With Merkel's Foes in Disarray, Germany Defies the Trump Trend

[masterpanthera_t]

(04-29-2017, 11:29 PM)Dill Wrote: You raise a number of valid points here Masterp.

Your concern about letting people in the country who might impact our "cultural ethos", however, takes us in a different, perhaps anti-pluralist direction. Most would agree that we should not let someone in the country who wants to kill Christians or Jews. What is troubling now is the tendency to ascribe such intent to Muslims in general--to enough, at least, so that adherence to the religion becomes the primary criterion for profiling. That seems to me the purpose of the recent flood of information purporting to explain what Islam and Sharia "really" are, and aligning Medieval texts with the actions of some dispossessed and/or psychically wounded actors in the present. 

 The lyric does not say, "You didn't vet me properly and a percentage of us are dangerous." The message is that all we need to know about a snake is that it is a snake. The poem is a re-purposed lyric from "leftist" social activist Oscar Brown, who  adapted it from an Aesop fable.

Hatred doesn't always lead to genocide. It exists in every country, but the haters are usually to small in number or too far from the machinery of state to do any damage. Insecurity and eloquence can expand their numbers, control of the state their power.This is to say that snakes are not really our problem right now. But people peddling snake oil are.

Limiting the "variety" of people allowed in the country is by definition anti-pluralist.  I don't feel anti-pluralism by definition is wrong, however, as you yourself provided a counter example (We certainly aren't going to welcome those who would kill Christians or Jews for the sake of their beliefs, which by the strictest definition of the word is anti-pluralist, i.e. we're not sympathetic to the values of those who would violate our values of "religious freedom").  The question here is, what is the right degree of vetting those we allow to enter into the U.S.  Between the extremes of no one from a certain religion  and everyone from everywhere, lies the spectrum.  The problem I believe is that to reach the right balance we must be a bit more open to using "facts"/surveys (facts here in quotes to really mean some defensible reasoning/interpretation obtained from facts or studies, not the actual data itself) to understand any population's "fit" for our cultural fabric.  I'm sure you would agree that this will at least inform us either way on what would be the expectations when people with different values are allowed to enter.  And at the least provide a framework not only to clarify what exactly our values are, but to appreciate how we differ from other regions of the world, and how our immigration policies reflect how we strengthen the framework of our own values and to inform our population why people whom we've allowed to immigrate here, are actually a reflection of those policies.  And to get here, I think one of the things we must understand better is why certain populations of Muslims in Western Europe hold certain views that are at least on the surface,  antithetical to the core values  of those nations.  This would definitely include a thorough analysis on whether such "surveys" were actually conducted properly and without skews etc.   I feel like you've actually come around to my point in the first place.  What I'm calling for is a detailed discussion which would also educate some of the less educated views in the populace and hopefully provide a defensible reasoning for whatever policy results from such an endeavor.  Now if we can arrive at the factors which would prime someone to hold views which we find are not conducive to our core values, we can create policies which have the right level of scope, i.e. I'm not doing surgery with an ax, but a scalpel.  Maybe we find out we don't even need surgery in the first place, and now our population is aware.  

Edit: I will make this completely clear. The above is in no way meant as a defense of any recent EO's by a certain someone. This is my way of explaining my view. There may be some overlap with recent news which is somewhat coincidental. It is to point out that hypothetically questioning some of our policies in a certain issue can be done with certain intents which may be different the perceived intent of bigotry.