that group or apply to another group or to all others(!) in order to control THEM.  There is no clearer example than brown-skinned people as an over-group, and African-Americans, as the driving sub-group, and descendants of slaves, the most exalted of the “drivers.”  Barring descent from slaves, having marched in Selma or having stood near Martin Luther King, Jr., suffices.

As with the growth of federal welfare programs, the epithet of “racist” has become almost standard within the belief structure of many black or brown-skinned residents of the U. S.  The charge of “racist” works to control the “other group” of essentially all “Whites,” including modifying their language and actions.  This has yielded political power to the modern kind of socialists: American liberals.  This, in part, explains the immediate descent to charges of racism emanating from one participant of the immigration meeting during which the president spoke so crudely.  But, it doesn’t make it true.

Welfare, itself, is a gigantic difference, since the 1960’s, from when earlier waves of immigrants reached our shores.  Those from Ireland, for example, came to take care of themselves and their families, as did Italians, Poles, Portugese, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Germans, Russians, Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians and many others.  Did they come perfectly?  No.  We didn’t send ships or planes to bring them here more quickly, either.  They were strong and self-selected to endure the sacrifice of leaving everything behind to start anew.  This is no longer so.

Immigrants in recent decades have been encouraged and assisted for purposes of “diversity,” the opposite of e pluribus unum.  Immigrants , today, receive fundamental – and generously comforting – public support, benefits, even cash, yet are not required to meet ANY tests applied to earlier generations.  They need not learn English, they need not become citizens (refugees, asylees) they need not assimilate.  Indeed, they need not even follow laws, often being released for offenses that citizens pay dearly for committing.  One might observe that their beliefs are not those of the “American Dream,” but of taking advantage of our official guilts and sympathies… or of selling drugs, or worse.

We are stretching our capacities to accommodate immigrants, including illegal entrants, even to the point of breaking our own laws, local and federal, to make them comfortable.  Yes, we are an “immigrant” nation, by past definition – most assuredly not by the current one.  I am glad someone with authority and sensibility is asking, “Why should we welcome immigrants from the (backward) countries of the world?”  What we have been doing of late is certainly not in the national interest, which is the primary business of a president, one hopes, although it may fulfill the interests of political partisans and of those who wish America to not exist as we know it.  Ask that question again, Mr. President, louder.

A second observation instructs that the president cannot, ever, trust in the confidence or even honesty of anyone from Congress or the “press” and damned few from the executive branch.  Trump failed to take note of the many lessons of the past year and more, when he posed the question everyone in the room, except Mr. Durbin possibly, a mendacious Democrat of proven, documented unreliability, was thinking and should be thinking: Why should we welcome immigrants who are unlikely to contribute to our economy or standards of living, and whose beliefs are antithetical to the fundaments of the U. S. Constitution or of the “American Dream.”

The ridiculous process of “hating” the president (and others) for so many things of which most of us are also guilty, and so readily accusing him of racism, transphobia, Islamophobia or a dozen other awful constructs, is corrosive and intensely destructive of our “unum” for which millions have bled and died, sacrificed and struggled.  If we are seeking perfection in or from our elected leaders we are fools.  They need, like John Kennedy, only to be pure enough to set a course that is pro-American.  The conversations never disclosed, that the Kennedys had then, or that brother Ted ever had, or by ANY other president, would curl our earlobes.  The profanity and privately voiced prejudices of EVERY president, have been, until recently, kept out of the news because their disclosure would have been so destructively irresponsible.  What we didn’t know didn’t hurt us; had we known all of it we’d have been damaged and history made far different.

News outlets of every kind hope to make history by ripping away confidentiality, no matter the damage.  Their hatreds justify the damage… for shame.  Do we think – do I think – that Trump will become perfect in order to avoid that damage?  Hardly.  When I pray about him it is to cause some intercession that will abridge the worst of his impulsive communication.  It is not that he will disappear, leaving leadership to others.  I have no love for him, but no hatred.  I grasp his attitudes, and even share some, not, I hope, the worst of them.  But then, I try to live on purpose and not in comparison, as does he, I suspect.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.  For all of his flaws I believe Trump is on stage exactly when needed by this country.  I want him to succeed where his direction and intention is right and best – or at least better – than where we were heading prior, God willing.