Monday, August 15, 2005
Quick Thoughts on Those Foreign Types
One of the astonishing things about our President and the people who work for him is how little they understand about foreigners. Specifically, the administration doesn’t understand the resistance of foreigners to reforms that would make them more like Americans. Iraq is the most obvious example. Immigration is another. I don’t buy that these people are dumb or motivated entirely by corruption, so what’s going on?
The operating theory seems to be that being an American is somehow more natural than being any other kind of person so that once we remove the chains that bind people to their un-American cultures, they’ll just start acting like ordinary American folk. Americans values don’t stop at Persian Gulf or the Rio Grande because they aren’t just American values. They are human values.
Unfortunately for the lads and lasses sent to test this theory in Iraq, it seems that a lot of foreign-types disagree. After our massive failure abroad, is it really a good idea to test a theory at home by encouraging more immigration?
The operating theory seems to be that being an American is somehow more natural than being any other kind of person so that once we remove the chains that bind people to their un-American cultures, they’ll just start acting like ordinary American folk. Americans values don’t stop at Persian Gulf or the Rio Grande because they aren’t just American values. They are human values.
Unfortunately for the lads and lasses sent to test this theory in Iraq, it seems that a lot of foreign-types disagree. After our massive failure abroad, is it really a good idea to test a theory at home by encouraging more immigration?
