WakeUp2005@adelphia.net wrote:
> On 30 May 2005 09:34:51 -0700, "t1gercat"
> wrote:
>
> >A high
> >school diploma does nothing to embellish the life of a bricklayer or
> >landscaper, and no one who needs his or her grounds managed gives a
> >flying damn whether or not the hedges are trimmed by a person with a
> >degree.
>
> Wow, what a contrast to, say, the great Bronx-born (of German
> immigrant stock) "longshoreman-philosopher" Eric Hoffer (author of the
> much-lauded "The True Believer" and other prescient works). The
> largely unschooled Hoffer, who was blinded in a childhood accident and
> subsequently regained his sight, was a young man during the Great
> Depression and made his way hitching trains to California during the
> 1930s. He wound up as a longshoreman in San Francisco and while
> working on the docks became an internationally acclaimed author,
> well-known for his wide and varied knowledge and for authoring several
> great books.
>
> The reason I'm referring to Hoffer is to point out the contrast
> between a burly, unschooled longshoreman who, through sheer thirst for
> knowedge and self-improvement, literally became, for a short time in
> the 1960s, the USA's most celebrated honest-to-goodness philosopher.
And Hoffer,whom I've read, was one in a million. When I was in the
Army, many years ago, I read an article in the Army Times about the
Navy's most educated enslisted man. He held two Ph.Ds, and the rank of
E-9. So what? Does that mean anything in terms of the average Navy
Chief? Hoffer was a gross exception to the general run of
longshoremen, that's all.
>
> (A funny story Hoffer recounts in one of his books: he tells about
> how, one day years ealrlier, he decided to visit Mexico by walking
> across a bridge (I suspect thismay have occurred at Laredo, Texas
> where there's a binational bridge, and it's known that during the
> 1930s before settling down in California Hoffer rode the rails
> throughout the Southwest.) Anyway, he says that he got half-way across
> the bridge and the stench coming from Mexico was so overwhelming that
> he stopped, turned around, and headed back to the US, never again to
> even consider the thought of visiting Mexico again.)
>
> Does any one reading this think that self-improvement, reading for
> the love of it, a thirst for knowledge -- that these things are
> important to today's Mexican immigrant bricklayers and landscapers?
They're not too important to most Americans, either.
>I
> think not. The fact is, educations simply isn't important to Mexicans
> (especially the low-class illegal aliens the US has been inundated
> with to the tune of 20 million+.) The SAME Mexican who'll spend
> $1000.00 on a quartet of shiny chrome wheel hubs for his car wouldn't
> think of spending $2.00 for a book at a shop selling used books. This
> is the REALITY.
Oh, give me a break. Whites are no less prone to blow their money on
stupidities while ignoring their minds. Seen any TV lately?
>
> Contrast the above not only merely anecdotally with the great Eric
> Hoffer but with, for example, Jewish immigrants to the USA. As the
> Harlem-raised economist/sociologist Thomas Sowell points out in his
> book "Ethnic America," Eastern European Jews who emigrated to the USA
> at the turn of the 19th century scored at the bottom of IQ tests.
Yes, according Stephen Gould, who knew what he was talking-about , the
I.Q. tests administered at the time were so filled wtih cultural bias
that anyone who wasn't a died-in-the-wool American was bound to do
poorly.
>But
> by half a century later, their US-born children were hugley
> over-represented in the high-status, education-intensive professions
> of law and medicine.
Yes, because those are portable professions. Jews learned to pack and
run quickly over the centuries. Put your wealth in diamonds, they're
small and easy to carry. Don't invest in land. Make use of you mind --
learn trades and professions you can take with you.
> On the other hand, as study after study has
> demonstrated, in the case of Mexican immigrants to the US the
> situation is not so admirable: they come to the US poor and, even
> thre, four and five generations later they're STILL poor and use
> government welfare programs at rates sometimes triple that of
> non-Mexican citizens.
Your proof for that?
(George Washington's Farewell Address, seldom invoked by today's
neo-cons, respecfully deleted as irrelevant)
Wexford
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