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Yes. Thing is, it is taken more serious when intimidation can keep people from voting. Just the presence of a weapon is not intimidation. Other factors must apply, like how the people carry themselves or what they say.
DR is right, people have gotten dumber as technology progresses. While there will always be a few gifted individuals that bring these new things into existence; the fact is that their innovations make life easier. Medicine, electricity, flight, and industry in general have dumbed down life and brought affluence to many people. Technology has progressed to a point where a cart full of coal can power circuitry to drive a virtual reality in the form of the internet, computer games, and the mass media in general. It is easy to go through life with basic skills and no education while being able to pay your basic cable TV package and waste away for 8 hours a day sitting on a chair.
200 years ago this was hardly the case. There was a lot of time during the day with nothing to do. People aspired to read and learn about current events, even if they didn't go to an expensive school. The works of people like Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine were read by many people and embraced. People today embrace nothing intellectually as long as they get their daily tabloid, watch reality TV, and find out what film their favorite actor is going to be in.
There will be a wake-up call one day when we run out of cheap electricity and can't afford expensive nuclear and renewable energy in huge quan ies.
The same mass media has brainwashed people into thinking firearms are dangerous. The ultimate sign of this is how we entrust millions of regular people to carry and use firearms of far greater killing power as long as they serve the government. The military and the police are comprised of THOUSANDS of poor and uneducated people from dubious backgrounds, yet notice that they don't regularly go on killing sprees with their fully automatic weapons and explosives.
All we have done is arm the government and disarm ourselves, even though both are composed of the same people from the same background.
Yes. Thing is, it is taken more serious when intimidation can keep people from voting. Just the presence of a weapon is not intimidation. Other factors must apply, like how the people carry themselves or what they say.
This whole post is nothing more than navel-gazing at "better times". People were not 'better' by any shape, way or form in the past. It's a fallacy. In fact, it's usually called the Golden Age Fallacy, or the Good Old Days Fallacy. A more broad fallacy that this would fall under also would be the Appeal to Tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
In the past, people didn't 'pine away' to learn about things anymore than they do today. Do we have more TIME for leisure? Sure... but that's what progress is. Some people use it to waste time, others use it on skills... whatever they choose.
Do you think that governments in the past would have been fine with cannons among the general populace? Highly doubtful. And America is one of the most populously armed countries in the world anyways.
Read letters from the soldiers (mostly officers) who served in the Revolutionary War and beyond.
Then read letters from WW2 and Korea.
Fast forward...
Read letters from Iraq.
Illiteracy in those was mostly a function of where one lived. Rural areas, where at least half the population lived at the time, didnt have a need to be literate in any way shape or form.
Yet only 20 percent of the adult population were illiterate.
The population of the cities in those times were FAR more educated than the equivalent today.
You mean social equality and the like? Sure, thats leagues better. I can admit that.What about education in other areas, such as morality? Are we more or less moral than the 19th century?
It is for me because our advancement breeds complacence and dependence. Sure, things are far more efficent because we stand on the shoulders of ingenius Giants of the past and our time.It's not looking down on people who choose to go hunting, or living off the land. But I can haul a lot more with a tractor, and I can build alot faster with a crane.
But the social structure of our society has changed for the worse, IMO. I am not in the business of supporting those who do not wish to support themselves, or funding their own negligence and lack of foresight.
I am sure there were quite a few Romans who argued exactly as you are now. The good times can never end and we're always better than those before us.
History is replete with accounts of great, dynamic empires which fell into moral decline, economic stagnation, and eventual downfall.
The fallacy might be the thought that people are worse now than they ever have been, which is silly nonsense.
Meh, upon retrospect, people of old were no better or worse than they are today. I guess thats what would be called "navel-gazing" and I am guilty.
But society's predilection to Save Everyone has certainly gotten worse. In the past, the weak died. Currently, they survive and thrive yet continue to be weak and unproductive.
I dont like it, I dont like being taxed and told how we're going to support millions of ing dirtbags. Get. A. Job.
I have a friend. Productive citizen right up until her job cut her position. That was 8 months ago. She actively seeks employment, but only for jobs that will pay her the same as her previous one (good ing luck). In the meantime she's become a lazy, dope-smoking Obama slappy. "Oh, Im going to work for Obama's local orgnizers" today, only to say "I'm going to be a lawyer!" tomorrow, only to have another change of heart "Im going to be a nurse!"
What she, and I would think MANY others in the same position, fails to realize is "youve gotta do what you gotta do". Push ing grocery carts at Kroger/HEB. Take a clerk position at a gas station, be a short order cook, do something...ANYTHING. Get two Joe-jobs, you lazy, self-en led loser.
Thats the American at ude I speak of and the at ude that I dont think existed in previous centuries. People like her would have magically disappeared in the past, where now dont be surprised when she's doing better financially, has more free time and fun than a person who did take two Joe-jobs trying to make ends meet.
She will be rewarded by our society for being a complete ing drain on it. Until that entire mindset changes, we're ed.
It's to be expected in a large society, I think. As Nietzche once said, and I'm paraphrasing, but the greater a society, the more leeches it can handle.
You don't have to support it. People are going to be out for their own, and if people can get a free ride out of you, they will. It's compe ion.
Eh, I don't think this is necessarily true. It might be true that we have more of an ability to support these people, and maybe we DO support them too much. But freeloaders have existed for a LONG time... it's just that the nature of the freeloading has changed.
Hey, that's why we share our views with friends and family and others. Try to change the world.
i have to agree. just watch HGTV shows such as intervention and house hunters and you will see that americans do not learn their lessons. they continue to live beyond their means. they buy homes they can not afford and then try to sell them back to recover a profit. then, they can not face the reality that the market has screwed them over. also, there were so many americans who sent the market out of control to begin with by overpaying on houses in certain areas.
Oh and DR, check out this page of letters from the Civil War:
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/cwlove/
Some are written well, others... not so much.
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/cwlove/testerman.html
Yes, but how many of them bought these homes with the assurance that they could easily re-sell, ARMs were better than fixed rates, house values go up, etc etc...
It doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid; they could just be low-information. Heck, people who run the insurance companies and banks were just as 'stupid' in that case.
Now, if people make the same mistake again? Sure, nail them to the wall for stupidity.
Based on this post, a lot of your others make sense to me now.
I have to admit, I've witnessed a lot of the same at ude you're describing. I friend of mine just moved to SA with her 20-something son. They've been here for six months. She works two jobs and he's yet to find ONE. Like you said, you do what you have to do. Go work at a convenience store. Go work fast food. Go wash dishes. Go work at a grocery store. If I were to lose my job today, there's no job that I would consider beneath me, if that's all that was available. I have other people depending on me. All my friend's "kid" does is watch TV and play video games. He can't even support his own smoking habit. And they share a vehicle! What 20-something y.o. man doesn't have his own ride? There's a lot of laziness in this world and it is pervasive in our younger generation.
that't the thing.. they are making the same mistakes again when it comes to selling their homes. rather than lowering their asking prices, many couples insist on listing tens of thousands above the market value. they just do not know when to stop the bleeding.
Yeah, ok. I wasnt talking about indentured servitude or child labor. I was talking about your average Joe American from the 19th century who subject to the whims of tyrant employers and awful pay.
Yet, they survived and thrived, when compared to their global contemporaries.
They were tough and steeled. Not so much anymore, by way of advancement or otherwise.
I dont wax poetic about the lving conditions and standard operating procedures of business and agriculture of the day, I only detest the modern American's 180 degree turn from self-reliance to state-dependance.
I think what you're really seeing is the difference between the "Greatest Generation", who HAD to be self-reliant due to the Depression followed by WWII, and the generations that came after, not so much that America was all about self-reliance until this most recent generation.
Yeah, ok. I wasnt talking about indentured servitude or child labor. I was talking about your average Joe American from the 19th century who subject to the whims of tyrant employers and awful pay.
Yet, they survived and thrived, when compared to their global contemporaries.
They were tough and steeled. Not so much anymore, by way of advancement or otherwise.
I dont wax poetic about the lving conditions and standard operating procedures of business and agriculture of the day, I only detest the modern American's 180 degree turn from self-reliance to state-dependance.
I mean, being a fan of socialism was much more acceptable in the early 20th century than it is now, for one thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History..._United_States
If an American in the past were given a land grant to farm, odds are he would actually do the work to raise crops on it, rather than laying around and waiting for someone to give him food.
The difference was that there was nobody to give him food, so if he didn't work, he would die. If there had been a social welfare system back East, there is no telling whether he would have moved to the prarie and worked as hard as he did. His work ethic could have just been a matter of survival rather than upstanding moral character.
But from the Roman Empire, to antebellum times in the South, to today, there has always been an upper class who relied upon the labor of others for their wealth, and lived lives of leisure. From time immemorial, they always justified this by claiming that they somehow were more "noble" or "genteel" or had better breeding or manners or divine right or what have you, and thus deserved their station in life.
But then the modern industrial era came along, and for the first time ever, we had an actual class revolution where the merchant middle classes displaced the landed nobility and took their place at the top. These were who Marx called the "bourgeois," the capitalists, the nouveau riche.
No country was ever more bourgeois in its sensibilities (economic, political, cultural) than the United States of America in its prime.
Yet even though the bourgeois capitalist worked for his money, he still depended upon the labor of those beneath him, the wage laborers.
The whole beef of the Marxist is that he rejects the argument that the capitalist should get the lion's share of the rewards and end up wealthy just because the business plan was his idea and he risked capital to implement it. He believes that the laborers should share equally, or something close to it.
So the type of rhetoric you will hear from the Marxist is rejection of any notion that capitalistic success comes from ingenuity or hard work or any such values that bourgeoisie claim for themselves. No, success comes from the acquisition of power and the exploitation of those without it.
So when you hear criticism of the American economic system and its history as being about the will to power, and the easiest path to glory through the coercive power of State and manipulation of the underclass, understand what you are hearing.
.......
We know from history that Marxism on the level of State has failed, and has simply resulted in authoritarian regimes where political leaders acquired power and wealth and exploited everybody else. However, now we have Neo-Marxists in various flavors. There is the German school, which claims that in a social welfare state the construct of the proletariat no longer makes sense, and reinterprets class warfare in terms of deconstructing all power claims in society that undergird class distinctions. This kind of Neo-Marxism is also called "social critical theory."
There is also a school of Marxism which views class struggle in terms of race. (When blended with Christianity, Black liberation theology flows from this font.) Now there is a naive view of this, in which it is claimed that if only we can get white people out of power, we will achieve social justice, where white = bourgeois, and nonwhite = proletariat. (When I hear white people described as "sub-par individuals," my interpretation gravitates more toward the naive view.) Then there is a view more like the German Neo-Marxist school, which seeks to identify social structures that undergird racial disparity and overturn them. Opposition to reform will often be viewed in terms of a struggle by the privileged race to maintain its privileges. So when you hear opposition to reform expressed in terms of "white power," understand what you are hearing.
I think it is important to comprehend the political thinking behind some of these criticisms of American society and history, rather than chalk it up to reflexive unthinking anti-Americanism. There is indeed a lot of thought behind it. Whether you find that reassuring or terrifying depends on your perspective.
Oh, I'm not saying criticism of America is unthinkingly anti-Americanism. I'm just against the idea that the overall character of America was different due to some inherent 'betterness' of the people living in past times. As you said, it's impossible to determine whether that hard-working ideal was due to necessity, their character, or any number of factors that are unable to be isolated from each other.
"right to bear arms"
dumbest right of them all. This right was created when america was fightin the british. centuries ago. can't beleive americans still beleive in this
Dumb ppl should not be allowed to carry guns. And let's be honest we human beings on the average are dumb
IMO republicans should carry swords, would make it more interesting
What difference does it make how shortsighted 19th-century agriculture was? That's like saying every developed country in the world is stupid and lazy because of global warming. Or, maybe you would say that, in which case I say you're bordering on nihilism.
How utterly obscurantist. Here we are typing in an European language about politics in a country whose government is a product of the European Enlightenment, sculpted by two centuries of Western thought, substantially populated by the European immigrants you mention with their European ideas, and you're claiming that applying European political philosophy to America is "stupid?"
The Eurocentrism of every aspect of our political, economic, and cultural structures is at the heart of systemic racism, right? What's the endgame here? Are we going to change society by reforming the existing structures, in which case we acknowledge their foundations for what they are, or are we going to destroy all those structures?
I'm not sure if your "Eurocentrism is the heart of systemic racism" quote is you responding to that idea or what you actually think. I'm assuming the former.
Reformation is merely an ordered form of destruction.
That's what I really think. It makes sense.
As a white person in Texas, I was brought up in such a way that the prevailing social, cultural, and economic structures in Texas make sense to me. I don't even have to think about them. When I get up and go to work every day, I don't have to worry about adapting to my surroundings, because my surroundings cater to my assumptions.
If I am spending time immersed in another subculture, on the other hand, there is a certain amount of unfamiliarity. When interacting with those around me, I am at a certain disadvantage. There are cultural assumptions I don't know about. There is nonverbal communication I don't pick up on. There are subtle ways of doing things that seem strange to me. I don't get the benefit of the doubt. The capacity for misunderstanding is increased. I must try to adapt.
In those situations, I depend upon the hospitality of the person bringing me into that community to build the bridge of understanding. There is at least the acknowledgement in extending the hand that I am an outsider at a disadvantage.
The same thing works on the level of society. When groups have been excluded for most of the history of the country, they are by definition outsiders. The dominant social, political, and cultural ins utions were built without their participation or their influence. It is a little like being a foreigner in your own country. Simply nullifying the policy of exclusion doesn't change that.
Where my views would differ with a leftist is that I believe I must extend people a hand personally through relationships. I don't believe we can build a community top-down through the state. The frustration is that a lot of people have no interest whatsoever in extending that hand, or if they do, they do it from a perch of presumed superiority rather than regarding the other person as a neighbor.
I think order and destruction are mutually exclusive.
Someone needs to get out of his hometown, go to Rio de Janero, smoke a joint and hang out with the locals at the Carnival.
Understood, but is it your view that systemic racism is originated from a European mindset only? I'm assuming not, as surely racism has existed in many other forms and countries throughout history.
Tell that to people who make buildings implode then.Order and CHAOS might be mututally exclusive... maybe... but order and destruction can and do occasionally go hand-in-hand.
I speak only of the American context.
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