![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley is newly unimpressed with the National Review's Mark Krikorian ("What Do You Mean ‘We’?").
Farley's annotation?
My annotations?
1. I've difficulties believing entirely the people who say that the United States isn't ultimately a nation-state founded on ethnonational grounds qualitatively no different from other Enlightenment republics of its kind. Yes, boundaries shift; they shift everywhere.
2. Stripping people of their nationality against their will is always problematic. That'd be one of the major frequently unconsidered complications of Québec independence: what would happen to the "Non" voters?
3. Farley also forgets the need to return the Midwest to Canada. Back to the sacred frontiers of the Quebec Act!
I’m at a hearing of the immigration subcommittee, and the pseudo-congressman from Puerto Rico is going on about how “we” are a nation of immigrants. “We”? Puerto Rico is a foreign country that became a colony of the United States in 1898, no different from the French colony of Togo or the British colony of Uganda (or the U.S. colony of the Philippines). Congress granted residents of the island U.S. citizenship during World War I, but Puerto Ricans remain a distinct people, a distinct nation, with their own (foreign) language, their own history, their own culture. Like other remnants of late-colonialism (like Belize, Djibouti, Comoros, etc.), most Puerto Ricans don’t want independence at this point, because it would end the gravy train. But that’s not our problem — we need to end this unnatural situation and give the nation of Puerto Rico an independent state as soon as practicable.
Farley's annotation?
In addition to a considerable level of ignorance about the history of Puerto Rico (it was never independent), and about the Puerto Rican influence on American life (there are more Puerto Ricans living in the continental US than in Puerto Rico), the comment really gives away the show about the question of legal vs. illegal immigration; Krikorian simply doesn’t care for foreign speaking people. As for cutting Puerto Rico lose against its will, I’d say we should entertain that policy around the same time that we give serious consideration to returning New Mexico, California, and Arizona to Mexico.
My annotations?
1. I've difficulties believing entirely the people who say that the United States isn't ultimately a nation-state founded on ethnonational grounds qualitatively no different from other Enlightenment republics of its kind. Yes, boundaries shift; they shift everywhere.
2. Stripping people of their nationality against their will is always problematic. That'd be one of the major frequently unconsidered complications of Québec independence: what would happen to the "Non" voters?
3. Farley also forgets the need to return the Midwest to Canada. Back to the sacred frontiers of the Quebec Act!
