Jerry Eichenberger wrote on 10/18/10 at 12:38:47:

Nice.

I got your point Spiff... I had to look up "Ojibwe", but I got it...

PS,... you have a 100 posts!... Congrats! Full Member... ...

Jog,.. I wasn't responding to any particular post or comment,.. just the general attitude of conservative thinking...

The hypocrisy of the sacrosanct status in which they claim to hold Constitution and simultaneous despise they have for the ACLU that defends it, for instance...  
The idea that rights and freedoms are only for those people that we agree with, and that behave like us...

Freedom is about defending the rights of the unpopular...
.... or it should be...


PS,.. I better back out of this topic,... Politics...
I'm trying to cut down... ...

It's posts like that last one that make me glad my Thai daughter is on the north side of the 49th parallel ... and I feel kinda bad for saying that because I generally am a very pro-American Canadian ...

Jerry,

I think to a large degree we agree on the language thing when it comes to business and government. What people speak besides those circumstances is up to them. In other words I have no problem with people expressing themselves in what they wear, say or do. However as you say I should be free not to participate. If somebody can't speak english, they simply shouldn't be able do business in the USA without an interpreter somewhere along the line.

As a "Johny come lately" I think you need to look closer at what happened to the people who paved the way for the later immigrants. They fought, clawed and forced their way into the mainstream. Our forefathers luckily understood what would likely happen and framed our constitution to prevent a situation that could have been a lot worse (basically what they were leaving behind in the old country).

Not all immigrants needed a safety net, or came to these shores as paupers. Some of them bypassed settling in the the cities in the east and struck out further west. One can only imagine the - whatever it took - to do this and the reasons they did it. Some of these people with means came to what we now call the midwest and settled in the wilderness (what they called it), carved out a piece of land, and were completely self sufficient. My guess is that at least a part of their decision was based on how they saw other immigrants being treated in the cities. They were able to settle among the native people, carve out their little spot in the world, and make it work. Later, came "the indian troubles" which of course came after the treaties (War of 1812 etc) written by people who hadn't even seen these lands yet laid claim to them.

My ancestors didn't have an accent, others might call it a brogue but never an accent.

Immigrants need to accept the norms of the society the have adopted as their own. I would assume they came here (Canada & the US) for a better life than could be offered in the "Old Country". This doesn't mean the lose all of their old ways and customs, just the the ones that prevent them from contributing to our societies. I grew up with many immigrants from various continents and various relegions. I found their differences facinating, but they all realized  they didn't have to give up much to benefit from what our society offered.

That East Indian on the West Coast mentioned above is nothing but a murderer and should be sent back from where he came, preferable w/o a parachute.

I really shouldn't step into this...but...

My background is Irish-Scots-German-English-Welsh-Pawnee-Amish. I don't speak ANY of those languages properly, start spouting off in the Queen's English and I zone out.

I drive an intermodal heavy container semi. I deal daily with immigrant drivers and dockhands. Tell you what, for my money, if you weren't born in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or western Europe, get off my piers and off my roads. Your spoken English is atrocious, you can't drive your way out of a wet paper bag (watch IRT Deadliest Roads, those East Indian cage drivers are good compared to African, Russian, Arab and East Indian truckers), and underbidding the job forcing you to run hell bent for leather is assinine. And take a shower you nasty f***s.  

I don't care what anyone does at home. Eat what you want, watch what you want, speak what you want. When I go to my riding friend Doug's, the food is German, the language is German, and the music tends to be SA and SS marching/battle songs. At my little brothers, it is mostly various Gaelic foods and music. At my house, it tends to be Southern food, Southern rock, and Parisian French and Castillian Spanish. With Lakota, Navajo, Coast Salish and a few other indigenous languages thrown in as I remember them (I've studied 30 languages, it gets confusing).

One set of great-grandparents came here from the Alsace. They settled on Long Island NY and kept farming until they died. One set came here from Ireland, via New York and Mexico. That great-grandfather was a shoemaker, he made Babe Ruth's shoes starting when the Babe was still in an orphanage. Another great-grandfather was all of 26 years old when he died of black lung, coal miner and logger. The other was a Master Mason, Scottish Rite, and fire chief in my mom's hometown.

What did they all have in common? They worked hard to make a life for their families. They didn't expect to get everything handed to them. No government safety net, no special breaks because they were "different", no special treatment because they were/weren't born here.

I'd just as soon close the borders to the unskilled masses, but until/unless we get our own kids to start acting like Americans or Canadians and not a pack of entitlement s***s, it's kind of pointless.

mick wrote on 10/18/10 at 15:01:11:


Actually mick out here on our Rock in the North Atlantic, we have our own dialect, "Newfanese"