08-15-2017, 11:17 PM
(08-15-2017, 12:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-14-2017, 11:01 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The time to choose is now. You can choose to be a Real Nationalist, a Real American, upholding everything our wonderful soldiers fought for in WW2 and The Cold War. Or, you can choose to go with the God forsaken, anti American, totalitarian scum. Simple choice. You are either with us, or you are with the Red-Brown Axis.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...roots.html
I have my biases. Cultures adopt to technology available and current environment. I've listed elsewhere my arrow of progress and why adapting a new culture when a new situation comes around is often necessary and a win. At the same time I can see where a tension can come from. Cultures have inertia. They developed generally for valid reason. They don't respond lightly to forces for change. Also, existing established elites don't lightly acknowledge new elites or release the handles of power.
Well, the Romans did reject steam power which would have given their economic order some vitality that it lost in a few hundred years. Perhaps had the Persians gotten it...Speculative history is interesting, isn't it?
Quote:But the above binary either or view seems shallow and partisan. A lot of folks proclaim themselves American and apply hateful labels to those who disagree with them. People on both sides wear red white and blue and wave the flag.
But people who wave a Confederate flag as a political statement insult those who see the Confederacy as a defense of slavery. I can excuse people who honor the Confederate dead, especially if ancestors. But let us remember that the Confederates didn't round up Jews for mass murder. (Andersonville reflects in part that the Confederacy was in deep financial trouble and had higher problems than feeding Union prisoners late in the war).
Quote:The Alt right? You can call them all sorts of names, but not un-American. It's very traditional for those who have been here longer to try to lock out newcomers, and do so with hate and prejudice. It's also very American, as you say, to fight this prejudice. Equality is one of our stronger founding virtues. I can strongly sympathize with the more rational among the alt right that affirmative action can be taken so far, but when a subculture reserves certain roles to certain privileged groups, the time for affirmative action is not past.
They are American to the extent that they were born and raised here. In that sense a tornado or a rattlesnake could be American. But this said, the typical illegal alien has values closer to the mainstream of American values.
Quote:The less rational of them? Well, they can deal with the less rational of the left. Go all out wacko if you have to. I'll sit back and wait for things to resolve as they have tended to resolve in the past. The self proclaimed privileged scum generally lose in the end. Alas, the arrow of progress flies absurdly slowly for an arrow.
Let us all hope (and pray) that reason shall prevail. Reason may be liberal and it may be conservative. But it will certainly not be fascist.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.