I appreciate [Maureen] DiRienzo’s concern for the safety of Western North Carolina, but her fears are hollow. In DiRienzo’s letter, “Take A Sober View Of Refugees” [Aug. 31, Xpress], she cites two examples of violence from Gatestone Institute — whose focus is to highlight and bring attention to anti-Islam views.
Refugees should be subject to the laws of the country. In a free society, however, people are innocent until proven guilty. If we were to use DiRienzo’s logic, we could cite the example of Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma, and Adam Lanza, who killed 27 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and keep out all white male Christians.
Race and religion do not make you predisposed to violence. Fear and distortion have been used for too long to pit people against one another and to justify violence. Our country was settled by refugees seeking asylum from persecution and war. Refugees and immigrants will continue to come because that is what our country was founded upon.
Let the refugees come to Western North Carolina. They will be judged by their character, not the color of their skin or their country of origin.
— Kathy Kyle
Hendersonville
As I do love the ad absurdum arguments, here are some ideas:
1) Don’t discriminate against Muslims who want to enter the US under refugee status- I know, absurd, right?
2) Let anyone enter the US who seeks refugee status, but pass an amendment that bans any and all displays of religion unless it happens on private property owned by those that pays taxes.
Public/federal buildings, town square Nativity scenes, prayers before sporting events, nope. Remove “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance in order to return it to its original form. Churches would then be forced to pay their fair share of taxes if they wanted to brainwash Americans. While annoying, tow truck and plumbing trucks with Jesus-y mottos would still be allowed to display them for being private property.
America needs to get back to its roots as a secular country with an actual separation of church and state like our Deist Founding Fathers intended.
Then we can claim the moral high ground again, and welcome any and all who seek a better life.
In advance, I’ll save ones the trouble-I just don’t ‘get it’, I need to ‘open my mind’, ‘back to kindergarten’, etc
LOL, here’s the asterisk that you left out loon. But pressure cooker bombs and mall stabblings might be a consequence. And since you hate white males and Christians with a passion, and assume they also are redneck gunowners, will vilify them as racist instead and seek to take their rights away.
Do I hate them? Explain how, praytell.
Ad Absurdum. They taught it in high school.
Christians do not deserve any respect, you got that one right. HyproChrists.
Neither do you loon.
No name-calling on this forum, please. Thanks.
‘pay taxes’ that is.
Only someone with extremist views would have an issue with taking a “sober view” of such an important and life-changing topic (esp for the immigrants!) And this letter reflects a significant lack of awareness of what is really happening. Not entirely her fault as the US mainstream media is providing extremely little coverage about what has been happening in Europe. Ask yourselves why that is! However, the internet is everyone’s friend so there’s really no excuse not to read coverage for yourselves. England’s newspapers are online as are other countries media (use Google translate). But, pls keep in mind that, like in the USA, each generally has a skew towards left or right. So, if you care about what’s real, you have to read both.
I am more than interested to hear and consider what a person has to say who has been on the frontlines of dealing with unofficial immigration. Tony Abbott is a former Australian Prime Minister and spoke recently at a summit in Europe about this issue:
Abbott: “For some years, 500 million Europeans probably could absorb current inflows provided the newcomers were joining in, rather than breaking in,’’ Mr. Abbott said. But a million people coming by boat and almost a million people coming by land last year has the look of a peaceful invasion.
Some of Turkey’s leaders have even urged Muslims to take back parts of Europe; and among the would-be migrants are soldiers of the caliphate bent on mayhem. Many of those taking to boats across the Mediterranean or clamouring at Europe’s gates look set to join an angry underclass. Too many are coming, not with gratitude but with grievance, and with the insistence that Europe should make way for them. Over time, this becomes an existential challenge.
And if Europe won’t meet it – as Brexit shows, as the reimposition of border controls show – individual countries will insist on dealing with it in their own way. Mr. Abbott went on to praise Australia as an immigrant nation; we well appreciate that people from Africa and the Middle East have every reason to seek a better life – but they have no right to demand that Europe should provide it to them.
Europe’s navies must do their humanitarian duty and rescue people who might otherwise drown; but taking them onto Italy and Greece just guarantees that more will make this dangerous journey. So long as people think that arriving in Europe means staying in Europe… they will keep coming. Sending them to more European countries won’t solve the problem; it will just spread it around. People in no immediate danger have to be turned back at Europe’s borders. People intercepted in the Mediterranean have to be returned to their starting point.
This crisis can’t be managed; it has to be resolved. That’s what Australia did, under my government: we stopped illegal boats at sea and escorted them back to Indonesian waters. If the boats were scuttled, we had big orange life rafts on hand so that people could safely return from whence they’d come.
I knew the risks to our personnel; I knew the damage this would do to relations with Indonesia; I knew the outcry it would spark from well-meaning activists but it simply had to be done. Effective border protection is not for the squeamish, but it is absolutely necessary to save lives and to preserve nations. The truly compassionate thing to do is: stop the boats and stop the deaths – and, for more than two years now, there have been no illegal arrivals by boat in Australia and the drownings have stopped. And having stopped the boats, we’ve been able to increase our genuine refuge intake because the Australian government has been in charge, not the people smugglers.
Europe’s challenges are on a larger scale and the geography is different but with the right will and organisation there is no reason why there could not be similar success.”
Write it, and he will come.
“Under my government”- are we readers to understand you are a fallen Aussie?
Please explain.
boatrocker – sigh……..the 3rd paragraph that begins: Abbott: “For some years, 500 million …….. all the way to the bottom of the post where the quotation marks end is from Tony Abbott.
Believe it or not, we are allowed (so far) to read foreign sources on the inter-webs. I am not from Oz but do like the country.
But you do such a good job at playing the man behind the curtain- color me surprised, mate!
Believe it or not, ‘Merkin and non-‘Merkin schoolchildren know that quotation marks belong at the beginning of every paragraph within a quote, not just at the beginning and end. So we know what’s a quote, and what isn’t, all the way through.
My sober view is that we need to STOP ALL immigration and refugees NOW! Just look at Germany, France and UK ! ! ! Is THAT what you people WANT here ???
Fisher Caudle, we are not going to close our borders and become a nation of racist xenophobes. Sorry.
Yes we need new cheaper labor. Job plentiful here.
If we had the gumption of previous generations and decided to invest substantially in our future, like a huge national infrastructure program, there would be tons of good jobs. Our roads, bridges, water & sewer systems etc. need billions of dollars of work. But the “shrink government until we can drown it in the bathtub” idiots are preventing us from even having a cogent discussion about it. In their view, any public investment in infrastructure is bad, because it prevents some private company from profiting.
(BTW, that was Tim Moffitt’s view, in our first conversation about the Asheville water issue, almost 5 years ago.)
We could have more jobs than we knew what to do with, if we would tax the uberwealthy at sane levels, and use that money for our collective future.
LOL, we are loon. It’s called the stock market and free money for the banks.
Totally out of touch with any sense of realty you are.
Totally out of touch with any sense of realty you are.
Who are you, Yoda? Anyway, I believe I have some sense of realty, but just haven’t had the money to buy a house yet.
Relevant, this is not.
I have no problem with letting Muslims into this country. Or even this city. I know the rabid ones will come along with the ones that just might want a better life. I also know that when the rabid ones here decide it is time to kill the infidel, they will go to a disarmed victim zone (identified by the no gun sticker) and kill a bunch of liberals.
Since I am a pro choice kind of guy, if someone chooses their own Darwin Award who am I to interfere with mother nature.
I do recommend that all the liberals who feel we should have open arms, (no pun intended) please, invite a Muslim family to stay with you.
If it’s Pat Gunz Gunz Gunz Orsban, then it has to be gunz! Gunz! Did you know Pat loves gunz! He loves gunz! Gunz make Pat happy because Pat has all the gunz to make him feel safe, also gunz.
He’s not rabidly obsessed with guns and shooting people at all!
spoken like a true future darwin award winner. I encourage you to embrace your feelings and frequent no gun zones. Perhaps you should also invite some nice muslim family to live with you, assuming you have more than a car or alley to live in .
What about if the refugees were guns, Pat? How do you feel about bringing in tens of thousands of poor orphaned Syrian rifles that no longer have people to shoot them?
I’m sure that you’d open your doors and personal armory to them! One could stay with your son Glock, and another with your daughter Beretta!
mmmm, wish I had a baretta and a glock, but alas, to much money. But you have an idea. You should invite a few of the rabid muslims into live with you, assuming that your honda has enough room.
Now, if you have a few poor, tired misused guns that you are willing to give up for adoption, let me know. Lord knows they are neglected in your home.
If they or their children ever vote, abortion rights will be virtually doomed in America.
A most excellent point! Progressive deconstructionists are oblivious to the consequences of opening the flood gates to those who want to impose shariah law upon them. And they think Christians are a problem! The sinkhole of unintended consequences…
It’s true progressives are oblivious period .
Utterly ironic, isn’t it? Those that seem willing to cast reason and balance to the wind can’t compute that many of the values they hold so dear will eventually be compromised.
I’m guessing they have a dreamy idea that all Muslims would acclimate peaceably into an American way of life. Really? Well, in Italy they are demanding that polygamy laws be overturned. They don’t like, or approve of, gay lifestyles and saw the legalization of same-sex unions in Italy to be an opening for demanding the right to marry several others at the same time. How’s that for acclimation? Isn’t going backwards fun? (Not) https://www.rt.com/news/355274-muslims-demand-polygamy-italy/