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To: dead
....But they're not mean to black people, like Republicans. Liberals want to give them some trinkets and stuff. Condescending douchebags.

They like "Designer Tribalism" from afar because LIBERALS can't separate culture from primitive. They are unable to recognize prosperity and education (except for themselves) as gifts to give following generations. Then wrap all that stupidity on the Left up with their biases, and you see what that video clip shows.

The Perils of Designer Tribalism

........."The Australian anthropologist Roger Sandall does not mention The Tears of the White Man in The Culture Cult, his new collection of essays. But his discussion is everywhere informed by the same spirit of salutary impatience. What Bruckner criticizes as Third Worldism, Sandall castigates as “romantic primitivism” and (marvelous phrase) “designer tribalism.” What is romantic primitivism? In the words of Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, it is “the unending revolt of the civilized against civilization.” Sandall begins with a small but telling contemporary example. In 1996, the actress Lauren Hutton took her two young boys to Africa to witness a bunch of Masai warriors and their witch doctor perform a tribal dance, slaughter a cow, and drink some warm blood straight from the carcass. The whole spectacle was captured for the television audience by Ted Turner’s minions. Miss Hutton loved it: according to Sandall, “Wow!” was her frequent refrain. But her young children, one of whom burst into tears, were terrified. Quite right, too. The purpose of the television show was to show that “Masai culture is just as good as Western civilization, if not better.” Miss Hutton’s enthusiasm was sparked by the display of “authentic” tribal passion. But her children saw the episode for what it was: a glimpse into the heart of darkness, the abyss of uncivilized barbarism.".....

....."It is part of the ethos of designer tribalism to foist all of one’s own attitudes and longings onto the apparently blank canvas of whatever primitive populace happens to be in vogue at the moment. To some extent, this is simply a matter of ignorance, as illustrated, for example, by Christopher Columbus’s report that the people he discovered “are very gentle, and know nothing of evil.” But the culture cultist supplements ignorance with heavy helpings of ideology and idealization. He looks at an exotic culture and, lo and behold, he finds himself looking into a flattering mirror. This is one reason that natives always seem to be non-smoking, vegetarian, sex-worshipping, drug-taking, eco-conscious, progressive-thinking pacifists—according, anyway, to the press releases distributed by the culture cultists.

Sandall speaks in this context of anthropology’s tendency to “normalize the primitive while treating civilization as aberrant.” Consider the Maoris. In contemporary New Zealand, Sandall notes, one finds “a miscellaneous army of teachers, academics, government servants, clergy, radical lawyers, progressive judges, journalists, and numerous other bien pensants promot[ing] the revival of traditional Maori culture even more fanatically than the Maori do themselves.” He cites an Anglican priest who rails against the “monocultural grip on all our institutions” that British colonialism supposedly still exerts (if only!), and cites various teachers who wish to return the education of Maori children to the tribes. In the background is a rose-tinted view of the Maoris as a peace-loving, ecologically conscious, spiritually delicate people who have been abused for two centuries by hard-bitten, materialistic Europeans.

In fact, the ecological record of the Maoris would not win any plaudits from the Sierra Club. Shortly after paddling up to New Zealand in their canoes eight-hundred years ago, the Maori indiscriminately burned huge swathes of forest. They also decimated the wildlife. Actually, “decimate” is far too weak a word. Within a short time, Sandall notes, some 30 percent of the bird life on New Zealand had become extinct thanks to the depredations of the Maoris. All twelve species of moa, for example, a large, flightless bird without natural predators before the Maori arrived, became extinct some six-hundred years ago. According to Sandall, it was perhaps the fastest megafaunal extinction ever recorded. Not that the Maori were particular about where they got their protein. Divided into numerous tribes, they were incessantly at war. Prisoners were routinely baked and eaten. But all of this is papered over. And even as the Maori past is systematically distorted and rewritten, so their future is jeopardized by government policies that, in the name of “bi-culturalism” and preserving tribal customs, dooms its beneficiaries to a life of second-class citizenship.".....

15 posted on 03/23/2012 5:56:54 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

What a Terrific Article!

Gilbert & Sullivan satirized “Designer Tribalism” in one astute line from The Mikado. In the song “I’ve Got A Little List”, Ko-Ko the Executioner is listing people who would not be missed if they were beheaded. One of these is:

“The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All Centuries but this, and every country but his OWN!”

This idiotic conceit has been around for a LONG time! hahaha!


17 posted on 03/23/2012 6:40:20 AM PDT by left that other site
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