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Comment by green_wheel | Hacker News Reader

People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.

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'Cultures' have never been units of 'insiders' isolated from 'outsiders'. Cultural change is inevitable and there is no reason assume 'changing significantly' is inherently bad. That's what history _is_.

We're not talking about being completely isolated. We're talking about no limits on migration and permanent settlement. Of course cultures change and aren't static. But these no borders people are just as foolish as the no immigration people imo

> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.

The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.

Did they get to have any say?

Yes that is a great example. You certainly don't want what happened to them happening to you.

Yeah that's a great example of hypocrisy

No one actually thinks this is hypocrisy. No one is giving up their houses to Native Americans. They do an land acknowledgement and call it even. Even the most liberal among us don't feel it's necessary to sacrifice any meaningful amount of their own comfort to right some past wrongs.

Land acknowledgement where the most ancient natives get the most marginal and inhospitable land. Plenty of people think it's hypocrisy and are willing to collectively sacrifice to right the many, many wrongs.

No I mean land acknowledgement as in proclaiming "I'd like to acknowledge we're on the land of the..." before a meeting. No one's trying to give up any of their own land or property to anyone. It's always someone else's land somewhere else.

The hypocrisy is:

Taking the lands of native peoples → outright massacring them in most cases → treating the original natives as second-class citizens with restricted rights → starting the worst wars in human history → preventing other people from traveling and immigrating under the excuse of "pReSeRvInG cUlTuRe" or jobs

There's no real Us culture to preserve.

The US is too large to have one monolithic culture but it certainly contains many subcultures on the regional level. I won't dispute they're on the decline though.

>There's no real Us culture to preserve.

Fish Fails to Detect Water

The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.

Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.

That's one subset of Americans and not representative of all.

NYC and Los Angeles are the biggest cultural exporting centers in the US and have none of that.

Big cities are indistinguishable from other big cities in other countries. All big cities mostly have the same culture. That's why I liked the Japanese perspective on us. They saw cool things that they liked and included in their fiction that contained us.

If you want to experience American culture I recommend https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello

America doesn't have one culture. It has 500 cultures. But the ones that other cultures notice are the ones I listed. Cities literally stink.

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Please don't post like this on HN. We've asked you multiple times to observe the guidelines. We have to ban accounts that continue to do this after repeated appeals. Please take a moment to read the guidelines again and make the effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Which part of the guidelines do you think I didn't follow?

I'm guessing I didn't explain my self clearly when I mentioned that people use the red neck stereo type to make fun of us? I wrote that in an unclear way?

Well, the first line of the “In Comments” section is “Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.” There's also: "Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer”, “Eschew flamebait”, and “Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle”.

It's common for people to not recognize that their commenting seems more escalatory when read by others than it does when it's being formulated in their mind, which is why we need to keep reminding people and asking people to make a conscious effort.

LA has a lot of that actually. Simulated and on screen, but that's what they export.

I’m think the weird irony is - and your example may exemplify this - a lot of the culture the right may want to preserve might be improved through immigration.

If you want more religious conservatism and traditional values, Americans are naturally moving away from that. Americans aren’t creating a whole lot of cowboy movies. China is innovating in fireworks.

David brooks has specifically called out this nihilism of the modern right. I think people attributing intention to policies like this are sadly externalizing their own values into an administration that doesn’t have them.

Because I think nobody is unified in this stuff. The people representing the culture you purport to imply a desire to preserve I don’t think agree with you, and certainly not with each other.

This is like Cracker Barrel all over again where most of the liberals I know loved Cracker Barrel and all the conservatives complaining about it almost to a one never went!

The sad truth is there is some sense things might be better if you were right.

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