More on the fallout from Paris

[archaeobob]

Uggh.

I know that this isn't the most uplifting of topics (although I will be posting something positive after this), but it is something I'm very worried about (and a subject that I know only too much about).

Talk2Action has an article about a proposed bill to create a Department of Judeo-Christian Values. Based on the people proposing it, I

Comments

[moropus]

That proposed department makes my blood run cold, so I'm glad to see at least one rational person agreeing.

Traditional Jewish values include a command to be good to refugees and strangers!

Traditional Christian values seem to include a new Crusade.

And the school of thought that those poor bastards in the Middle East need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age is laughable.

Really laughable. When I was in Turkey, an overbearing Saudi who was on a buying trip in his Rolls, tried to buy me from a bunch of military guys from my work.

They immediately stashed me in the corner behind about 20 men and really kept an eye on me for several days, just like you'd expect.

If somebody's culture tells them that they are allowed to buy women from total strangers and is very insistent, he isn't going to enter the modern age just because you occupy his country and kill people.

I am sick and tired of us sponsoring overseas rebels with cash and weapons, only to have them turn on us later. We need to just leave them the hell alone.

But by all means take in refugees. Some of my ancestors were refugees from the Irish potato famine.

I wish sometimes that everyone was forced to acknowledge that most of us that left Europe did so under less than pleasant conditions and arrived here with nothing.

[archaeobob]

Yeah... people tend to forget "little" facts like that.

I think it's part political... like the Irish Potato famine. While Irish people were starving to death, there was a large food surplus in parts of England. I don't remember the reason why none of that food went to Ireland - whether it was politics (ethnic discrimination - also very common in England against Irish and Scots) or greed (not willing to sell the food for an affordable price - because people were starving and would pay more for food).

Some of my ancestors were in the Jamestown settlement - according to my grandfather they were "indentured servants" forced to come to Jamestown to serve the rich settlers (who were here to find gold - or get rich in some other way). Others were on the Mayflower... and I strongly suspect that those ones were not nice people (the Mayflower settlers were here for religious reasons - they were thrown out of Europe because they kept trying to take over countries - like the Dominionists today). I had a ship's captain as one of my ancestors - and at the time the main "crop" going from New England were Native American slaves!

Maybe it's an unwillingness to admit to the truth about a lot of one's ancestors - that they weren't all the pious, good people that so many wish they were? I for one find the truth to be more interesting - but I'm also very lucky in having such interesting ancestors!