Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not the ones who come in here illegally and steal people's social security numbers and ID's so they can work.
That ain't my American Dream.
There is a difference between LEGAL immigrants that work hard to get here, then work hard to make a life, and ILLEGAL aliens (they are not immigrants as immigration requires documentation and is a LEGAL process). Those that come here illegally as you say, commit IDENTITY THEFT and scam the system. We need to deport and stop them from entering.
I'll start with a simple model of society with aspects of the right left divide, informed by recent Western history mostly.
Human society is composed of two basic groups: a minority elite and a majority populace. The elite is generally superior to the populace because they are a self-selecting subgroup of the population with above-average cognition. The populace are everyone else who cannot compete with the elites, and cannot enter the elite because they are not seen as elite marriage material.
Enter democracy, which turns traditional society on its head because the majority populace now has power, in theory. How on earth can a minority rule in a democracy?
In the US up until very recently, the elite has been on the right. Its main tool was the elite's oldest and most formidable tool: religion, which is basically a psy-op that convinces the populace that elite minority rule is natural and just. However due to the drop in information storage and transmission costs, religion is dying everywhere, which explains the long-term decline of the right starting in earnest with the French Revolution.
It is true that Christian fundamentalism remained potent in the US for about one generation longer than it did everywhere else, but that is now ebbing. At the same time, right-wing power in thr US increased as Christianity declined. So I don't see the decline of religion as a death knell for the American right, as many leftists hope. It just hasn't worked out that way.
Rather, I see the strength of the American right as an expression of the weakness of the American left. And the American left is weak because it is riven by ethnic and sectarian divisions. This gives the right an opening for divide and conquer. The left is far stronger in nation states such as those of Europe, than it is in a civic state like the US, because the left in a nation state is comparatively united by history and culture. This explains the unique persistence of the American right, in my opinion.
This is the real reason that the "GOP establishment" likes immigration. It gives life to the divide and conquer strategy. Who is being divided? The working class, split between natives and immigrants.
The left is close to achieving a governing majority without the need for the native working class. (That near majority requires dissident native elites, however, an alliance forged at the cost of abandoning wealth redistribution policies, but that is a topic for another thread.)
So will the American right, understood as the elite (significantly thinned by the above-mentioned dissidents, who I predict will be fair-weather friends to the left) be able to reinvent themselves once the universal tool of the right, religion, and the particular American tool of the right, immigration, both lose effectiveness?
You are over thinking and over analyzing:
Conservatives: The belief that the rights of the individual supercede those of the state and that logic and common sense should prevail.
Liberal: The belief that the rights of the state supercede those of the individual and that emotion and sensitivity should prevail.
I'll start with a simple model of society with aspects of the right left divide, informed by recent Western history mostly.
Human society is composed of two basic groups: a minority elite and a majority populace. The elite is generally superior to the populace because they are a self-selecting subgroup of the population with above-average cognition. The populace are everyone else who cannot compete with the elites, and cannot enter the elite because they are not seen as elite marriage material.
Enter democracy, which turns traditional society on its head because the majority populace now has power, in theory. How on earth can a minority rule in a democracy?
In the US up until very recently, the elite has been on the right. Its main tool was the elite's oldest and most formidable tool: religion, which is basically a psy-op that convinces the populace that elite minority rule is natural and just. However due to the drop in information storage and transmission costs, religion is dying everywhere, which explains the long-term decline of the right starting in earnest with the French Revolution.
It is true that Christian fundamentalism remained potent in the US for about one generation longer than it did everywhere else, but that is now ebbing. At the same time, right-wing power in thr US increased as Christianity declined. So I don't see the decline of religion as a death knell for the American right, as many leftists hope. It just hasn't worked out that way.
Rather, I see the strength of the American right as an expression of the weakness of the American left. And the American left is weak because it is riven by ethnic and sectarian divisions. This gives the right an opening for divide and conquer. The left is far stronger in nation states such as those of Europe, than it is in a civic state like the US, because the left in a nation state is comparatively united by history and culture. This explains the unique persistence of the American right, in my opinion.
This is the real reason that the "GOP establishment" likes immigration. It gives life to the divide and conquer strategy. Who is being divided? The working class, split between natives and immigrants.
The left is close to achieving a governing majority without the need for the native working class. (That near majority requires dissident native elites, however, an alliance forged at the cost of abandoning wealth redistribution policies, but that is a topic for another thread.)
So will the American right, understood as the elite (significantly thinned by the above-mentioned dissidents, who I predict will be fair-weather friends to the left) be able to reinvent themselves once the universal tool of the right, religion, and the particular American tool of the right, immigration, both lose effectiveness?
What drives the American right?
- Preference for Capitalism over Socialism for delivery of most goods and services - rewards for effort
- Respect for Christianity
- Rights and Freedom - speech, religion, guns, property
I've noticed that the more assimilated an Asian American or Hispanic American is and the more integrated a black person is, the more likely they are to be Republican vs be in a subculture or racial voting bloc that is pandered to by the Democrats, in a way similar to the corrupt party bosses from the 1800s era they preyed on Irish and Italian immigrants for their votes.
I'm a minority and the son of LEGAL immigrants and I've NOT found America to be a racist country, I've NOT found the American Dream to be a lie, like liberals believe. I know that the American Dream is real, that capitalism is preferred over socialism and I believe in working hard for what I have vs asking for a handout and feeling entitled. And I feel I pay far more than my fair share in taxes, while so many people literally pay nothing, and even illegal aliens are able to get so much for free that Americans like myself pay for. Also based on my family I KNOW that one can come to the US LEGALLY and I have zero sympathy for the illegals in the caravan or for Dreamers who are being rewarded for their parents' crimes.
You are the left's worst nightmare and they will do anything, anything, to minimize viewpoints such as yours.
You are the left's worst nightmare and they will do anything, anything, to minimize viewpoints such as yours.
If he's the "left's worst nightmare," then I, as a WASP, educated, fully assimilated immigrant (ie. you'd never guess I haven't been here for many generations) who votes Democrat -- am the right's "worst nightmare."
If he's the "left's worst nightmare," then I, as a WASP, educated, fully assimilated immigrant (ie. you'd never guess I haven't been here for many generations) who votes Democrat -- am the right's "worst nightmare."
You left Canada, a much more progressive country than the US, and came here for the better opportunities this country had to offer you....opportunities you obviously didn't find at 'home'.
and now, as citizen of the US, you vote for politicians to implement policies in the US that you left behind in Canada?? makes no sense to me.
Middle America abhors the left, and that is where every census shows the growth is.
The leftwing East Coast is losing electoral college votes every decade.
The rights 30 states were w/o many from the coasts in 2016.
The Red Wall has held firm since 1988. The Blue Wall cracked in 2016.
But the growth isn’t among Republican groups. That’s why the GOP can’t win the national popular vote. The margins in Texas, Georgia et al, no longer are sufficient to counterbalance CA and NY.
We’ll have to wait until after 2020 to get a definitive read on the Industrial Midwest. Trump job approval is currently under water in Iowa (-8%), Michigan (-10%), Ohio (-4%), Pennsylvania (-7%) and Wisconsin (-13%).
But the growth isn’t among Republican groups. That’s why the GOP can’t win the national popular vote. The margins in Texas, Georgia et al, no longer are sufficient to counterbalance CA and NY.
Population growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Californians and New Yorkers are moving to texas in droves for many reasons, among them: work, opportunity, and affordable housing.
And the availability of jobs, a government attitude amenable to small business, and available housing doesn’t happen in a vacuum either.
the coasts are losing population to mid-american states and then those citizens are voting to turn places like texas into California and New York. these people come to texas and vote to implement political policies here that were the very reasons they chose to leave California and new York.
You left Canada, a much more progressive country than the US, and came here for the better opportunities this country had to offer you....opportunities you obviously didn't find at 'home'.
and now, as citizen of the US, you vote for politicians to implement policies in the US that you left behind in Canada?? makes no sense to me.
Do you ask these personal questions of all immigrants you encounter, or am I an exception?
You know, it doesn't HAVE to make sense to you, just as your choices don't have to make sense to me. You do you. I could ask similar questions of you. Why are you a Texan conservative in the North -- fighting, possibly, for policies you left in Texas? I guess you couldn't find in Texas what you've found up North? I assume you have your own very good (and very personal) reasons for now living in a blue state, yes?
However, I'll bite: I left Canada because, for the most immediate reason, my engineer ex-husband accepted a transfer here. I left because, to be perfectly honest, some of Canada's policies were too liberal for me. And because of other realities of living there, especially the particular part of Canada I hail from (Toronto, Ontario area), which I won't get into because it's off-topic. And because I grew up spending a lot of time in the US, because we have family here, who I'm pretty close to.
The US, on the other hand, as much as I adore her (as I love Canada), is too right wing, in some ways, for me.
So I'm thinking of starting an entirely new country, which will combine the best of Canada and the US, socially, culturally, and politically.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
