Comment by asgard1024 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asgard1024 | Hacker News Reader

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The solution is very simple - support the immigrants, and instead of waging a war outside the country, focus on police/social work inside the country.

I was born in a country that (somewhat) supported terrorism - Czechoslovakia. Eventually we switched sides (and later also somewhat supported terrorism again). Why did we switch sides? Because our emigrants received support from the West (while we were receiving very little terrorism). The West didn't engage the Warsaw pact directly (or semi-directly through terrorism), but through cultural war. That's why (at least I think) the West was successful in the Eastern Europe, but not in the Latin America, or in the Middle East.

In my opinion, immigrants are the key to successful foreign policy. The reason they are coming is because you're doing something better than their home leaders. And they will tell their relatives in their home country that, very passionately.

The terrorism is short-term strategy of states or other groups that are massively losing the cultural war (kinda like firing employees to boost profits). The long-term strategy is outlined above (and as every long-term strategy it entails element of getting better). So don't worry about the culture; if your opponent resorts to terrorism, your culture has already won!

I largely agree with your sentiment, but what of the fact that poorly integrated immigrant populations have been hotbeds for radicalism? I think it is not enough to simply allow the immigrants to live in our country, but to also have a culture that is pluralistic enough to accept them. Not that the US is perfect at doing this, but I think that having a national identity that is less attached to a concept of ethnicity or monoculturalism has been helpful.

We need to do a better job at integrating them (both from social and policing point of view). This is an expense but is less an expense than doing war at foreign country.

Unfortunately, multiculturalism has often been used as an excuse for not doing enough. Many times I have heard police to say (about some atrocity that happened in some subculture) that this is "how they do things in their culture/community". It's unacceptable excuse for not doing the job.

Appeal of radicalism is ultimately a social issue like many others (say, appeal of drugs, appeal of violence), and it should be dealt with as such. People on the right don't like the idea of telling somebody what to do at someone else's expense, but I am afraid that good prevention (access to education, having good job) is the only thing that really works here.

Whether citizens will accept the above is of course up to them, but I am convinced (from empirical evidence) that this is the best way to handle the problem in open society. If, on the other hand, the goal is to remove as much terrorism as possible, then the open society is perhaps no good. If you close off borders, have isolationist foreign policy, and establish a semi-totalitarian regime, you will probably get less terrorism (this was case of Czechoslovakia in the past). But this strategy probably comes with its own set of disadvantages (according to this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant..., the only country that seems to be worth immigrating into with low amount of immigrants is Japan).

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