From Across Difficult Country in 2005:
"America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them; and every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American."
George W. Bush
"America is not only for the whites, but it is for all. Who is the American? The American is you, me and that. When we go to America we will become Americans and there is no a race or nationalism called America and the Americans are those Africans, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans and whoever goes to America will become American...American is for all of us and the whole world had made and created America. All the people all over the world had made America and it shall accordingly be for all of us. I will never feel ashamed when I claim for my right in America and it will not be strange when I raise my voice in America."
Col. Moammar Gadhafi
Posts
64 comments:
Two new polls (Rasmussen and Marin) show Cain leading Romney in Iowa, Florida and South Carolina among likely voters. They mentioned it on National Review's Corner blog.
This could get interesting.
I really, really, would like a source for the original quote. This is dynamite.
Good post Steve. Some Americans -like me - bristle at these comments. But guess what? Your average White American agrees with both of them.
I think we need to be honest with ourselves, the average Amurican only cares about $$$, football, and maybe his family. Hey, and if things get too bad, well he'll go back to the old country.
Stupid and Bizarre, but true.
Just to point out, Obama got Osama and Gaddhafi, succeeding where Bush the Younger and Reagan failed.
Barry seems to favor air power and special forces engagements. So far, it's proving to be a better strategy than Neocon nation building exercises. We basically just toppled a government with zero US casualties. And who cares about the inevitable, bloody civil war? The cameras will be long gone by the time that gets underway. With no US boots on the ground, Americans won't care about what's going on there. So Obama gets the credit for overthrowing a dictator but none of the blowback from failing to keep the country under control.
He also seems to prefer killing terrorists (including US citizens) in the field rather than bringing them back for trial. I guess a drone-obliterated Jihadi is less awkward than one grandstanding in an American court.
Expect more of these operations leading up to Election 2012.
After an evening at the hashish bar, Kaddafi channels the poetic offspring of Khalil Gibran and Walt Whitman.
Source: It's from the Colonel's old website, now defunct:
http://www.algathafi.org/issue/i-g-4-en.htm
After he made nice with the NWO in 2003, he got into blogging on foreign policy topics for a year or two. He was pretty good at it.
The Irwin Corey of the Maghreb . . .
"He also seems to prefer killing terrorists (including US citizens) in the field rather than bringing them back for trial"
As one wag commented on the last thread, Obama favors the drive-by whacking - the Chicago way.
Gilbert P.
I must say there's something odd about Obama commemorating the MLK memorial--honoring the prophet of peace--and Hillary cracking up about the lynching death of Gaddafi in the same month.
You gotta love humanity. Never a dull moment.
Let's not be English-centric. Bush should have made that speech in 200 different languages. To be 'more American', that is.
And of course, America isn't any more European or Christian than Muslim or Buddhist. If America had been founded and conquered by Chinese Confucians or Arab Muslims, it would be the same America we know today.
If everything is equally American, why do liberals keep telling us 'black music' like Jazz and blues is more American than classical music or polka? Or Chinese opera?
lol. RIP Gadhafi.
I guess Gadaffy admired America so much that he tried to emulate Americanism by bringing in a million Subsars into Libya. How well did that go?
Caring about $$$ and your family is bad? Substitute baseball for football and I'm good to go.
Anonydroid at 4:08 said: Just to point out, Obama got Osama and Gaddhafi, succeeding where Bush the Younger and Reagan failed.
Hunsdon replies: I will give POTUS his props on this. As distasteful as I find the position we find ourselves in, with the United States as the hegemon of the world, I do find it vastly preferable to use Special Operations units and drones to do our killing for us. We're getting too many of our boys blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan to no good point.
Still, the phrase "What's the worst that could happen?" is, for me, something serious to ponder, and not a throwaway line or a handwave. I fear that for the US, and for Libyans, the day may come when we look back on the K-man (or Q-man, or G-man) with bemused fondness. As the old minister responded when told his church needed reform: "Reform, sir? In the name of God, are things not bad enough already?"
After he made nice with the NWO in 2003, he got into blogging on foreign policy topics for a year or two.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blogs here:
http://chedet.cc/blog/
I More-Americanized Bush's speech into Urdu:
"ہمارے مفادات سے اوپر امریکہ کی طرف سے خون یا پیدائش یا مٹی کی طرف سے کیا گیا ہے کبھی نہیں متحد. ہم آدرشوں کو جو ہمیں ہماری پس منظر اگے بڑھنے کے پابند ہیں، ہمیں لفٹ اور ہمیں سکھا شہری بننے کے لئے کیا مطلب ہر بچہ ان اصولوں سکھایا ضروری ہے ہر شہری..ان کی بالادستی ضروری ہے، اور ہر تارکین وطن، ان کے آدرشوں کو گلے لگانے کی طرف سے، ہمارے ملک بنا، کم
I More-Americanized Bush speech into Malay:
"Amerika tidak pernah bersatu dengan darah atau kelahiran atau tanah. Kami terikat dengan cita-cita yang bergerak kita di luar latar belakang kita, mengangkat kita di atas kepentingan kita dan mengajar kita apa yang dimaksudkan untuk menjadi warganegara. Setiap kanak-kanak mesti diajar prinsip-prinsip ini. Setiap warganegaramesti mendukung mereka, dan setiap pendatang, dengan meliputi prinsip ini, menjadikan negara kita lebih, tidak kurang, American ".
If diversity and equality are so important, then shouldn't US have equal number of each ethnic group all over the world? Well, good reason to build a wall between Mexico and US. Mexicans are way over-represented.
Bush's speech makes no sense. If America is about democracy, equality, and diversity, then isn't any nation that is democratic, egalitarian, and diverse just as American as America? Why is Turkey, Mexico, and Brazil not America? They are democratic and diverse and have constitutions similar to ours.
On the one hand, Bush says America is all about universalism, but this universalism... makes us exceptionally American.
Huh?
Hey, I'm uniquely universal!!! Maybe such should be called uniquersal(which sounds like unicurse-all).
Bush's speech translated into plain English:
"I'm a gutless politically correct wasp afraid of being called 'racist'. Neocons control my mind. Hell with national borders cuz big corporations that support me can make more money through open borders."
"Two new polls (Rasmussen and Marin) show Cain leading Romney in Iowa, Florida and South Carolina among likely voters. They mentioned it on National Review's Corner blog."
Romney is such a putz. Cain-Rubio. Haha, a riot.
Romney is so stiff. Everyone knows Clinton and Obama are liars, but they so smooth with it, like Teflon Ron.
Romney, in contrast, always tries to come across so straight when we know he's crooked all over. Some people have the style to lie and get away; others don't.
Margin Call
"I'm a fighter, yes". "How long have you been fighting?" "Just two weeks." ROTFL. Libyans are such divas. Check out the guy's hat. Maybe there's something about Arabs that brings out the Diva in everyone. Hillary laughs. T.E. Lawrence went kind funny in the head. "I am a river to my people!!!!"
Not an original thought, but hasn't Barry kind of shot his wad for 2012? I mean, what's his October surprise going to be? Taking out Achmedinejad? Putin?
Ah yes, the old "America was built by 'immigrants' therefore it belongs to 'immigrants'" schtick.
My dad was a doctor. He was frugal and invested much of his earnings wisely and left his estate to his 7 children, none of whom chose to be doctors. But his fortune was built by a "doctor," so should he have been obliged to leave it to "doctors" rather than his own flesh and blood?
I love hearing that immigrants today are better than regular Americans because they took the "risk" of leaving their own country to come to America to try to "struggle" and succeed.
1607-1850ish Immigrants: came over on rickety sailing vessels across the dangerous North Atlantic.
1850-1950 Immigrants: came over on significantly more reliable steamships, though still mostly across the Atlantic.
1950-2011 Immigrants: come via airplane or automobile, the two safest ways to travel ever invented.
1607-1850 Immigrants: LEFT a superior civilization to come settle a wilderness host to often hostile natives. Faced frequently high mortality rates. When land was full picked up, move further west, and fought the natives again.
1850-1940 Immigrants: Left countries generally much poorer than America, where they were often dying en masse.
1940-2011 Immigrants: Left dirt poor countries to arrive in giganto welfare state, where they can live on the dole for years and make 10 times what they earned at home.
So uh, what do you think you just said here?
Re: being a 'nation of immigrants' - even up until 1990, half of the US was populated by descendents of pioneers - they had big families in those days. This, from Samuel Huntington's book "Who We Are". It was Roosevelt who came up with the phrase, and it was wrong when even he said it.
> Obama got Osama and Gaddhafi, succeeding where Bush the Younger and Reagan failed.
Osama? OK, Osama was a bad guy.
But Gaddhafi had given up his weapons! He had made nice with America and kissed the ring, and paid compensation for Lockerbie.˘ I mean, here he is shaking hands with Obama in August 2009!
http://demotivationalpics.com/albums/userpics2/demotiv_pic_1693-obama-gaddafi.jpg
Less than two years later, Obama is launching cruise missiles at him. And there wasn't even an invasion of Kuwait in between, just same hastily concocted hand-waving about a "genocide" so that they could Arab Spring the living crap out of Libya.
To understand how psychopathic this is, you need to understand that Hillary Clinton and Obama are just as shallow and uninformed as your average college graduate in international relations.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/9468-us-officials-celebrate-killing-of-former-ally-gadhafi
Just a few years ago, Gadhafi and the U.S. government were actually cooperating closely in the battle against many of the same figures now taking over Libya with Western support. Top leaders of groups like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which merged with al Qaeda in 2007, were considered high-priority targets for both governments.
The relationship between the two national governments was apparently going well and getting better until recently. In 2008, for example, the U.S. Federal Reserve was secretly bailing out banks owned by the Gadhafi regime. The next year, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, a high-level American delegation in Tripoli praised Gadhafi’s regime and the strengthening of bilateral ties between the two governments.
Among the participants in the senior-level meetings were the Libyan despot, his son, U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and others. “The Senators expressed appreciation for Libya's counterterrorism cooperation in the region,” the cable noted.
During one of the discussions, Sen. Lieberman “called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends,” the embassy report stated. “The Senators recognized Libya's cooperation on counterterrorism and conveyed that it was in the interest of both countries to make the relationship stronger.”
Senator McCain, meanwhile, promised Gadhafi’s son Muatassim that the U.S. government “wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its security,” noted the confidential document released by WikiLeaks. “He described the bilateral military relationship as strong and pointed to Libyan officer training at U.S. Command, Staff, and War colleges as some of the best programs for Libyan military participation.”
I'm amazed how few people in this thread understand how big a deal this is. Every single country in the world has gotten the message that making nice with America could lead to being murdered by them just a few years later!
Under the influence of the neocons this country has become, bit by bit, the new International Communism, spreading violent revolution all over the world.
And if you think it couldn't get any worse...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-21/putin-assad-may-be-unnerved-by-qaddafi-killing-mccain-says.html
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other “dictators” may be “nervous” after the death of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, U.S. Senator John McCain said.
“I think dictators all over the world, including Bashar al-Assad, maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them, may be a little bit more nervous,” McCain said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. late yesterday. “It’s the spring, not just the Arab spring.”
We are governed by homicidal maniacs.
Yes? And your point would be?
More generally, how is this different from 'citizenism'?
Every single country in the world has gotten the message that making nice with America could lead to being murdered by them just a few years later!
Nothing new. As Dr Kissinger said: Being America's enemy is dangerous, but being America's friend is lethal.
I've argued with Steve about this in the past and as much as I admire him and profit from his blog, on this question he simply has his thumbs in his ears up to the knuckles and won't take them out.
So, OK, the hated George Bush said that. Well, so did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, James Madison and virtually everyone who actually founded the country (to say nothing of Abraham Lincoln). So the Founders thought America was a "proposition nation"--they even went so far as to put that proposition in the nation's founding document--yet we are all supposed to believe it was invented by the neocons, or Dubya. Right.
Sorry, Steve, it would be too charitable to say that on this one you don't know what you are talking about. You actually don't WANT to know what you are talking about and spend considerable effort to avoid having to learn.
Live not by lies. Indeed.
"We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age and race and country in which we live, for these celebrations.
"But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have--besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors--among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; and then they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."
America is fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon, majority European project, it seems to me, and that's not a bad thing.
Consider the others in that class:
United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Am I missing any of note? The USA has more in common with that category than other immigrant-defined nations like Brazil or, well, Brazil, it seems to me.
The dull truth is we're another English-speaking, mostly white nation, and they're all doing pretty good. In some respects almost as well as Scandinavian nations, in fact.
Hopefully Anonymous
http://hopefullyanonymous.blogspot.com
Two senators propose increasing immigration to prop up home prices. I predicted this would happen 3-4 years ago during the housing collapse. Their proposal is of course replete with the usual promises that their bill provides no "pathway to citizenship" and would 'bar the immigrants from government welfare.
The banks took a lending risk, driving up the prices of homes to unaffordability in the process, and lost. Home prices outpaced income growth by double digits for years. Now the irresponsible banks would be bailed out by a policy that would flood the nation with immigrants to buy the homes Americans can't afford. What's shocking isn't that one of the bills' sponsors is Wall Street butt-boy Chuck Schumer. What's shocking is that the other sponsor is Tea Party victor Mike Lee (R-UT), who ran on an immigration restrictionist platform. If a guy like Lee is for it this bill has a serious shot. Time to go to the phones...
> Obama got Osama and Gaddhafi, succeeding where Bush the Younger and Reagan failed.<
Libyan people got Gaddafi. We just gave them a push.
"So, OK, the hated George Bush said that. Well, so did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, James Madison and virtually everyone who actually founded the country (to say nothing of Abraham Lincoln)."
Here's the difference. The Founding Fathers and Lincoln meant it in a different context from Bush, i.e. they TOOK IT FOR GRANTED that America would be a European-majority nation rooted in Anglo traditions. Paradoxically, they could speak in such lofty and non-tribalist terms precisely because they didn't have to worry about losing white dominance. They were being magnanimous because the power was so much on their side. It's like a rich person can support higher taxes because he has so much to give away. If each of the original 13 colonies had been settled by different groups--Mass by Anglos, Georgia by Russians, Virginia by Chinese, Pennsylvania by Arabs, etc--the Founders in Mass would not have been so idealistic. They would have created a tribalist constitution trying to preserve Anglo tradition in Mass against the different systems and cultures of other colonies.
The context in which Bush speaks is totally different. He's not being generous and magnanimous because his people have the power but being pandering and chickenshit cuz the wasps have lost out to Jews and rising tide of non-whites. It's not the idealism of a generous winner but the pandering of a sappy and sorryass loser.
"More generally, how is this different from 'citizenism'?"
Citizenism is a strategy, not an abstract ideal. It is a means to use non-tribalist policies to attain tribalist goals. It may not be explicitly pro-white-interest but its prescriptions favor white interest.
It's like meritocracy and anti-affirmative-action in college admission are technically for color-blindness, but they favor white interest because whites are naturally smarter than blacks and browns.
"Two senators propose increasing immigration to prop up home prices."
We need more architectural diversity in order to be less Euro-centric. How about we build African-style mudhuts for blacks on welfare? Maybe they'll feel more at home. You see, so many blacks are distraught cuz they're surrounded by Eurocentrism.
"Nothing new. As Dr Kissinger said: Being America's enemy is dangerous, but being America's friend is lethal."
Not really. Maybe the Kisser was talking about the Shah. But the problem with the Shah, as with Gaddafi, was he lost the mandate of his people. The problem was less Shah's good relations with America than his neglect of his people while hobnobbing with rich Europeans. Gaddafy also lost his link to his people. He ignored their pleas, imported blacks into LIbya, hobnobbed with rich whites folks he'd condemned for so many yrs. They saw him as a phony.
Besides, he was never a friend.
He was, at best, someone we grew to tolerate.
Anonymous said...
Two new polls (Rasmussen and Marin) show Cain leading Romney in Iowa, Florida and South Carolina among likely voters. They mentioned it on National Review's Corner blog.
Not surprising. Don't underestimate the Mormon hate among White Americans.
The average Klansman would probably vote for Herman Cain over any Mormon.
Michael Anton, it's not that there isn't any proposition. It's that a nation can have a proposition, but can't be a proposition. And then there's the "posterity" part, which wasn't intended to include Somalis. Ex-Army goes on about this HERE.
Libyan people got Gaddafi. We just gave them a push.
That's a fairly large understatement. Before we intervened, they were a retreating rabble about to wiped off the face of the Earth. Even with overwhelming air support, they couldn't win until Western special forces were among them doing most of the trigger pulling.
They just carried out the celebratory killing of unarmed prisoners at the end. Now that's something they know how to do well.
Our politicians are whores of the global elites. America as the Prostitution Nation.
One good thing about the grisly death of Gaddafi. It restores a sense of reality. Not long ago, we were discussing the violence in TROY and 300. They are violent but stylized and neat, even romantic and heroic.
But when Achilles threaded ropes through Hector's heels and dragged him from his chariot, it must have been as ugly and ignomious as what happened to Gaddafi.
The Passion of the Mob.
Baloo, I get that.
Where I think Steve goes wrong is, he seems to assume that any acknowledgement of America's Founding principles or "proposition" somehow forces us all into accepting unlimited immigration from everywhere. Or at least he thinks it leaves us intellectually defenseless against such a conclusion.
But if so, he's wrong. The Founders themselves asserted plainly that the American people have the sovereign right to allow, or disallow, exactly as much immigration as we want--including none at all. Moreover, they were candid on the subject of quality as well as quantity. They specifically opposed taking in people from despotic countries with no tradition of liberty, and people from wholly alien religious traditions. They did not believe that you could take mass numbers of people from anywhere and make them Americans overnight on the basis of a "proposition."
So, it is not necessary to reject or dismiss the Founders in order to oppose mass immigration. Quite the opposite, the Founding principles AFFIRM what Sailer calls "patriotic immigration reform".
"virtually everyone who actually founded the country"
As an English person, I always thought the American nation as a whole founded the country.
You would think that on a thread about America as a proposition nation, comments on the topic of America as a proposition nation would be allowed.
But the inscrutable Komment Kontol strikes again.
OK, the hated George Bush said that. Well, so did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, James Madison and virtually everyone who actually founded the country
Can you cite where Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, and "virtually everyone who actually founded the country" actually said "that"?
Because I've read a lot of the Founders papers and I'm drawing a blank on that one.
Michael. Oh, I think I see, then. Your disagreement with Steve isn't on a principle so much as a strategy? You think that the "proposition" is widely misinterpreted for malign purposes, and you want to reclaim it for what it was really meant to be? I can sympathize with that. But I think NLF's reply is dead on. The proposition is so completely warped that I'm not sure there's enough energy among us to set it straight again. It's like trying to reclaim the word "liberal." I gave up on that one, and opt for "Libertarian Nationalist." Whenever I hear the term "propositional nation," I reach for my keyboard.
Anon, you can start with the Declaration of Independence--both the founding document of the United States and the source of the "proposition"--and go from there. The actual word "proposition" comes from the Gettysburg Address of course but all of the Founders reiterated in their own words the basic ideas of the Declaration. Here's but one example: George Washington's letter to the Newport, RI, synagogue. If you are really interested, I urge you to look into the writings of Harry V. Jaffa and his various students. Jaffa is, unfortunately, unsound on the topic of immigration (I suspect he suffers from what Steve describes as Ellis Island Derangement Syndrome) but his students see more clearly. Tom West and Ed Erler have done terrific studies of the Founders' views on immigration and demonstrated that they did not interpret the "proposition" to mean "open borders forever."
Baloo,first of all, what are we trying to defend? The United States, right? Why? Because it's ours or because it's good? Well, either way. If only because it's ours, then the Founding is also ours. The Founding is what gave us the United States. So trying to defend the latter while rejecting the former is contradictory. If we are to embrace what is ours, why not embrace it whole hog?
Second, and more important, it's not merely ours, it is also good. The Founding principles are the true and correct political principles. The fact that they are true explains in very large measure the extraordinary success of the United States, especially when compared to the places that some of us came from. Sure, there are other factors. One of my problems with Steve is that he likes to cite those other factors (cheap land, sparse population, distant enemies) and then just ignore (when he does not deride) the Founding principles.
"But the inscrutable Komment Kontrol strikes again."
I think Google went bonkers today from around noon to 3 pm.
Or maybe not. Maybe it is Komment Kontrol after all.
I posted something like earlier:
A paradox. Maybe West got rid of Gadaffy precisely cuz they became close.
If Gadaffy and the Western elites weren't chummy, Gadaffy's murdering his own people woulda simply been "thug tyrant Gadaffy kills his people".
But with Gadaffy as the "new friend" of the West, the narrative becomes, "Gadaffy, with support of the West, mows down his own people'. Not good.
So, getting rid of Gadaffy was a way of paving over the fact that the West had warmed up to him a bit too much. After WWII, some people who'd associated with Nazis in France were among the loudest supporters of the new order. It's a way of overcompensating for one's own sins. By being super-virtuous, you hope people will forget your compromises.
The first Bush may have gotten rid of Noriega for the same reason. They'd once been too close.
-----------
If the above post passes KC, I'll know it was Google. If not, I'll know it was KC.
If KC, I guess illegal comments are turned away at the border.
"virtually everyone who actually founded the country"
As an English person, I always thought the American nation as a whole founded the country.
Yes, God forbid we give credit to all the people from 1585 to ca. 1850 who left established civilization to build a new one up from the muck while risking mortality rates that were frequently in the double digits.
And today we call "courageous" those who arrive from Mumbai via 747 or manage to trudge a dozen or so miles through the desert while risking mortality rates of 0.1% at worst, LEAVING the muck FOR the promised land.
God bless the "Founders," but this nation was founded long before the "Founders" were on the scene.
"But the inscrutable Komment Kontrol strikes again."
"I think Google went bonkers today from around noon to 3 pm.
Or maybe not. Maybe it is Komment Kontrol after all.
I posted something like earlier..."
Well, I'll be...
So, was it google... or is Sailer playing with our minds in a Jedi-mind-trick sort of way?
Do we really have to point out the obvious here?
The US was founded by us and for us--and us alone.
My favourite quote on the matter comes from the movie The Good Shepherd (2006):
--------------------------
Italian guy: "We Italians have family. The Jews have tradition. What do you people have?"
Edward Wilson (WASP): "We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting."
---------------------------
Visiting time is over.
If this country had stayed with the people who founded it-English, Ulster, Scots, Welsh, Dutch, French Huguenot, and yes, the slaves-we would have been just fine. Sure, other ethnic groups have done well here, but in 1850, which is when the first nontraditional groups, the Germans and Irish, came,we were a first rate country already. There is nothing in the historical record to make me feel otherwise.
Gagoofy.
Lady Gagaddafi.
Michael Anton, I'm familiar with Jaffa and his cult. (I use the word "cult" with some thought beforehand)
But their interpretation of the Declaration is self-serving twaddle, a Levi Straussian "useful lie".
The basic ideas of the Declaration do not include those promoted by Jaffa and Co. It is dishonest to boil the "basic ideas of the Declaration" down to the five words "all men are created equal", and it is dishonest to pretend that these words meant to the Founders what Jaffa (and you I suppose) want to read into them.
"All men are created equal" was not a statement about individuals, just as the word "people" in the Declaration does not mean "individual persons". The Declaration, like so much else of the Founders writings, is missing in any conception of individuals.
"All men are created equal" is why it is possible for for "one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them".
In the Declaration, Americans are a collective entity, "one people". This "one people" is what is making a declaration of independence.
The Founders did not believe, even as a theoretical concept, that Africans were "created equal" to themelves. At least not in the modern sense of equal as meaning "interchangable". They would have agreed that Africans in Africa had an equal Natural Right to establish a goverment over themselves "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness". But that was the extent of the equality.
Also, Michael Anton, it would be nice if you tried to provide some specific cites of the Founders saying those things you think they believed.
Here's Thomas Jefferson:
"I mentioned Connecticut as the most hopeless of our States.
Little Delaware had escaped my attention. That is essentially a Quaker State, the fragment of a religious sect which, there, in the other States, in England, are a homogeneous mass, acting with one mind, and that directed by the Mother society in England. Dispersed, as the Jews, they still form, as those do, one nation, foreign to the land they live in. They are Protestant Jesuits, implicitly devoted to the will of their superior, and forgetting all duties to their country in the execution of the policy of their order."
There is very little "all humans possess equal worth" sentiment in the Founders writings. Instead there is a realistic, even cynical, acknowledgment that different groups of people are different and of different worth. More Jefferson:
"I wish I could give better hopes of our southern brethren. The achievement of their independence of Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very serious one, what will then become of them? Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under military despotism, and become the murderous tools of the ambition of their respective Bonapartes".
if Jefferson were alive today he'd be disappointed, but not surprised, that Jews still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in. He'd be disappointed, but not surprised, that Hispanics remain incapable of self-government. Because when he said "all men are created equal", he was not saying what you imagine he was.
"DYork said...
The average Klansman would probably vote for Herman Cain over any Mormon."
The average Klansman would vote for whomever his handlers in the FBI and the SPLC told him to vote for.
"If this country had stayed with the people who founded it-English, Ulster, Scots, Welsh, Dutch, French Huguenot, and yes, the slaves-we would have been just fine. Sure, other ethnic groups have done well here, but in 1850, which is when the first nontraditional groups, the Germans and Irish, came,we were a first rate country already."
Germans by 1790 already comprised a larger share of the free population than all but the various British nationalities - around 16%, I believe. There were substantial German populations in numerous areas of the US. The City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for example, was founded by German immigrants in 1753.
Otherwise you make a valid point. Many of the post-1850 immigrants, whatever their other contributions, introduced a grievance mentality to the political debate that has yet to subside. To this day it's dismaying to see members of groups who are better off than the natives and/or recent voluntary arrivals, bitch about being "oppressed."
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