I'm so ethnocentric. I've been wishing I could get out. I'd love to live in another country, France, New Zealand, Canada even. I need a job though and I'm insufficiently marketable to transplant myself. It really hadn't occurred to me until today that although I know there are a lot of people like me that don't love this country the way they once did, there is an even larger number of people in other countries that might have once dreamed of living in America and now don't.
We have always had our share of simple minded reactionary cowards afraid of change or anything they don't understand, from McCarthy to Haldeman to Rove. Try as I might to see these folks as sincere and good hearted but misguided, I've come more and more to see them as dangerous and threatening. It's simple really, they've never been in power and now they are. They've got their meaty fists wrapped around the steering wheel and they will not listen to the rest of us shouting about the cliff we're headed for.
What started all this is a book a friend asked me to read, The Flight of the Creative Class. Author Richard Florida suggests that the measure of economic success now and in the future will no longer be based on natural resources or military might but instead in the creative power of its people. He talks about the creative flow into the United States that resulted from the rise of Fascism in Germany. Einstein and Oppenheimer came to the US because they were no longer welcome in their country.
For many decades nations sent their best students to American Universities. For the first time in decades the percent of visa refusals is growing as more and more promising students are denied access to the US. The relegation of science to the status of interest group by the Bush administration is having a chilling effect on the interest of the world's best and brightest to make the US their home.
Article comments
1 - D L Ennis
You said, "We have always had our share of simple minded reactionary cowards afraid of change or anything they don't understand..."
This sounds like you, right here in this post!
D L
2 - Bunny
Ditto, DL
3 - Bunny
The neo-cons talk openly of rolling the society back to a time before the Warren Court and the social upheaval of the sixties, as if that could be done.
Cite ONE source that quotes one of your "neocon" personalities, by name with place and date, saying anything even remotely close to this...
4 - ss
If you don't think neocons and fundies are reactionary, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you...
They are.
Unfortunately knee jerk reactions aren't limited to Creationists and traditionalists. England has exteremly restrictive laws in place concerning genetic research because of a modern, secular, humanist knee-jerk reaction to 'cloning'.
Science, one of the main avenues of progress, seems to be hamstrung everywhere in the world right now by hysterical reactions based on nonsense.
In America, clearly the problem IS WOG Christian fundies.
5 - soon-2-b repatriate
Sorry, Mr. Florida, but I strongly disagree that things are so much more progressive in other countries. I'm an American who has lived in Finland for 5 years and if you only knew how strict, bland, and just plain uncreative this society is.....it is nothing like what the international PR essays claim. People who challenge the status quo, or who are different here are alienated and ignored. In addition, certain European countries such as Germany and Finland have an unemployment rate that almost makes Depression Era America look prosperous! Having lived abroad, I now realize that America is still the best place in the world to make dreams come true. So, yeah, I'd recommend working abroad to get some perspective, but in the end you'll appreciate America even more.
6 - Dave Nalle
I'd argue that restricting visas isn't the same thing as keeping creative folks out of the country. For the most part the people who come here to study on visas are technical rather than creative. They're engineers and theorists - the folks who build what the creative folks come up with. Most of our actual creative geniuses are still home grown. That strain of wild creativity which IMO we inherited from the Scotts, is something uniquely American and doesn't really come from the outside.
Dave
7 - Joe C Rolfe
I agree with the post entirely. I am a former "born again" type. There is somthing comforting in having a book that has all the answers and is guaranteed to be right. That is the power of Fundamentalism. "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it" allows one to believe in absolute certainty and that no opposition can possibly be right or good. Unfortunately - it stalls reason, ends questioning, stifles growth. People are labled and therefore "understood" so there is really no need to listen to anything they say. The current administration may be using this viewpoint in the most callous way, simply to obtain power and keep it for thier own purposes. It is hard to imagine any Christian embracing torture as a Christian value, yet the same churchgoing people who laud this administration, and support it, will be unable to divorce themselves from the horrible things that it has done. Changing the name of torture does not change the facts of torture, just as surely as saying global warming was not happening did not keep my japaneese magnolias from blooming in October. America has jettisoned it's respect for science and research. We are one step away from another round of monkey trials. I am very sad at the loss of my country. The terrorists hijacked an airplane - the neocons have hijacked a nation.
8 - dave
Bunny,
While I don't think that any neo con has said those *exact* words, those sentiments are quite obvious in their political philosophy. Read the works of Leo Strauss, and check out the "Project for the New American Century" (among the supporters are Wolfowitz and Cheney) and see what you think: http://www.newamericancentury.org/
When people extoll the "traditional virtues" of America, they're usually *not* referring to America past 1960..... and if you were to look up "activist judges" (a neo-con buzzword) in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of the Warren Court. Agree or disagree with the philosophy, I think that you're kidding yourself if you think that Neo-conservatives are not intereseted in changing society to resemble 50's America on some level.
Not that I think neo-con thinkers are reactionary cowards, however... their goals and philosophy are very well thought out, and have existed since before the Regan era (though they're "neo", these guys ain't young after all). I just tend to disagree with them.
9 - dave
bunny,
project for new american century was a little off topic there (mostly foreign policy)..... got my links confused. sorry about that.
the reference to Strauss is still relevant, however, as Straussian philosophy bemoans the fragmentation of society as exhibited in the 60's. Though reading wikipedia, Neo-conservatism , this whole thread may be misusing the term "neo-con" anyway. I think what we're really talking about is the current Bush Adminstration which, as made evident by Supreme Court Justice picks, does not have a favorable view of the judicial philosophy of the Warren Court.