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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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When we consider the lie that America is a nation of immigrants

Starting with this assumption, you really need to prove it. I find it hard to read the rest when you start with such an incorrect premise. Especially when you say things like:

To begin with, it’s important to note that immigrants have never been the dominant force in American society.

If you read your American history, you should know that all of the white folks here in the U.S. were immigrants. Immigrants were absolutely the dominant force in American society during the most pivotal period - when American society was actually being built. That's what people mean when they say we are a 'nation of immigrants.' On top of that, we have have multiple waves of immigration Throughout our history, in the early 19th century and around the turn of the 20th.

When you say immigrants do you really mean 'non-whites' or 'non-British?' If so you should just come out and say that, it would make much more sense based on the argument you seem to be making. The premises you are taking to start this argument right now makes me not very interested in reading past the first bit.

You have failed to engage on even a cursory level with the distinction the OP is drawing between settlers and immigrants. If you think this distinction is specious or lacks explanatory power and utility, that’s fine and you should make an argument for it, but you appear to just be accusing OP of lying, whereas the failure here is on the part of your reading comprehension.

but you appear to just be accusing OP of lying, whereas the failure here is on the part of your reading comprehension.

OP starts by accusing a fairly large group of people to be lying, and does not give any indication that they're interested in arguing for their claim at all. Moreover, when they do get around to making something resembling an argument, it's largely a definitional dispute. Calling someone lying because they might have used a different definition of a word strikes me as less-than-charitable. If anything, it reminds me of radical trans activists who scream their lungs out if you suggest that "woman" is defined by, say, genetics.

He's not accusing anyone of lying, except in the Lies My Teacher Told Me way of reexamining or recontextualizing common misconceptions, trite phrases, just-so stories, and other assorted myths.

"America is a nation of immigrants" is a thing that a lot of people explicitly say outside the context of a school history class. E.g. https://www.brookings.edu/product/our-nation-of-immigrants/ and https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/03/29/nation-immigrants and https://iamla.org/docs/Nation_of_Immigrants.pdf and you can find lots more examples by Googling. I agree that it's ambiguous and somewhat cliched, but that doesn't make it a lie. It's at least arguably true, I think most of the people saying it believe it to be true, and, in my opinion, it points at something important.

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