141–150 of 160 posts
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That fatalistic attitude is why your democracy is in peril. Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.
Social unrest is not usually a hallmark of a functioning society.
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Midterm elections are coming up.
When you figure out how to leverage a vote to get something, let me know. Last time I tried this I was screamed at for electing a fascist for withholding it.
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> Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French. Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.
> Sir, I'm fleeing this country. Where to? Because unless you become a citizen of the country you are fleeing to (a process that, *IF* it is open to you, will take years), you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.
That may be true. But there won't be the pretense that I'm living in the most free, democratic place on earth when I'm obviously not.
Anyway, voting and protesting seem to have zero impact, so it's hard to figure out what value to assign...
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When you figure out how to leverage a vote to get something, let me know. Last time I tried this I was screamed at for electing a fascist for withholding it.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".
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With very few exceptions, you can’t acquire handguns in Canada anymore. They’ve also banned most semiautomatic rifles. Maybe Canadian public opinion isn’t anti-gun, but the current government seems to be.
Right, so. We're not anti-gun. Just anti the "only used explicitly for killing people " kind of gun. I grew up and live in rural Canada. Rifles for hunting or farming are just part of life. Though the long gun registry did make them more of a hassle. Why do you need a killing-person gun? What's that for?
That doesn't square with Canadian classifying tasers (purely defensive, non-lethal) and anti-materiel rifles as prohibited firearms. Not that those kinds of bans don't have some sort of legitimate public policy basis, but there's something else going on here.
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"Europe has open borders and this hasn't facilitated any increase in xenophobia that I'm aware of, despite many countries having many immigrants." My guess you are naive but intra European racism was always a thing (easy example was Hitler). The EU tries to combat it and reduced definitely thanks to Erasmus, better weath of East Europe, well open borders but oh boy it still exists.
So taking your premise on face value, how has open borders specifically augmented/facilitated this racism exactly?
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Social unrest is not usually a hallmark of a functioning society.
Social unrest is how equality and functional societies were obtained.
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> Then you haven't been paying attention. I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis. > Arguably a legacy of the time when it did. I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
> I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis. The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration (not to mention not even having open borders in the sense usually meant by "Europe has open borders", other than between a pair of neighbouring countries with very strong cultural ties), if that's where you mean by "here" you may have been insulated from it.…
Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.
> if that's where you mean by "here"
It's not, I live in Switzerland, which has one of the highest rates of migration in the EU
> there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU
I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time. Regardless, even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia
> Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.
Omegalol - you might want to look up what modern day xenophobia in SA looks like (as well as the current socioeconomic situation) so you can see why that probably wasn't a concern pre-20th century
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So taking your premise on face value, how has open borders specifically augmented/facilitated this racism exactly?
Thanks and you're right I misread the sentence (in line with other commentaters). Though because of xenophobia there was much hesitation against open borders (e.g. Germany and Poland, where Germen didnt like incoming Polish)