Posted under Immigration & Multiculturalism & Political Correctness & Rand Paul & Republican Party
Thanks to Palmetto Patriot for pointing this out. I didn’t listen to the SOTU Address. Couldn’t stomach it. And I haven’t watched the two Republican responses yet – Rand and Rubio. If you watched any or all of them, let me know your thoughts.
This, however, is very disappointing.
Paul insisted in his speech that race and ethnicity are unimportant (a notion that none of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence would have agreed with), using the tired-out, Leftist phrase ‘complexion of our skin’ as if colour is the only thing which that makes Eskimos, Nigerians, Chinese, Frenchmen and Greeks different. Along the same lines, Paul spoke about the ability of a person from anywhere on Earth to ‘become an American.’ If Paul is right, then ‘American’ is simply a proposition – a notion that one accepts or rejects – or a piece of government paper which is handed out for political and economic concerns. Or perhaps both. It’s clear though that if Paul is correct in his view that ‘American’ is universal then it does not define nationality. There is no single notion that the 310 million people who live between Canada and Mexico hold in common. They do not have a common religion. They do not have a common background. They don’t even have a common language. Nothing unites them except that they are all subordinate to a single city on the Atlantic coast – which about half of them pay income taxes to while the other half lives off of those taxes. The United States that Obama, Rubio and Paul believe in is a universalist construct. It’s a motley collection of everyone and no one.
PalmettoPatriot on 14 Feb 2013 at 3:47 am #
Thanks for posting this here, Red. It was indeed disappointing. I knew ahead of time that Rand was going to make a plea for Republicans to accept immigrants. However, his language was very disappointing. This was a man I wanted to believe in; I had high hopes for him based on his father’s career. And he has disappointed again and again over the last year. This was the icing on the cake, so to speak. I’ve got no more use for him at all. We have no friends in the US Senate. And perhaps that is how it should be.
Matt Weber on 14 Feb 2013 at 2:28 pm #
No, none of the men who signed the DoI thought race was unimportant, but then this isn’t 1776. These days, some–what? 95%? 98%? Certainly among the political class that Paul runs in, probably 99.99%–believe that race is unimportant. Ron Paul believes race is unimportant, for that matter. What should Rand have done? It would be suicide to say anything else. It’s almost suicide these days to fail to affirm that race doesn’t matter.
Proposition nation is a nonsensical notion, but that doesn’t change that it is the prevailing nonsensical notion among Americans today.
C Bowen on 16 Feb 2013 at 12:15 am #
I am not shocked by the American Exceptionalism crap.
I am frustrated to the point of thinking Rand is ridiculous, that Conservative Inc advisers that surround him, don’t bother to resurrect their own silly rhetoric about a color blind society.
If nothing else from a strictly tactical position in the interest of the bad guys in the GOP, Amnesty should be tied to doing away with Affirmative Action–if I have to explain this out, all is indeed lost.
Rand is surrounded by idiots.