Thank you!
Posted on 05/01/2006 7:21:51 AM PDT by kellynla
Senator Alarcon’s talk about the views of the Founding Fathers on immigration caught my attention and interest. I am quite familiar with the writings of Benjamin Franklin on the subject and Senator Alarcon may be very surprised to learn that there was no more ardent or vigorous critic of illegal immigration than Benjamin Franklin. He wrote about it extensively during the mass immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania, in the 1750s. His solution however was not to ban immigration, but rather to insist upon legal immigration.
And that is the problem I have with this resolution: it blurs that vital distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The proponents are absolutely right and absolutely solid in saying that ours is a nation of immigrants. Virtually every one of us is either an immigrant ourselves or the son or daughter of immigrants.
That is what makes this country so great. That is the foundation of a nation, built on that uniquely American motto, E Pluribus Unum: from many, one.
From many people, one people. The American people.
From many races, one race. The American race.
Our immigration laws are not written to keep people out. Our immigration laws are written to ensure that as people come to America, they come to become Americans and to assimilate to American society: they acquire a common language, a common culture and a common appreciation of American constitutional principles and American legal traditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at tommcclintock.net ...
Yes! I know!! But if you were to write them a note and challenge them about it, they would get just as insensed as some FReepers do when you challenge their conservatism when they swoon over some idiotic celebrity trying to "act" like a danged (R)Governor of the nation's most populous state!!! Same difference!!!
I read a LA Weekly interview in which Alarcon states he isn't a communist but a "progressive."
That sounds like just a little slower path to the same place!
As to our own progressive trolls at FR? pfffft!
I wonder if Arnold is out in a sign of solidarity like he was for the Cesar Chavez rally.
God bless you, Marine
A former fellow 1st Mar. Div. Marine,
Semper Fi, Kelly
What? And chance him gittin photographed next to that "Buzzard Flag" of Ceasar Chavez' that looks like something from the third reich???(grin)(grimace)(wretch)(barf)
Perfect.
"Our ancestors may well have been (and probably were) but that does not make us a nation of immigrants."
So many times throughout recent history we just absorb, then repeat these trite little molecules of sophistry thrown at us night and day, year in and year out by the MSM!!!
Thank you for thoughtfully analyzing what that presumptive phrase really said incorrectly in the majority of current American situations!!!
You are a great American!!!
Thank you. I wonder how many people get it, instead of just nodding their heads without even thinking.
susie
I'm glad you finally got pist off enough to say something and at least helped me to realize how many time I've heard some idiot in public life say that same inane tripe and everybody just swallows it whole.
Of course, during the short time I was in public life, I challenged so many of these mindless sayings I was constantly in trouble. Ha Ha Ha!!!
What that idiot doesn't want anyone to remember is... That was a bunch of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalist Religionists WITH GUNS!!!
Oh! Could you not zoom in so tight on the next series so's we could see some "open space" and maybe even some "urban sprawl" to give us a better perspective on the actual size of the crowd??? Those photos are great, but entirely too generous in the perception that they might have been packed that tightly for blocks and blocks, or something erroneous like that!!!
Sorry. You are right. When you use a long lens it tends to make the crowds look denser. I was shooting from the third floor windows of the old section of the Capitol.
BUMP
Thank you Sir! Thank you!! THANK YOU!!!
And your more accurate estimates have been appreciated up here in the far reaches of the Stupid-Sierra-Nevada-CONservancy, too!!! Thanks again!!!
Oh, I bet you were. BTW LOVE your tagline!
susie
he brought more $$$ to the gun fight than Senator TOM
...I agree about who should be governor, but the Big Tenters wanted the ARNULD...
Argggggh! I absolutely HATE this assertion people on all sides of the issue insist on making. It is false, both as a literal and figurative assertion.
ALL nations are "a nation of immigrants." Human beings have been a migratory species ever since our arrival on the planet, however long ago that may have been. Whether or not one believes the "out of Africa" theory, or an alternative theory, the fact is that, during our hunter-gatherer phase, human beings migrated around the globe.
With the advent of agriculture and domestication of animals, people began staying in one place and defending their territory from others. Hence the rise of settlements, villages, towns, cities, city-states, empires and, eventually, nations.
A person living in the nation of his/her birth is NOT AN IMMIGRANT, even if his/her people came from elsewhere. To assert otherwise is nonsense. More to the point, to assert otherwise is to overtly or covertly reinforce the false notion that there is really no such thing as a native-born citizen. Therefore, none of us have a really strong moral and ethical right to keep others from immigrating here, or to control the numbers and flow of immigration to our country.
The overwhelming majority of citizens of the United States (and of most countries) are native born. That is, they were born in the United States. A great many, probably a large majority, have never spent any appreciable time in any other country (vacations aside) except while serving the military.
I am not an immigrant. I was born in New Jersey and have lived my whole life in the U.S. My mother was not an immigrant. She was born in Oklahoma and lived her whole life in the U.S. My father was an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen. He was born in Italy, but lived nearly 60 years in the U.S. I love my father, but simply because he was born in Italy does not make me an immigrant, nither literally nor metaphorically.
I implore all FReepers to reject this false claim that we are a "nation of immigrants."
That literally is true of everyone on every continent if you go back far enough. The real point that gets obscured -- no, denied -- by the "we're a nation of immigrants" assertion is this:
Ever since the advent of city-states (precursors to nations) birth within the borders of a state was the very definition of being a Sumerian, Egyptian, Judean, Babylonian, Athenian, Roman, later French, English, Chinese, American, etc.
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