Comments Posted By jlo
Displaying 1 To 2 Of 2 Comments
LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE PILGRIMS
"I know, I know. We simply can’t let a Thanksgiving go by without being made to feel simply awful as a result of rapacious white Europeans betraying and eventually murdering Rousseau’s “noble savage†in bunches. This line of thinking leads to a rather interesting conclusion; Europeans should have stayed in Europe, allowing only Asians to emigrate to North and South America.
If European naval technology had been just a little less advanced, we very well could be speaking some Asian tongue today – or perhaps even Polynesian..."
The line of thinking about facing our ancestral history with honesty does not lead to the conclusion that those ancestors should have never come to colonize the West.
All that perspective asks of us is that we know the truth - that behind all the wonderful things America has done, there are many awful moments too that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
If our country is going to make rational, informed decisions about foreign and domestic policy it is essential to know the truth about our past.
It's not about cheaply demonizing the past as some misguided iconoclastic exercise to feel cynically superior to others.
Finally, to say we would be speaking "Asian" or "Polynesian" is just stupid. If your thesis is that these societies would have colonized the Americas if the Europeans hadn't, why would I, a European descendant be here speaking Asian?
Comment Posted By jlo On 23.11.2007 @ 11:46
O'REILLY AND GERALDO LOSE IT ON AIR
13Veronica Said:
6:27 pmSorry but look at it this way If he would not have been here in the USA he would not have been drinking and driving with the end result of a death. I am a firm believer that if you want to live in the US or any other country for that matter you need to do it the right and legal way.
--------------------------------------------------------Since Bill is so hyped up about the "larger issue", I think I'll introduce the vast concept that "we" never arrived here legally either. Ask any descendant of the continental natives either exterminated or subsumed by the European conquest how their culture perceives our wonderful tradition of legality in emigration.
This is not an issue about illegal immigration except in some much larger context which must certainly include such "causes" as the pull factors of our demand for cheap manual labor and our high standards of living (relative to most of the world).
If Ramos's status as an illegal immigrant is the real crime here, should the folks who employed him, housed him, gave him that alcohol, etc. be held as accomplices to vehicular manslaughter?
I think Bill's argument is a specious and opportunistic attempt to prop up his pet social theories in a field of contrary evidence so well laid out by commentor ME above.
Comment Posted By jlo On 7.04.2007 @ 17:05
