[rayiner]

Whether or not people have that right outside the US doesn't mean it's our problem to enforce that right. Those people have their own countries, with their own governments organized for their benefit.

As an immigrant, this is one of those things that still perplexes me about Americans despite my having grown up here. Nobody in Bangladesh thinks they should care as much about people in Africa as they do about their own neighbors. I see that attitude in the US, but it seems to mostly be an excuse not to really care about anybody except at the most diffuse level.

[blackbagboys]

Frequently it seems that caring about immigrants or refugees in the abstract is an oblique way of attacking your fellow citizens.

Additionally, if government officials are supposed to be governing the nation for the benefit of all mankind rather than looking after the interests of the people whom they theoretically represent, we might as well dispense with the pretense of representative government and try to formulate some other basis for state legitimacy.

[rayiner]

I grew up with a lot of "college democrats" types who think big about being "citizens of the world" but will happily shit on people from "flyover country," "rednecks," etc.