Just as mutts are often the smartest dogs – Intermingling of breeds and other forms of “husbandry” has granted us better livestock and will probably do well to help propogate the best of our species as well

A mixture of racial atributes has proven to be a great blessing for our nation. We are beyond the basic us/them of racial attributes- Proven by the fact that we now have a mixed-race prez. Those who would differ just no longer matter. History has moved on beyond narrow-minded criteria.

The problem of immigrants not being a boon is also not one of lacking education and other forms of “know-how”… We need to welcome those who will help build – not those who will take without giving back. That being said, I have seen a huge influx of Indian/sub-continentals into Plainsboro NJ. They are not good neighbors and do not wish to become citizens. They do not try to become part of the larger community. They send huge amounts of money out of the country- which is a serious drain on our economy! They are far more interested in taking wealth out from the USA than adding anything to our society… And of course there are many exceptions to that scenerio as well…But that is not a racial issue. It is cultural. They just happen to be darker skinned than Anglos…

So for me the test should be demonstrating a willingness to become part of the sollution, not part of the problem, and what would that test be?

Maybe a ban on sending money out of the country for those entering our borders? It is easy to just say ” no darkies” or whatever the simple-minded may utter…But silly in the extreme. Race is a simple-minded approach to anything. we have intermingled too well to be seperated now anyway!

That we are all one on a molecular level is worth noting; we are all in this together as one world no matter what we think. That is just the way of it. We can not seperate ourselves by any criteria from being Earthlings. I think it far more important to figure out how we are to make this crazy-quilt of a human race work together than blame-game our socio-economic problems onto each-other…

Teaching civics 101 may be a good start for all youngsters who get schooling here…But that is another issue – Love to all- Pat

I suspect that the belief in fan death derives from prior superstition about wind. My wife tells me that Koreans believe that wind on a baby’s head can cause illness and that other ‘evils’ are due to wind. Of course, one can always find a rational-sounding reason for such beliefs.

(Compare with the Western fear of ‘drafts’ of air in a house.)

For The Korean to be right about the genesis of a belief in fan death, then some medical expert in the 1950s or 1960s in Korea would need to have done a study and concluded that fans can in fact kill people by disturbing the air ‘cocoon’ that envelopes them at a body temperature that enables them to maintain their ideal body heat. This ‘knowledge’ would then need to have become commonly known among Koreans. There was no such expert study, so far as I know.

Empirically, people wouldn’t generally have concluded that fans can kill simply by blowing air within a closed room since fans don’t obviously do this — else people in lots of other countries would have noticed.

It seems to me that The Korean is merely rationalizing a folk belief.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

“For people commonly reason thus: “A thing is possible, therefore it is”; because the thing cannot be denied generally, since there are particular effects which are true, the people, who cannot distinguish which among these particular effects are true, believe them all. In the same way, the reason why so many false effects are credited to the moon is that there are some true, as the tide.

It is the same with prophecies, miracles, divination by dreams, sorceries, etc.”

However, the case is complicated by the likelihood that if requests for permanent residency in the United States were coming from let’s say Ireland, Scotland, or the Scandinavian countries, the American people would have little compunction in denying them. The source of so much liberal guilt on this issue is that maximum immigration pressure is coming from places like Mexico…… So the modern liberal message on the Statue of Liberty might no longer read give me your huddled masses, but give me your racially oppressed and economically deprived non-white masses.

This selectivity is bound to cause fear of cultural transformation in conservative MIddle America. And, in any event, there must be a finite limit to the number of immigrants that can be assimilated even in a country as big and as rich as America. Economic arguments probably trump cultural considerations in the argument to limit or stop further immigration.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Fan death is REAL.

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/01/fan-death-is-real.html

=)

If I take what some call liberal positions on an issue it is because I believe those positions are justifiable. I try to remain open to changing my views, as I have done on more than one occasion. Calling me names won’t do it though.

Immigration is an obvious strain on a society. But I must categorically reject the kind of racist general anti-immigrant talk referenced in this thread. Policy cannot be founded on such sentiments.

“I can’t help but notice that none of the deep thinking intellectual giants here took Malcolm up on his suggestion.”

Just for the record, I’m a shallow-thinking intellectual dwarf, so don’t look at me!

But if you want to argue about fan death…

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

I would be very grateful if we could all simmer down. I realize the tone of this thread is no different from what typically happens everywhere in the blogosphere when difficult questions of politics and religion come up, but it doesn’t have to happen here.

Dennis Mangan, an intelligent, thoughtful man whom I consider a friend, is surely no Nazi — the suggestion is absurd — and not even a typical conservative. Organizations like Stormfront, as Jeffery Hodges points out above, not only consider race the most essential of human characteristics, but also insist, to the point of violence, on the axiomatic inferiority of all non-whites. Neither Dennis nor any of the commenters at his website are presenting or defending such views. Meanwhile, Dennis, himself a non-believer, disagrees with the view held by traditional conservatives like Lawrence Auster (and many white-supremacy groups, including the KKK) that Christianity is an essential structural pillar of American culture, and necessary for its survival. Read his reasonable (and, I am sorry to say, in contrast to the discussion here, unfailingly civil) debate with Mr. Auster on this topic, here and in subsequent posts.

The questions raised here are real and important. So brutal and ugly is the history of racism that even to consider the possibility that there might be innate differences among human groups has become, it seems, a kind of thoughtcrime. I can feel the strength of this social conditioning in myself. But if we are to understand ourselves, and to make social policy that is effective in the real world, rather than some imaginary Utopia, we must declare no topic off-limits for critical examination. I am fond of quoting Churchill’s maxim that “you have to look at the facts, because they look at you.”

So if we are going to discuss this topic, let’s try to be rigorous and clear-headed, and lay off the personal attacks. It is light we are interested in here, not heat.

p.s. I’ve stayed out of the “debate” because my views on this matter are greatly influenced by my anarchistic leanings; making it unlikely that a discussion could proceed from shared assumptions.

O RLY?

Then about those comments I’ve read about deporting blacks, shooting liberals, and racial civil wars about?

Oh…I guess since you agree with it, then its not malicious. Grow a spine. Maybe that’s too much to ask. Grow a skin at least.

Your whole blog is an exercise in pointless provocation and for disenfranchised bitter curmudgeons to pat each other on the back and tell each other that they’ve got everything figured out. If only unenlightened liberals (to them: the rest of the world) would listen to them! Gee, I wonder why nobody does…
You can tell how hungry they are for someone to actually listen to them by begging for a “debate”. As if a true debate is arguing over internet blogs. lol. What a nerdy dork thing to think. Go evangelize your views in public if you want debate, and be sure to wear clothes you don’t care about.

“In any insular community, prestige may often be gained by expressing ever more extreme versions of generally accepted view points. They implicitly recognize this in some of their comments to you.”

^Dennis Mangan ‘s blog is a case in point for this phenomena

I repeat, as I wrote in reply to Malcolm, that no one is talking about cultural uniformity, and any representation to that effect is fundamentally dishonest, a lie even. You guys seem to be pretty good at lies and innuendo, however, since you can’t argue you spit out your contempt. In any case, if you had thought for 2 minutes – a long time for you Jacob, I realize – you would understand that in this day of global communications and the internet, cultural uniformity is hardly even achievable by North Korea, much less a country like the U.S., even should it be desired.

“self-reinforcing myopic discourse fragmenting American society into ideological enclaves intolerant of dissent”: this is just so hilarious coming from someone like Jacob, someone who sits here and sneers from a distance, looking down his nose at people who disagree with him, and refuses to debate. And that “intolerant of dissent”: who is exactly intolerant of dissent, when you people sit here wetting your pants at having to hear something you disagree with? Now that Obama is president, people like Jacob or LOL will presumably stop saying that “dissent is patriotic”.

By the way, Malcolm, as you know I moderate comments at my blog, and I never would have allowed any as shoddy and malicious as the first to appear.

For all their discussion about the need for cultural homogeneity, they are themselves participating in the kind of self-reinforcing myopic discourse fragmenting American society into ideological enclaves intolerant of dissent. In any insular community, prestige may often be gained by expressing ever more extreme versions of generally accepted view points. They implicitly recognize this in some of their comments to you.

Perhaps I should stop reading blogs so much? It does afford me so much pleasure however.

The one exception – some brave soul who cut and pasted some pro-immigration clips. Bravo!

Let’s try to keep it civil, and assume that we are all intelligent non-Nazis. There are reasonable arguments on both sides of this issue; let’s try to explore them without being scornful, as that gets us nowhere.