Dear Realname:

I am uncertain exactly where you got your information on immigration to other countries, but you are very sorely mistaken.

Firstly, dual citizenship is something many countries do not accept, and something you need to have a true claim to (i.e. ancestral linage) to effect. While some countries desperate for affluent immigration may offer such options, unless your goal is to build a new life on the frontier you will be trading a headache for a stomach ache moving to such a place. Canadian citizenship can not be purchased. The laws with regard to duel citizenship although lax now are still relatively archaic for those born before 1974. Even then second generation emigrants must claim their citizenship early or lose their rights. The case of Hong Kong immigration has more to do with its membership in the common wealth than anything else. The US is not a member of the common wealth and as such receives no special immigration status.

As to American immigration it is not based on quotas and hasn't been for a few decades now. It is based primarily on familial ties that extend far beyond what other countries require. If you have any relative living in the US they can sponsor you for immigration, and the immigration is quite rapid. If you have no family to sponsor you, you are forced to wait in line with all the other people who are petitioning for entrance, but that line is based on a first come first served system, not a quota system. The number of non familial immigrants is limited but is still much more open than most other countries.

As to your statement that America has always been anti intellectual and xenophobic, I would say that they are these things only when compared to ourselves and our ideals. Compared to most other countries Americans are by far a more dynamic and accepting culture. Most other countries put many more strictures on speech, assembly, and movement than the US does. Although we always have a bit of the puritan in us, it has never been enough to keep our true founding fathers the gamblers and the debtors from making their way in this country.

Americans are first and foremost individualists. The problem with individualists is that they don't do a great deal to take care of the down trodden, but the advantage to them is that they don't like to organize around anything that doesn't provide immediate comfort and security for themselves and themselves alone. Fascism, like so many things looks good on paper which is why Americans to flirt with it. But as it breaks down almost immediately in practice it always falls by the way side. I would argue that socialism was just as popular as fascism in its hey day, but because there's no money in it, it too fell by the way side.

For better or worse Americans don't like to be told what to do, which is why any autocratic rule in this country always ends poorly, with at least half the nation if not more cursing the name of the leader who ruled his way alone. If you explain things to them they are very open minded and will except logic and reason, but if you brow beat them and tell them their wrong without adequate proof, they will dig in and fight you even when they don't necessarily buy into the alternative theory.

Essentially here is my argument. Creationist science is a biblically flawed as it is scientifically flawed. If you actually make an attempt to teach it using the standard Socratic Method you will find the day and a half that it takes to cover the topic and remove it from the curriculum will be easily made up as you now have highly charged intellectually curious children.

The point is not to teach by rote, which is what we do. If you let children experiment, ask questions, and learn about the forces of the universe, evolution takes care of itself.

I honestly think Darwin's work and the subsequent field that arose from it is not what you would call beginners science. I would have no problem with the word evolution not coming into the curriculum until high school. Since creationism should be offered as an alternative theory, that gives you eight years to teach children the mechanics of real world right now science that no one can object to. By the time in freshman year when we begin the topic of how all these factors of physics come together to make life, the creationist myth will be a fun joke the kids talk about after class, and the meat and potatoes of biochemistry will be the stuff they take away into the real world.

If you tell a kid the God made them out of mud, or God made them out of a monkey, or that their ancient ancestor was a more primitive primate, they will accept it, but it is as they say a house built on sand. And all three will blow over once the child learns to reason.

I say teach reason first, and the origin of the species becomes what it should be. A beautiful and elegant scientific theory that makes perfect sense when understood through our historic and modern observations.