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Well, JR -- and here I was thinking the John Birch Society, who's principles (which, as an unrepentant hippie) I sorta grasped, and often argued against in the 60's, 70's and 80's, was an anachronism that died with the Cold War and was buried with the revered bones of Ronald Reagan.
But I just now Googled their website and it seems they are still going strong. Perhaps only peripherally, but I live and learn...
Anyhow, you describe Spy 1 as being, "Fiercely libertarian and anti-government yet strangely conservative." I agree, but would replace the "strangely conservative" part with "conveniently fascist." Obviously in him we witness a confusion of purpose, but perhaps it is one, to a certain extent, we all share.
I don't know if you catch Lou Dobb's CNN show in your part of the world, but here is another otherwise inarguably intelligent and articulate man who seems undone when it comes to the issues of illegal immigration and a global economy.
Perhaps I'm naive, but as far as I'm concerned, the sooner we all emigrate, immigrate, infiltrate, associate and assimilate into one huge brownish-hued human package never-again in need of a suntan parlor; while still remembering, respecting but not revering beyond reason our individual cultural and religious heritage, the better. We've been wandering all over this globe for a quarter-of-a-million-years, each of us in search of a peaceful home, and we remain divided principally by inherited prejudice and the quest to power of the inadequate. Our art and literature reflect our lust for comity, our religion and historically recently-found nationalism our need for dominance.
At the moment, obviously, we are doing a rotten job. The air about us is filled with hatred, invective and bullets. And the fires of mutual destruction are stoked on all sides by those who subscribe to the machines of war and the suppression of a differing spirit in the name of preservation of what remains to most chimera.
I propose many, many questions and few if any answers, but, addressing this particular thread, I think one who risks all, indeed his/her very mortality, to find a better place in this world for himself/herself and those he/she cares for is, in my mind, not committing sin but is evincing virtue. He/she may break a law de jure, but it was he/she and his/her like who summoned the courage to lead us the way from the Rift Valley to populate the globe.
And in America the Old-German-based English language will adapt and adopt and flourish, not at all threatened in its long established utility and vitality in literature, the street and commerce, and even bolstered by the new influx of Spanish as it was since and before, in England, when Harold lost the Battle of Hastings to a French William in 1066.
But, then again, we have to face the fact that there are among us some who are just plain lazy, bone-deep stupid and comfortably convinced of their own infallible mission. And – this I haven't figured out yet – they somehow rise to the top of the puddle in the pot hole of history.
There must be some sort of physics involved. As with most things, Shelly might better explain it.
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