(06-14-2022, 02:06 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(06-13-2022, 01:49 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Most immigration today comes from south of the border. Many of these immigrants are poor, and victims of drugs, guns and gangs, dictators and death squads, climate destruction, etc. But it is well to remember that their ethnic difference from most USA Americans is minor; indigenous (14,000-year ancestry Americans) plus European (Spanish and Portuguese rather than northern and eastern, but originally those were mostly all the same people).
Genetics is entirely over-rated. People are pretty much the same. Culture and economy is another matter, and the degree of exploitive history. In the past, the USA has attracted adventurous people who wanted a fresh start, and they have tended to be restless dreamers and poor people from countries with dictators and famine. Sort of like today, but northern and eastern European and later Asian instead of Latin America like today. In CA and WA, lots of Asians have come again, and some have settled in Texas too.
We used to accept refugees from tyranny, but we are not doing that today. Biden kept the border closed, and now the Court is keeping it closed. But Republicans still lie and complain. That's all they can f**king do.
Just because race doesn't matter doesn't mean genetics don't matter. If you want to look up something scary, there are several studies of men growing up to commit similarly heinous crimes as their criminal fathers....even though they were adopted at birth. Liberals don't want to hear this (including, to a lesser extent, myself), but....some people are just bad apples and even in the most supportive environment, society just doesn't have a place for them. The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine has many chilling examples.
It this holds true, then this is one of the strongest cases for abortion rights that I can think of. Rapists and pedophiles are largely sociopaths and psychopaths. Should there be a link to evil behavior in which rapists and pedophiles transmit to their offspring, then aborting the offspring of such a creep, then aborting the fetus carrying those evil genes is a boon for our society through the subtraction of tigers in human form.
But what if we end up destroying a talented, creative person? Well. Charles Manson was on the borderline of having some commercially-valuable talent for music. Rodney Alcala had some talent for film-making -- enough to impress Roman Polanski.
Of course we have the nature-versus-nurture argument, but someone like Ted Bundy was very scary very early. Scott Peterson, who had a cunning plan to murder his pregnant wife, .came close to getting away with it. He was adopted, but his birth father was a petty Mafioso. Mafia-like groups are obviously full of sociopaths and psychopaths.
Is morality genetic? I dunno. Giving a sociopath or psychopath opportunity can be extremely destructive. Such people do sundry betrayals of organizations to which they owe loyalty. They are the brutal police and bribe-takers on the force. They are the spy chiefs who dal classified information to rival powers or betray foreign sources of spy data. They are the clergy who molest children. They are the people who get their companies in trouble with lawsuits for sexual harassment., They do plagiar4sm. They deal on insider information and cut deals that better serve them than their companies. )They get commissions as salesmen but give their companies headaches trying to make those deals work. If engineers they are the ones who bill expensively for good materials and components and then pull a bait-and-switch on their projects with substandard materials in return for bribes from an equally-corrupt supplier (obviously also a sociopath). They pad expense accounts and do fraudulent billings.
Did I saomehow forget large-scale embezzlement? That is simply too obvious. .
As for incest -- it usually borders on rape if it is not such. Incest is sexual madness that reflects crazy, indefensible ideas in personal life.
....this is before I even discuss the life and health (including the reproductive health) of the mother. I would guess that the typical female seeking an abortion for non-medical reasons is about to become a single mother. If a victim of rape she might have a difficult time raising the child, especially if that child fgrows up with sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies. Those in need of abortions for reasons of health may leave behind, if single mothers... orphans. Being an orphan may be less common than it used to be, as after the influenza epidemic around World War I, but it still isn't easy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.