I could say something similar about immigrants, based on what I see here in London.

I’ll say it again: Fischer is engaging in arrant nonsense.

🙂

I could say something similar about immigrants, based on what I see here in London.

I’ll say it again: Fischer is engaging in arrant nonsense.

as for “nature”, that word is often used in the sense of mentality, or the unconscient/half conscient deep structure of the mind.

I doubt that Fischer really wanted to say that the average Hispanic is innately and completely unable to learn a non-clientelistic way of life. And I’m definitely on his side by stressing that a change in Hispanic mentality won’t happen in a decade (perhaps a century) and won’t happen necessarily (but only under preconditions which have to be created).

In fact, there’s a historical parallel. The British poors were not so much different from present Hispanics, but became an “honest working class”, partly by unusual social conditions (industrialization), partly by the influence of Evangelicalism. Which may mean that Evangelicals can indeed make a difference, but only if they accept the problem Fischer speaks over, not if they take him for a fool.

(To be exact: I know that the British working class was heavily “socialist” in the Aneurin-Bevan way. But that – even if it, too, didn’t work on the long run – was quite different from clientelism, which means that the term “socialism” is not precise enough to be used.)