dracht

I live in a European city/country with a lot of muslims and they are nothing but a problem - generally speaking (this one cool muslim guy you know is not a rebuttal), they refuse to assimilate, are an enormous burden on the welfare state and are overrepresented in crime. Demanding similar anecdotes from the OP however is an appeal to authority.

You only have to take off your rose tinted blinders and look at the state of affairs in muslim majority countries to see what happens when they are significant in numbers. Even in a "moderate" muslim country like Indonesia gays get arrested. Do you think these societies are a result of their geographic location or the culture/religion? What do you think happens if you only change the location of the people and they keep their culture/religion?

It's far from a "tiny minority" that holds extremist views - there are plenty of polls (check out those from Pew Research Center) that attest to that. You are gravely mistaken if you believe all religions are the same and equally compatible with western ideals.

If you were to follow the author's advice, next week's article would be about Asian characters on the show (a comedy show) not being portrayed accurately enough for leaving out their faulty human side. You cannot win with these types. It's best not to engage them.

> Basically, I like having the opportunity of moving to any country I want, so why shouldn't the same hold for anyone who wants to come to my home country?

Why should your countrymen back home, the vast majority of which have no desire to emigrate, bear the cost of you being able to live in China? I'd gladly give up my opportunity to move to any country if it put a stop to and reverted the disastrous waves of immigration in western Europe of the last two decades.

In the three largest cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague), the Dutch are a minority.

I stopped reading there. You have got to give them credit for being able to inject some "white guys ugh am i right" message regardless of the story. Slate is garbage.

You felt it was appropriate to interject in a conversation about slavery to wonder why none of these people online haven't helped you out financially, which a typical person would construe as asking for money, despite being a woman with the highest internet points (or something). Maybe I don't frequent HN enough to know who's who, but your replies to obstinate read like the ramblings of someone with mental problems (I don't mean that as an insult).

Honest question: what is it that happens to you when you read the words master and slave in the context of computer science? Slavery is horrible and so is killing, but I do not shed a tear whenever the words 'kill/terminate process' appear on my screen - I don't get visions of beheadings, I don't associate it with the act of ending a human life. It's a safe bet to say that no one reading about computer architecture today suffered as a slave, so saying this terminology triggers you is akin to me pretending to be bothered by loud noises because my great-grandfather went through war.

When you hear about a master/slave relationship or a male/female connector, you know immediately what is being described, which is pretty good for a method of communication. If you are unable to interpret words based on their context, I'm inclined to believe it's not the language that's the problem. I doubt that's the case though, I think these manufactured outcries are attempts at social engineering and moves in a game of power (controlling language->discourse->thought).

I suppose it comes down to whether you're arguing what started the war or what started the world war. Without the alliances, Austria-Hungary would have invaded Serbia and that would have been it.

You're arguing from the arrogant point of view that the USA is the pinnacle of civilization and other nations should strive to emulate it.

European countries, and most other nations in the world, have/had native populations that enjoy cohesion through a common culture, history and ethnicity. Being American is a loose concept that a newcomer can easily adopt. Being Japanese or German carries with it more than just having the appropriate passport, and for that reason the integration of immigrants in Europe has failed completely. Turks in Germany identify as Turks despite being born on German soil. Who is to blame - the Turks, for sticking to their tribe, the Germans for sticking to theirs, or the people who forced this idea of multiculturalism on them both?

A quarter of the population in the Netherlands is of non-Dutch origin and that number will grow significantly in the foreseeable future. That change happened in a mere 30 years or so. To say the Dutch people (and Belgians, Swedes, etc) should not worry about being displaced and made a minority in their own country is to tell them to stick their heads in the sand.

Reducing peoples' thoughts and emotions to "they don't want immigration because they're racist proletarians" is inflammatory, intended to silence opposition to failed social experiments. Keeping immigration at a level that doesn't cause unnecessary friction does not mean you want to shove people into ovens. This whole debate is a battle between ideology and pragmatism.

Immigration to solve an ageing population, i.e. a population that is not experiencing constant growth, is a pyramid scheme.