The Discomfort Of Stangers

Immigration is an issue that has become a part of the American consciousness. Politicians, that class of self serving and self aggrandizing citizen that is woefully ill equipped to deal with matters that are in the best interest of the nation, are being forced to deal with issues that impact our economic, social, legal and cultural identity. Special interest groups are determined to climb to the top of the heap and dictate their own agendas as gospel, no matter who gets hurt in the process.

The well being of America and Americans are irrelevant to politicians who seek new bases of political support and the Hamas-like agendistas that want their share of the booty.

The Discomfort Of Strangers is an essay by David Goodhart "challenging liberals to rethink their attitudes to diversity and the welfare state has provoked a bitter debate among progressive thinkers."

The was first published (in 2 parts) in The Guardian.

From the first part of the essay

"...And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life). The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left's recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed...."

Moreover, modern liberal societies cannot be based on a simple assertion of group identity - the very idea of the rule of law, of equal legal treatment for everyone regardless of religion, wealth, gender or ethnicity, conflicts with it. On the other hand, if you deny the assumption that humans are social, group-based primates with constraints, however imprecise, on their willingness to share, you find yourself having to defend some implausible positions..."

The second part of the essay is equally provocative:

"...When solidarity and diversity pull against each other, which side should public policy favour? Diversity can increasingly look after itself - the underlying drift of social and economic development favours it. Solidarity, on the other hand, thrives at times of adversity, hence its high point just after the second world war and its steady decline ever since as affluence, mobility, value diversity and (in some areas) immigration have loosened the ties of a common culture. Public policy should therefore tend to favour solidarity in four broad areas.

...Negotiating the tension between solidarity and diversity is at the heart of politics. But both left and right have, for different reasons, downplayed the issue. The left is reluctant to acknowledge a conflict between values it cherishes; it is ready to stress the erosion of community from "bad" forms of diversity, such as market individualism, but not from "good" forms of diversity, such as sexual freedom and immigration. And the right, in Britain at least, has sidestepped the conflict, partly because it is less interested in solidarity than the left, but also because it is still trying to prove that it is comfortable with diversity."

Read parts one and two of Goodhart's essay. It is an eye opener.