“the threat of the US becoming more theocratic or religiously discriminatory is domestic in nature, rather than being brought in by immigrants”
Exactly. Any fears I have of that nature reside in conservative christians imparting their own values and beliefs on my personal freedoms.
I guess you don’t live in an area where Hassidic Jews are a large percentage of the population. They really impinge on the personal freedoms of people around them.
What values? Being a good person? Not cheating on your spouse? Not killing people? Respecting your parents?
Are those really getting in the way of your ‘personal freedoms’?
I could see a case in which a business could refuse to provide a service to my gay relative, all in the name of religious freedom for fundamental Christians.
But that would never happen would it? 8-|
@zoosermom, actually I don’t so I can’t speak to that plus they hold no political clout on a state and national level.
“Really, musicprnt? Godwin’s Law?”
I am tired of that being used to totally stop using analogies with the WWII era because the Nazi analogy has been so overused, Godwin’s law is like the PC argument, it uses extreme examples of idiotic extremes to try and show it is a bad argument, and it isn’t always.
My analogy is valid, what I was saying is that hypocricy undermines arguments based on some claim of moral superiority or even supposedly rational justification. WWII was back then and today has been sold as a great moral crusade, that pitted the allies against the Nazi’s and their evil claim of racial superiority, etc…meanwhile the US had a system of legal racial segregation that while it didn’t reach the level of the Nazi’s, had many of the same underpinnings of racial superiority/inferiority and it was noted by our allies and also by blacks and also by fellow white soldiers, they saw blacks fight and die in WWII and came back with heightened awareness of how the US supported a system with a very similar ideology, and it was one of the prime moves of the civils right movement gaining support among people who may not have realized how bad it was for blacks under Jim Crow (and de facto segregation elsewhere). That cognitive disconnect caused people to fight to try and change that, that’s all.
I am not saying that people who want to throw out illegal immigrants are the same as Nazis,racism or racial bias is not that kind of level. What I was trying to say was that there is a problem with the illegal immigration debate in that it is mostly being aimed at Hispanic immigrants and the language people use, about them “taking over”, all the crap about “they don’t want to learn English”, "they want to take over ‘my country’ is the same tired old crap people said in the past about Italians and Jews and Irish and whatnot…more importantly, an immigration policy that targets Hispanics only, and people say things like “they don’t want to assimilate”, “they are taking our culture”, while ignoring other groups of illegal immigrants, it is the same kind of disconnect, and that is my point.
There are arguments to be made for slowing down immigration, there are real issues with things like the cost and who will bear it, there are issues with illegal immigrants in some areas taking jobs that had been decent paying with benefits, there are arguments there, but it has to be done on that basis, not on whose culture is superior or whose culture is threatened, that is bias and ignorance, not reality, if it appplies to one group it has to apply to all, whether it is illegal irish immigrants, or Chinese immigrants smuggled in, or Mexicans or hondurans or whatnot, that’s all, and if we don’t do it equally, if we don’t do it on the basis of rational policy, then it is based on fear and ignorance, not facts, any more than the Asian exclusion acts or the "immigration reform act’ of 1920 were based in facts, they like the current anti immigrant hysteria, were based at groups thought to be inferior, while leaving the door wide open for ‘equal’ groups (who apparently didn’t threaten “our” culture at the time…). The same arguments were used back then, that the ‘swarthy masses’ came here, didn’t speak English, brought all these weird customs with them and strange foods and the like, and the laws reflected the idea that ‘those people’ could never be “Americans”…btw, everything I see shows how the next generations are pretty much following the same as prior generations,the kids of hispanic immigrants learn english, and by the third generation often can’t speak the native language.
First of all, it doesn’t target “hispanics only”. Second, Mexicans are statistically most likely to cross the border here illegally! That’s just a fact. I’m sorry, but it is. If 20 red apples are rotting prematurely to every 1 green apple, you put most of your focus and limited resources trying to fix the red apple problem…
Do you propose we start going after the Irish for illegal immigration? I mean, seriously… let’s use our heads here.
They hold a great deal of clout in my state and city.
Which of your personal freedoms do “fundamental” Christians curtail? (And thank you for not calling them evangelical Christians - much appreciated).
If we know where the illegal Irish immigrants are living openly, why not?
Serious question - isn’t that the national conversation that we are now having because of the introduction of the RAISE litigation? Shouldn’t we be having this conversation?
Ok, I’ll play…
You have five busted water lines in your house… four of them are big ones, and quickly flooding your first floor. The fifth one is a small dribble coming from the water line leading to your refrigerator.
Which water lines are you most likely get fixed first?
@zoosermom LBTGQ rights, separation of church and state, contraception/freedom of choice issues, science vs theology based views and their effect on political policy, to name a few.
Gay marriage is the law of the land, as it should be. Creationism isn’t taught in public schools. Abortion is legal.
What personal freedoms have been curtailed by Christians?
It’s a wholly separate argument to say that different groups - including but not limited to some Christians - hold different views from you on these issues and would like to take actions that you don’t support, but that’s not the same as curtailing your freedoms.
If there are illegal immigrants in NYC and Boston, and there are ICE resources to go ofter them, why not? How many illegal Mexican and Central Americans are there in those cities compared to others? If you’re talking available resources, you have to discuss the distribution of those resources and what priorities are at those localities? I think there is also a large number of illegal Brazilians in the Boston area.
You don’t think there are efforts being made to change the laws both at the national and (at least in my) state levels? No political agenda among conservative Christian leaders?
If you reread my post I said fear as it fortunately hasn’t come to fruition yet but the agenda is there for some. It’s a much realer threat to me than any perceived threat from immigrants of different cultures and religions. That is what I am stating.
" Any fears I have of that nature reside in conservative christians imparting their own values and beliefs on my personal freedoms."
I don’t know where you live, so I can’t speak to that!
Yes I do think there are people, whether conservative Christian or not, who want to change policies in ways that different people don’t like. I find that other groups, both religious and not, want to curtail my freedoms and impact my preferences. It’s part of life in a diverse society. But I find it interesting that you continue to call out Christians without acknowledging that other groups would like to do the same.
I don’t want to speculate here, so let’s look at the breakdown of where illegal immigrants come from:
http://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000845
The data speaks for itself.
Well, I do believe in a separation of church and state and who else but Christians has the political clout in this country to have a national agenda? Can you name a Hassidic Jew that is a political in Washington?
I guess i could say the same of you - why call out the Hassidic Jews repeatedly?
“Do you propose we start going after the Irish for illegal immigration? I mean, seriously… let’s use our heads here”
.
First of all, the Irish aren’t the only ones, and in some places there is a significant flow of illegal immigrants from China. The irony with Hispanic immigration is for the past few years, a lot more are leaving than are coming…but more importantly, as so many say, an illegal immigrant is an illegal immigrant and should be treated as such. I am not arguing that the size of the Hispanic immigrant population is large, by far the largest we face, but everything being said, whether it is anti immigration advocates, government officials (including the president with his broadsides on twitter making it seem like every hispanic immigrant is a racist or murderer), the whole cultural issue, is laid right at their feet…I haven’t heard anyone say “Asian immigrants speak their own language, live among themselves, and don’t share our culture”…
That argument (since people emphasize that ‘illegal immigrants’ are committing a crime) is like saying “because X group commits more murders than Y group, X commit murders 10 times more than Y”, we should only pressure point group X when they are suspected of murder. It might seem out in left field, but it isn’t, it is the same problem, uneven enforcement which leads to all kinds of problems. For example, one of the arguments against the death penalty is that if you look at death row, many of those there are non white, and the standard answer is “well, as a percent most murders are committed by non whites” …and assuming that is true, the devil is in the details, with the death penalty what every statistic shows is that non whites get the death penalty a larger percentage of the time than white defendants, and it is one of the reasons the death penalty has been suspended. People make the same argument, that non whites commit more murders so of course they represent on death row a lot more, but the reality is the problem is unequal enforcement. Whether someone is Jose Sanchez from Mexico or Liam Sullivan from Ireland or Xuemin Ma from rural China, if we are going to deter and also round up illegal immigrants, then they should face the same kind of scrutiny…and they don’t. I doubt very much if a cop pulls over a guy with an irish brogue and asks him if he has documents proving he has a right to be here, or if they pull over a chinese guy who talks with a heavy accent, it happens routinely to hispanics, either on the street or wherever.
@zoosermom:
Christian religious conservatives, especially fundamentalists, don’t just live their lives (and if you want an eye opener on what they profess versus what they live into, do a web search for the Barma report on religion, it is done by a conservative Christian, and it shows things like divorce rates, adulttery, spousal abuse among self proclaimed evangelicals/conservative Christians (and I am using evangelical here because he himself uses it, and he is talking about Christian Conservatives, what you call fundamentalists…it is eye opening, but that is another discussion). As others have pointed out, issues like health care plans covering contraception, sex ed being taught in the public schools versus “abstinence only” or worse, nothing, condom distribution programs, LGBT rights (ie same sex marriage, the right to be able to adopt kids, or the many places where LGBT people have no job protection or housing protection or other protections other groups enjoy), Science being censored because it ‘challenges their long held beliefs’, textbooks censored for all because Texas is dominated by religious conservatives and textbook manufacturers kowtow to them, and just plain ugliness of so called 'Conservative Christians denouncing everyone else as immoral amd evem uglier stuff…
What is really ironic is many in this group go around screaming about Muslims wanting to bring Sharia law to the US, when they want to legislate their ‘shariah’ law (I put it in lower case, using it as a descriptive adjective, not as a noun).