The best thing about foreigners is that we don't have to give a damn about their civil rights, dignity and right to "personal" privacy. In fact, playing with foreigners is just oodles of fun. In America you can do things to foreigners that you can't even do to dogs and cats. In fact, dogs get better treatment these days at our borders and airports than non-US citizens.
If you want to enter the United States your body cavities belong to us. If we want to plant the American flag on your prostate gland or in your uterus, just say thanks and whistle "America the Beautiful."
Oh, I'm not talking about those sub-humans at Gitmo or Mexicans; I'm talking about all foreigners regardless of race, color, creed or point of national origin. We treat them all like shit.
Hell, even our President thinks he has the right to frisk the German leader and violate her personal space and dignity. She felt otherwise, the stupid bitch.
At one time in our history, too many Americans held to an idiotic notion that civil and human rights were universal principles and not exclusive to some master race. Today we know better.
A friend of mine wondered why as a native Australian and a university professor who is currently teaching and residing in Japan, he is now required to undergo a 2 1/2 hour screening in order to enter and exit the United States, a screening that will soon be expanded to almost three hours since the government is now going to demand a full set of fingerprints from every foreigner entering and leaving this country.
Steven, our visitor's name, used to anticipate his twice yearly visits to the United States with excitement, attending international academic conferences. However, during his last few visits the experience of entering and exiting the United States has moved from extremely frustrating to horribly humiliating. In fact on his last visit he was honored as a "designated selectee" at airports in both Ithaca, New York and Detroit, Michigan and provided with an "intimate" full body search. In case you're wondering, Steven is a 49 year old, 6 ft. 2 in. white man who has that terrifying nerdy academic look that screams 'books' to some of us but 'kaboom' to airport security guards.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baronius
Foreigners don't have civil rights. In this debate, we need to be clear in our terminology.
2 - JP
Baronius, isn't your quick dismissal an example of why the world says we as Americans pay lip-service to our ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How can some of us be SO QUICK to compartmentalize, and to quickly identify why *others* should not be given the same respect that we give our own citizens?
Shameful. I found this to be a very provocative essay on that subject.
3 - Richard Rothstein
If we deny the universality of civil rights, we will eventually see them whither away in this nation as well. What else do we stand for and on what basis do we claim any moral ground if we believe ourselves to be an elitist club? America is not a parcel of real estate, it is a universal ideal.
4 - Richard Brodie
It's all so ludicrously foolish. It's like the government thinks nukes are more likely to be smuggled into the country up your friends butt, than across our wide-open unsecured borders.
5 - Nancy
No, Baronius is correct: 'civil' rights pertain to rights held by citizens only. He's not announcing his personal vendettas. There is another category of legal rights for non-citizens, but they aren't called 'civil rights' (at the moment I forget the exact title).
Like it or not, the requirements for entering a country are whatever that country says they are. That's their privilege. No foreigner is 'entitled' to enter any country not his/her own, but enters under sufferance of the country being visited. That means should I go to Saudi Arabia, I wear fairly enveloping clothing instead of halter tops & butt-baring short-shorts. Some countries wave in all & sundry, others, perhaps with good reason, are more suspicious & have stiffer requirements. Personally, I think we ought to limit most searches to those persons most likely to be terrorists, even if it IS 'racial profiling', because frankly 80-year-old nuns are not likely to be serious terror practitioners or bomb carriers, but in the US government decrees they don't want to single out just one group, so we all suffer accordingly. Qwitcher bitchin'.
6 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Nancy.... AMEN!!!
Because we have always been so lenient we paid the ultimate price on this day 5 years ago,so now we have to be strict and if foreigners don't feel the need to abide by the rules then they don't need to come here.
7 - Nancy
Yeah, that's the way I feel, too. I don't go to someone else's house if I am unprepared to abide by their rules. Likewise, I don't go to another country if I am not prepared to abide by their rules, neither do I carp & whine about it. It's part of the price of going. By the same token, if they want to come here, they do as we tell them and be glad they're allowed in at all.
8 - Richard Rothstein
Strange, when I go to someone's house I anticipate that I will be treated with some degree of hospitality and civility.
9 - Richard Brodie
Well, Richard, it's not exactly barbaric to be asked to submit to a search. Let's suppose your friend was in line at the airport next to some arab, dressed in a burkah that concealed a bioterrorist agent. Rather than being lead off into a shakedown room and required to undress, thereby allowing the discovery of a dangerous virus and containing it's destructive potential, he/she is instead allowed to pass through (to avoid "racial profiling", offending "religious sensibilities", or whatever other bullshit PC reasons) and the stuff gets released inside the terminal, thereby infecting and causing the death of your friend? Then how would you feel about the "hospitality" that was shown to our moslem "visitor"?
10 - Clavos
Long before 9/11, American Customs and Immigration agents at US airports were known by travelers from all over the world for being among the most arrogant and rude such people anywhere.
I learned this during thirty years of working in the international airline business, both in the US and abroad in several countries.
11 - Joan Bias
Or what if you're next to some 30-something guy with freckles and a white face, talking with a midwestern accent?
Hope it's not another Tim McVeigh!
Or what if he's a short Asian man?
Hope he's not in Aum Shinrinko!
12 - Richard Brodie
Hope it's not another Tim McVeigh!
Contrary to the liberal goal of a 100% risk free society, examining every single passenger could only be done at the cost of shutting down the airline industry. That's why some common sense has to be used. Racial profiling is a way of taking into account what we know about LIKELIHOOD. McVeigh and Shinrinko were ethnic aberrations, whereas we know that arabs/muslims are from a culture known for having committed numerous acts of terrorism in accordance with a religiously prescribed program of jihad against Western Civilization. That's why whites, blacks, asians, indians, etc., in the absence of other suspicions of a non-racial nature can be reasonably exempted from search to a greater degree than semites.
13 - Joan Bias
Mr. Brodie:
Proof that this would shut down the airline industry?
Proof that McVeigh was an ethnic "aberration?" Seems to me that there have been many more incidents of violence in this country from right-wing extremists than from Arab terrorism.
I must not have gotten the issue of the newsletter when the "liberal goals" were elucidated. What are they besides a 100 percent risk-free society, or is that the only one?
14 - Richard Brodie
Proof that this would shut down the airline industry?
The inordinate delay would limit the number of flights that could be scheduled. This in turn would cause fares to skyrocket as fliers competed for a greatly reduced total number of seats. Many would opt for other means of transportation, or just cancel trip plans. Perhaps a total shut down of the airlines would not happen, but as far as the American middle class is concerned it might as well have.
Proof that McVeigh was an ethnic "aberration?"
The fact that the Oklahoma bombing is the only instance of an attack by a "freckled" guy with a "white face" that anyone can point to, anywhere near in scope to the kind achieved and envisioned by islamic jihadists.
Seems to me that there have been many more incidents of violence in this country from right-wing extremists than from Arab terrorism.
Actually there are a great many more killings, rapes and other crimes committed in this country by blacks against whites than the other way around. And virtually all of these are individual criminal acts, not terrorist mass murders.
Of course someone coming from where you are probaby believes this is justifiable payback for crimes committed by whites against blacks generations ago.
15 - Joan Bias
Mr. Brodie:
No, I meant actual proof.
Of course, having read many of your posts, I didn't really expect any.
And as to "where I'm coming from," do you mean New Jersey? Because we don't all believe that here.
16 - steve
Ever since the beginning of immigration issues involving the United States, we have been hazing the "newbies." The Irish and the Italians were hated when they arrived. The Chinese and the Japanese were also hazed. It is merely part of becoming an American. Deal with it; or get out!
(sarcastic)
17 - Mark Schannon
liberal goal of a 100% risk free society
Brodie, I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Thanks. I guess that makes Bush and his Bushites the most liberal administration in American history. Someone find me a flag.
In Decaf Veritas
18 - Richard Brodie
The difference is that the liberals seek to establish a society in which INDIVIDUALS are relieved of any risk (Social Security, Medicare, Workman's Compensation, Contractor Licensing, etc.) - which ends up destroying the nation's economy.
The Bushniks on the other hand seek to relieve the NATION of any risk (Patriot Act, Criminal Record Retention, etc.) - which ends up destroying individual liberties.
To hell with both camps.
19 - zingzing
what did the black on white violence thing have to with... anything... again?
i had forgotten that white people don't kill people. i'm going to look up white murderer(s?) on wikipedia, see if i find any... later.
20 - Richard Brodie
Here, zingy, let me help you (from the Color of Crime report):
"Blacks are many times more likely to commit crimes of violence against whites than viceversa. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial violent crimes involving blacks and whites reported every year, blacks commit 90 percent and whites commit only ten percent. Blacks are therefore more than 50 times more likely than whites to commit interracial crimes of violence. The differences are even greater for multiple-offender interracial crimes, with blacks 100 to 250 times more likely to be involved in gang attacks on whites than the reverse.
Some people may argue that blacks attack whites because they expect them to be carrying cash or valuables. However, fewer than 20 percent of black attacks on whites are robberies; rape and assault do not usually have economic motives. There is more black-on-white violent crime than black-on-black violent crime. When blacks commit violence they attack whites 50 to 55 percent of the time. When whites commit violence they attack blacks only two to three percent of the time.
Most Americans probably believe that whites commit most interracial crimes, and that blacks are the most frequent victims. The reverse is true: In approximately 90 percent of the interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, blacks are perpetrators and whites are victims. In terms of crime rates (calculated as the number of crimes per 100,000 population), blacks are more than 50 times more likely to attack whites than the reverse.
Although white-on-black hate crimes receive a great deal of attention, blacks are approximately twice as likely to commit hate crimes as whites. Hispanics are considered a victim category for hate crimes but not a perpetrator category. A Mexican who is attacked because of ethnicity is recorded as Hispanic, but if the same Mexican attacks a black or white for racial reasons he is considered white. This inflates the figures for “white” hate crime perpetrators, and gives the impression that Hispanics commit no hate crimes."
21 - zingzing
ahh, the good old new century foundation, that bastion of believable research! they don't skew the facts any which way, now do they? i remember one of their glorious findings: "blacks reproduce faster because of the size of their sex organs." oh, that's classic. don't quote these people if you don't want to be laughed at. they are racists and you know it.
22 - Richard Brodie
That's an urban legend. At dfire.org, in a very slanted pro-ADL, pro-SPLC article, the source of your quote is admitted NOT to be Jared Taylor's New Century Foundation, but rather a completely different individual. I suspected as much, because that's not the kind of thing I would have expected Mr. Taylor to have said.
And yes I know he is a racist - a defensive, not an offensive one. And in case you don't know the difference, an offensive racist is the bad kind who hates people solely because of their race, regardless of their character qualities, and has the malevolent "supremacist" notion that his own race should be politically supreme over others. A defensive racist is the good kind who loves and is proud of his own race, does not want to see it eradicated, and has the benevolent "separatist" notion that all races deserve to be protected from every form of genocide, from slaughter to miscegenation, and that the only way to insure this is to have their own separate geographical spaces.
So instead of trying to dismiss facts that negate your own preconceived multiculturalist brainwashing, by resorting to slinging the same old stupid worn-out epithets, try and do some fact-based refuting.
23 - zingzing
a racist is a racist is a racist. how's that?
maybe you would call what he writes "pro-white" instead of anti-everyone-else, but what he writes just spreads hatred for non-whites. it's racism through and through. there is no good racism. just look at the comments at American Renaissance for proof.
24 - zingzing
and the quote i made is from a conference headed/curated by new century/american renaissance.
25 - Richard Brodie
zing the epithet slinger asks:
a racist is a racist is a racist. how's that?
It's like saying "a killer is a killer is a killer" - it's the way a moral and intellectual coward ignores the distinctions between "in cold blood, in self-defense, in combat".
You say that my quote in #20 from "The Color of Crime" skews the facts. So evidently you don't have any qualms with the facts themselves, just the way they are "skewed". The author is a Yale graduate, with a degree in philosophy, a masters in international economics, has taught at Harvard, and written for major newspapers and magazines. He's not the kind of person who's going to be misquoting easily verifiable facts.
He pointed out how the government skews the facts by reporting Hispanic VICTIMS as non-white, while at the same time reporting Hispanic PERPETRATORS as white! So tell us, if you can, in what way you think he has "skewed" the facts. I know you can't do that because he has not skewed them - he just STATES them, and lets them speak for themselves, rather than ignoring them and brushing them under the rug, as is done by people like yourself, Mark Potok of the SPLC, etc., who don't want to have to face up to them.
maybe you would call what he writes "pro-white" instead of anti-everyone-else, but what he writes just spreads hatred for non-whites.
Yeah, those racist fuckers who want to encourage Whites to be proud of their race, culture, and history are just as bad as those other racist fuckers who encourage Blacks to be proud of "Black History", to enroll in "Black Studies", to learn about and celebrate "Black Heritage", etc. ... aren't they?