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2006-02-17 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by Fred 2006-02-17 00:02|| || Front Page|| [11128 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Yeah - I never really realized what "American Culture" was until I left America for foreign lands. It's as obvious as the nose on your face. I threw a Superbowl party (at 7am on a Monday morning) and had ten people show up. I broke out all of my good irreplacable foreign food - tortillas, salsa, jalapenos and the like - and we had a good time and watched the game. Culture isn't funny clothes and group dances, it's who you are and what you do.

I agree that this sounds like a student's essay for some civics class.

Posted by gromky">gromky 2006-02-17 00:54|| http://communistposters.com/]">[http://communistposters.com/] 2006-02-17 00:54|| Front Page Top

#2 People like this should just open their veins up and let the blood run out. My culture beats the heck out of what he thinks he is missing.

Posted by Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2006-02-17 01:08|| 2006-02-17 01:08|| Front Page Top

#3 The poor child needs to get out more. A little prozac might be helpful too. I suggest a trip across America, to see the red barns, giant balls of string and the purple mountain majesties.

I know this is what they are teaching them in schools these days - that all "white" culture is bad - so s/he's pining for something that has a stamp of pc approval to identify with. What a pity.

Posted by 2b 2006-02-17 01:18|| 2006-02-17 01:18|| Front Page Top

#4 my soxn haff culchers

Posted by muck4doo 2006-02-17 02:42|| http://www.evolvedamnyou.blogspot.com/]">[http://www.evolvedamnyou.blogspot.com/] 2006-02-17 02:42|| Front Page Top

#5 So America has no culture because this little student isn't thrilled according to his tastes?

Ach.

This is no different than college professors who believe that a system that financially rewards the local shoe store owner more than an oh so erudite educator must be an e-e-e-evil system. Just because you, as an individual, aren't being served dooesn't mean that the system as a whole is wrong or bad or vapid.

Many years ago I saw a great piece on this subject in the Boston Globe, of all places. The names are dated, but the jist is the same.

At the Heart of a National Community

David B. Wilson

Maybe never again can there be an American national community of the kind my father experienced just before and during World War I.

He wept at the Armistice, a college boy of 18 on a troop train bound for Norfolk, because he was not going to be able to fight the Hun in France and maybe die a hero. Men who did not go to war were slackers, draft dodgers, cowards. There was a side, and American side; and those who evaded their clear patriotic duty had let it down.

Such national feelings still exist but seem almost quaint. They are unstylish. The elite ridicule them. More important, patriotism is optional. People who admire John Lennon cannot be expected to have much use for John Wayne.

How can young people whose parents or grandparents arrived here from Cracow or Galway or Palermo, or Hanoi or Bangkok for that matter, be expected to have much interest in the peregrinations of English Protestant nonconformists or in Valley Forge, Custer's Last Stand, or the Panama Canal?

I forget who first asked this question, which goes to the very heart of national coherence and integrity. The answer was that Americans should be loyal to the principles of their Constitution (as most recently interpreted) and the Declaration of Independence, and avoid the irrelevancies and pitfalls of history.

This argument is mischievous, dangerous, and wrong. Without any cultural-institutional memory, without a sense of the past or future or belonging, no one is going to be inspired to sacrifice immediate, individual advantage to the common good.

Ordinary people sense this. It is the best explanation for the efficacy of Ronald Reagan's Teflon. Sure, he sometimes seemed a dimwit. But there was never any doubt about whose side he was on.

Laws are not obeyed nor are taxes paid for fear of police or prosecution, not in the peaceful and voluntary association of a free, democratic society. Laws are obeyed because decent, sensible people recognize the advantages to be found in social order and behavioral predictability.

Anatole France committed much mischief when he said that the law with majestic indifference forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg, and steal. Life is, of course, unfair. But that neither excuses nor recommends nuisance, mendicancy, or larceny.

People who would try to transmute mere principle to the stature of community mistake the government for the nation. In all its gaudy and troubled variety, the nation is not the government except in totalitarian states. The government in this country is not the nation but its servant. That is what the Democrats have forgotten and is a lot of why they are not winning national elections.

It is also why Michael S. Dukakis, near the end of what might have been a career crowned with the presidency, in today an embittered, discredited politician whose future seems less precarious than merely bleak. Advocating, at least in his younger years, the omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence of government, he ran for office as a sort of professional immigrant technocrat. As Lincoln remarked, you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The wicked notion that it is the role and even the duty of government to enforce social and economic equality is ordinarily concealed under a disguise of compassion. By taking from those who work and earn and have, and giving to those who do none of those things, the government is supposed to be, in the words of the Preamble, establishing justice. What it really is doing is spreading the misery and mediocrity around.

Such a government is the rawest, most debilitating, demoralizing, invasive and insulting form of tyranny. It ought to be resisted by every citizen alert enough to find the way to the voting booth.

The national community precedes the government and nation-state and should outlast them both. Like all true communities, it is defined by its capacity to certify its members and exclude nonmembers. The American community is inclusive, not exclusive; but to be a member, you have to wish to be.

Posted by no mo uro 2006-02-17 06:30|| 2006-02-17 06:30|| Front Page Top

#6 my yoghurts too

Posted by too true 2006-02-17 06:31|| 2006-02-17 06:31|| Front Page Top

#7 Am I the only one who is pissed that the people who sneer the loudest about others like of culture are themselves unable to solve a second degree equation?

Why dodn't they learn a bit about science and engineering for change?

Posted by JFM">JFM 2006-02-17 07:26|| 2006-02-17 07:26|| Front Page Top

#8 Best short statement of American culture I've ever seen is a couple snippets of dialouge in Michael Sharra's The Killer Angels

"America should be free ground, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here you can build a home. But it's not the land. Land is just dirt, and I never saw dirt I'd die for. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, that we're worth something more than dirt. What we're fighting for, in the end, is each other." -- Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry

"What I'm fighting for is to prove I'm a better man than the others. There's many a man worse than me, and some better. But I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. And that's why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved." -- Sgt. "Buster" Kilrain, 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry

Posted by Mike 2006-02-17 08:54|| 2006-02-17 08:54|| Front Page Top

#9 Heh. Froma different post at that blog, a great Valentine sentiment:

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
All My Base
Are Belong to You

:)

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2006-02-17 09:15|| 2006-02-17 09:15|| Front Page Top

#10 No culture? Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not there or not worthy.

Aside from the historical/political aspects enumerated so well by Fred, what about 19th century folk tunes, sea shanties, ragtime, jazz, show tunes, gospel (black and white), bluegrass, country-western, rock and roll, and all their later permutations? And that's just (some of) the music.

And the single greatest contribution to culture by America: the U.S. Constitution.

American culture has nothing to be ashamed about.

Posted by Xbalanke 2006-02-17 13:04|| 2006-02-17 13:04|| Front Page Top

#11 Damn - forgot to mention the blues. I'll have to atone for that oversight by listening to Howlin' Wolf on the drive home.

Posted by Xbalanke 2006-02-17 13:26|| 2006-02-17 13:26|| Front Page Top

#12 this young man needs to get out of the USA for a while,I suggest The Philippines or Tiawan, Kenya, Haiti or the Dom Rep. and Greece.
That ought to get him going in the right direction, at least hem might begin to appreciate what he has here.

Posted by bk 2006-02-17 20:56|| 2006-02-17 20:56|| Front Page Top

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