As I have read previously, the Europeans tend to permit Muslims to live there, but there is little integration of them and their children into the regular society. They put up active berriers to the integration of Muslim populations to integration into regular society.

I can recall from the 60's when I was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army that the Turkish guest-workers were needed for their labor, but were treated even worse than American G.I.s who would have preferred to be in the land of the great PX anyway.

The U.S. in most places is quite accepting of foreign workers, and more especially, their children. When I needed a replacement transmission in my '88 Honda Accord, the two best mechanics were a couple of guys from Saudi Arabia. Seemed reasonable because I had bought the car from a retired Oklahoma State electrical Engineer who was also from Saudi Arabia. They were all proud of their origins, good at their jobs (I won't complain about the Citroen the car salesman sold me that lasted 30 days - he made it good with the Honda and a bit more cash. Honesty in horse trading and Used Cars is not perfection in the products sold.)

I now live in a mostly hispanic neighborhood which previously was mostly white military retirees and Blacks. The stores advertise in English and Spanish, and if you want to know what some adult is saying, ask the kids. They are all beautifully bilingual. We aren't losing the Anglo-Saxon and German heritiage of Texas. We are gaining the much more openly emotive family life which the German and English ancestors stupidly represses. But English will dominate. It adapts in ways the German and Spanish languages do not.

The anti-immigrant crowd wants to drive the foreign language and culture people out. It won't work. They will remain. The difference is that they will be driven into an undergroud where the best ways to make money and provide for their families is to violate the law.

Violating the law is a learned habit. If your very existance violates the law, then why bother to live by any other law? The only effect of the anti-immigration movement will be to create a larger criminal underclass and to prevent the integration of the children of those families into American society.

That's a level of stupidity that only Republicans can countenance. That's also something the Europeans must not teach us. Our society works so much better than theirs, even now two centuries after the American Revolution, that we must work to keep what is good about our society.

Our Muslim society is a major protection against the forms of reaction that the Islamic societies are creating within themselves. We need to remember that. In 1971 a friend of mine was rejected from the Army because he still had relatives in Sweden. While I can understand concerns in the security clearance process, the Army lost an excellant potential recruit. If we treat Muslim-Americans the same way we will have a Hell of a problem getting Arabis and Farsi speaking persons to tell us what reality over there is. The kids are bilingual Americans. They can be driven out of America by American bigotry, but when that happens we all lose.

If we accept the Americans with Middle Eastern backgrounds, they will be our biggest protection against the extremists. That's what happened in Great Britain. We need to make sure it is possible here, also.

Actually, I have no idea what you're getting at.

His argument is that it's a good idea to avoid disenfranchising segments of our community, because people who feel disenfranchised are likely to be less concerned with the wellbeing of the community.

How is this racist?

If I could honestly make sense of your post I'd probably give it a 0 -- illogical and spurious accusations of racism seem troll-worthy to me -- but I can't even figure out what you're getting at.

mike

I can at least sort of make sense of what you're saying now, but I still feel like you've really misread the post.

He's arguing, from what I can tell, that Britain has a history of disenfranchising Muslims -- in reference to the previous "what not to learn from Britain" post, I take this to mean that he agrees heavy-handed law enforcement techniques and racial profiling, among other issues, are bad acts perpetrated by the UK government against their Muslim community.

He's saying that's a bad thing. He's saying that, since Muslims are being made to feel less like UK citizens, it's reasonable to expect at least some of them to feel less like UK citizens. He suggests that better integrating Muslims in the UK -- making them feel more welcome -- isn't just a humane, decent thing to do, but a better approach to law enforcement. There's nothing racist about that -- and insofar as it cuts against anyone, it cuts against British law enforcement. I think the real racists here are the racial profilers.

I really think you're misreading this. It seems like an extremely reasonable post to me. That being said, thanks for clarifying your thoughts.

mike