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Comment by purerandomness | Hacker News Reader

> immigration should be slow enough that they can be thoroughly assimilated before they change American culture

I support your idea. Would you agree that all immigrants that arrived in America after, let's say, 1493, have to leave America and apply for citizenship?

If you don't agree, can you propose another immigration year after which you'd have to leave America again? Would you agree on 1783?

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Your joke inadvertently shows the error in your logic. “America” (in the sense of the nation) didn’t exist in 1493. Various Indian nations existed in this land. British people didn’t “immigrate” to those Indian societies. They created a new society on the land. They were settler colonizers, as the kids say these days.

> Your joke

I'm not amused. Are you amused?

> They created a new society on the land.

I see my message didn't quite get through.

You're almost there however. Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?

Nothing! If a superior civilization comes to America and wipes it out and builds a new society in its place, then those people will also be “settlers” not “immigrants.”

I'm worried about your use of "superior" here but yeah the rest of that is right.

Why? It is demonstrably superior. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t be debating whether it’s immoral to not let everyone else on the planet in.

The only real advantage of European settlers was smallpox immunity. If not for that the history could move in a very different direction.

This entire thread is filled with people willfully lying about history like you are right now. It’s incredible to see. I can’t tell if it’s because this is a simple is vs ought distinction and you are having a hard to reconciling your ought with the is.

In his last book “The Dawn of Everything” David Graeber very convincingly argued that the idea of modern democracy came from Indian tribes in Northern America.

And it is also interesting how easily European countries went back to authoritarian or even totalitarian states given the opportunity. Yet US is more resilient and one explanation is subtle influence of Indian culture that still affects US.

As for technological advantage of Europe then 3000 years ago Ancient Egypt was way more advanced than Europe. 1000 years ago Arabic countries were more advance and 500 years ago China was more advanced. And Europe was lucky that China was focused on internal problems and not territorial expansion.

I think you have to be on drugs to think that American democracy came from Indian tribes. I grew up in the Midwest, so this mirror universe explanation for the origins of my country isn’t going to work on me.

>1000 years ago Arabic countries were more advance [sic] and 500 years ago China was more advanced.

Yeah real life isn’t your science fiction fantasy. None of this is true. I am aghast at how ostensibly smart people have, just in the last couple years, adopted a view of history that is completely at odds with the written record.

Eh. I wouldn't say only but it was the biggest advantage. The Europeans brought better tech and bad racism along with the terrible diseases. If they had established trade without disasters we might have seen the natives be very successful too.

Ah, that explains the Israeli "settlers" in Gaza.

Do you mean the kind of superior civilization that progressed from chattel slavery to being run by a cabal of pedophiles?

The kind that invented the internet and the airplane and the microchip and put a man on the moon.

> The kind that invented the internet

Seriously did not expect a MiniTel reference here. Vive Le France‽

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

ARPAnet had already been out a decade by then. TCP/IP was standardized the same year MiniTel came out.

I think it’s telling that you have the opinion that a superior civilization would wipe out another at all.

> Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?

Nothing, but it is our right, as Trump does, to call that an invasion and forcibly reject it.

Certainly not, but it would have been natural for the American Indians to desire this. They lacked the means to carry it out of course.

That tracks, elsewhere:

  There's nothing I would rather be
  Than to be an Aborigine
  And watch you take my precious land away
  For nothing gives me greater joy
  Than to watch you fill each girl and boy
  With superficial, existential shit

  Now you may think I'm cheeky
  But I'd be satisfied
  To rebuild your convict ships
  And sail them on the tide

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Chi

I like how you think you’re dunking on immigration restrictionists but in your hypothetical you implicitly admit there’s a hierarchy of belonging and claim to a nation, and temporal proximity to its discovery and founding is quite obviously one of the most important.

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