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Comment by GrumpyYoungMan | Hacker News Reader

>I'm asking people to consider the fundamental rights of others and to notice that they're at risk.

This may come as a shock but you'd be surprised at how little anyone cares about the "fundamental rights of others" when their own livelihood and the well being of their families are at risk regardless of what part of the political spectrum they're on.

This is not an attack on you nor sarcasm, just a blunt statement of fact. The left (of which I am a part) cannot, can not, ask people to "put up with the status quo for a bit more" in the current political environment. That will lead to Brexits, President Trump, and whatever lies beyond. Instead of berating them for being "uneducated" and "voting against their own interests", we on the left must remember our role as champions of the working class and relieve their economic suffering _now_, "fundamental rights of others" be damned, or we will all pay the price.

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>I'm asking people to consider the fundamental rights of others and to notice that they're at risk.

The cognitive dissonance is unbelievable, especially from those who are otherwise pretty intelligent.

1) immigrants making choices to come to a country in order to improve their economic situation are heroes.

2) non-immigrants voting for policies to improve their economic situation are haters and bigots.

I would love for people in my country to vote for policies that improved their economic conditions. Instead they listen to propaganda pushed by multiple billionaires (and many, many millionaires) working together to change politics, and who've discovered the best way to get people to vote against their own interests is fear of the other.

The irony in your comment is that both sides are saying the same thing! No one thinks they are voting against their best interests, billionaires exist on both sides of the spectrum, and fear is a tool used by the right and the left.

Then we've arrived at a simple priority difference. I suppose I simply don't care that much about economic suffering of people when the values upon which my country was founded are in question ("that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."). I think these values are just marginally more important than the immediate well being of the middle class.

Note: all men, not all straight white Americans who aren't Muslims and are in economic turmoil

In my opinion, the most magical thing about the United States is our duty and tendency to welcome all people of the world, of any religion, of any ancestry, with open arms and make available a better life for them. If you take this away, I'm not too impressed with this country (as compared to most of Western Europe).

What values are we talking about, though? "Immigration" isn't an unalienable right, though might be a core value of the U.S. (being a nation of immigrants, after all).

But at the end of the day, the President's job is to protect the American people first and foremost.* Visitors and immigrants get protection under law, but, not at the expense of the American people. Safety, economic prosperity, and job security might fall into that category. On that reasonable minds can debate.

I think there's a lot of nationalism vs. pluralism going on right now. Brexit is one example; U.S. immigration and foreign policy is another.

(* It's actually not. It's to "defend and uphold the Constitution". Which does speak to citizens vs. non-citizens. But President Obama and others say things like, "I have no greater responsibility than protecting the American people." So anyway: nuance.)

> though might be a core value of the U.S. (being a nation of immigrants, after all).

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Like I said in the later bit of my post, our openness to immigrants and the lack of European-style nationalism and nationalistic discrimination is my favorite thing about the US. If this goes, I'd much rather live in Europe.

Like I said in another post, it's a matter of priorities. Of course I can't disagree that we need safety (cough gun control cough), economic prosperity, and job security. But unless these things are in much worse shape than they are now, I find that their importance doesn't hold up terribly well to what makes America great! :)

To me, Western Europe is a place where I can lead a much higher quality of life (I've lived in Germany and Switzerland and much prefer it over there). But I keep coming back to loving the US because we don't have this strange attitude I see in many Europeans of kinda... scowling at foreigners, thinking they're out of place, treating them differently... In fact, it's the contrary. In the US, we love foreigners. We're impressed by them, the languages they speak, the cultures and ideas they bring, and if we start having a more European approach to immigration, I'm worried we'll lose that. Then the US will become just another country.

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