I wasn't going to post about this, but I just cannot keep silent on this topic any longer. Every day I scroll through Facebook and I begin to fear, distrust, and even hate some of the people I once thought of as friends. I cannot stand the absurdity of this whole situation any longer.
Let me start at the beginning. There was an attack on Paris orchestrated by terrorists under the orders of ISIS. Not one of the attackers was a refugee from Syria, but due to a fake passport, it was originally believed that at least one was. He may have followed the same path as the refugees, but he was obviously planted there by ISIS, and his passport did not stand up to any level of scrutiny.
What has upset me most is the people now calling for an immediate end of acceptance of any new refugees from the Middle East. These people are calling for the US to turn away those who are fleeing their war torn homes. The United States is not a European nation, and thus can be a lot more stringent about its screening process for refugees. In fact, since 1980, not one refugee admitted to the US has committed an act of terror. We admit around 70,000 refugees each year. That means that in the last thirty five years, nearly 2.5 million refugees have settled in the United States, and a resounding none of them has committed an act of terror since settling here. Let's stop worrying about terrorists among the refugees.
Seriously, these are human beings who deserve all the love and compassion we claim to want to give to any homeless person. All I am asking for is to allow them to enter the country and be taken in by those people and groups willing to care for them until they are able to be assimilated by our economy. If history is any indicator, our economy can handle a flood of refugees like the Cuban flood in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Since I bring up the Cuban refugee flood, I might also point out that back then, Americans understood that we should take refugees from Cuba, even given the potential theat of communists insurgents.
Now, moving on to the other point that I'm honestly tired of seeing on Facebook, the gist of which is "we need to feed and house all of our veterans before we give any help to a bunch of brown people." I barely even know where to start with this. There are numerous programs in place to assist veterans on all stages. A quick Google search is enough to verify this. There's even an initiative in place at the US Department of Veterans Affairs to end homeless for all veterans. We're already doing that through the government and through various charities, so the argument that we need to "take care of our own first" is basically garbage. Anyone making this argument is just attempting to justify their xenophobia, and it's disgusting.
Finally, I am outraged by comments made this week by Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio that basically call for everyone to forget all the important strides we've taken since the first leak by Edward Snowden and go back to allowing NSA to unabashedly spy on American citizens. I try to avoid the whole "outrage" thing because very few things that people get worked up over are truly outrageous, but in this case I feel justified. These two men are calling for the government to completely stomp on every person's right to privacy. Every one of us has the right to live free of government spying and meddling. The argument about having nothing to hide holds no water, either. Even though I have nothing to hide, I don't want random government employees to be able to access my call records, emails, etc, basically on a whim. My correspondence with my friends and family is no one's business but those people I choose to correspond with, and if I wanted to make it the government's business, I would post it openly online as I am doing here. Edward Snowden basically gave up his life here to bring about the meager changes that were able to get passed through Congress. Let's not take that back now just because of a tragedy that no one could have foreseen and the program probably wouldn't have helped with, anyhow.
We are all human beings, and refugees just need to be shown a little compassion. They're not terrorists and I'm not asking you to do anything but let them come and let those of us willing to care for them take them in. Put aside your xenophobia, your hatred of Muslims, or whatever it is that is making you push these downtrodden people away, and allow those of us who are willing open our hearts to them.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Saturday, November 7, 2015
11/7/15 - Privilege
I know I've been inconsistent about these, but this particular topic has been sloshing around in my head for weeks now and I've honestly been a little intimidated by it. I knew this had to be my next topic, but I just couldn't seem articulate my feelings appropriately, so I kept thinking about it, listening to others, and questioning. I'm still not sure I'm ready, but I'm going to give it a shot.
This all started before even my last post, when I listened to a particular episode of the Tom Woods Show when he talked about Social Justice. Since, I've heard many podcasts about the ideas of social justice, privilege, and oppression. I've listened to people I know speak about things along these lines. I've asked questions where I can. I've even read a few blog posts about the ideas. I wasn't ready to do this post, though, until I was driving to Houston, TX to deliver a last minute order for my company. I was in the truck for 23 hours one way, all by myself, so I was able to go through some of my back catalog of podcasts that I had wanted to listen to but had never had the chance because so many new episodes come out all the time. I spent a good 30 hours or so listening to the entire catalog of The Uncontrollables podcast, and one of the last episodes really hit a nerve.
Episode 29 of The Uncontrollables was all about privilege and oppression, and I spent the greater part of the podcast shouting at the radio in the truck. It was also probably one of the few episodes in which I spent the majority of the episode actually agreeing with Miah.
In the episode, Miah's guest Laurelai Bailey talked about how White, cisgender, heterosexual males of the Christian persuasion generally receive privilege due to the systematic oppression of all other groups. Now, I will be the first person to tell you that, as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male who grew up in the Christian tradition, I have received my fair share of privilege. I cannot deny that I live a life that's been relatively blessed and fairly easy compared to many, many other people. I can also tell you that I have witnessed oppression with my very eyes.
In fact, while I was listening to the episode, I was stopped at an unconstitutional immigration checkpoint (which I'd love to get into at some point but instead I'll just send you here). I was actually stopped at one of these checkpoints every time I passed into a new state given my proximity to the Mexico border. This one, however, was interesting to me because I was not the only person at the stop (all the other times I had crossed borders rather late/early and no one else was really on the road). When I crossed into Arizona from New Mexico, however, it was right around rush hour traffic time, and every single car was being stopped. Literally the highway was shut down to force everyone through this stop. The car in front of me was full, and at least the driver from what I could tell was Hispanic. This car was stopped and the driver was harassed for 15 minutes. There was a drug sniffing dog brought out. The officer shined a flashlight into the backseat. All in all it was an incredibly ridiculous proceeding, but in the end the car was allowed to pass. To contrast that, when I drove up in my empty pickup sitting in the cab by myself, the officer waved me on without even questioning if I was a citizen.
Here's my point: oppression exists, but, by and large, the government perpetuates it more than any other group.
Why is this important? Well, for starters, because most groups that rail against privilege and oppression go to the government for support. There are all sorts of laws on the books right now to "protect" certain classes of people. There are plenty of laws and programs currently in effect with the sole purpose of lifting up those who are members of these protected classes so they can overcome their oppression. These laws and programs range from forcing employers to meet certain diversity requirements to giving out grants and scholarships to minority groups disproportionately to allow them to get into colleges. Many of these programs have been in effect for years. What have we learned in this time? I can tell you that I've learned that government cannot love you. If everyone else would learn this, we might not have so many of the problems we do now.
Government promises to bring about "social justice" by bringing down those who discriminate and uplifting those without privilege. Instead, all that the government has done is hold down those who would have been accepted and prolong prejudices. Let's use my example of the immigration checkpoint above. The United States Federal Government has decided that, for whatever reason, only their arbitrarily chosen number of people can immigrate to our country each year, and anyone else is forced to "get in line." I won't get into the absurdity of the line metaphor, but I will say that, if someone wishes to live in our country, I have yet to see a rational explanation of why anyone should stop them. Instead, we spend untold amounts of money "protecting our borders," which, as in the example above, generally leads to discrimination against anyone who is even vaguely Hispanic. This discrimination is then spread to the general population through scare tactics that politicians use to campaign.
What about drug policies? There's documented evidence, as I discussed on a previous post, that many drug laws were originally passed with racial motivations. Now, years later, we see police in inner cities singling out black people as more likely to be drug users or dealers, and so police are much more likely to harass black people on the streets than white people. In fact, I can think of a particular instance where the police killed a man simply because he was black and had run-ins with them in the past over a stupid law. Then these policies are pushed on the general population and people are taught to fear any black people they meet because they're probably criminals.
Even policies intended to help generally do more harm than good. Let's look at all the subsidies, grants, and scholarships available for minority students. The government has become more and more involved in colleges across the nation, and as a result, college tuition has increased over 1000% in the last 30 years. As I mentioned in a post about Bernie Sanders, for every dollar the US Government spends on colleges, tuition costs increase by 65 cents. Now, I'm not saying that minorities shouldn't go to college. I'm also not suggesting that 30 years ago there was no discrimination against minorities while entering college. I will also admit that many minority children are disparately affected by poverty (which is also caused by government meddling), making the cost of college out of reach for many of these people. However, as I discussed before, not everyone needs to go to college. I met many, many people in my school who had no idea what they even wanted to get out of college. Why should anyone, government or private, waste money on spending time in school for almost no reason? Before I go ranting on that for three pages, though, I'd like to get back to my point: college cost has increased exponentially because of government intervention, and that's hurting everyone. The biggest reason most colleges site needing to increase tuition is increased administrative costs necessary to comply with regulations, such as the diversity mandates.
On and on it goes. However, if you look at a group like the LGBT community, you'll see that, by and large, public opinion has shifted well before government changed it's policies. You just have to look at examples like the pizza shop that went out of business because they refused to cater to a gay wedding. The law was on the side of the shop owners, but they still had to close their business because public opinion was not. Why do we need a government to get in our way and slow down our movements to include everyone?
Lastly, I'd like to touch on those who speak out against privilege. Just as those who are oppressed cannot help the fact that they are born that way, I cannot help the fact that I was born a white, cisgender, heterosexual male in a Christian household. That's my lot in life, and unfortunately that means I won't get harassed by police or border patrol agents. I'm thin and able bodied, so I won't get discriminated against when I shop or apply for work. My body type and facial features fall within societal norms, so I don't get strange looks in public.
However, for those claiming that social movements aren't "about me," I'd like to take the time to tell you that you're wrong. As I said above, many so called social movements force themselves into my life by getting the government involved, or simply attacking people like me on social media. I once heard the statement, "The way to promote tolerance is to be intolerant of intolerance." Does no one else think that's kind of like saying the way to promote peace is to go to war with anyone who's not peaceful? The point is, when you're being "intolerant of intolerance," the first thing you're being is intolerant, which seems to me to be the exact opposite of what you're attempting to promote. Don't attack people for having different views; talk to them or debate with them. Try to convince people that you're right. You won't win everyone, and that's okay. I don't expect everyone in the world to agree with what I say on this blog, but I put it out there because some people may agree. Hell, my wife doesn't even usually agree with me, but that doesn't stop me from arguing with her.
Finally, all I ever really ask for is a chance to be left alone. If you want me to change, talk to me, and I'll adjust the things I think need to be adjusted. By and large, most people are fairly reasonable and if you tell them they're being honestly offensive (and not just that micro-aggression garbage), they will adjust their actions to avoid offending you. Don't get the government involved. Don't force people to do what they don't want at the point of a gun. That's the best way to bread contempt and prolong discrimination, and any government intervention suddenly takes a movement that is not "about me" and makes it my business.
This all started before even my last post, when I listened to a particular episode of the Tom Woods Show when he talked about Social Justice. Since, I've heard many podcasts about the ideas of social justice, privilege, and oppression. I've listened to people I know speak about things along these lines. I've asked questions where I can. I've even read a few blog posts about the ideas. I wasn't ready to do this post, though, until I was driving to Houston, TX to deliver a last minute order for my company. I was in the truck for 23 hours one way, all by myself, so I was able to go through some of my back catalog of podcasts that I had wanted to listen to but had never had the chance because so many new episodes come out all the time. I spent a good 30 hours or so listening to the entire catalog of The Uncontrollables podcast, and one of the last episodes really hit a nerve.
Episode 29 of The Uncontrollables was all about privilege and oppression, and I spent the greater part of the podcast shouting at the radio in the truck. It was also probably one of the few episodes in which I spent the majority of the episode actually agreeing with Miah.
In the episode, Miah's guest Laurelai Bailey talked about how White, cisgender, heterosexual males of the Christian persuasion generally receive privilege due to the systematic oppression of all other groups. Now, I will be the first person to tell you that, as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male who grew up in the Christian tradition, I have received my fair share of privilege. I cannot deny that I live a life that's been relatively blessed and fairly easy compared to many, many other people. I can also tell you that I have witnessed oppression with my very eyes.
In fact, while I was listening to the episode, I was stopped at an unconstitutional immigration checkpoint (which I'd love to get into at some point but instead I'll just send you here). I was actually stopped at one of these checkpoints every time I passed into a new state given my proximity to the Mexico border. This one, however, was interesting to me because I was not the only person at the stop (all the other times I had crossed borders rather late/early and no one else was really on the road). When I crossed into Arizona from New Mexico, however, it was right around rush hour traffic time, and every single car was being stopped. Literally the highway was shut down to force everyone through this stop. The car in front of me was full, and at least the driver from what I could tell was Hispanic. This car was stopped and the driver was harassed for 15 minutes. There was a drug sniffing dog brought out. The officer shined a flashlight into the backseat. All in all it was an incredibly ridiculous proceeding, but in the end the car was allowed to pass. To contrast that, when I drove up in my empty pickup sitting in the cab by myself, the officer waved me on without even questioning if I was a citizen.
Here's my point: oppression exists, but, by and large, the government perpetuates it more than any other group.
Why is this important? Well, for starters, because most groups that rail against privilege and oppression go to the government for support. There are all sorts of laws on the books right now to "protect" certain classes of people. There are plenty of laws and programs currently in effect with the sole purpose of lifting up those who are members of these protected classes so they can overcome their oppression. These laws and programs range from forcing employers to meet certain diversity requirements to giving out grants and scholarships to minority groups disproportionately to allow them to get into colleges. Many of these programs have been in effect for years. What have we learned in this time? I can tell you that I've learned that government cannot love you. If everyone else would learn this, we might not have so many of the problems we do now.
Government promises to bring about "social justice" by bringing down those who discriminate and uplifting those without privilege. Instead, all that the government has done is hold down those who would have been accepted and prolong prejudices. Let's use my example of the immigration checkpoint above. The United States Federal Government has decided that, for whatever reason, only their arbitrarily chosen number of people can immigrate to our country each year, and anyone else is forced to "get in line." I won't get into the absurdity of the line metaphor, but I will say that, if someone wishes to live in our country, I have yet to see a rational explanation of why anyone should stop them. Instead, we spend untold amounts of money "protecting our borders," which, as in the example above, generally leads to discrimination against anyone who is even vaguely Hispanic. This discrimination is then spread to the general population through scare tactics that politicians use to campaign.
What about drug policies? There's documented evidence, as I discussed on a previous post, that many drug laws were originally passed with racial motivations. Now, years later, we see police in inner cities singling out black people as more likely to be drug users or dealers, and so police are much more likely to harass black people on the streets than white people. In fact, I can think of a particular instance where the police killed a man simply because he was black and had run-ins with them in the past over a stupid law. Then these policies are pushed on the general population and people are taught to fear any black people they meet because they're probably criminals.
Even policies intended to help generally do more harm than good. Let's look at all the subsidies, grants, and scholarships available for minority students. The government has become more and more involved in colleges across the nation, and as a result, college tuition has increased over 1000% in the last 30 years. As I mentioned in a post about Bernie Sanders, for every dollar the US Government spends on colleges, tuition costs increase by 65 cents. Now, I'm not saying that minorities shouldn't go to college. I'm also not suggesting that 30 years ago there was no discrimination against minorities while entering college. I will also admit that many minority children are disparately affected by poverty (which is also caused by government meddling), making the cost of college out of reach for many of these people. However, as I discussed before, not everyone needs to go to college. I met many, many people in my school who had no idea what they even wanted to get out of college. Why should anyone, government or private, waste money on spending time in school for almost no reason? Before I go ranting on that for three pages, though, I'd like to get back to my point: college cost has increased exponentially because of government intervention, and that's hurting everyone. The biggest reason most colleges site needing to increase tuition is increased administrative costs necessary to comply with regulations, such as the diversity mandates.
On and on it goes. However, if you look at a group like the LGBT community, you'll see that, by and large, public opinion has shifted well before government changed it's policies. You just have to look at examples like the pizza shop that went out of business because they refused to cater to a gay wedding. The law was on the side of the shop owners, but they still had to close their business because public opinion was not. Why do we need a government to get in our way and slow down our movements to include everyone?
Lastly, I'd like to touch on those who speak out against privilege. Just as those who are oppressed cannot help the fact that they are born that way, I cannot help the fact that I was born a white, cisgender, heterosexual male in a Christian household. That's my lot in life, and unfortunately that means I won't get harassed by police or border patrol agents. I'm thin and able bodied, so I won't get discriminated against when I shop or apply for work. My body type and facial features fall within societal norms, so I don't get strange looks in public.
However, for those claiming that social movements aren't "about me," I'd like to take the time to tell you that you're wrong. As I said above, many so called social movements force themselves into my life by getting the government involved, or simply attacking people like me on social media. I once heard the statement, "The way to promote tolerance is to be intolerant of intolerance." Does no one else think that's kind of like saying the way to promote peace is to go to war with anyone who's not peaceful? The point is, when you're being "intolerant of intolerance," the first thing you're being is intolerant, which seems to me to be the exact opposite of what you're attempting to promote. Don't attack people for having different views; talk to them or debate with them. Try to convince people that you're right. You won't win everyone, and that's okay. I don't expect everyone in the world to agree with what I say on this blog, but I put it out there because some people may agree. Hell, my wife doesn't even usually agree with me, but that doesn't stop me from arguing with her.
Finally, all I ever really ask for is a chance to be left alone. If you want me to change, talk to me, and I'll adjust the things I think need to be adjusted. By and large, most people are fairly reasonable and if you tell them they're being honestly offensive (and not just that micro-aggression garbage), they will adjust their actions to avoid offending you. Don't get the government involved. Don't force people to do what they don't want at the point of a gun. That's the best way to bread contempt and prolong discrimination, and any government intervention suddenly takes a movement that is not "about me" and makes it my business.
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