United States is literally on the other side of the world. There are places like Malaysia, a very good friend of Rohingya Muslims, China, Thailand, and others that would be perfect places to accommodate. I am not sure why you think that United States should be a deposit box for all sorts of human miseries from across the globe.
Because the U.S. can afford it, being the wealthiest nation on earth, and should therefore take on its share of the burden. Also, because the U.S. can do good, and give these people liberty and safety; if they don't deserve it, why do you?
Do you apply the same standards to your own life? I bet from your presence on this site that your income or potential income is above the median. When a drunk husband across town starts getting abusive towards his wife, do you open your house to the wife? If no, why not? Are you shouldering your share of the burden?
> Do you apply the same standards to your own life?
Yes, absolutely. Most mature people do and most modern societies do. The U.S. has actively supported freedom and democracy around the world since it became a major power, and part of its ethos has been to take in the 'hungry, tired and poor'.
In fact, if you are an American, you are one of the major beneficiaries of this attitude: The entire society, it's freedom, safety, and prosperity, is build on sacrifices of others. Like everyone else alive today, it was given to you by the generations before you. What will we give to others? Recent generations won WWII, gave the nation civil rights for women and minorities, and did so much more. What will we give to the next generation? Hatred and greed?
I have done that, but the implication isn't serious: My giving up part of my home isn't the same as a nation of 320 million people and $18 trillion in income taking in a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of refugees. Nor is the level of sacrifice a serious question - the U.S., beyond any doubt, can easily afford it.
I also give money and food directly to the needy, and also to organizations who provide for them (they have far more expertise and resources than I do). Several of those organizations are governments, and I advocate for higher taxes in order to provide more of these services.
To truly believe that these actions are somehow extraordinary is to be naive about how the world really works. This is the norm of how communities function; if I didn't do my part, I would be looked down on and rightly so - I would be a parasite on everyone else. Who do you think takes care of your needs - food, shelter, education, healthcare, the arts, solving community challenges and problems, and much more? Some of it you pay for, and without a doubt some was paid for and worked hard on by people of good will (and some enlightened self interest). That hospital you went to is funded to a great extent by donations and tax dollars, for example. If you live in a democracy, it's up to the people to provide these things - they won't just happen for you.
Charitable giving is not an unusual or even noteworthy activity; it's done by many, many people throughout the U.S. and the world. Without it - and not just money, but time - society would collapse.
Charity is also provided by government via tax dollars, something else the U.S. has always done and will continue, even under Trump.
> the Buddhists didn't woke up one day and decided to commit genocide
Germans didn't wake up one day in the 1930s and decide to exterminate the Jews either. That doesn't mean the Jews were at all to blame for their persecution.
> What ideas have parents come up with to make it "feel" like there's more unstructured play time for kids during the school year?
Uh maybe, I don't know, actually giving them more unstructured play time? Schools have been drastically cutting back on mid-day recess and other types of "free time".
My point is that there's a small window of time remaining in their day once school is out. And my wife picks them up right after school. Most kids are in after care until 6pm.
How can we make the 2 hrs of actual free time he has feel like 3? That's what I'm asking.
Thank you. I wondered if anyone else could see why the original essay is so ridiculous. It assumes that bad culture is the cause of poverty, and not the other way around. It's pretty obvious that the decision to get married and stay married is affected by material conditions. One consequence of the decline in manufacturing jobs is that less-educated men have pretty low employment rates. Since they can't hold down a stable job and be the primary breadwinner (as "bourgeois culture" expects them to), there's little reason for them to stick around (or for their partners to keep them around). This also explains the data Haidt and his group turned up on the correlation between parents' marriage status and children's future success. The couples that managed to stay together were the ones that had a better financial/employment situation. There's no reason to believe that a deadbeat dad would improve his child's future competitiveness that much just by staying married to the child's mother.
There's also the fact that single moms on welfare would lose their benefits if they married the father of their children. As one astute internet commenter on a similar article remarked, "Only an ivory tower egghead could think that poor people don't make rational economic decisions."
What does this have to do with the article? People (all people) fled violence, hunger and death that came from a series of conflicts so dire that some populations haven't fully recovered still.
Add to that incredible amounts of political violence at the dawn of the 20th century, and you have the immigration flows. Similar thing happened when the Soviet block collapsed and economic/political strife spilled out.
> places where people aren't getting paid to innovate but rather are there to do a 9-5 job, there is little (and, in many cases, negative) incentive culturally to think outside the box and push the envelope
That's pretty much every country, including the US. Even many Silicon Valley companies are this way.
Samsung is a strange choice of example. It also mostly follows a "well made clone" business model and Korean work culture isn't much different from Chinese.
Despite the existence of laws criminalizing holocaust denial and displaying Nazi symbols, Germany still has holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis. Criminalizing speech isn't a very effective way of diminishing it.
Just because a law hasn't eradicated something, doesn't mean that it hasn't been effective in diminishing it. I wouldn't support the United States to follow the same route as Germany, but I understand that Germany was in a very different situation as a country when it enacted those laws. On what basis do you think neo-Nazi activity in Germany would be less diminished today had Germany not criminalized such speech?
> Does that same freedom exist for private entities that don't want to bake cakes for gay couples?
I think sexuality should be a protected class. I do not think neo-Nazis or White supremacists should be a protected class. But in the case of the wedding cake, I think it would be fine for bakers, caterers, or photographers to refuse to work at a gay wedding, an event they consider immoral. If a customer happened to be a neo-Nazi and was booking a vacation stay, I doubt AirBnB would have cared. It was the fact that they were using the service to book accommodations for the rally that caused the company to cancel their booking.
> That is why you need to defend the principle, even if you don't like the specifics of what you are defending, and is why, for example, the ACLU is defending Milo
The ACLU is defending Milo from government suppression of his speech. I agree with the principle they are defending. This is not the same as a private entity deciding not to do business with him. The ACLU will not, for instance, help him sue Simon & Schuster for cancelling his book deal.
I'm all for not doing business with hate and or terrorist groups but I don't think I'd want to ground it on "freedom of association" basis as anyone could make that same claim for not serving a sub-class of people. Maybe protestants refuse to serve atheists, or vice versa, for example.
Police Story 1-4 were all good fun. Not really for kids though. Plenty of bawdy jokes and innuendo.