America: stop being stupid; or, Teddy Roosevelt knows nothing about immigration policy

[Harold Schiffman]

America: stop being stupid; or, Teddy Roosevelt knows nothing about
immigration policy
Posted by wyattgwyon on February 8, 2008

I am long since used to my family and friends in Missouri forwarding
me emails like the one reproduced below, without modification:

***

The year is 1907, one hundred years ago….READ PRINT UNDER PICTURE



Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907 :

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes
here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us,
he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is
an outrage to discrimin ate against any s uch man because of creed, or
birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's
becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There
can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American,
but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for
but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language
here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one
sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt 1907 Every American citizen needs to read this!
***

Independent of its political content, this email and others like it
epitomize an historically American of sloppy thinking. Set aside Teddy
Roosevelt's ignorance and narrowmindedness, which is excused by
history as a product of his age (set aside, that is, the political
dispute over immigration that inspires emails like this one). Set that
aside and we still have a ridiculous argument being made here: You
should believe such and such because a person (dead or alive, usually
long dead) whom we respect or respected in some respects believed such
and such. As though it makes any rational sense to substitute the
judgment of a man, any man, from 1907 for our own in evaluating
massively complex, global social issues like immigration, problems
that are themselves products of postmodernity! To put the matter
strictly in terms of being clear: "immigration" doesn't mean in 2008
what it did in 1907, and to endorse Teddy's "argument" is to
implicitly make the absurd assumption that the two are in any way the
same thing when scrutinized. They are not. Seeking Teddy's opinion on
this matter makes about as much sense as asking the captain of a 1920s
ocean steamliner for advice on how to free the U.S.S. Enterprise from
a gravitational eddy. Which is to say it makes so little sense that
anyone who suggested it would probably be sent to sickbay for a few
psychiatric scans. Ulysses S. Grant's diagnosis: "It is preposterous
to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and
only rules of government for those who come after them…. We could not
and ought not be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under
circumstances so different…." [1]

Yet this sort of absurd "reasoning" simply pours out of conservatives
in places like Missouri, which is why it's increasingly difficult for
me to take anything political I receive from (most, certainly not all)
people I know in Missouri seriously. That someone would earnestly send
along that Teddy graphic with that text indicates at best an
intellectual laziness on his part and at worst a disregard for
rationality, perhaps a malicious disregard. I don't think it's malice,
but rather the tendency to passively receive and mindlessly forward
nonsensical emails like this one, the tendency to take rhetorical
husks like this email to be any sort of evidence of of anything.

Yes: I understand that this particular email might well have been
meant to be nothing more than humorous. But how distinct is the line
between humor and earnestness here? And where precisely do we locate
the humor? In the funny picture? In Roosevelt's historical ignorance?
In the naivete of whomever put it together in the first place? Where?
I've been listing ways of finding humor in this that mock the email
and the original maker—rather than ways that find the email or its
maker funny—because I honestly can't see how else it, that is the
email as such, could be in the least funny. Of course we can't say
objectively why this or anything is funny. But I am confident that if
you asked most people who forward this to people what precisely they
find funny about it, it would not be the feebleness of the email's
message or the thickheadedness of its creator. I imagine that most
people who forward this to family and friends don't find it at all
funny—more likely, they find that Roosevelt's sentiments mirror their
own. They don't think it's funny, they think it's correct. But whether
or not Roosevelt is "correct" isn't at issue here; we can't even speak
of "correctness" in this context—Roosevelt has never been to the 21st
century, he has no opinion, valid or otherwise, on our current
immigration situation. This Roosevelt email is pernicious not because
Roosevelt's sentiments are "wrong" in any grand, atemporal sense, but
because it encourages readers to jettison their critical judgment and
take Roosevelt's opinion on this matter seriously as a guide to
political and moral engagements with the questions of immigration
policy. I do find this dangerous to our ability to seriously address
immigration (a political and policy concern); but I find it even more
dangerous to the intellectual fiber of our country (a moral concern).
Every time someone forwards an email like this one, we all get a
little dumber.

http://wyattgwyon.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/teddy-roosevelt-knows-nothing-contemporary-about-immigration-policy-or-america-stop-being-dumb/

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