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Ethnic America
So, for about a week I have been working through Ethnic America, by Thomas Sowell. The book covers the numerous waves of immigrants and how their culture, context, and interrelationships affected each group’s trajectory to establish themselves as Americans. I’m about halfway through, which means I’ve covered European and Asian immigration. European immigration covered first the Irish, then the Germans, Jews and finally the Italians. Asian immigration covered the Chinese and Japanese. This leaves some notable ethnic groups in our current context outside of observation. Immigration from the Middle East, Korea and India all stand out in my mind. This is largely due to the fact that the book was…
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Quotable Common Sense
This is the first of the quotes I intend to share after having completed Common Sense: Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence… Common Sense (AmazonClassics Edition, p.3) – Thomas Paine He is articulate, if not quite pithy, here. Government, and the resultant loss…
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Common Sense
I think I read portions of this in high school, and certainly, elements of it permeate much political discussion in the USA. But it was quite illuminating to get the whole at one stretch...