Oh, here’s where I’ll be a little less, er, academic — as someone who lives in a city shaped by the influx of Irish and Italian immigrants - fuck out of here with “lesser”.
Irish people such as my ancestors fought and died for America in WWII. They were among the finest patriots who served the country.
As I said above, we can argue about whether those changes were good or bad. My point is that the changes were fundamental. The country was supposed to look more like New Hampshire than New York.
[1] I go to a church that happens to have a high representation of northeastern Congregationalists. We had an ice breaker activity where we went around and talked about what we liked to cook. They were almost apologetic about it. They started their stories with “well I grew up being taught cooking was just for sustenance, …” They cut donuts in half at events so nobody feels tempted to take more than they should eat. It is incomprehensible to me as someone from South Asia. But it’s the basis for a worldview that does affect how those people would run the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-wasps...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Mid-19th_centu...
How is it “prejudiced” against Irish or Italians to point out that their voting as a bloc fundamentally changed the country during the 20th century?
Really? Where is that written, and by whom?
New Hampshire as of 1491?
I said “arguably lesser,” because people obviously have different utility functions. I would say an orderly and well governed society like Sweden or Germany is better than a chaotic and disorderly but somewhat richer society like the United States. Obviously people may differ on that. My point is that immigration changed the country fundamentally.
Or we could try another perspective: America is, beyond peradventure, the most successful continent-wide, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society in the history of the world. Lots of problems, but we're working on them.
Agreed that it's a good word. I'd never heard or seen it myself until I was a mid-level partner at my then-law firm, and our senior partner used the phrase "beyond peradventure."
But come—never mind about that; let’s—have you got such a thing as a map of that region about you? Now a good map—”
“Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto, doth—”
What most people want is an orderly, well-functioning society with a government that serves their needs. The United States is closer to a third world country on that front than Western European or Scandinavian countries. And it’s only going to get worse. The prosperity of California today, for example, is the result of inertia from the well-governed California of the 1960s-1980s. At the time, the foreign-born population had dropped below 5%. Now it’s over 15%.
Most people also want vigorous good health, satisfying work, plenty of income, and rewarding personal relationships. They'd also be glad to have well-adjusted children who are independent and self-motivated yet always listen to their parents' wise counsel. (And more than a few kids want a pony ....)
Sadly, life doesn't always work that way. It certainly doesn't do so reliably and scalably, or at least we haven't figured out how to make it so.
There's also the challenge of trying to achieve quasi-static local "maxima" (so-called) in an inescapably-turbulent world. It's not clear we've sufficiently explored the costs and burdens of such an effort.
> The United States is closer to a third world country on that front than Western European or Scandinavian countries.
Depends on what you're optimizing for. The international order supported by Pax Americana isn't perfect, but it beats anything the world has seen since Pax Britannia — and again, America and its allies are working on improving it.
> At the time, [California's] foreign-born population had dropped below 5%. Now it’s over 15%.
Oh, the irony of a scion of a successful immigrant family saying (in effect): OK, we got here and made good, so it's time to shut the gates ....
I don't disagree that we're stuck with the cultural schisms we have, at least in the near term. But that doesn't mean we must continue to make things worse through mass immigration. We could do what we did in the 1920s, dramatically curtail immigration, and work on assimilating all the people we already have.
> Depends on what you're optimizing for. The international order supported by Pax Americana isn't perfect, but it beats anything the world has seen since Pax Britannia — and again, America and its allies are working on improving it.
Sure. But it seems self-evident that American policy should be optimizing for the well-being of Americans, not those of other people in other countries.
> Oh, the irony of a scion of a successful immigrant family saying (in effect): OK, we got here and made good, so it's time to shut the gates ....
It's not ironic--I also think the government should raise my taxes for the good of the rest of the country. I'm grateful to have been given the opportunity to grow up in Virginia in the 1990s. But I can also see that the place I grew up no longer exists because of the very immigration wave of which my family was a part.
Moreover, as a foreigner, I'm better positioned to understand how immigrants bring with them deep-seated cultural attitudes even when they assimilate at a superficial level.
No. It's not. This is a cartoonish depiction of America, ginned up solely for cynical political purposes.
This is the primary reason why the US is the greatest country in the world: the ability to integrate immigrants.