Let me pick at specifically Russia/Ukraine. A short time ago, these countries economic ties were vast. There were many Ukrainians whose personal wealth stemmed from e.g. the country's ties to Russian petrochemical industry.
Others, seeing that, said "You are accruing personal wealth by strengthening a foreign power's hold on our nation." To which the response was occasionally "Are you racist? Are you nationalist?" We see now how this turned out.
The dirty secret is that history vindicates all forms of identity group tribalism, in principal. That includes racism. There is no shortage in history of examples like the above, nor of examples of destroyed nations.
If anything, I feel the problem is that contemporary countries do not represent the nations the purport to.
That’s entirely unrelated to “racism” or “xenophobia,” which is stereotyping or prejudice based on superficial rather than substantive differences.
There's a benign version of the argument you're making here, the one that protects cultural and religious tolerance while establishing some set of core values (pluralism, the rule of law, representative government, separation of church and state) set above all other concerns. But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.
It’s not “racism” at all because it has nothing to do with “race,” which is a superficial construct. It’s about substantive differences in people’s worldview, beliefs, values, etc., which are relevant to living with people in communities and sharing a government with people.
> But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.
Whether the founders envisioned it or not has nothing to do with whether it’s “racism.”
Besides that, the founders were not multiculturalists. America at the time was a collection of mostly monocultural communities. Massachusetts and several other states still had an established church. The founders created a framework where those disparate groups could cooperate in a limited fashion through a federal government of limited and enumerated powers.
That ship, however, said long ago. If a federal Department of Education exists and the federal government says that 99.9% Protestant communities in Iowa can’t have prayer in schools you can’t invoke what the framers thought about how pluralism should work.
"[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith."
There may be countries in the world that don't have a moral obligation to allow people from different cultures and religions (I'm avoiding "values" here, since it's a squiggly concept). But we're not one of them.
Show me where it says there is a moral obligation to accept immigrants who will move into your community and change its culture? You’re reading all that into a single sentence:
“A representative of the United States must be of the age of twenty-five years; must have been seven years a citizen of the United States; must, at the time of his election, be an inhabitant of the State he is to represent; and, during the time of his service, must be in no office under the United States. Under these reasonable limitations, the door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.”
The sentence is saying that elected office should be broadly available to all citizens, which is a point nobody is disputing.
> The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population." [3]? Or Benjamin Franklin, writing "the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small [..] I could wish their Numbers were increased [..] But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind." [4]?
As an American you were probably exposed to much propaganda about how the US is a "nation founded on an idea", or similar nonsense. But as a foreign observer, let me assure you nothing could be further from the truth.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/what-je...
[3] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s65...
[4] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-00...
Sure, I'll try to be clearer. You wrote "I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders."
Which goal, and where was it stated?
I like how Republicans act as master and judge and issue the judgement "incorrect" and go on to adopt a blatantly racist stance under the currently fashionable republican sound bite of "unacceptable cultural differences", while immediately switching to the directly opposite sound bite "diversity of ideas" without flinching. Republicans have a reputation for being racist for very good reasons.
Ironically, nearly all the people immigrating to the US come from countries that believe the same thing as republicans: one cultural group has no moral obligation to invite another cultural group over the border to share democratic governance of their country with them. Indians believe that, Chinese people believe that. Japanese people, Koreans, everyone in the Middle East. Mexicans would flip out if mass immigration from Guatemala was flipping elections in their country.
In reality, American democrats and a handful of liberals in European countries are the odd ones out in elevating immigration to a moral issue. Ironically, it’s because they have the least respect for culture. Religious and cultural differences don’t matter to them because they’ll teach their culture in schools anyway.
If Hispanics and Muslims were coming here and voting their social values instead of their economic ones you can bet the narrative would be different.
Dude, stop bringing up Bangladesh as context for anything and everything. What you are calling "cultural differences" in 1971, was simply called genocide because of racism by everyone else.
But you are going for the racism and genocide is A-ok, as it's just an expression of "cultural differences". You can continue with your word play in your replies again.
Liberals reading into this and seeing racism is itself an example of this phenomenon. They hear something like "diversity of ideas" and instantly a big red moral stop sign shows up in their head. It's an example of how when everyone has fundamentally different values, and everyone's different set of moral landmines are overlaid on the same map, it becomes basically impossible to walk through the space of ideas without stepping on one sooner or later.
You absolutely have the right to improve your lot, if by lot you mean the portion of land you were born in. I would even go as far as to say you have the duty to care for it. However, you don't have the right to take other peoples lot, their identity and society from them just because you were born unlucky and they were in your opinion born unfairly lucky. What you are advocating in practice is the destruction of all smaller ethnic groups, local traditions and cultural diversity of the world by overriding everything with unstable and internally conflicting pseudo-culture (or maybe a bit more politely worded pop-culture) and identity policies promoted by the wokeist Americans. This modern, woke American imperialism hiding behind the cover of liberty and personal freedoms is in practice almost as evil and destructive as the reactionary imperialism of Russia.