Posted on 11/28/2015 4:27:06 AM PST by Kaslin
"From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide." -- Abraham Lincoln
The winning streak enjoyed by campus activists this fall was violently interrupted by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Some activists were sufficiently annoyed by their ejection from the limelight that they took to Twitter to complain under the hashtag "F---Paris."
The most obvious irony stemmed from the fact that some of the same protestors who griped about media coverage of their antics -- even declaring First Amendment-free zones -- suddenly whined when the cameras turned to bloodshed in the heart of Europe.
But there's a deeper irony. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, fueled by a cynical media strategy directed by the president himself, the national conversation turned quickly from Barack Obama's foreign policy failures to the bigotry and insensitivity of the Republican Party. There's no denying that Donald Trump made this an easy pivot for the Beltway Brahmins. But left unnoticed in the clamor is the dismaying disconnect between the conversation elite liberals want to have and the one being pushed by their left-wing shock troops on the ground.
For instance, on ABC's "This Week," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) ripped into Republican rhetoric about Syrian refugees, saying that we must have "confidence in who we are as a nation ... we need to be adhering to the values that have made this country strong."
Ellison was hardly alone. Everyone seems to be talking about those American "values" of tolerance, diversity and pluralism. Obama has been on a tear about how rejecting refugees is "not American" and how those refugees are akin to the pilgrims who arrived on our shores. He pays rote lip service to denouncing murderers in Paris.
Meanwhile, back on our campuses, those very values are routinely denounced as little more than "white privilege." Needless to say, the people who want to see Columbus Day banned and call for an accounting of America's crimes against Native Americans don't think too highly of those Pilgrims.
As for our values, student protestors and their enablers on and off campus offer a full-throated rejection of America's (classical) liberal principles and, at times, America itself. By now you've heard it said that "free speech" is just code for "white privilege" or even "hate speech." Tolerance itself has become a dirty word for many.
Many campuses have announced a zero-tolerance policy for "hate speech" and "racial insensitivity," and countless more campuses have students demanding that such policies be implemented at their schools.
In principle, that doesn't sound so bad. The problem is that the definitions of hate speech and insensitivity have become entirely elastic and subjective. Disagreement with the mob of right-thinkers is now deemed unacceptable. There's a vaguely Maoist flavor to demands that liberal white professors and administrators confess and atone for their "white privilege."
It's gotten to the point where even admiration for non-European culture is denounced as bigoted if that admiration blossoms into so-called "cultural appropriation." Ethnic food fads are denounced for their insensitivity; the website Everydayfeminism.com recently offered "The Feminist Guide to Being a Foodie Without Being Culturally Appropriative."
For generations, we've heard that "diversity makes us stronger." I'll leave it to another day to question whether this premise can withstand the test of reality. The relevant point is that many of the chief beneficiaries -- or at least their self-proclaimed leaders -- of what was once called "Diversity Inc." now reject the logic of diversity at the most fundamental level. The famous "melting pot" is now derided as a kind of cultural genocide.
Nothing is more comfortable for the Sunday-morning talk show elites than taking on the alleged forces of intolerance to their right. Ohio Gov. John Kasich recently argued for promoting America's "Judeo-Christian" values of tolerance, equality, free speech and pluralism. NBC's Chuck Todd fretted that such rhetoric sounded "anti-Islam."
Meanwhile, the campus left is openly rejecting those core American values, and the response from media elites has run the gamut from condescending tolerance to abject encouragement.
By all means, we need more civilizational confidence. But demonstrating it only to denounce partisan opponents isn't confidence at all. It's a recipe for suicide.
Merriam-Webster defines native as having been born and raised in a place so those who are called native Americans are in fact native Americans but so are all of us who were born and raised in the USA. Therefore the use of the term native-American is merely a propaganda tool.
Native is not the same as aborigine, the Cherokee, for instance may be called aboriginal Americans, a term which would not apply to someone of European descent, no matter how many generations their ancestors may have lived in America. The same liberals who use the term native American would possibly find some reason to say that using the term aboriginal is offensive, at least I would not be surprised if they did so.
I dont feel young lol.
My 82 year old mother feels younger than me. and i’m 47!! dont rush me!! :)
you know, i worked with some guys from the south and midwest in Manhattan and they dont get the ethnic breakdown among whites on the east coast.
They say it’s mostly black and white everywhere else.
Here it’s Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and now Russian and Albanian.
And it seems a lot of folk on this board have generations of kin born in America.
My pop was born in Italy. Mom’s family goes back two generations, I think.
Guys in the office would talk about family going back to the 1700s!!!!
THe thing that burns me about so called food appropriation is that it hurts only the ethnicities that are trying to make a living by serving the good food they know and Americans love.
Chinese invented Gunpowder but it took Euros to make it a way of life.
Yet, after 75 years of Soviet domination, the cultures of Eastern Europe sprang back up just fine. That’s the only thing that gives me any hope.
I think I’ll read up on the discovery and how it came about.
I dont even know who the first to have a gun was. Should be fascinating.
Satan and his minions are loose on the earth.
I always thought that aborigines were weird little head hunters with bones through their noses.
Deffo the Chinese. However, I was just thinking that Navigation was what REALLY allowed the Euro cultures to dominate (not rule) the world.
Not quite true. Native American is defined by the feds as anyone who was here before 1492. That makes the Vikings who were here a thousand years ago NA.
Dont let Northern Europe know. They’ll apply for benefits.
I believe that was said sarcastically....since after all if you are born here you are indeed a native American
And for the record not all ‘Native American” tribes are of Asian ancestors.....
“I always thought that aborigines were weird little head hunters with bones through their noses.”
Some have been but some have been university graduates also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seClSNjnLdU
Diversity = division
Unity = strength
The left has done everything they can to disrupt and destroy any unity we once had as a nation.
They have had help from many considered on the right when it comes to the non-enforcement of our laws and borders, this author included.
The melting pot only melted Europeans. The blacks are not immigrants. The Mexicans are not here to assimilate.
First the 'Statue of Liberty' was a gift. The inscription on the pedestal was a POEM. It was NOT the Constitution... It was an effing POEM.
Liberals need to dump the drama queen bit and talk about the issues...
It's NOT 'do we follow in lock step behind a poem written to raise money (... Your huddled masses yearning to be free etc).
It's 'can we afford this and if we can should we really bring in men who don't want to fight for their country (Syria) so we can send America's sons and daughters to fight for THEIR country. In short do we want to support them living here so our people can die over there in their place?
I think our folks came over how ever they could get here;
then had to get busy making hay while the sun was shining.
Then, along came Mr. Lincoln’s war. Folks like my great
great grandfather fought at Shiloh because they were being
invaded. Heck; he WAS practically a slave. Most of us
didn’t actually *have* any slaves. We had lots of kids,
mainly because they made good, cheap farm hands. Daddy
went off to fight in WWII; so Civil War was well past in
his rearview mirror. - One set of sixth great grandparents
had a few slaves down in Georgia territory. Her son
married a Cherokee; the mother about died of the vapors
over that; the father gave the son his inheritance so
the couple could float upriver on the Tennessee River to
Perryville. That’s how we got to Tennessee. All blood’s red
to me.
WOW!!!
Italy had no jobs so my grandfather dragged the kids here 90 odd years ago.
What a boring story compared to yours!!
I’ve read 5 percent of southerners had slaves.
You’d have thought it was 110 percent if you went by media accounts.
yes, I know thank you
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