Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Intolerance--the Initial Reports are In

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I read an interesting article in the New York Times the other day titled The Price of Intolerance.

The article raises some interesting points about how the developing mood in our country against immigration and cracking down on illegal immigrants is having some very clear negative impacts to our way of life.

The scene for this article is in Alabama, and the impact of the loss of the lower working class of the population is significant--not just on the farmers who have crops rotting in the fields--which by the way will not make it to market and therefore drives up the price of food for everyone, but on the businesses which cater to the immigrant population. And here was the punchline for me--"there is no evidence that Alamabaians in any significant numbers are rushing to fill the gap left by missing farm workers or low wage laborers."

So why do it?

The intolerance is resulting in a situation where they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

I worry about the current intolerance I am seeing across America. I see threads to another time in other countries where classes or groups of people were blamed for economic or national failure. The ressulting scene was not pretty and had some horrific outcomes. We experienced it in our own country with the McCarthy era communist hunts which caught many innocent people up in situations which our Constitution should have protected them from.

I worry about the intolerance of some of the laws being proposed by our leaders in knee jerk reactions to the economy. So far, in my opinion, many of their attempts to fix the economy have only made it worse. I know I am no better off now than I was two years ago.

Our current problems are causing us to look in the wrong places for remedy.

We are not an intolerant people--but we are becoming a scared population which will fling itself against anyone or any idea which offers a glimmer of hope.

We have entered election season--I am afraid that the rising intolerance factor will drive us to elect not the best person for the job, but perhaps the most radical and narrow-minded person who merely has a good-sounding proposal.

And if we are not careful--our whole economy will be rotting in fields right alongside the unharvested crops in Alabama.

-- Bob Doan, Elkridge, MD

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