Interesting little snippet

Ran across the following article related to "rivers of blood". Apparently, it was a speech given by Enoch Powell in 1968. If you have a bit of time on your hands, I would highly suggest you give it a looksie, it seems to be fairly interesting from the 15 words I bothered reading from it. Some if it could even be considered topical. I can draw a lot of parallels between the fears of 1968 England and similar fears in 2004 California.

"The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred; at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing; whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future."

Read the Rest It makes you think though. We may not want people coming into our countries and changing our way of life, but when looking at America one has to wonder what the world would be without immigrants. People from various cultures infringing upon one another, forcing adaptations and concessions so that they can live "harmoniously". We rebuke persecution for race, creed, religion, etc, but we get upset when we are asked to modify our way of life or our viewpoints because someone or a group of someones has encroached upon our territory against our will. Do we look objectively at the situation and state that we must accept our faith for the good of mankind; or do we take the existentialist view and look out for ourselves and our families? Who is to say who is right and who is wrong? Who are we to judge, lest we be judged? I read that speech and felt a tinge of disgust. A man could judge others based upon the fact they were not his kith and kin, they were "outsiders" and therefore inherently "bad". But, when your way of life is threatened by a wind of change that proves to devastate all that you know, why do we persecute? An example being the old woman in the article who was probably set in her ways and afraid of what she observed going on around her being called a "Racialist" for not wanting to let the outsiders in? I am not a proponent of rascism; I am not a proponent of anti-rascism. Just reading that article made me consider how judgemental and hypocritical of a people we are that we can constantly say and do things to make an individual feel worthless or that they will have no worth in the future, because they do not appreciate forced change and do not abide by the way the status quo tells them to feel/act/react/be. Yes, change is an inevitability of life, but the question is: Who are we to state that one MUST accept an unknown with open arms just because we are told that we should? It's quite amusing that we preach individuality when we are force-fed and forcING the "herd-mentality" down everyone else's throats.