[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Partial victory against SB 1070. Protest is still on!

[E.Wayne Johnson]

I see the border as a semi-permeable membrane with gates and pumps.  Some 
things are pumped in
some are pumped out and some passively flow in and out.  Some things diffuse 
across the membrane.

If there is no border, there is no State indeed.  I can't say that I dislike 
the idea of No State and No Borders but I recognize that the integrity and 
existence of the State is defined by its border.  I mean State here in the 
general sense, not the 50 states, etc.

The extreme Libertarian position is for no borders at all.  Extremes are 
usually dysfunctional.

Some borders and separations are natural due to various geophysical 
properties and the property of distance and the "homing" tendency.  People 
tend to naturally segregate (not in the racist sense) and develop their 
individual cultures.  My wife's hometown used to have a wall around it to 
keep bandits and roaming marauders out.  Consequently Qixian developed their 
own language that is quite different from the neighboring two county seats 
Taigu and Pingyao.  The wall at Pingyao is still standing since the 
merchants of Pingyao had money enough and motivation enough for a wall that 
would stand for centuries.  They got their training in xenophobia at the 
college of hard knocks.

The good people of Arizona have their own reasons for keeping out the 
Mexican riff-raff.  Likewise our Mexican brothers and sisters have their 
impetus for wanting to migrate northward in search of what they hope would 
be a better life.  My sympathies are with them.  I dont think that the 
majority of them are bandits and small thieves in search of something for 
nothing.  Some of them are.  Has to be so.  Such exist on both sides of the 
border.   Most of the Mexicans who come to the US are good people.  The fine 
Mexican guy who replaced my fried automatic transmission in Elko Nevada 
asked me where I was from and then asked me "what part of Mexico is that?".

"Born in East LA" is one of my favourite movies.  Lao Zi said that if you 
dont value things that are hard to get, then you bring it about that people 
do not compete.

However biased and rednecky stupid and xenophobic we might think Arizonans 
to be, they have a right to their own culture and individuality and I do 
regret that there are people who want to homogenize and dumb down the 
concept of the 50 or so sovereign states, however artificial and contrived 
one might find their ILL-drawn borders to be.

If Arizonans want to be assholes, we should respect it somewhat.  It is the 
differences that are interesting and blending the 50 states into a 
homogeneous mass is entropic.  I was cheering for the Quebecois to secede 
and it had nothing to do with whether or not I like Quebeckers.   In 
southern Illinois we didnt want the "Chicago dumbasses who cannot 
disttinguish Shinola from its colorimetric congener" telling us what to do, 
and we shared a lot more in common with the people in southern Indiana than 
those northerners who dont even know how to talk right.   For the other 49 
states to hammer the Arizonans is as least as hypocritical and xenophobic as 
the gun toting blaspheming rednecks of Arizona.

We make a big mistake when we try to impose our cultural memes on others. 
If immigration is a good idea then give the Mexicans free train tickets and 
safe passage through Arizona.  But dont tell the Arizonans how to run their 
state, however damn stupid their policy seems to us.  Yankee imperialism 
stinks no matter how you package it and the more you stir it up the more it 
stinks.

Mexicans come to the US because the equilibrium draws them in just like salt 
into a pickle.   The good people of the US dont want to do the jobs that 
they do, or used to do.  The Mexicans pick your fruit and vegetables, feed 
your livestock and slaughter and package them for you and clean your toilets 
afterwards.

I am disappointed at how polarized the issue has become & I dont see any 
meaningful dialogue going on between the different sides.  The federal 
government wants to extend its tentacles into every aspect of American life. 
Arizona has its own ideas.  I think that both sides are very very wrong and 
this matter is bound to continue to smolder for a long while.  The best 
thing for the Yankees to do is to simply give their advice and then mind 
their own business.  But if Yankees did that, they wouldn't be Yankees would 
they?

...and we wouldnt have a gazillion and a half military bases around the 
world either.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Szoke" <r-szoke at illinois.edu>
To: "Karen Medina" <kmedina67 at gmail.com>; "Peace-discuss List" 
<Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Partial victory against SB 1070. 
Protest is still on!


> The matter came before the judge because a lawsuit was filed against the
> State.  The lawsuit may have been filed because of some public pressure,
> but there is no indication that it was or needed to be "massive."
>
> Note that original issue has disappeared in the confusion, as usual:
> whether the ruling was a direct causal result of "massive public 
> pressure."
>
> -- Ron
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>