I’m not going to address the meat of Peter Beinart’s complaints about Bill Clinton’s comments about Muslim immigrants in his piece at Atlantic. I do, howeer, want to remark on this:
The problem with transferring that formulation to Muslims today is that Muslims aren’t asking for benefits from the welfare state.
That’s either wrong on the facts or sophistry. The fact is that more than 90% of recent Muslim immigrants receive federal welfare in some form. In addition the rate of unemployment among the Somali refugees who came here 25 years ago was 50% for decades and is still remarkably high (25% the last I heard).
I suppose you could weasel out of that statement by claiming that they aren’t asking they’re just receiving but the facts remain the same. The Europeans are complaining about the same thing. Why do you think they’re Middle Eastern migrants are trying to get to Sweden and Germany rather than Denmark or Switzerland? They’re venue shopping; Swedish and German welfare benefits are more generous.
The only thing I’ll say about the meat of Mr. Beinart’s comments is that Donald Trump does seem to have moved the Overton Window, doesn’t it?
I didn’t listen to the speech, but Tom Maguire in defense of Clinton, says the context was clearly not about American Muslims, but Muslims who would “like to become a citizen,” and if you love America, “stay here and help us win.” If so, Beinhart is wrong to believe Clinton places a special obligation on one group of Americans; he perhaps did so with respect to a specific class of legal aliens. Though I believe Clinton might have met a guy once that said:
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
“Stay here and help us win” what?
Invade the world, invite the world, and at all times continue in the Dale Bumpers legacy and tradition.
Clinton was part of the phony neolib Arkansas coterie who used Zionist funding to ruin the longstanding career of JW Fulbright.
Fulbright was an authentic left wing Arkansas senator with impeccable antiwar credentials. Problem is, he also opposed
American alliance with Israel at least in the terms it existed, that is, among other things, a term which was guaranteed to provoke revenge attacks.
This was too much for the neolibs who used Bumpers then Clinton to suppress any authentic Israel-critical statesmen in the Dem Party.
So Clinton’s call for Muslims here to stay and help us is a call for
chaos. I guess the Clintons are more the chaos candidates than Trump.
In addition the rate of unemployment among the Somali refugees who came here 25 years ago was 50% for decades and is still remarkably high (25% the last I heard).
I bet that halving of the UE rate has to do with people magically dropping out of the workforce, as has happened with the overall UE rates. Or perhaps steve will now tell me that simply half of all Somalis have gotten extremely old and dropped out due to their overall decrepitude. You know, like I did at FUCKING FORTY YEARS OLD.
Call me names, but the Somalis we have here are hunter gatherers and subsist on shoplifting.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2016/07/dead-muslims.html
Beinart was correct.