you wanted to label me as right-wing for my description about the situation in South Africa
I certainly did not intend to label you as right-wing. All my comment was meant to say is that your views do not perfectly fit the left-wing box as you broke what is essentially a taboo for the U.S. left. I actually consider it as sign of an open mind when people are willing to disagree with their own ideological camp.
I think you model me very wrong if you think that I'm a Democrat and thus Republicans would be my political enemies.
I was partly relying on your self-description:
“I'm left of center in Berlin.”
“If I could vote in the US I would rather vote for a Democrat then voting for a Republican. That's the most common way to distinguish someone who's left-wing from someone who's right-wing.”
That doesn't mean that it isn't useful to be explicit about expectation.
Being explicit about expectations may be useful, but a person who wishes to know an objective truth must be very careful to separate expectations from the actual evidence. Without objective evidence that Republicans are on average more xenophobic than Democrats, how can you be sure that your expectations are not guided by your political sympathies?
The US would likely profit from giving every decent programmer who wants to relocate to Silicon Valley a greencard.
I agree. The problem in the U.S. is that if a politician said “we should get more Indian programmers and less manual laborers from Mexico” he would be accused of being racist and anti-poor. Mainstream Republicans want to avoid such accusations so instead they talk about “securing our borders”.
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