Europe and the far right

I had a conversation with a taxi driver too when I was in England, in lovely rural Kent. His theory was that England was already a third-world country and that things were going to be get much, much worse--UNLESS the government would give televisions to all the immigrants. Then they would have something to do besides have sex.

He was completely in earnest.

(But I have noticed that taxi drivers almost always want to talk about sex with me in some form or another. It's odd. And I'm from small-town Minnesota. I'm very rarely in a taxi. But when I am, here we go, here comes the sex talk. I've learned to brace myself.)

Another reason to fund birth control, including abortion services, now that the Bush II is back in TX; if the poor keep having babies, they're going to want to send them somewhere. Lower birthrates mean fewer boats crowded with desperate people crossing the Mediterranean (or the Rio Grande). A nation that can't feed what it breeds is a desperate-and dangerous-place, for everyone.

Mexico's problems are the result of many decades of political corruption and one-party rule.

The solution to them is not eugenocide imposed upon Mexicans by someone named Phreeque Shouw.

Actually most European countries cannot feed themselves - lack of land mass for the population they have. Britain generates 60% of its food - which is pretty high for a European country. I would think that as fuel gets more expensive and imported food then also gets more expensive, this may tend to cap population growth thru immigration.

I think the taxi driver got it right - from what I have seen in britain - there is a complete unwillingness to address problems around immigration and a dismissal of such concerns by labeling anyone who brings it up as "racist". It is amazing to see how stupid and dense a government can be.

One of the causes of immigration is the collapse of agriculture in third world countries. There are lots of reasons for this- expansion of the desserts, loss of potable water, improved technologies which result in less workers being needed for agriculture, inability to access markets etc. In short - many of the same reasons farmers in the US have a hard time.

The motive I think for most immigration proponents is that we have structured our economy in such a way that we need constant growth (as in your basic pyramid scheme). In the past one achieved growth by opening new markets thru colonialism. Now we achieve new expanding markets by promoting immigration. Of course the fallacy of such an approach is 1) we may run out of people who want to immigrate or 2) we run out of room. The English certainly seem to feel they are running out of room.

Something I find interesting in England is the spread of the transition town movement - I believe England has more transition towns than any country. It seems to reflect a belief that the government either will not or cannot address problems such as collapsing local economies, peak oil and climate change. While this is a good sign to see people organizing on a local level, it is a very bad sign to see such a loss of confidence in institutions.

Kind of unrelated, but I think it's wonderful how talkative English taxi cab drivers are.

Last year in London, I had a lengthy conversation with a driver about the EU.

We should listen to the cab driver reverently, because simple-minded solutions always work out well.

Yes, but having many more mouths than jobs can't help.

Jack Bauer,

Hampton's comments have quite a bit of truth to them. During the 19th and 20th centuries, colonial schools in Africa and Asia told children that they should regard the colonizing country as their "mother" and encouraged the use of English, French, etc. among the natives. Imperial imagery constantly used almost multicultural rhetoric to promote colonialism. During both World Wars, hundreds of thousands of colonial troops from Africa and Asia fought and died for the various European nations. The survivors of these wars still receive pensions from their respective colonizing country. So after being told for more than one hundred years to consider England, France, or Belgium their "mother," should it really be that surprising that some of the ex-colonial subjects took the propaganda as truth and started showing up?

Bill Butler wrote: "Mexico's problems are the result of many decades of political corruption and one-party rule."

Correction: Many CENTURIES of political corruption. History really does matter, and real conservatives never forget that we're creating the future today.