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Personally, I have respect for the people in the past who risked their lives to settle. The modern-day descendants of those people deserve no special accolades. You didn't do shit except get popped out in the right place from the right hole. You're not special because of what they did.
And I can't help but notice that the Heritage Americans seem to have little to no problem with white people who have only recently migrated, or that they seem to have little interest in the contributions of people who are not white but have also been here a long time.
You say special treatment, I say the Hmong are obviously not American.
The Irish and Italians have done a remarkably poor job of integrating and this coming from someone with great grandparents born in both countries.
Why is the Boston NBA team Celtics? Because an Irishman, Curley, made the city Irish, instead of American. You'll notice the dates are contemporaneous to the Teddy remarks, and you'll notice who won that argument, and you'll notice that Boston is still more Irish than American.
And you'll look at Minneapolis. And you'll start noticing every African woman in a hijab in you neighborhoods.
And maybe, just maybe, you'll learn a lesson from the past instead of pretending none of the bad parts happened.
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This argument goes both ways. By all rights, what makes modern immigrants special, in that they should be allowed access to America? Access to America isn't some human right, after all.
So?
That's a moral condemnation, not an argument.
Access to America is not a human right. I tend to more pro-immigration in that more people means more work gets done, more work being done meets more prosperity, etc. I think that we can help people, and maybe a few generations down the line many of them will become at least middle class and pay taxes. But that's a mix of utilitarianism and charity, not a moral imperative. Should, not must. But I oppose opening the floodgates because even if you believe in charity, charity must be measured. Spread yourself too thin, too fast and everything gets neglected.
But in either case I mostly despise the people who say "I deserve to be here because my ancestors were born here." There are two connotations of deserve, moral and procedural.
Procedurally, the rules say that people who are born here are citizens. So they are correct. But by the rules, it is equally correct that if if an illegal immigrant crosses over the border and has a kid, the child is a citizen.
However, there's a moral/cultural definition, that there's an inherent social credit to one's family being in a country for a long time. That you own more shares in the stock that is American culture by virtue of inheritance. The Heritage Americans are appealing to that. That I think is nonsense, because the circumstances of one's birth are a matter of luck.
Yes and no. Why should I respect their viewpoint if they preach one set of values but practice another? If enough of a group says A but does B at what point should I feel entitled to say that their real beliefs are B? And note that I would say that contradictions can come in two flavors: vice and hypocrisy. The man who cheats on his wife once and hides it out of shame is one thing. The man who has been carefully arranging rendezvous behind his wife's back for two years does not believe in marital fidelity.
Bringing it back, my observation of Heritage Americans is that in practice they seem less interested in how long one's family has lived in what is now America and more interested in the superiority of those of European descent. I don't see vice being a factor here, so what should I conclude?
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