that in dirt-poor Liberia, the country founded for and by freed slaves from America --who now are only a tiny minority among the 3.5 million who live there-- that their Constitution restricts citizenship to persons of Black African ancestry only?
BTW, I have no objection to this in principle. What is the point of having a country if you can't choose who you want to be your fellow-citizens? Citizenship is exclusive by nature; it only depends on what the grounds are. For most of the world, ethnicity is, and should be, primary. A country or nation is in many ways The Tribe writ large. Of course there is no international outcry from the Highminded against this Liberian restriction because it is not a White country. But you knew that.
It seems that the issue largely arises from complaints by the resident Lebanese community there. The Lebanese belong to that class of commercial middlemen cultures that Thomas Sowell writes about. No one loves these folks: Indians in Africa, Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Europe, Armenians, etc. I am sure that they are doing better financially than most of the Black citizens there. The Jews of Liberia, so to speak.
BTW, I have no objection to this in principle. What is the point of having a country if you can't choose who you want to be your fellow-citizens? Citizenship is exclusive by nature; it only depends on what the grounds are. For most of the world, ethnicity is, and should be, primary. A country or nation is in many ways The Tribe writ large. Of course there is no international outcry from the Highminded against this Liberian restriction because it is not a White country. But you knew that.
It seems that the issue largely arises from complaints by the resident Lebanese community there. The Lebanese belong to that class of commercial middlemen cultures that Thomas Sowell writes about. No one loves these folks: Indians in Africa, Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Europe, Armenians, etc. I am sure that they are doing better financially than most of the Black citizens there. The Jews of Liberia, so to speak.
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