The real tragedy today is that there are many Americans who want a monopoly on American identity, instead of embracing the source of America's strength: our ability to assimilate people and ideas into something greater than the sum of its parts (and genocical imperialism and slave labor helped too)
American identity is much more heterogeneous today than ever before, in no small part thanks to ecumenism.
That is what they are referring to, right?
What?
The stereotype of Asian laborers working (and dying) to build the great Western railroads is grounded in a fair bit of truth. Moreover, San Francisco's Chinatown acquired the Asian residents that lead to its name long before 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laws_concerning_imm...
Not to be mean, but I'm having some difficulty understanding how your contributions to this subthread are related to the topic broached by rm_-rf_slash.
I am trying to put this narrative into perspective.
I expect that -if you make a close study of history-, you'll find that "[America's greatest strength is its ability to assimilate people and ideas into something greater than the sum of its parts as] long as [those people] are white and [those people and ideas are] christian..." is a statement that isn't supported by the facts.
Xenophobia and racism was and is real, yes. But, -culturally and ideologically- the US has been and remains substantially less homogenous and substantially more willing to accept immigrants into its borders than many other countries.
"I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another." -- Fro the first draft of George Washington's inaugural address.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had to deal with more pressing issues at the time and put off freeing slaves for a later generation.
Honestly, setting aside anachronistic moral issues, I don't think they are any different than a random selection of modern US politicians.
Read through their letters and through contemporary news articles and you get the impression that in some ways they were even more fractious and petty. The vapid insults and conspiracy theories they published aimed at each other often make even Trump look good. (Probably the biggest misconception I had was that the 'Founding Fathers' got along pleasantly even if they had the occasional intellectual disagreement. Nope, not at all. And their political positions existed on a much, much broader scale than I had ever imagined.) They don't come across as remotely exemplary characters even compared to their peers.
Then you have things like the Alien and Sedition Acts, where even white men were arrested and prosecuted for criticizing the President, and you realize we've got it pretty good these days. Frankly it seems almost incredible that the early republic survived.
I think the real lesson to learn from the early days of America is that the right circumstances and processes can make a workable union out of even a hugely disparate population - but that there are still limits. Early America made it only because the shared sense of values and community was just enough.
Come on, it's an anonymous troll account with an obvious goal of ridiculing pro-PC argument. Check your #{x}!
I'm sure in 100+ years, people will look back on us and laugh at how "unenlightened" we are.
Heh.
It's fairly clear that the justice system arrives at the wrong conclusion too often for it to be trusted to determine that a person is both irredeemable and needs to be killed.
Even a cursory search of relevant medical literature reveals that there are situations in which abortion of a pregnancy is the safest and most correct course of action. This topic is substantially less clear-cut.
> However I am against unregulated abortions.
The sentiment "Abortions are immoral" is a significant driver of efforts to force all abortions to be illegal and -thus- unregulated. You might think about expressing your stance in a more nuanced fashion in the future.
You are referring to a tiny fraction of abortions.
Only a few abortion critics oppose abortions to save the mother's life.