but your country is a hand out magnet. somehow you are OK with those who have the accident of birth in the US, and others from 3rd world or 2nd world countries you see as immoral. hmmm

Please do not forget the contribution from the gradually more and more corrupt political system, which enabled the politicians to buy votes by distributing what in essence are stolen goods.

WOW! It was these kinds of immigrants that made this country so great! Very inspiring!

Great story

+1

I absolutely loved that book! I think I need to read it again! Great quote!

I am the 1st gen. American on my mom's side, 2nd gen. on my dad's. They were early 20th century immigrants, and their stories are legion. By then, it was well established in eastern Europe, that if you could get to America you could not only find work, but you might even get the opportunity to have a business of your own. For the great majority of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Romanians this was almost mythical. So they came, often spending everything they had just to get here and having someone vouch for them. My uncle Benny was sent into the Gulag after WW2. He escaped and walked, rode, hitched from Siberia to West Germany. It took him two years. Instead of merely saving his money to get to the USA he knew he needed to do a lot of bribing because he had no papers, so he bought commodities which were in short supply and sold them at a profit as well as saving his salary. He was a tailor. It took him two years to find my grandma in Detroit. She added to his "wealth" with whatever she could afford as did my dad. He got on a ship with his forged papers a couple changes of clothes and a sack full of cameras which he sold on the ship so that he not only had relatives waiting for him but a wad of cash. All in all, the whole trip took him ten years, but he made it to NYC, found a job, became a citizen, got married and lived his dream. How many of us could have done it? It sure took determination and will. Never underestimate the desire to be free. He had one camera left over which he gave to me. A 1934 Retina 35 mm camera which got me started in photography. I still have the camera today. Actually "Uncle" Benny might not have even been a relative but a family friend from the old country. Who knows?

Now they don't go back...we change our culture to fit them!

Old Dino gives khalling two thumbs up for all that I just read.

John Quincy Adams had a unique perspective. He had grown up around the founding of this country and had plenty of opportunity to see the world from an aristocratic point of view. He was one actually being groomed to be President from a young age. He was given vision that far outweighed his age and that, in some ways, alienated him from many of "the people". He was not the tough battle-forged frontiersman that the country was looking for in that post-Jefferson Purchase generation, that's why he only served one term. In my opinion, he was the last of the Presidents that was a "Thinker", and the Presidency changed forever after he left office.

In other words, who would want to pull up stakes and migrate anywhere, except desperate people? The more wrong it becomes, then, to hand out "goodies" to people, even beyond the basic question of stealing from some for the unearned, unpaid benefit of others. Because you don't want your country to be a handout magnet.

I have the highest respect for the United States of John Quincy Adams and his cohorts and a diminishing respect in direct proportion to the deviation from those principles over the last century.

An incredibly beautiful, distinctive truth. Nourishment for the mind. Thank you.

freedom, go for it!

This one deserves its own topic, kh. Brilliant.

Yes, a rational attitude when immigrants would be coming to an untamed land with only their individual abilities to help them survive. JQA would likely have a completely different view today given the socialist incentives. He also hadn't seen 50 million arrrive in a few years trashing the "manner" of the previous residents along with the manner of self reliance and any understanding of liberty.

Both great quotes and good reminders of what those 'old boys' had in mind.

"It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders’ motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world." Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, p.183