A campaign speech to win my vote
Nov. 28th, 2007 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsLadies and gentlemen:
You have probably heard the other sixteen candidates talk about how necessary it is that we strengthen our borders, close them down, and keep out those who might hurt us. All sixteen of my opponents say this because they know it will get them votes.
We are a nation filled with fear.
It is harder today to enter the United States as a visitor than it is to enter Japan, Canada, England, France, or Spain: all nations that have suffered at the hands of terrorists just as we have. And yet it is America, more than any of these nations, strong and brave America, that failed to roll with the punches, failed to stand up to the blows and fight back effectively.
We must re-open our borders. We must become a nation welcoming of both immigrants and visitors. We must do this, or our children will suffer a terrible price.
Our nation's economic engine derives much of its power from two sources. From below, we rely on cheap labor from the third world nations of South and Central America to pick our vegetables and package our fruit. We cannot muster the labor we need to do so internally, nor should we want to.
More importantly, the United States has always relied on having an elite scientific and technological cadre producing new miracles: new drugs, new medical procedures, new computers, new phones, new fruits and vegetables. The only way you produce these miracles is by having research scientists collected in one place, where ideas can live in the open air, and where healthy debate about the appropriateness of one research strategy or another can be debated face to face.
In the past eight years we have destroyed the intellectual research capability of the United States. Partly this has been due to an ideology that assumes that the science we have is enough. And partly this has been due to fear: we have turned away at our borders great minds in physics, chemistry, and biology, and sent them back to their own nations.
The next century will see great leaps in the biological and computational sciences, leaps that will allow our children healthier, longer, happier, more productive lives. If America continues to view all of its visitors with paranoia and suspicion, we will not share in this revolution. The wealthy may be able to afford to send their children to Korea, or India, or Germany, or wherever the great therapies of the 21st century emerge. The rest of us will not. We will stay behind our tightly closed borders and slowly decline into intellectual irrelevance and squalor.
We must be courageous. We must stand up to the terror and be not afraid. We must open our borders and return our country to its place as the preeminent land in which to conduct research and inquiry. That is what it takes to be a great nation.
A great nation is always a source of envy and resentment. We will be the subject of future blows. We must accept those attacks, and return violence effectively upon our attackers. We must embrace our role as a great nation, an open nation, an effective and influential nation, a nation of great and accepting people.
You have probably heard the other sixteen candidates talk about how necessary it is that we strengthen our borders, close them down, and keep out those who might hurt us. All sixteen of my opponents say this because they know it will get them votes.
We are a nation filled with fear.
It is harder today to enter the United States as a visitor than it is to enter Japan, Canada, England, France, or Spain: all nations that have suffered at the hands of terrorists just as we have. And yet it is America, more than any of these nations, strong and brave America, that failed to roll with the punches, failed to stand up to the blows and fight back effectively.
We must re-open our borders. We must become a nation welcoming of both immigrants and visitors. We must do this, or our children will suffer a terrible price.
Our nation's economic engine derives much of its power from two sources. From below, we rely on cheap labor from the third world nations of South and Central America to pick our vegetables and package our fruit. We cannot muster the labor we need to do so internally, nor should we want to.
More importantly, the United States has always relied on having an elite scientific and technological cadre producing new miracles: new drugs, new medical procedures, new computers, new phones, new fruits and vegetables. The only way you produce these miracles is by having research scientists collected in one place, where ideas can live in the open air, and where healthy debate about the appropriateness of one research strategy or another can be debated face to face.
In the past eight years we have destroyed the intellectual research capability of the United States. Partly this has been due to an ideology that assumes that the science we have is enough. And partly this has been due to fear: we have turned away at our borders great minds in physics, chemistry, and biology, and sent them back to their own nations.
The next century will see great leaps in the biological and computational sciences, leaps that will allow our children healthier, longer, happier, more productive lives. If America continues to view all of its visitors with paranoia and suspicion, we will not share in this revolution. The wealthy may be able to afford to send their children to Korea, or India, or Germany, or wherever the great therapies of the 21st century emerge. The rest of us will not. We will stay behind our tightly closed borders and slowly decline into intellectual irrelevance and squalor.
We must be courageous. We must stand up to the terror and be not afraid. We must open our borders and return our country to its place as the preeminent land in which to conduct research and inquiry. That is what it takes to be a great nation.
A great nation is always a source of envy and resentment. We will be the subject of future blows. We must accept those attacks, and return violence effectively upon our attackers. We must embrace our role as a great nation, an open nation, an effective and influential nation, a nation of great and accepting people.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 05:08 pm (UTC)BTW, have you seen this article:
http://talisker.livejournal.com/510092.html
(I'd copied the content to my blog but subsequently lost the original URL, doh!)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 08:50 pm (UTC)I don't think your argument holds water.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:12 pm (UTC)While I don't think intellectuals and researchers are leaving the country in droves, it potentially sets us back.
As far as stem cell research goes, Korea and some European countries have very little restrictions on stem cell research. Researchers will be spending more time trying to figure out how to conduct the research without running afoul of regulations while remaining competitive with the rest of the world, rather than being productive.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 01:57 am (UTC)