Death by Openness #fundie educationrealist.wordpress.com

Your points about openness and personal empathy for immigrants are interesting. Your view toward the world likely is similar to mine, but I suspect that you and I – and the many like us – are leading our cultural to its demise.

We object to additional immigration on a policy level, but tolerate it on a personal level. We meet – and, perhaps, become friends – with immigrants. We may live in mixed neighborhoods and enjoy the different peoples. We treat individuals with respect and manners, since they are often good people.

However, this tolerance leads to a welcoming land for immigrants. And what immigrant from a poor and often violent land wouldn’t want to move a rich, safe and tolerant land. Thus, they come. They come and slowly dilute the culture and the country that was built over 300 years. Will that country remain so rich, so safe and so tolerant as those who built it are replaced by Mestizo Mexicans, Indian and Nigerians. Unlikely.

Again, are the vast majority of these people good, decent folk? Yes. Will having them in this country in overwhelming numbers change the middle-class culture that developed over the centuries? Very likely.

In 20 to 50 years, this country will look much like a South American country – and I’m not talking about Argentina. If people think that we have income inequality now, they ain’t seen nothing yet. How tolerant are these newcomers? Not nearly as tolerant as those of us who welcomed them. The world won’t end when the traditional American culture finally dies, but I will miss it.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve gained a much deeper understanding of intolerance. To preserve a culture or a people or a religion, you need to have a certain amount of “unfair” intolerance. It’s ugly. It’s repulsive. But it’s necessary. You can’t just be intolerant to the bad illegal immigrants. You have to be intolerant to all of them. Otherwise, more will come.

Ask people in hundreds of neighborhoods who were tolerant when the first couple of black families moved in. These were good people, good neighbors. We should treat them kindly. But once the neighborhood was seen as open to blacks, more moved in. Cousins and some of the children of those nice parents sometimes weren’t so nice. A decade or two later and the neighborhood is destroyed. I wonder how many of those kind, tolerant whites hiding behind their doors wish that they had been a little less tolerant years before?

Again, I’m one of those nice, tolerant people, so if I’m casting stones, it’s at myself as much as anyone.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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