Over the weekend, some anti-immigration protesters gathered on the steps of Minnesota's State Capitol building to hold a rally. (h/t Amanda Terkel)
The interesting part? There were some counter-protesters that had gathered with this group and one of them, a concerned citizen from Minnesota named "Robert Erickson", actually got on the list of speakers.
Erickson delivered a scathing speech denouncing immigrants who come to take American jobs and encouraging the crowd to send the immigrants "back where they came from". It wasn't until the last third of Erickson's speech that it became clear that he was actually talking about European immigrants.
By this point it was too late as the crowd was already solidly behind Erickson as he denounced how European immigrants inflicted genocide on an entire population and stole land from this county's true inhabitants. He even finishes his speech by leading the crowd in a "Columbus go home" chant.
Here is video of his speech:
This piece is cross posted here.
Monday, November 16, 2009
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2 comments:
So he was saying that us people with European ancestry actually were immigrants to this land too? Wow, I think he's right, I never thought of that!! So does that mean since America dropped a nuke on Japan, America should do the right thing and ignore all the problems that come with present day nuclear proliferation and passively accept whatevever develops without any attempts at directing things the way we would deem most beneficial? As I have stated before, from what I've read I'm under the impression that unchecked 3rd world immigration is a serious challenge to our relatively prosperous and well-functioning polity.
(I ran out of time on my public computer above and cut my comment short) To continue: PC thought is not really an actual attempt at analysis of current realities but simply a diplomatic way of speaking. It has its uses but it proves irresponsible and inane when messy and unpleasant realities arise. I guess one can claim some sort of moral superiority by simply ignoring unpleasant data and mouthing nice-sounding bromides. But its the morality of children who don't have to look at unpleasantries and can avoid playing the 'uncool' heavy. But the unpleasant, empirical data seem to suggest that the different peoples of the world may not be as identical as we would hope. Have you ever watched football on Sunday; ever noticed anything unusual about the majority of the participants? Using a popular phrase,they don't much look like America, do they? And this unusualness doesn't just apply in this arena. Its been 55 years since Brown v. Board; do you really think it has lived up to the hype that most on the left had believed- that institutional barriers were all that was holding back some folks academic acheivement?
How does this apply to the current immigration situation? I obviously am not calling for any peoples who were here when the nation was founded to be deported as undesirables. Or anyone else who legally has immigrated during our country's history. But are people who question the country's ability to assimilate mass immigration from countries who (relative to the West) are quite impoverished, have only minor grievance of historical unjust treatment by America (I know that Mexico once owned part of America but my understanding is that it was a very lightly populated part of Mexico and also the vast majority of immigrants come from southern Mexico with no real historical ties to America), and who empirical data has shown to have not achieved the academic and ecomomic assimilation that the large waves of European immigrants did, just insensitive monsters or are they people who aren't afraid of the unpleasantries of life? Look, if it turns out that all our greatest hopes are true and that people are all basically the same and thus can easily live together in a democratic system, I don't know of too many people who would complain. But I still think the best course is not to assume that turning a blind eye to some of the possibly serious repurcussions of taking the nice-guy approach is somehow wise.
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