Posted on 07/07/2017 11:12:54 PM PDT by aquila48
Whatever, we are divided now.
Leeches and producers.
Re: “Niederndorf, Germany....more than 700 miles from London.”
OK.
A 700 mile radius, then.
As the crow flies, Berlin is less than 650 miles from London.
Niederndorf is less than 450 miles.
By the way, both sides of my family emigrated from Germany in the late 1820s.
They were Lutheran ministers-farmers, they transited through a Lutheran community in western New York state, and were granted farmland in northwestern Illinois.
Two of my great-great grandfathers fought, and were wounded, in the Civil War.
But compare the US in 1914 to Austria-Hungary or Russia or Turkey in the same year, and we were more united or unified than any of those empires, even taking the various regions and ethnic minorities into account.
The author (Rockwellite toilet scum) sets an unrealistic standard of unity and then complains that America never measures up to it. But look through the telescope from the right end.
We are never going to be as united or as homogeneous as Wales or Denmark, yet America in the post-WWII period held together very well indeed, for a country composed of so many varied groups.
As is so often the case, the answer simply lies in decentralization.
If not being culturally united is the "problem" is that really the "answer"?
“But compare the US in 1914 to Austria-Hungary or Russia or Turkey in the same year, and we were more united or unified than any of those empires”
That’s not saying much. All those empires disintegrated. We are not far from that if this idiotic, irrational, moronic idea of multiculturalism doesn’t get destroyed.
“If not being culturally united is the “problem” is that really the “answer”?”
It could be a temporary or even a permanent answer. Look how long Switzerland has lasted, a tiny country with 4 different languages and subcultures. Most of the political power there rests with the cantons, not the federal government.
Thing is if an arrangement among various groups is not working out than disband it and let each group do their own thing.
The “German” side of my family, in parens because there really wasn’t a Germany as such at the time and some of them were from outside what eventually became Germany but spoke German, have been described as “pacifists” but that’s not quite true, they were forbidden to take up arms in a war but they did serve notably as musicians, also as medics and spiritual guidance, in both the Revolution and the Civil War. They were Moravians from North Carolina.
The people who made our country great, in the first place.
You’re right, I should clarify. I’m really talking about the political representatives of immigrants who speak publically. And it refers to today’s immigrants, the ones who refuse to assimilate. In this sense, today’s immigrants are the opposite of the immigrants who made our country.
The ultimate test to determine which is the dominant culture is to find out which set of values supports political power and which set of values erodes political power.
By this test, we see that traditional American culture is still the dominant one: just listen to anyone from la raza or from cair, any democrat politician, etc. They pretend to support traditional American values because this is the only way their political power can be supported.
Nor can Buchanan possibly be referring to the US of the so-called Gilded Age. After all, during this period, the US was flooded with immigrants from a wide variety of backgrounds,
...
The US has a long history of large riots related to immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States
well, mostly people don’t read much today.
But the common culture of America is not only present—it’s still dominant today.
The only way any democrat can be elected is to pretend to have a foundational set of traditional American values. And if any voice support for anti-American values, they go home losers.
Also, see post #70 above.
No it isn’t. There is no common culture. This is a country with 3 different names for the same sandwich, 4 different major traditions for the same style of cooking meat, the idea that there is a common culture here is laughable.
What foundational set of traditional American values did Obama run on? Or Bill Clinton? They both voiced a lot of support for anti-American values and moved right into the White House.
Food defines culture only by shallow minded thinking, usually on the left or in academia. What people eat is as superficial as you can get in terms of looking at culture.
There are no democrat politicians who get elected by admitting to their anti-American views. Clinton ran as a conservative. Obama ran as a populist who favored conservative policies including tax cuts. Of course, what these guys say depends on who their audience is at any given moment.
Actually food is one of the most deep roots of culture. What they have available to eat and how they eat it is one of the magnets that draw a random collection into an actual group. But more importantly for this discussion it shows how very much we are NOT one culture. If we can’t decide if BBQ is tomato, vinegar, mustard or rub how the hell can we have one culture? We have literally dozens of identifiable culture groups in this country. We’ve got North and South, we’ve got coastal and fly-over, city country, snow and no snow (which is different than North and South as those largely divide along Civil War lines and there is snow in that South), tech and non-tech, all the substantial racial groups get at least one. And a good chunk of those divides have existed from the very earliest days of the nation. Simply put anybody thinking we have ever had one culture in this country has not bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention.
Clinton did not run as a conservative, now you’re just making up crap off the top of your head. His two biggest campaign promises were gays in the military and socialized medicine. And Obama did NOT favor tax cuts, again the opposite, he ran on undoing Bush’s tax cuts and hitting the rich to make them pay for “Bush’s wars”. Obama was also publicly aligned with the “God damn America” preacher, clearly and obviously running on anti-American views.
Really, you need to stop talking out your rear. Every statement is embarrassingly full of it.
Switzerland isn't deeply divided when it comes to values. There's something of a consensus about what society should be and government should do.
And the divisions between the speakers of different languages may actually help hold the country together. For one thing, divisions in language, ethnicity, or religion make it harder for people to get together in two polarized parties based on economics or ideology.
For another, being the country with four languages spoken gives the country something of a distinctive identity. And Frenchmen who've been living alongside Germans and Germans living alongside Frenchmen for centuries may have more in common with each other than with other Frenchmen or Germans.
The US used to be like that. Catholics and Protestants were different. They may not have loved each other. So what? They lived together more or less peacefully. Same thing with Easterners and Westerners. Something similar was true of Northerners and Southerners, except when they really were divided about absolutes and basic values.
Anyway, I don't think a country needs to be completely homogeneous to be "one nation." All modern societies are bound to have divisions and most survive them. We were one nation because we thought we were, and because we had common goals and common enemies.
I don't think we were as divided when it comes to fundamentals in much of our history as we are today, and while the country may not fall apart or break apart, decentralization isn't necessarily the answer when countries are as polarized as ours is now.
The strongest factor in a culture is attitude. Food is peripheral. And as the left saw in November (despite Hillary’s typical democrat strategy of faking a pro-American attitude during the campaign), many decades of anti-American attitude by the elites was answered by the monolith known as American culture.
No. The food that is available, and how available it is creates the attitude. Areas of food hardship build cultures that put much more stock in the meaning of sharing, areas of plenty build cultures that put much more stock on variety of experience.
Remember, if Hillary isn’t the most unlikable person to ever run for president, and she actually bothers to fight for the Rustbelt, she’s president right now. “The monolith” gave her the win, luckily the Founding Fathers were much smarter than you, understood that America was a collection of micro-cultures, and structured an electoral method that demanded the candidates win as many micro-cultures as possible and Hillary failed.
Culture is how people think, feel or act in response to circumstances. This is derived from basic beliefs about self and others, as derived from answers to questions such as “who am I,” “who is God,” and “what is the meaning of life” and is entirely independent of food style.
No, the monolith you’re talking about, the 65,844,000 Hillary votes, was likely at least three to five million votes from the culture of Mexico.
Meanwhile, Trump got the 62,979,000 winning monolith vote of American culture.
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