I think I can trace my ancestry back to Salem on one side, and the royal land grants of the 1600s on the other.
>>...nobody but the Quakers were in North America trying to build a nation based on mutual respect, tolerance, and cooperation.<<
I think Rhode Island also tried for an accepting sort of society (though their idea of accepting vs ours might have been rather divergent.)
Also, don't fawn over Quakers too much - we participated in chattel slavery up until the 1700s, I think we were involved in reservation schools in the 1800s, and we spent a decent amount of our history ostracizing people for being fancy [wearing dyed clothing, singing, dancing at weddings...]
I think we are fairly decent people overall, but we have done horrible things and even today we are still not perfect.
>>The richest and most powerful nation since the fall of the British Empire, and people are walking from the Panama Canal Zone to the Texas border to get put on a bus to NYC, where they might be given some bureacratic advice and a place in a homeless shelter.<<
Real conversation, paraphrased: "Well, if they [refugees] don't like it, why don't they go back where they came from?" [drily] "Because somebody bombed their house."
Personally, I figure that just because we are better than somewhere else, that doesn't mean that we are automatically good.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-09-10 07:04 pm (UTC)>>...nobody but the Quakers were in North America trying to build a nation based on mutual respect, tolerance, and cooperation.<<
I think Rhode Island also tried for an accepting sort of society (though their idea of accepting vs ours might have been rather divergent.)
Also, don't fawn over Quakers too much - we participated in chattel slavery up until the 1700s, I think we were involved in reservation schools in the 1800s, and we spent a decent amount of our history ostracizing people for being fancy [wearing dyed clothing, singing, dancing at weddings...]
I think we are fairly decent people overall, but we have done horrible things and even today we are still not perfect.
>>The richest and most powerful nation since the fall of the British Empire, and people are walking from the Panama Canal Zone to the Texas border to get put on a bus to NYC, where they might be given some bureacratic advice and a place in a homeless shelter.<<
Real conversation, paraphrased:
"Well, if they [refugees] don't like it, why don't they go back where they came from?"
[drily] "Because somebody bombed their house."
Personally, I figure that just because we are better than somewhere else, that doesn't mean that we are automatically good.