Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) recently caused a stir when he blamed gun violence on heterogeneity while being interviewed on WBAP’s Chris Salcedo Show. This is courtesy Scott Keyes @ ThinkProgress:
“It has a lot to do with distrust of people. Chris, I have been in lots of societies, we could say like Japan, where they have a homogeneous society, where people are more alike,” Sessions said. He went on to discuss “this thought process that we have to have diversity in America.
Neither Scott nor my original lead on this incident, Hunter @ The Daily Kos, seemed to really zero in on the problem with Rep. Sessions statement. To my mind, Rep. Sessions has completely forgotten the original purpose of the United States of America: to successfully live cheek to jowl with other people who have differing viewpoints. This is perhaps the most critical mission of the United States in the minds of the Founders, but Sessions basically appears to have rejected it in favor of having more people that, well, think like he does.
That’s the unstated point of the First Amendment.
