Mrebo said:
I think the high ceilings probably have a fair amount to do with having lots of money.
Well that also makes sense: people with lots of money have the money to raise the ceiling to cool their house as well as a way of making visitors feel inferior. It's still dumb.
Having requirements for citizenship is a good thing, but some of yours are fairly arbitrary. There is a difference between needing to conform and needing to integrate - the latter being a worthy endeavor. Like EyeShotFirst says, we have many kinds of people. The Amish have never conformed! I don't think forcing people to give up their heritage helps.
I agree that forcing them is probably the wrong way around, but encouraging them is what I'm after. I think about all the different ethnic groups that settled in North America as pioneers and how they were forced to get along because of the hardships they were all facing and had in common. This happened really quickly in North America where it took a lot longer in Europe because there was no reason to do it the same way.
So what I'm looking at here is that all these people are still coming to North America, but now there are no common hardships to force them to work together and integrate and become a common nation. I'm thinking that I don't want to introduce an adversity, but I am thinking that a way to conform voluntarily should be rewarded in the form of citizenship. Basically a relationship that states that this one group cared enough to join us on our own terms rather than to come here and appear to scorn our culture.
The way I look at it is: people want to come to America, cool, how best to we regulate that? A preference on people with skills is good. Showing comptency in English is already generally required.Mostly, I don't see what dangers lurk in a multicultural society - even if people have a distorted view of what a multicultural society looks like. I also think Politics is sufficient to encompass all the comments.
Feel free to talk about it in politics if you like. Look, I'm new here, but I've looked at the politics thread and it goes on and on and accomplishes nothing particular. All I wanted to do here that was different was to see if there were ideas that could actually move society forward without the liberal/conservative stigma that locks people down in the politics thread.
And maybe you're right and politics is where it belongs, but right now we're all here so let's talk!