The World Never Stops....

by Glenn N. Holliman

Please note comments at the end of this article!  As usual, thoughtful and insightful. And a delightful poem by a talented, but ailing, authoress in Australia!

Dan Schuckers, a learned legal scholar in Pennsylvania, sent this article along which makes very good reading.  This article is by a Financial Times contributor, Simon Schama, published in the September 4, 2015 edition.  


Mass movement sees the US and Germany undergo Historic Role Reversals

"Before our eyes, as drowned children are washed up on the shores of our shame, two great nations are undergoing historic role reversals. The mass movement of peoples lies at the heart of both American and German history. But faced with immigration crises, they have responded in ways very different from what those histories might have predicted.

In the US Emma Lazarus’s lines, which transformed the Statue of Liberty, originally designed as a symbol of international republicanism, into a beacon of hope for “the wretched refuse of the teeming shore” still face New York harbour. And yet today the country’s activist president is uncharacteristically quiet on the plight of refugees.

Meanwhile Republican contenders to succeed him in the White House, including those of immigrant background, compete to denounce illegals, issuing proposals to “secure” a border already defended by some 20,000 personnel, a budget of $3.6 bn and hundreds of miles of fence.

In Germany, on the other hand, where a mere three-quarters of a century ago the most pitiless campaign of dehumanisation and extermination was executed in the name of racial purity, the chancellor has been a tower of moral decency. The country’s people have, by and large, responded to the plight of refugees with heartwarming humanity.

Across the Atlantic, the talk is all of walls and mass deportations (in Donald Trump’s case of fully 11 m souls). In Germany it is of making arrangements so that 800,000 desperate people might find asylum.

Our world is facing three overwhelming problems.

 There is the relentless degradation of the planet’s ecosystem; then the monstrous, ever-widening inequality between rich and poor . And then there is the big one, which those of us born at the end of the second world war did not see coming and which has proved intractably murderous.

It is the division between those who want to live with people who look and sound pretty much like themselves, and those who think differences of skin colour, faith, language are no bar to sharing the neighbourhood — provided that newcomers subscribe to the same tolerant principles which brought them there in the first place.

Though since its foundation America has celebrated its exceptionalism as being the first nation of immigrants, its attitude has long been fickle. One of the great eulogies of American life, Hector St John Crèvecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer, published in 1782, lauded the young republic for being the only place in the world where, regardless of one’s origins, race or language, subscribing to the common democratic ideal was enough to make a citizen out of an immigrant. 

But a century later, with hundreds of thousands pouring in from Italy and eastern Europe, the New York Times sounded a proto-Trumpian alert. In May 1887, seven months after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, on a day when 13 steamers landed 10,000 immigrants on a single day, its editorial writers fumed “shall we take Europe’s paupers, her criminals, her lunatics, her crazy revolutionaries, her vagabonds?” 

Yet millions continued to come, laying down the rich loam of ethnic diversity from which 20th century America drew its cultural and economic nourishment. This changed after the first world war. In 1924 the aptly named Ellison DuRant Smith, senator for South Carolina, in a speech to Congress insisted that “we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure unadulterated American citizen.” Sure enough a brutal quota system, based on tiny percentages of populations already in the country, began to close the gates. 

During the 1930s they slammed tight against Jews desperate to exit the Reich dooming them to destruction. In the same decade, violent attacks on Mexican workers. California persuaded them to flee back home; tens of thousands of others were deported. Worse still the US sponsored two conferences on “the refugee problem” in Evian in 1938 and Bermuda in 1943 (when the horror of the holocaust was known) in which the wringing of hands and the shedding of crocodile tears was followed by stony inaction. 

How remarkable, then, that it is Germany which has been most receptive to the plight of Syrian refugees — not just through the forthrightness of Angela Merkel (who was also exceptional in tackling resurgent anti-Semitism) but the generosity of its people. Perhaps it is precisely her demonstration as the tormentor of the long-suffering Greeks which has made Ms Merkel realise that if it is to survive at all the EU is in need of some other raison d’être than as the superintendent of fiscal rectitude. Or perhaps this moment of truth has just come to her and to Germany and for that matter to all 28 states of the EU inadvertently.

Either way it is this issue, not the question of sovereign debt that will decide whether Europe lives or dies as something other than a fine tuner of the business cycle. Doubtless there will be a conference. Pray it is not an empty charade like Evian and Bermuda. Pray again that it might be the moment when Europe — including Britain — finally discovers that long lost item of its political anatomy: moral backbone."

Comments? 

From a 'retired' United Methodist minister who runs a B & B with his wife in the rolling hills of Tennessee:

Thanks, Glenn, for sharing this..
This insightful article addresses several layers of issues worthy of my reflection and meditation.

Frankly, I'm "under conviction" myself as we sit here with a home of 10 bedrooms, 8.5 baths, fresh water streams and acres of land doing nothing ....

The minds of Adolph Hitler and Ellison DuRant Smith still breathe their arrogant exclusivity just below the American surface ...

Lord, have mercy!


From a Biologist and Deep Thinker in the English Midlands:

Dear Glenn

Obama Stuff

A masterly, and, in my view, objective, summary.

Would that we were all able to take such a non-emotive stance and vote with our heads rather than our gut feeling (or 'faith').

Mass Movement of People

The current wave of people fleeing war and strife, although not entirely Muslim, is a majority thereof. Many Europeans will welcome them and recognise their anguish, their need and their courage. How ironic, however, that their dogmas will forbid their integration - they will not share our meals, for much of what we eat is haram - their women folk will not socialise with men who are not their relatives. Mary had many female Muslim colleagues to whom we would love to have extended invitations to our home, but they would have shared neither our food nor my company. Alas, generations after becoming British, the Muslim community in Burton continues to live in a parallel universe. I have no answer. I simply think that it's sad.

Bizarrely, almost the same situation exists in Belfast, and there, the communities separated are both nominally Christian and their children even attend different schools.

God and religion have a great deal to answer for.

Our Scientist comments further in the day:

Donald Trump - bizarre.

Jeremy Corbyn - equally bizarre, but more frightening. His election - out with the new, in with the old (around 1950, I'd guess) - has removed a realistic opposition to our current government, the Labour Party now being effectively unelectable. Thus, with no proper democratic channel through which to voice opposition, the public may turn to undemocratic ones, like demonstrations; civil disobedience; rioting, even. The only consolation is that unlike yours, our public isn't equipped with assault rifles!

However, back to Trump and Corbyn as a duo (add Nigel Farage to make a trio): even though they are as mad as a box of frogs, I cannot help but admire the fact that they say what they mean and mean exactly what they say. They get their support, because Joe Public's view of politicians is a cynical one. Politicians in general, are believed rightly or wrongly, to speak in 'spin' and platitudes. 

Often this is to avoid saying anything, for fear of making a commitment, but otherwise it is an attempt to say what they believe the public wants to hear and thus to 'earn' its vote. Thus, even if you disagree completely with what our trio says and stands for, at least they stand for something and state their sincerely held beliefs honestly and loudly.

Had the world of politics not brought itself into contempt, people like our mad threesome and your tea party would simply be laughed at.

From a retired educator just north of the M-25 of London with whom I have had discussions on the 'First Past the Post' voting system in the U.K.
 

On the question of voting systems – UK is the ONLY country in Europe which uses our crazy system !!!   And can we really think this is democratic when 4 million people vote for a party and they only get ONE MP ! (in the case of UKIP).  Contrast that you can get a Tory MP with just 34.347 votes on average or a Labour MP for 40,290......

From the insightful author and playwright in Adeline, Australia, writing from her hospital sick bed:

 

This is one of the hardest topics to debate, because if one cautions against taking in a mass of desperate people, they will immediately be branded either ‘fascist’ at worst, or ‘hard-hearted’ at the least. But there are many reasons I say ‘beware’. A non-discriminatory welcoming of all those refugees who need sanctuary, will spell the death of any prosperity or order in many European countries, and then they will be of help to no-one.

Imagine for a moment that your family is tucked in bed in their house in a western country, and all is well. An urgent knock at the door, and when the door is opened a family of desperate foreigners seeks refuge. You take them in, of course, and feed them and find beds. The next night another knock on the door, and this time when you hesitate the refugee father puts his foot in the door and says they won’t leave – they are too desperate for that. So you take them in, and feed them and find some more bedding. Now the word has spread, and over the next week many more families ask, in fact demand, to be let in and fed and housed. If the refugees are from the Middle East, you may have to witness the subjugation of women while you play host, and other practices which you have never condoned, and indeed may even be against your country’s law.  

I ask all those good and humane people who are criticising governments for not taking in more Syrians right now, ‘when will your charity stop?’ Will it be when you are financially ruined, or when the jobs of your children are taken, or when your guests are now in the majority and wish to take over with their laws and rules?  

This sounds simplistic, almost absurd, but it is the only way I as an individual can describe the conflict I face when I see the heart breaking pictures of millions of individuals fleeing. As for the conflict which various governments must be facing now, they have my deepest sympathy, and I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision on behalf of my country.

And here is her poem
worth many a shinny coin
describing her woes
of feeling ill from head to her toes - GNH (ugh)

 A TALE OF SLUDGE AND WOE

I’ll tell you the story of Hillary Mudge

Who grappled with problems of biliary sludge

In most bad gallbladders sit stones that won’t budge

But swollen with cream cakes and caramel fudge

Hillary’s bubbled with biliary sludge.

Engorged between liver and stomach it lodged

While it gruesomely churned with its porridgy splodge

On the xray the doctors saw one pudgy smudge

And they pondered the problems of biliary sludge.

So what was the cause of this bladder so large?

A rogue gene from Hillary’s mad mother Marge.

So tight was the bloated bladder wedged

One surgeon thought it should be dredged,

Another, perhaps more fully-fledged,

Suggested trimming round the edge

Like the gardener had done to the hospital hedge.

One doctor said ‘Stomach and liver we’ll merge

As round the gallbladder we diverge’.

A vacuum doctor, a funny old codger

Said ‘Why don’t we suck out the fat little bludger,

And if that doesn’t cause an immediate purge

We’ll switch the vac from suck to surge

And blow out the bugger in one massive splurge!’

Another suggested a by-passing bridge

From liver’s far corner, to stomach’s near edge,

But as you can tell, all solutions seemed dodgy

For a bladder so grossly engorged and so podgy.

Then Dr Chen remarked with a nudge

‘There’s a simple solution for Hillary Mudge.

It will not be easy, it will be a drudge,

She will need to train for a daily trudge

Lots of mileage through foliage

And upon her return she must go to the fridge –

Now all listen closely, this is ridgy didge -

She must reach to the ledge where she finds a thick wedge

Of frittata stuffed full of eggs, parsley and veg,

For the only way that Miss Hillary Mudge

Can resolve the affliction of biliary sludge

Is to give up all cream cakes and caramel fudge!’

And a follow up on 14 September from Australia capturing the angst:

I can’t believe it!  My little parable about the family accepting ever increasing numbers of refugees, then reaching its limit and yanking away the welcome mat, is actually coming to pass. Germany now closing its borders; others putting up the wire ever higher. You know, it’s a horrible thing, but in the end we are like rats in a cage. At first, with the low numbers, all needs are met and the community is one of harmony. Then, as the numbers increase beyond the ability of the infrastructure to meet all needs, the mood turns and it’s every family for itself.  It is why the human species has survived and reproduced for so long so successfully.

Horrible, but undeniable, and inevitable.

You and I are just so lucky to be born when we were, and where we were.

Meanwhile, I try not to feel senseless guilt for my lucky life.

From a Pennsylvania Farmer:

I, too have thought more on this subject mass migrations and refuge crises.  Started last night at dinner and your other commentators have helped to firm up my opinion and, yes, fear.  The disruption we fear in Europe is inevitable.  Peoples' lives and livelihoods will be affected.  Taxes may rise. Housing and school slots may be scare.   Assimilation will be difficult.  Native Europeans will certainly protest.  But disruption is going to happen regardless of whether or not the EU opens its door to the Middle East and Africa.   With an open door people can show love, goodwill and generosity, which is reciprocated once a relationship develops.  Closing the doors hardens hearts among those who close the doors and breeds fear, resentment and retaliation among those who are turned away.  Those who find a way in are illegal and must live in the shadows.  Those kept in camps or turned back either die or seek to hurt those who have hurt them.   I can see no way to avoid further radical change and turmoil.