A quick quote from Jefferson
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,' which was rejected 'By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'"
From his biography.
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Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823
?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson
No one has any comments regarding Jefferson namedropping islam in his explanation for why the founding fathers made sure not to include the phrase "Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion" in the workings of our federal government?
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Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823
?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson
Obviously he was another one of those illegal presidents since he wasn't born in the USA.
200 years ago, Islam had no presence in the USA............. his statement was totally hypothetical at that point because there were mabye like 10 Muslims in the whole country.
Also Jefferson owned slaves, so funny quoting slaveowners to back up multicultural sentiments.
None of these "hindoos and infidels" were yet moving into the USA with any force so Jefferson could say these things comfortably without any insight into the dynamics of today.
Back then, the big complaint against immigration was against German 'Boors' settling in Pennsylvaina, and also against the first waves of Catholic Irish and Germans.
Also Jefferson owned slaves, so funny quoting slaveowners to back up multicultural sentiments.
None of these "hindoos and infidels" were yet moving into the USA with any force so Jefferson could say these things comfortably without any insight into the dynamics of today.
So... you're in favor of our founding principles as long as they don't actually have to be applied to public policy?
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Our 'founding principles' were set down by men who had no insight into the issues facing us in the 21st century.
in the same sense, we could not debate intelligently or do any more than speculate on what issues will be facing the world in the year 2200.
The founding fathers inserted the 'elastic clause' so the Government would be able to react appropriately to new dynamics as they popped up......... For example, the federal government took the initiative of creating the Interstate Highway System. The founding fathers obviously could not have anticipated automobiles or the need for freeways to accommodate them, but they created a system that would be flexible enough to hopefully deal with new issues like this one as they came up. Nothing about Interstate Highways was ever expressly written down in the Constitution or elaborated on by any founding father, but the Government grabbed the bull by the horns like they do with many other things they feel they need to interfere with or take action on, like desegregation or FDR's New Deal.
In the same sense, radical Islam and the Islamic cultural invasion is a new threat facing us today so our western government and leaders of European descent must react to this decisively, crush it, and win the culture war.
When it comes to the culture war, the Islamic culture is making many inroads.
Basic human rights are non-negotiable, Hanotaux. It is wrong for the state to enforce religious views, just as it is wrong for the state to muzzle the press or herd people into concentration camps. We are all endowed with "certain inalienable rights." Those enshrined in the Bill of Rights are among those inalienable rights. Freedom of religion must be held inviolate.
Also, just on factual grounds: Islamic cultural invasion? Really? Try as they might, Muslims are still roughly 1%, maybe 2% at the outside, of the American population. Talk of an "Islamic cultural invasion" is no more credible than the paranoid ravings about the "Jewish elite" that secretly controls the government.
And your expressed desire to "crush it?" At that point, we have become the enemy we seek to destroy. If they "hate us for our freedom," the response is not to trample on freedom. It is to promote the cause of liberty ever more vigorously, and to never give in to the fear-mongering of cowards and fascists who seek to silence dissent and opposition by force.
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
There's more of a basis for the Jewish elite than the Islamic cultural invasion given just how many federal appointees and elected officials hold dual citizenship with Israel and considering our policies regarding defending Israel's actions against any kind of reprimand or sanctions.
But, of course, the real story there is just like most of our narrative lately: leftover brainwashing from the Cold War when Israel was relevant to our foreign policy in the region as a disruptive force against the USSR's influence in the region (same reason why we sided with the Iraqis and the "freedom fighters" who would later attack us on Sept 11th, 2001). We may have won the Cold War but the blowback from our actions in the region will haunt us for probably a couple more decades or so to come.
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Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823
?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson
Actually, this is all arguable. During that time, there was the debate between strict constructionists and loose constructionists, with the former having a significant number of supporting founding fathers. Given this division among them though, talking about a unified intent is difficult.
They also really weren't trying to create an overly flexible system. Even further, a number of the examples provided are examples of things fiercely contested on constitutional grounds. I mean, desegregation used to be upheld by the earlier interpretation of "Separate but Equal" and actually happened because of a later court decision in most cases due to the unpopularity of desegregation at the time. The New Deal was also heavily contested, with some of FDR's plans blocked by the courts.
Even further, neither of those occurrences would have been possible in the legal framework granted by the original constitution, as the original constitution gave the federal government incredibly little power.
When it comes to the culture war, the Islamic culture is making many inroads.
I agree with Orwell, Islam is not a threat, and our best approach is to dominate it culturally by displaying our liberalism. In fact, the US doesn't have a culture it can promote other than the liberalism of the US. (By liberalism, I don't mean "left-wing" but rather refer to the liberal ideologies that came about from the Enlightenment) Conservatism represents the ideas of many Americans and even past Americans, but it does not represent the ideals of American government very much/well.
I think its up for debate where our basic rights begin and end......(the right to property, and what exactly the "pursuit of happiness" even means.) The idea of what our basic human rights really are is subject to interpretation and not one man's arbitrary definiton.
For obvious reasons though, allowing radical Islamic culture/Sharia/jihad to become an even moderately powerful and influential force in a Western nation is just not an option for Non-Muslims. Allowing these radical people to even gain any real power even if they remain a minorty(as the Nazi party was in Germany between 1922-1933) just can not be accepted, because once the door is opened for them, they will continue to grow and will not stop until they take ultimate power and impose a theocratic Islamic Caliphate. The invasion will come in steps taking decades, starting in the 2000's, and will not happen overnight. As we see with Muslims in Britian who continue to assert themselves more and more, if you give a mouse a cookie, they'll want a glass of milk. Continuing to accommodate them will only make them bolder.
People must react to the Islamic inroads now while their presence is still somewhat small, controllable, and defeatable. Its not an option to allow their numbers to grow such where they can field their own powerful political factions and that sort of thing. Their foot is only just in the door, so the time to cut them off is now before they begin to fan out rapidly in the heart of the organism. Muslims in the west typically demand much tolerance and accommodations from their host countries, but they often don't reciprocate the tolerance and remain very insular and unassimilative. As it is now, the relationship is not a 2-way street.
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And to AG, I agree and know about the strict-C vs. loose-C debate but I'm merely pointing out how the system has had to grow and change to meet up with the new demands imposed on it over the years. Obviously, most if not all major change is and was bitterly contested but often necessity wins out. Meeting radical Islam is a necessity, as much as it was fighting the invasion of Malta in 1566 and the other advances of the Ottoman Empire.
Ok, but it isn't a concern. We have no reason to expect them to grow. Not only that, but reasoning from one fluke that only gained power due to a LOT of really terrible events happening to Germany isn't a big place to take lessons from. Germany was one of the most impoverished nations. It had just lost a war for reasons that seemed illegitimate to the German people. It had to take the blame for a war in which it was only a player like all of the other players. The very model of liberal democracy was also something that many people were skeptical towards, given the Great Depression. I mean... the US isn't going to be in that situation anytime soon.
Even further, the issue is only unreasonable accommodations. If the west gives up its ideals, which you really do seem to be suggesting, even if the fringes are negotiable, then we have effectively destroyed our own cultural foundation. Not only that, but we have no reason to believe that Islam will maintain the same approach that it currently has to reality, the fact of the matter is that Muslims aren't just Islamicizing our culture, but we are secularizing their culture by forcing them to accommodate our secular rules. By moving over here, muslims have accepted a world where sexual relations outside of marriage are normalized in major media outlets, where atheism is getting more and more vocal, where other people with other ideas are going to be willing to challenge them and oppose them, and this is going to have an impact.
The issue is that there is little reason to believe that your notions will come to be the case. We have no good reason to scrap the foundations of our political system for a mere possibility that might never be actualized. And even further, doing so has a major cost. Nations partially work by norms and ideals, and what you propose is a massive transgression, that could destroy a lot of our roots.
I don't think a lot of our changes are just necessity. Rather there is agency involved in a lot of it.
Your fears for the future sound no different than those voiced by people who opposed immigration by the Irish in the 1800s, or who opposed Italian immigration in the early 1900s. As an American of mixed Irish-Italian heritage, I don't really appreciate the xenophobia and intolerance. The most we can do is try to integrate Muslims into our culture as we have done with numerous other cultures throughout our history.
And I dunno what Muslims you know, but all the Muslims I have encountered very much desire to assimilate into American culture, even if they retain some distinctive elements of their own. Heck, plenty of them don't need to assimilate into our culture, because they are already fully a part of it. You really think that many people are picking up their lives and moving here just for some sort of demographic warfare? They come here because they want to live in America. They likely share at least some of our values, and in time will grow to be a part of us, just as my ancestors have done (and just as your ancestors have done as well—we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants).
Your reference to the invasion of Malta: If someone takes up arms against the United States, then of course we will fight them. But simply existing and believing a different Abrahamic faith than the predominant one is not the same as waging war.
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
By most estimates, the birtrates of Islamic populations in the west is explosive, and the birthrates of the 'indigenous population" is stagnant or even imploding rapidly. So I see that it is very well within the realm of possibility that the Islamic population will increase rapidly, both absolutely and relatively, and thus gain electoral influence. Also, many young Musliims will likely be vigorous and easily impressionable and recruitable.
Also, the USA is apparently in a "recession" at present and many seem to expect an even bigger depression in the 2010's, thanks to the fact that we live in a decaying service economy with bleak prospects for new job creation, especially decent employment opportunities for young males.
Also, many white Americans are disillusioned and confused by the election of a visible minority as President and what the perceive justifiably as a general transfer of power in America from whites to minorities. Having Obama as President is an acute symbol to American whites of their diminshed power and status in the USA. The conditions of there for that kind of strife that will lead to extreme political situations like the rise of extreme political factions from both spectrums.
I acknowledge the above and that is fair........... I think it may be different though as the common racial differences that weren't there in the 1800's will create skin-color uniforms. It was easier for whites to assimilate with other whites. Also, there is a bigger chasm between Christianity and Islam, and there cultures, than the Catholic/Protestant chasm.
Even 'Native-Americans' or 'Indians' emigrated from Siberia 10,000 years ago. Are there any "send the Navajo back to Siberia" campaigns?
It is highly unrealistic to expect demographic trends that have been extrapolated from virtually no data to actually hold up in the real world.
Largely because of race-baiting from certain segments of the political right. Obama is half-white; his mother was from Kansas for crying out loud. The bulk of his administration is white. Almost all senior corporate executives are white. Claiming a "transfer of power... from whites to minorities" is nothing more than scapegoating and is rather similar to what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Put an Englishman and an Irishman next to each other; you can see the difference. My ethnic background is still plainly evident to anyone who takes a glance at my beard. And the racial enmity between the Irish and the English is much deeper-seated than any hostility that exists between Arabs and Europeans.
Besides, we have blacks in America. Unless you propose kicking them out, we need to move past worrying so much about who is what race. And the majority of Muslims, globally, are not Arab. The largest racial group among Muslims are the Asians. There are also plenty of black, white, and Persian Muslims.
The Catholic/Protestant divide was much more severe back when the Irish and Italians were immigrating in large numbers. My grandfather had to renounce Catholicism and convert to a Protestant church in order to be able to marry my grandmother. I don't buy that the cultural gap is more daunting now than it was then.
As I said: we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants. We have to learn to live with each other, because none of us can plausibly claim to have some sort of fundamental right to exclusive ownership of this continent.
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
There is plenty of data from censuses in the USA, the UK, and other countries to demonstrate that muslim and minority populations are growing rapidly, while 'white' populations are aging as the baby-boomers retire. As well, the white population is reproducing at a rate of anywhere between 1.3 children to 2.1 per female head in any picked Western country. To ignore these trends is to bury one's head in the sand.
Even liberal CNN a couple months ago stated that 48% of all births in the USA this year were minority children. By 2012 they projected it to be over 50% So one can see how impactful this 'change' is going to be as far as the look of America goes and the identity of the new leaders that come out of it.
I agree there is some element of this but Obama is still the first visible minority president. Obviously things have come a long way in 100 years. Comparing the current conservative reaction to the Nazis though is Goodwins Law, isn't it? (I compared to the Nazis too, so draw.) Can't we talk about it intelligently without referring constantly to "Hitler and the Nazis?"
The Democrats absolutely lambasted Bush for 8 years so really its not right for the Democrats to expect the Conservatives not to resist at all to Obama's "change?" I don't really think the Democrats just expected Republicans to roll over and die? There is a right to resist the Obamanation.
Also, the "race-baiting" is nothing more severe that groups like the NAACP often do in reverse.
Disagree. I agree you can generally stereotypically tell an Italian from a Swede and stuff like that. There are Irish who don't have red hair, Nordics with dark hair, Spanish with blond hair. I agree you could probably tell an Irish and and English apart based just on looks but I doubt you could get it right every time. Also, there are deeper ethnic divisions in white people besides just "French" and "German." French have many subdivisions like Occitian, Alsatian, Norman, and many others.
Probably because with the different skin color and the oft-times different dress of Muslims and other minorities, the segregation can be more natural. Also, many of us now live in suburbs instead of the close-quarters of the inner city where Irish, Italians, Poles, and others all mixed in and had little elbow room 100 years ago. We have more privacy in the suburbs and I suppose more of an option to close ourselves off.
Meh, other people were saying the exact same things about non-Nordics a hundred years ago, and time proved that they were full of crap. Unless you explain how you are actually different from them, I'm gonna go with historical precedent and say that you are just the modern incarnation of the previous ethnic alarmists.
I don't see how "liberal" has anything to do with numeric data unless you believe reality truly does have a liberal bias. But what's the big deal? So America's ethnic makeup changes over time. As long as we retain the core of our identity as a liberal democracy (again, not "liberal" in the sense of left-wing, but rather liberal in the Enlightenment sense of support for civil liberties) we will still be America.
I turn your argumentiam ad Nazium back against you and all of a sudden you cry foul? OK, fine, I have plenty of other historical references I can make.
Since when is Obama the cause of any ethnic changes? If anything, he is more the result of a multi-racial electorate. These demographic shifts aren't part of anyone's agenda; they're just what's happening. And most of the shift is towards Hispanics (who are overwhelmingly Christian), not Arabs or other Muslims.
I could tell pretty reliably. Within America almost all of us are mutts, so it gets mixed up a lot, but if we're talking 100% ethnic Irish (Celtic) vs 100% ethnic English (Anglo-Saxon/Anglo-Norman), yeah, I can distinguish between those.
Skin color is something we have to deal with regardless of whether we allow Muslims in. There are already tons of blacks and Hispanics, and there are a lot more Hispanics coming all the time. And Muslims aren't necessarily a racial issue; there are plenty of white Muslims. And I have never seen anyone object to having ethnic Indians or other Asians around, and a lot of those are Muslim.
In the inner city there would be an Italian neighborhood and a Polish neighborhood, and the two were very distinct. Today most people won't know if someone they meet is Spanish or Russian. Moving past an obsession with racial identity is a long, slow process, but it is happening and I believe it is a good thing. 200 years ago, the idea of intermarriage between Irish and English would have seemed obscene; nowadays how many Americans can even tell the two apart, much less give a damn about the difference?
_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH