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Quentin Reply Part VI of VII
Maybe that's why it seems okay to voters in California to pass an amendment to the constitution saying we're not going to offer any more health care to the children of people who came into the country through unofficial means. We figure, "why should we give health care to people who broke the law to come into the country? Let them go home and get health care in their native country." This ignores so many important facts, of course. People are desperate to get here because they're not able to meet their families' needs in their own country. They're here, and they're going to stay. We can throw them out, and they'll come back. So we have to find a way to deal with it. We need to give health care and education to their children, who did not choose to be born in another country and did not choose to be brought here to be treated as criminals. If we don't keep them healthy, they will simply create a public health problem, and we'll have to spend the health dollars anyway, only by waiting, we'll make the problem much more expensive. Yes, it's a serious problem that "illegal aliens" as we try to call them get free health care that is not available to many citizens who can't afford health insurance and need this kind of health care, too. But the answer is not to remove the service, but to make sure it's available to everyone who needs it. We play way too many games with health care in this country. We've got to stop screwing around with this stuff and start taking care of people when their health care needs are still really inexpensive. We create such outrageous problems for ourselves.
And, by the way, why do these people come here anyway? Do the sneak across the boarder, move into an apartment somewhere and start collecting unemployment and welfare? I'm sure a lot of voters must think this is true. The fact is, these people come here because they get jobs that pay them enough money to support their families, something they're unable to do in Mexico. If that's true, then, the criminals are NOT the foreign citizens coming to earn money and feed their families. The criminals are the companies that hire undocumented workers, offering them wages that draw them across the boarder. If our companies weren't paying them good wages, they wouldn't have any reason to come. But we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to hire workers to do our ugly jobs for us at low (by our standards) wages, but then we want the immigration service to throw these people out of the country as soon as they need some public services that might come out of our tax dollars. Sure is rough, doing business in the United States.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part VII of VII)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Quentin Reply Part V of VII
Anyway, there are way too many Americans who get their ideas about the world from…I don't even know what people are watching on TV these days. Survivor, I guess, and maybe something like Jerry Springer (Not that I'd admit it if we were, but I promise. I have no relationship to Jerry. The last name is just a terrible, unfortunate coincidence. ) Like any human culture, we are still very suspicious of anything that seems strange to us. I suppose I shouldn't get so angry, when we discriminate against people who come into the country, or against homosexuals. But it really makes me crazy. It seems like the Civil War, the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, the Haymarket affair, none of these things get through to us. We keep finding new ways to be just as sick as we always were. It's no longer fashionable to discriminate against African-Americans or Mexican-Americans, so now we'll just discriminate against foreigners in their own countries like Iraq, or Homosexuals, who are really easy to pick on because we're a good Christian Nation and God hates gays (so we're told), or people who want to come to the United States to work or to become U.S. Citizens.
Anyway, yes, we have a lot of values that I can't understand. We are deeply involved with our TV Sets, and it makes sense that there is a significant connection there. I know that I grew up in the 60's and 70's, and in those decades, the TV's were telling us a lot about liberty, civil rights, feminism, cultural tolerance, and a society moving towards greater value of diversity. Archie Bunker from All in the Family was funny because he was so ignorant, and we couldn't believe that there were real people who thought as he did. We were getting in touch with our inner liberal.
More recently, it's shows like Married with Children or Bart Simpson. Al Bundy talks very much like Archie Bunker, but now we're laughing "out of the other side of our mouths." He says things that cross our minds and that we're ashamed of even thinking. Bundy makes it okay to be Archie Bunker. He helps us to get in touch with our inner bigot. Now there's something to be proud of.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part VI of VII)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Quentin Reply Part IV of VI
The media did get involved with Perot and with Anderson, because they were obviously big news. Even if they weren't likely to win the election, they had tremendous power to upset it, like Nader did in 2000. Whenever you have a third-party candidate who's polling higher than the difference between the two big guys, and who seems to be taking voters from the guy in front, you've got the makings of an upset. Of course, this is why you'll see a lot of anger from democrats directed towards Nader. Statistically, it's pretty clear that if Nader had dropped out of the election before Election Day, Al Gore would have one in 2000, and we wouldn't be living this eight-year nightmare we're suffering through. That's true enough, but is based on some ridiculous idea that Nader's votes somehow "belonged" to Gore and that Nader "stole"' them from him. Of course, there's been no evidence of any ballot tampering by the Nader Campaign, and if you believe in democracy, you got to believe that votes belong to voters until they are cast. So if Nader upset the Gore campaign, it has to be because Gore didn't take enough votes from Bush to cover himself with Nader. Nader has always been a third-party guy, and had no obligation of any kind to the Democrats.
Another really big impact of a significant campaign by a "third-party" candidate is that it does have a tremendous influence on the winner's agenda after the campaign, and this is where independent parties really do have some power in American politics. The core of these campaigns, certainly of Anderson's and Perot's campaigns both were about balancing the Federal budget. When ten or twenty percent of the voters are backing the guy who promises to balance the budget, it sends a pretty clear message to Washington, and the issues ends up staying on the table through the following term. OF course, this is nice and I appreciate it, but I don't see this as any substitute for a viable multiple-party system.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part V of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Quentin Reply Part III of VI
But as I watch the elections, I am at a loss to understand how people can think a brainless oaf like George Bush could provide us with leadership. He promised us jobs and economic recovery and national security (which, coming from a republican means jobs for the rich, tax cuts and more loopholes for the rich, lots more national security than we need, which is always really good for the rich, and of course, since we really need to find a way to pay for all of this, we'll turn back the clock on all of the critical social programs that are giving lower middle class, working class, and poor people a fair chance at "the American Dream" Also, let's go back to the days when abortion was illegal and women were being murdered by back-alley abortionists who had no accountability because their job was illegal. I'd better shut up. I could go on and on. I know that there are some sensible, well-intentioned republicans in the world, I've met them. And the Republican Party has some values I respect a great deal. But I can't find any word to describe the Republican Party de-facto as it exists in this country on the agenda that it pursues, other than evil. What they're trying to do is simply wrong, and a huge mass of the country, mostly people who stand the most to lose a great deal by their success, is happily cheering them on. I don't know if I'll ever understand this.
I don't know about the media. There are some issues now and again, but over all, I find them reasonably objective. Of course, there's no way to put the news together without making necessary filtering decisions, and these decisions are always ideologically driven. But they don't seem to me to promote one political agenda over the other overall. They do obviously favor democrat/republican candidates over any independent party candidate, and that is wrong, but it is more a problem with our political system than with the media. The media cover the candidates who are going to make an impact on our lives, and most of the time, under our present system, those are going to all be republicans and democrats.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part IV of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Quentin Reply Part II of VI
I always feel that Europeans have more of a sense of community than we do in the U.S. We have our legends about lonely cowboys on the range making it by their own effort. This is just another form of our American Adam myth, responsible for most of our stories that you may know, like Huckleberry Finn or Thoreau's Walden. And Horatio Alger, whom I've never read, but who is so famous here, you know who he is, even if you've never seen any of the books. Even if you don't know the name, you know the story line –rags to riches. It doesn't matter where you come from, but you can be President of the U.S. or you can be Nelson Rockefeller if you just stay honest and work hard (Of course, we never mention that our presidents seem to have bought their degrees from Yale, or that Nelson Rockefeller's hard work was to figure out how to make other people's work enrich his own bank account.)
Of course, I know nothing about politics in France, but there does seem to be a huge connection between people's political values and where they get their information. I would be surprised if it were otherwise. But, too, it's hard to tell which direction the relation goes, and I'm sure that it goes different ways depending on the individual.
There are many people who get their views from the mainstream media: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, what have you, and they tend to be fairly middle of the road. We all know that a lot of information never appears in the main stream media, and many of us listen to public radio stations, which tend to offer a more liberal presentation of events. But even public radio stations vary. I was shocked to hear a report on a public radio station from Berkeley (this was some years ago) claiming that Wall Street had written to tell then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo that if he hoped to continue receiving financial assistance from them, he would put a stop to the unrest in Chiapas by whatever means it would take. This news report was aired some time after we heard of a terrible government massacre of men, women and children in that part of Mexico. I was aware that this particular radio station was extremely left-wing, even by my own very liberal standards, and I found myself thinking that this story sounded just a little too much like the Monday night movies to me. I figured that more information would come to light and it would turn out that someone had misunderstood something or jumped to conclusions somewhere. So you can imagine my shock and horror a month later, when I saw the story again, in the San Francisco Chronicle, a very mainstream news source. I learned to pay more attention to my public radio station from Berkeley and to have more respect for their reports.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part III of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Quentin Reply Part I of VI
Hi Quentin!
Sorry I took so long getting back to you. I can tend to be a terribly chaotic guy. I need to find a better way to prioritize my goals, to make sure the things I want the most happen first. More often, they just get lost in a stack of papers. If they ever get done at all, it has nothing to do with how important they are to me.
Anyway, once again, I am delighted to have you in on our discussions. If you're a friend of Arnaud's, I have no doubt that you'll have many challenging questions and ideas.
I have been to France, as it happens. I was in the Air Force for some years, stationed in Wiesbaden Germany. My fiancée, Jennie, of the time had a father, Butch, who was often in Paris on business, and we met him their a couple of times. The three of us stayed in hotels off the Champs-Elysées, not far from L' arc de Triomphe. Jennie and Butch knew something of Paris—I'd never been before, so they showed me around. I got to see many of the big American tourist attractions: Le Cathédrale de Notre Dame, le musée du louver. Notre Dame was really exciting, of course, but I have never had any experience in my life like being in the Louvre. What an amazing place. I wanted to get a flat down the street and live there and study the museum for a year.
Sadly, that is all I've seen of France, except for the rail journey to Paris and back to Germany those times. I'm embarrassed, really. I could have seen much more of France, and I just didn't take advantage of the opportunity while I had it.
Likewise, I know very little about differences between Americans and French. Clearly, Europeans in general have learned how to deal with problems that Americans still deny. Until the 1960's, Americans were still enjoying the largess from all the territory we stole from the native Americans and from Mexico. We're finally running out of what used to seem like infinite room to grow, infinite resources, and we have to accept the fact that the world is only so big. In Europe you learned that long ago, because you have long since grown enough to bump into each other and get into fights over the limited space you are forced to share.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part II of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Re:La Revolucion Francesa: I sobre II, translations to English (bilingual msgs)
Hola Arnaud, Tienes toda la razón acerca de los que dejamos atrás al hablar ingles todo el tiempo. No es bien siempre hablar inglés cuando hay gente que no comprende.
Al otro lado, el problema es como hablar con la mayoría de la gente, y esto, desafortunadamente, es los que hablan inglés. A mi le parece que no debe ser un asunto de uno o el otro, pero puede ser asunto de ambos/los dos. O aun todos, los 215, tal vez.
Si has repasado los archivos aquí, puede haber notado que varias veces he apegado mensajes escritos en inglés y español, los dos, o he traducido algún mensaje desde una lengua al otra. De esta manera, puedo agregar más a los incluidos, en vez de cambiar un grupo por otro más pequeño.
También, cuando leo un mensaje que me ayuda mucho, tradúzcalo para ayudar otros que no pudo leerlo antes.
Por esta razón, si no te molestes, traduciré tu historia de Francesa al inglés para los que no comprenden el español. Ojalá que otros les gustaría traducirlo en otras lenguas, tal vez como italiano, chino, japonés, francés, alemán, y holandés, o algunos que serán de ayuda para alguien. Este trabajo será práctica muy útil por nosotros, y estará muy acogedor para los otros, ¿no crees?
Hi Arnaud,
I agree with you completely about the number of people we leave behind speaking English all the time. It's not right to always use English when there are members who don't speak English.
On the other hand, we want to be able to speak to the greatest majority of members, and these, unfortunately, are the English speakers. But to me, it doesn't seem to be a question of either/or. I'd like to consider a both/and solution. Or perhaps a solution for all 215, in our case.
If you've been through the archives, you will see that I've put up a few messages in both English and Spanish, like this one. Other times, when I've found a particularly funny joke or a very helpful message, I have translated it so that it will be accessible to more users –as I hope to do, if you don't mind, with your wonderful history of the French Revolution. In this way, I will include English speakers who don't read Spanish. I hope others will be interested in coming and translating it again, into Italian, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch-any language that might be helpful to another uses. This is helpful, not only to the translator, who gets some useful practice from the materials available here on the site, but also to the speakers of the translator's other language, who will get to read your informative report—don't you think?
Cheers!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: Spanish; English
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Politics in US and EU V of V
US and EU Politics: V of V
Republicans, oppose Democrats on all of these points. They are more likely to want more freedom to own firearms, while wanting to limit the freedoms of abortion, sexual orientation. The Republican party is catching up to the Democrats, on the issue of supporting racial diversity. I have to admit that the Bush Administration has more minorities on the cabinet than any U.S. President in history. But the Republicans continue to deny that there is any gap between whites and non-whites in the face of overwhelming evidence that the work of affirmative action has hardly begun to complete it's job.
Then Republicans want to crank back spending, make government smaller, and cut back taxes. Of course, they always tend to want to increase spending on defense. It's great for big businesses that make weapons and communications systems. It helps the economy. And a nice fat military-industrial complex is always good for republicans.
Republicans have a huge core of support from fundamentalist protestant groups, and this is reflected in a lot of their positions. Anti-abortion, anti homosexual rights, pro prayer in the schools. Ironically, however, republicans (and conservative protestants) also tend to be very supportive of capital punishment, something that Democrats, despite tending to be highly in favor of abortion rights, tend to find very offensive. It's a fascinating inconsistency on both sides of "the aisle." (On congress, the left and the right are often referred to as "sides of the aisle," since the main aisle through the center of both the house of representatives and the senate tends to form a rough boundary between the republicans and democrats in congress. )
Well, I do go on and on, don't I. Sorry about that. I'm going to cut this up into pieces so that I can post it there for you. I hope you find it interesting.
Of course, I'm very interested in hearing what you have to tell me, along these lines, about your own country. I know something about your own revolution, about Marie Antoinette losing her head over an imprudent comment about cake, the barricades and all. I know something about Napoleon Bonaparte. Terms like Waterloo and Elba have some meaning to me, even if I don't know any details. I know roughly the story of Joan D'arc. I know nothing at all about your current political circumstances or about how you came to them. So I'm basically a tabula raza. Please, tell me some stories. I look forward to hearing them.
Au revoir,
Mark
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Language pair: French; English
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Mark S.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Politics in US and EU III of V
US and EU Politics: IV of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part V of V
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Language pair: French; English
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Mark S.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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Politics in US and EU IV of V
US and EU Politics: IV of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part V of V
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Language pair: French; English
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Mark S.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 26
Latest: April 23, 2005
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