Polite Kid

...just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! - Mark Twain
On the other hand, Twain also said "A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't."
Still, I am a partisan of banjo music; readers of this blog will know that I love old-time string-band music and its offspring, bluegrass.
So, over at Winston Smith's Blog, I was delighted to see that he has a post on building a fretless mountain banjo.
Now, I am not looking to build a banjo but I love to read about how craftsmen build these things. Back in simpler times when music was something that was often homemade, not something you bought in a store and consumed passively, people knew how to make instruments with which they made their music. It is good to know that it is not a forgotten art everywhere.
I think of the humble "banjer" as a quintessentially American instrument, and Winston Smith has some thoughts about its origin:
There's a myth that the banjo (the "gourd banjar") is a Negro invention, and it came to America with Negro slaves. The implication us that our beautiful Appalachian and Bluegrass music is the child of Africa. B******T! In the first place, instruments like the banjo - strings over a stretched hide - have been in China, non-Negroid Egypt, the Caucasus, Near Asia, and many other places for thousands of years. Negro Africans may have developed such an instrument (highly improbable), but they didn't "invent" it. In the second place, the banjo existed in regions of Appalachia long before our excellent mountain kin folk had ever laid eyes on a Negro. Thirdly, if Negros invented it, then why did they abandon it?''
Those are questions I've wondered about, and posed to other people as well, so it's good to see that I am not the only one asking.
Some people have asked me why it even matters to me who 'invented' the banjo. It matters to me not only because I love the banjo, but because I think the truth matters. In recent years, as I've written so often about on this blog, we've been subjected to an all-out campaign to rewrite history and to take credit away from our people, assigning it, rightly or wrongly, to others. Why? To build others' fragile self-esteem? To diminish our own confidence and pride in our people? To make the gullible think that America was always a multicultural society and a melting pot in which we are only one minor ingredient? I think it's all of the above, and if there are any other possible reasons I am open to considering them.
This source is typical in crediting Africans with influencing Appalachian music and with introducing the banjo -- and the writers get extra PC points for tying the instrument to Islamic origins as well:
ONE of the greatest influences on Appalachian music, as well as many popular American music styles, was that of the African-American. The slaves brought a distinct tradition of group singing of community songs of work and worship, usually lined out by one person with a call and response action from a group. A joyous celebration of life and free sexuality was coupled with improvisation as lyrics were constantly updated and changed to keep up the groups' interest. The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of Appalachian singing and dancing. The introduction of the banjo to the Southern Mountains after the Civil War in the 1860s further hastened this process. Originally from Arabia, and brought to western Africa by the spread of Islam, the banjo then ended up in America. Mostly denigrated as a 'slave instrument' until the popularity of the Minstrel Show, starting in the 1840s, the banjo syncopation or 'bom-diddle-diddy' produced a different clog-dance and song rhythm by the turn of the century.
[...]
The instrumental tradition of the Appalachians started as anglo-celtic dance tunes and eventually was reshaped by local needs, African rhythms, and changes in instrumentation.''
Winston Smith mentions that the banjo is associated with the old minstrel show tradition, and yet blacks, since the 1960s era, have disclaimed this tradition as being an offensive racial stereotype. I've also heard that such entertainment was something that many blacks feel their ancestors were ''forced'' to do by Massa, and that it was demeaning to them. I have noticed that there are very, very few blacks who play the banjo today. If it was 'their' instrument originally, it seems they've abandoned it.
It does seem, too, that there are no home-grown analogues to the banjo in Africa, no apparent antecedent that I'm familiar with, and I do know a little about world music. There are, however, many related instruments in the Western tradition, making it much more plausible that the banjo was a European-derived instrument, probably being developed to its present form in our country, among our people.
I think it's important for us to take credit for our own traditions. The politically corrected cultural history has just about taken away every American folk tradition from us and credited it to blacks -- traditions such as buck-dancing, flatfoot dancing, and later traditions such as rock 'n roll music.
Anyone who is familiar with the dance traditions of the British Isles recognizes that buck dancing and flatfoot dancing, as well as clogging and 'square dancing' are derived from traditions that came with our early English and Scots settlers.
If we're to believe the popular historians of today, we have no culture of our own; blacks had to teach us everything when they came here from Africa. And this idea fits with the current demeaning stereotype of Whites as being mere blank slates with no innate character or culture to speak of. This is particularly said, maliciously, about White Americans. So it's important for us to confidently claim our own traditions back again, and to refuse to let ourselves be stripped of our traditions, however humble they may be. They are part of us.
Read the rest of Winston Smith's post at the link.

Labels: American Culture, American Heritage, Folk Arts, Folkways, Political Correctness, Traditional Music

In the discussion about American culture, cabbageroll observed that
I think Americans used to have a cocky self-assuredness. Like the gun slinging cowboy. We like those types ... Annie get your gun. Don't tread on me. Straight talkin', straight shootin'.''
That reminded me of this part of Carl Sandburg's 'Good Morning, America', where Sandburg reels off a list of American sayings, slang, and proverbs that seem to sum up a lot of quintessentially American qualities.
A code arrives; language; lingo; slang;
behold the proverbs of a people, a nation:
Give 'em the works. Fix it, there's always
a way. Be hard boiled. The good die young.
Be a square shooter. Be good; if you can't
be good be careful. When they put you in
that six foot bungalow, that wooden kimono,
you're through and that's that.
The higher they go the farther they drop.
The fewer the sooner. Tell 'em. Tell 'em.
Make 'em listen. They got to listen when
they know who you are. Don' t let 'em know
what you got on your hip. Hit 'em where
they ain't. It's good for whatever ails
you and if nothing ails you it's good for
that. Where was you raised--in a barn?
They're a lot of muckers, tin horns; show
those slobs where they get off at. Tell 'em
you're going to open a keg of nails. Beat 'em
to a fare-thee-well. Hand 'em the razz-berries.
Clean 'em and then given 'em carfare home.
Maybe all you'll get from 'em you can put in
your ear, anyhow.
They got a fat nerve to try to tie a can
on you. Send 'em to the cleaners. Put the
kibosh on 'em so they'll never come back.
You don't seem to know four out of five
have pyorrhea in Peoria.
Your head ain't screwed on wrong, I trust.
Use your noodle, your nut, your think tank,
your skypiece. God meant for you to use it.
If they offer to let you in on the ground
floor take the elevator.
Put up a sign: Don't worry; it won't last;
nothing does. Put up a sign: In God we
trust, all others pay cash. Put up a sign:
Be brief, we have our living to make. Put
up a sign: Keep of the grass.
Aye, behold the proverbs of a people:
The big word is Service.
Service--first, last and always.
Business is business.
What you don't know won't hurt you.
Courtesy pays.
Fair enough.
The voice with a smile.
Say it with flowers.
Let one hand wash the other.
The customer is always right.
Who's your boy friend?
Who's your girl friend?
O very well.
God reigns and the government at Washington lives.
Let it go at that.
There are lies, dam lies and statistics.
Figures don't lie but liars can figure.
There's more truth than poetry in that.
You don't know the half of it, dearie.
It's the roving bee that gathers the honey.
A big man is a big man whether he's a president or a prizefighter.
Name your poison.
Take a little interest.
Look the part.
It pays to look well.
Be yourself.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
War is hell.
Honesty is the best policy.
It's all in the way you look at it.
Get the money--honestly if you can.
It's hell to be poor.
Well, money isn't everything.
Well, life is what you make it.
Speed and curves--what more do you want?
I'd rather fly than eat.
There must be pioneers and some of them get killed.
The grass is always longer in the backyard.
Give me enough Swedes and snuff and I'll build a railroad to hell.
How much did he leave? All of it.
Can you unscramble eggs?
Early to bed and early to rise and you never meet any prominent people.
Let's go. Watch our smoke. Excuse our dust.
Keep your shirt on.''
He captures the jauntiness, the bravado, the toughness, the playful spirit, the cynicism, and the self-assuredness of America. I wonder how well this fits us today -- or are we still the same people as in Sandburg's day?

Labels: American Culture, Poetry

Oliver Wendell Holmes, physician, author, critic, and poet, was born on August 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Most of us, in earlier decades, read his poems in school, notably 'Old Ironsides' a patriotic poem about the frigate Constitution, which had defeated the British ship Guerriere in the War of 1812. When Holmes read a newspaper story indicating that the ship was to be dismantled, he was moved to write the poem.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,--
The lightning of the gale!
The poem was credited with saving the ship, which has been preserved and can be seen in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Holmes, (who is often confused by later generations with his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was a Supreme Court Justice,) also wrote many prose pieces, notably a series called the Breakfast Table series, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.
Here are a few quotes from Holmes:
The very aim and end of our institutions is that we may think what we like and say what we think."
"A page of history is worth a pound of logic."
"I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth, - not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas." - The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
"Language is a solemn thing," which "grows out of life - out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined." - The Professor at the Breakfast Table
"The one great thought" that the American "inherits as his national birthright; free to form and express his opinions on almost every subject, and assured that he will soon acquire the last franchise which men withhold from men, - that of stating the laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts without hindrance except from clearer views of truth." - The Professor at the Breakfast Table
If a person "chooses to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout; - perhaps he thinks the Devil is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right, Sir!" - The Professor at the Breakfast Table

Labels: American Culture, American History, Birthdays, Literature, Poetry

I think we're all rather fed up, and weary of the dismal political prospects in our country, so for once I am going to blog about something rather more trivial -- or is it trivial? The subject is the role of hats in our society.
I tend to agree with that philosopher -- was it Confucius? -- who believed that every little detail of life had some significance, and that the small details and niceties and ceremonies were building blocks of civilization. I am one of those rare people who believes that clothes, in a sense, do make the man or the woman. By that I don't mean that the expensively-dressed people, or the fashion plates, are superior to the rest; far from it. But I think that not only does the way we dress and present ourselves reflect our total worldview and our attitude, but it also helps shape it.
I think most of us would agree that there is a different feeling associated with wearing our best, our Sunday finery, as opposed to wearing our sloppy, lounging-around clothes. But does the phrase 'Sunday finery' even have a meaning nowadays, when most people who attend church wear the same clothes they wear for a casual occasion or recreation? In most churches I've attended in recent years, I've seen more jeans and athletic shoes than dressy clothes, and I've seen a lot of rather revealing clothes on many women, especially the younger ones. When the subject is discussed, I'm always the lone voice speaking for dressing up; most people nowadays are very insistent that God wants them to be comfortable above all else, and that they have a God-given, Constitutional right to wear jeans and sneakers to church. Anything else is decried as being superficial or snobbish.
Again, I appeal to tradition here: generations of our ancestors believed in wearing their best on Sundays, and that did not mean being a fashion plate, nor did it mean competing to be the most stylish or the most expensively dressed. Past generations may not have had expensive clothing, and my Puritan ancestors believed in dressing rather simply and conservatively. Those who had little money and few items of clothing still wore the best they had for worship, and the clothes, no matter that they might be cheaply made or well-worn, were clean and pressed; it was a matter of showing respect.
But now it seems it's all about ourselves and what we want or what we feel most ''comfortable'' in.
People these days seem not to favor dressing up for fancy secular occasions, like going to the ballet or the opera or a concert. I remember when I was a child, we dressed up to go to the movies. My parents both loved movies and we went as a family, and dressing up was de rigueur for evening movies. Similarly for travel; you wore your good clothes to take a plane trip, or even a train trip. Nowadays, wherever you go, the Uniform is everywhere: jeans and athletic shoes. Male or female, the look is much the same. I remember being bemused and somewhat appalled about 15 or so years ago when John Kennedy Jr. was photographed by paparazzi with his then-girlfriend, and both he and the girlfriend were dressed identically, with jeans, sneakers, and identical bomber jackets and baseball caps. Unisex. I thought they both looked very proletarian and sloppy, these 'beautiful people.' What's the use of being rich and beautiful and young if you dress in frumpy, nondescript, shapeless, genderless clothes?
One of the items of clothing that was once standard though now rarely worn is the hat. This is true of men particularly; when I was a child hats were almost universally worn by men. And there was an etiquette involved in hat-wearing; the hat had to be doffed in certain settings (in the presence of ladies, and in church, for example). Men would tip the hat as a greeting. I remember in a building where I worked about 20 years ago, there were still a number of older men who visited there, who still wore their hats, and they unfailingly removed their hats as a chivalrous gesture when I entered the elevator. I found that rather gallant and touching, realizing that these men were a vanishing breed in our society.
Here is a rather fun article about 'Bringing Back the Hat'.
''Up until the 1950�s men were rarely seen out and about without a hat sitting upon their head. Since that time, the wearing of hats has seen a precipitous decline. No one is precisely sure why. Some say the downfall of hats occurred when JFK did not wear a hat to his inauguration, thus forever branding them as uncool. This is an urban myth, however, as Kennedy did indeed don a hat that day. Another theory posits that the shrinking size of cars made wearing a hat while driving prohibitively difficult. Most likely, the demise of hats can simply be traced to changing styles and the ongoing trend towards a more casual look.''
Yes, I think that the changing hairstyles and the overall trend towards a more proletarian, egalitarian, anti-style look explains the disappearance of hats. JFK's hatlessness might also be explained by his own hairstyle; he had a very thick, bushy head of hair that was probably not suited to wearing a hat. Later on in the 60s as young men began to adopt the Beatles hairstyle, and long, unkempt hair became the fashion among younger men, hats just didn't suit the look. Later on when some long-haired young men began to affect hats from earlier eras, for example, young hippie men wearing high silk hats with their ragtag, motley attire, the effect was clownish; similarly with long-haired young men wearing a fedora. It just looked absurd. But hair was all-important in the 60s and onward; long hair was a badge; it showed whether one was one of the 'enemy' or whether one was part of the Movement.
Women, too, abandoned hats around the same time, for similar reasons; the bouffant hairstyle, which was teased and sprayed into shape, was not well-adapted to hats. So the hats had to go; no big-haired woman wanted her hair to be flattened by a hat.
As the years went by, the counterculture look seemed to prevail, and people tended to associate the pre-counterculture fashions as being stodgy and ridiculous. Hats were square and passe.
''Yet hats are due for a full resurgence. Hats are both functional and stylish. They can cover a bad hair day, keep your head warm, and shade your eyes from the sun. They can also be worn to cover a receding hairline, which interestingly enough is why Frank Sinatra, an iconic hat wearer, start wearing one in the first place. They give you touch of class and sophistication, impart personality, and add an interesting and unique accent to your outfits. And hats are a sure-fire way to boost your confidence. A cool hat can quickly become your signature piece and give you extra swagger.
Of course men today still wear hats, but they are most often confined to ratty baseball caps, hippie beanie caps, or the thankfully almost extinct trucker hat.''
Personally I would like to see the last of those ubiquitous baseball caps, except on actual baseball players of course. They are fine in the appropriate context.
The comment thread contains a link to this piece by Theodore Dalrymple, called Use Your Head.
''Theodore Dalrymple believes that wearing proper hats � not hoods or woollen beanies � could encourage self-respect and civility in the young
[...]
Why do men behave so badly nowadays? I know that the question has been asked for more than 2,500 years, but it just so happens that, this time, it is entirely apposite. Any doctor who has worked in the NHS will tell you so.
The explanation came to me a few months ago in a blinding flash of illumination: the hat. To the hat, or rather to the lack of one, is to be traced the source of all our ill-deportment. Bare heads, or heads accoutred in the wrong kind of headgear, cause our want of self-respect, and therefore our want of respect for others. What we need, therefore, is more hats: proper ones, from cloth caps to trilbies, homburgs, bowlers and toppers.
[...]
Reflecting on hats, it suddenly occurred to me how much more difficult it was to behave badly in a proper hat, and how much easier to be polite in one. I recalled the days of my childhood during which most men wore a hat, and I remembered that my father, who was not always the most considerate of men, never failed, in a gesture of genuine politeness, to raise his hat to someone whom he knew. Indeed, the etiquette of hats was drummed into me as a child as being a stage in the taming of the natural savage.''
It's an interesting piece; I recommend reading it. Dalrymple asserts, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we might encourage hat-wearing as a means of increasing public civility. But I think he is somewhat serious, too, and I do think that what we wear and how we behave are not unrelated.
I think that dressing appropriately shows a proper respect for convention and tradition; dressing for ''comfort'' or to make some rebellious or defiant statement is appropriate to a more adolescent society, which we have become in recent decades. One of the distinctions between the America of my childhood and today's America is that it seemed in the past that grown-ups were in charge; there were rules, there were standards, there were traditions and conventions on which there was a solid consensus. In today's America, it seems as if we've entered Neverland, as in James Barrie's Peter Pan, where there are no grown-ups, and each child creates his own personal Neverland.
I knew someone who said he liked old movies. When I asked him what kind of old movies he liked, he said, ''anything where they wear hats and drive black cars.'' I don't know the significance of black cars here, but the wearing of hats seems to be an indicator of the days when America was still sane and our society was still civilized and decorous.

Labels: American Culture, American Customs, Civility, Egalitarianism, Societal Decay

'Good' is Not a Bad Word
by Chuck Colson - Breakpoint
Eight years ago, a young writer named Wendy Shalit took the culture by storm with a radical book called A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. While many people embraced the idea of a return to modesty�especially the young women whose struggles and aspirations Shalit wrote about�others were appalled. "I knew that my arguments . . . might be challenged," Shalit recalls now, "but nothing prepared me for the tongue-lashings I would receive from my elders. . . . [Feminist writer] Katha Pollitt called me a 'twit.� . . . The Nation solemnly foretold that I would 'certainly be embarrassed� and regret my stance 'in a few years.�"
Well, it�s now been a few years, and Wendy regrets nothing. On the contrary, she has a new book out, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It�s Not Bad to Be Good. As the title proclaims, Shalit is still convinced that true strength and happiness come not from deadening one�s emotions and having sex for fun, but from practicing modesty and self-restraint.
And guess who�s on her side?
As Shalit recounts, "To find out why modesty is more appealing to younger people, [feminist writer Katha] Pollitt might have talked to her own daughter, Sophie, who . . . was disgusted by contemporary sexual norms."
Colson's article then goes on to tell how some feminists' daughters, like the daughter of feminist writer Erica Jong, agree with Miss Shalit's point of view. It's obvious that the feminist ideology has not been a great success in achieving a better society in which women are 'freer' and safer and more 'autonomous', but instead, too often, young women feel more vulnerable and more distressed by the shabby state of male-female relationships, in which heartless, soulless 'hook-ups' often substitute for romance or loving companionship.
Shalit in her original book also made the point, a valid one, that many 'conservatives' who ought to have been on her side tended to dismiss some of her concerns as being feminist 'whining' and complaining. If she said that young women felt vulnerable or treated as objects, this was decried by many 'conservatives' as feminist victim rhetoric.
She said:
First, I want to invite conservatives to take the claims of the feminists seriously. That is, all of their claims, from the date-rape figures to anorexia to the shyness of teenage girls, even the number of women who say they feel 'objectified� by the male gaze. I want them to stop saying that this or that study was flawed; or that young women are exaggerating; or that it has been proven that at this or that university such-and-such a charge was made up. Because ultimately, it seems to me, it doesn�t really matter if one study is flawed or if one charge is false. When it comes down to it, the same vague yet unmistakable problem is still with us."
I think conservatives probably went too far in deriding some of the claims of young women about date-rape, for example, simply as an unthinking knee-jerk reaction against feminism. If feminists claimed that date rape occurred at a certain rate, then the 'conservatives' immediately rejected the claims as feminist propaganda, and tended to deny that rape was as common as feminists said -- just because feminists said it. Surely there is a better and more honest way: examine statistics, and pay attention to real-life anecdotes. We can't rely on anecdotes alone, but when you see patterns, those patterns are telling. I have heard stories from women and girls whose honesty is not in doubt; conservatives have been too quick to downplay and deny that women's rape claims are true.
I agree that false rape claims do happen; I believe that women sometimes do make false claims for vindictive reasons or for other reasons: to escape consequences for some bad judgment on their part, or to get attention and sympathy. But to acknowledge that false rape accusations are made (as with the Duke Lacrosse players) should not mean that we declare all rape claims to be lies or feminist whining.
A while back, when basketball player Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, I was staggered by the number of 'conservatives' who were quick to condemn the accuser as a liar and a 'gold-digger' or attention-seeker. I could not and cannot see how her claims would enrich her or bring her fame; instead, she was exposing herself to being called a liar and worse.
I think in an overreaction to feminist claims about rape, both 'date-rape' and forcible stranger rape, many 'conservatives' have dropped the traditional chivalrous protection of women and have been too quick to disbelieve women who have in fact been victims of rape or other sexual crimes.
Another recent case in which people, both men and women, have been quick to condemn a young woman was the Natalee Holloway case, in which the missing young woman was condemned as a slut, a whore, and worse, for having apparently left a club with a young man she just met. Yes, if that's the way it happened (and we have only the suspects' word for it) she certainly showed poor judgment, but did she deserve rape and/or death as a punishment?
I think conservatives have been too quick to adopt the harsh tone of lesbian libertarian writer Camille Paglia, who tends to blame young women for their poor choices. Paglia somehow has been established as a 'conservative' when she is simply anti-liberal (and often anti-traditional, hence anti-conservative). And she is a feminist, for Pete's sake, yet she has many ardent 'conservative' admirers. Conservatives are all too often easily pleased; anybody who insults liberals is taken to the hearts of these 'conservatives' as being on our side. Paglia is not on the side of traditional values, in any way. In her own words:
I'm someone who is on the record as being pro-pornography--all the way through kiddie porn and snuff films. I'm pro-prostitution--I mean really pro, not just pro-prostitute and against prostitution. I'm pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-drag queens, pro-legalization of drugs.''
Some 'conservative'. Some advocate of women.
More from the same piece
Like when this huge, nasty expose I wrote for Arion at Boston University came out, and the San Francisco Examiner magazine made it its cover story this summer. They asked me, by the way, "Would you pose as Madonna for our pages?" And I said, "No, but I'll do something just as good." So I posed in a purple miniskirt with a whip and chains in front of a porn store. I thought for San Francisco I should do that--make an extra effort!
So at any rate I got these wonderful moving letters from San Francisco and from the Bay Area--people who said that they were weeping, crying as they read my piece. They said that "for twenty years I've seen our Sixties ideals seem to be betrayed--I felt lost and uncentered--and when I read your piece I remember again the fire that we felt in the Sixties, I remember again what we were working for in the Sixties." Okay, so this is what I'm doing. I'm trying to bring back out of the woodwork all these Sixties people. Come out, come out, wherever you are!''
Paglia occasionally says a true thing, but she is no conservative, and should not be a darling of unthinking conservatives just because she insults their enemies occasionally. I see the same phenomenon with figures like Christopher Hitchins and Andrew Sullivan, neither of them conservative, yet they are still fawned over by conservatives because they aim barbs at favorite targets of many on the right, and they do so with verbal skill or eloquence. Yet they should not be mistaken for conservatives.
So Paglia is right to an extent; she is right that feminism has tended to infantilize women, a point which I have made myself on occasion. We might expect liberal feminists to adopt an infantilized victim image of women, but when conservative women embrace that image of women and defend women who ought not to be defended, on the basis of their helplessness, this is distressing. Women are not helpless and are not exempt from responsibility.
Infantilizing women, and inculcating them with the idea of their helplessness and lack of accountability is not the traditional way; women may have been 'second-class citizens' by our modern liberal standards in the old days, but they were brought up to believe that they were responsible for the choices they made, and they were taught that they had better choose rightly or there would be consequences. Hence young women, in the unenlightened pre-feminist days, were taught that public drunkenness, or even private drunkenness, was a bad and immoral choice, and that it left them very vulnerable to any number of possible fates, none of them good. Rape or worse would be a potential fate of a young woman who got falling-down drunk, or allowed herself to be alone with a strange male. Young women understood that, and behaved accordingly, and those who did not, were at the very least, likely to have their reputation diminished, and to find themselves gossiped about and sometimes shunned. Was this cruel? Maybe; but it brought many a young woman back in line, or deterred her from getting out of line in the first place. Better to be shunned or chastised and to avoid the wrong path than to become a drunk and a promiscuous slattern. And nowadays, drunkenness and sluttish behaviors are the norm for many young women, not the exception.
So was Natalee Holloway to blame, as many conservatives assert, for whatever sad fate overtook her? In some sense, maybe, but does her irresponsibility absolve the guilt of whoever abducted and/or killed her? Hardly.
The young woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape seems to have been less to blame, considering that her job brought her into contact with Bryant, and she may have been alone with him in the context of her job. So was she irresponsible? Most of us can't decide that because we don't know the facts. She may have been star-struck; some young people rashly believe that celebrities are not capable of criminal behavior.
But these young women are all in a sense victims, although I hate to use that odiously overused word, of our current society's libertine norms. In a world in which many young people have a careless and callous attitude towards sex, regarding it as a mere animal act, it's not surprising that 'hook-ups' are the norm and promiscuity no longer scandalous. And in such a degraded atmosphere, there will be more sexual advantage taken: drunk young women are vulnerable. And the dropping of social censure for drunkenness is a contributing factor. It used to be that drunkenness, or alcohol use in general, was considered 'unladylike'. Nice girls did not get drunk. But with the triumph of feminism, with women vying to outdo males in excesses like social drinking and promiscuity, being 'ladylike' was declared to be oppressive for women. It was male chauvinism that invented the image of the 'lady', so the feminists said, so the ladylike ideal must go. The word 'lady' became a fighting word, a grave insult, for feminists. Women must never be called 'girls' or 'gals' or 'chicks', and worst of all was the word 'lady'. because the 'lady' was a prisoner of the patriarchy, with censorious males telling her not to do this and not to do that; her freedom demanded the discarding of all rules of ladylike behavior. Women were thus encouraged to curse and swear like sailors, drink heavily like men, go everywhere unescorted, including into bars (remember ladies could not enter some bars unescorted in the old days). Women suddenly adopted a number of other risky behaviors like hitchhiking alone, often with bad consequences. And the feminists refused to see that their reckless casting off of old taboos and social roles made women immensely more vulnerable to the predators who unquestionably exist out there.
Feminists did women no favors, though they claimed to be 'liberating' women.
But Wendy Shalit is right; conservatives have overreacted against feminists and have thus turned against women in a sense.
Feminists may have exaggerated the victimization of women, and diminished their responsibility for the misfortunes that followed feminist 'liberation', but the fact is, women ARE vulnerable, if only by virtue of the fact that women are not the physical equals of men. And the 'conservative' women who believe the feminist nonsense about women being the equals of men in the military and in police work are as much fools as the liberal feminists on this score. Women, aside from the occasional -type, are simply not a match for men in size and strength. Women and girls are more at risk out there in a world with too many predators and deviants, Paglia and her ilk notwithstanding. Shalit tried to make that point: women are vulnerable, and we have to re-instill in our girls the need for greater vigilance and 'ladylike behavior' so as to minimize the risks. Yes, we can teach our girls to defend themselves as best they can, but to teach them that a few martial arts lessons will make them invulnerable while walking the streets at 2 A.M. is to delude them. And yes they should be taught to use firearms, but we should also teach them that it's still better to live a life which does not expose them to needless risks, and that the old-fashioned ways and norms were much healthier and safer for women than this egalitarian jungle in which foolish and reckless and misguided young women are exposed to dangers their grandmothers would never have imagined.
We do need a return to modesty and to some kind of sanity regarding sexuality and the balance between the sexes. Clearly the 'new' ways pushed on us by the left since the 1960s are not working; they are destroying the very basis of our society.

Labels: American Culture, Conservatism, Feminism, Societal Decay

Here is an interesting view of men and male-female relationships as seen by actress Carole Lombard, in 1933.
It's quite a contrast to today's belief system according to the 21st century feminists, as cited in my recent post. But here's what Miss Lombard had to say:
"I like superior men," Carole Lombard says
By Carole Lombard
I could never admire a man unless he were superior to me in most ways, rather domineering in manner, and a much better player than worker.
To women who make their way in the world, directly competing with the homo sapiens, this may smack of lese majeste. So an explanation should be forthcoming.
In the process of evolution, affected by the sociologic scheme of things, man has had the advantage of development -- physically and mentally. This situation may be reversed a thousand years from now. But at present, with woman's emancipation a recent event, man is considered the superior animal....
Read the rest of the short piece at the link.
For those who are not classic movie fans as I am, and who thus don't know about Carole Lombard, you can read something of her here. She was one of the more fascinating actresses in a time when there were many memorable actresses (and actors) in Hollywood. She was a great beauty in her time, and she died a tragic death in a plane crash, leaving behind her grieving husband, Clark Gable.
She was known as something of a free spirit, very individualistic, and I suppose in today's world she might be classified as a feminist:
Carole was born Jane Alice Peters, 1908, the daughter of Frederic Peters and Elizabeth Knight. Jane Alice was a bold, little tomboy. The tag-a-long little sister of her two older brothers, Stuart (1905-1956) and Frederic (1902-1979), demanded to be included in all neighborhood baseball and football games... to be thought of as an equal.But as you can see, believing in "equality" did not mean that she thought as feminists of today think.
It just illustrates how attitudes have changed since Lombard's time.
Many women of today look down on the women of her era as being downtrodden or unenlightened; I think the women of that era might beg to differ -- as do I.

Labels: American Culture, Classic Movies, Feminism

For a change, I am going to write a little about a couple of subjects that I really enjoy writing about: Cajuns. And history.
Part of my childhood, a very happy part, was spent in South Louisiana. And one of the best things about 1950s South Louisiana was the people there, who were mostly Cajun.
I have a special fondness for Cajuns and their way of life. Who wouldn't like Cajuns? They are known for their joie de vivre, their joy of living, and for their easy-going, open ways, their down-to-earth attitude, their sense of humor, and their wonderful food. And their music.
But despite all this, they are a group of people with rather a sad history.
Cajuns are a group of people of mostly French descent, whose ancestors settled in Canada, and who were displaced in a tragic event referred to as Le Grand Dérangement.
Le Grand Dérangement ("The Great Disturbance") is the name given to the Acadians� 1755 mass expulsion from their homeland by the British military. An illegal action undertaken during peacetime without approval of the British government in London, the expulsion was devised by Major Charles Lawrence, a professional British soldier who in 1754 took command of the colony as its lieutenant governor.
Later appointed full governor, Lawrence feared that the Acadians, despite their claims of neutrality, would become fifth columnists in the event of another war with France. The Acadians� numerical advantage over their British overseers magnified his fear. In addition, Lawrence desired the Acadians� fertile farmlands for loyal Anglo-Protestant settlers. Failing to acquire from the Acadians an ironclad oath of allegiance to the British crown, Lawrence summoned Acadian males to fortified posts under false pretenses and arrested them while soldiers burned homes and boats and rounded up women and children. Herded into ports, Lawrence divided the Acadians into groups according to age and sex, loaded them onto overcrowded vessels, and scattered them across thousands of miles in a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Acadian identity. (Numbering some 12,000 to 18,000 total, only 6,000 to 7,000 Acadians were actually expelled on British ships, the remainder fleeing to neighboring regions.) According to some estimates, about half the pre-expulsion Acadian population died from disease, exposure, and starvation brought about directly by the British operation (which by modern standards arguably constituted an incident of genocide or "ethnic cleansing"). ''
As usual, in these historical accounts of 18th century colonial North America, the British are cast as the bad guys. I will overlook that for now. It certainly does seem as though the Cajuns suffered some real ill-treatment in this event. But Canada's loss was eventually Louisiana's gain.
From the Wikipedia entry on Cajuns:
Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles and peoples of other ethnicities with whom the Acadians eventually intermarried on the semitropical frontier. Today, the Cajuns make up a significant portion of south Louisiana's population, and have exerted an enormous impact on the state's culture.
[...]
The Cajuns retain a unique dialect of the French language and numerous other cultural traits that distinguish them as an ethnic group. Cajuns were officially recognized by the U.S. government as a national ethnic group in 1980 per a discrimination lawsuit filed in federal district court. Presided over by Judge Edwin Hunter, the case, known as Roach v. Dresser Industries Valve and Instrument Division (494 F.Supp. 215, D.C. La., 1980), hinged on the issue of the Cajuns' ethnicity. Significantly, Judge Hunter held in his ruling that:
"We conclude that plaintiff is protected by Title VII's ban on national origin discrimination. The Louisiana Acadian (Cajun) is alive and well. He is "up front" and "main stream." He is not asking for any special treatment. By affording coverage under the "national origin" clause of Title VII he is afforded no special privilege. He is given only the same protection as those with English, Spanish, French, Iranian, Portuguese, Mexican, Italian, Irish, et al., ancestors."
From the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture:
Dictionaries generally define Cajun as "a Louisianian who descends from French-speaking Acadians." However, many common Cajun surnames � for instance, Soileau, Romero, Huval, Fontenot � are not Acadian in origin, but rather are Spanish, German or French Creole. Some are even of Anglo or Scotch-Irish origin, as in the case of famed Cajun musicians Lawrence Walker and Dennis McGee.
For this reason, contemporary scholars of Cajun history and culture tend to offer a more complex, comprehensive view, attributing the traits of modern-day Cajuns to a dynamic, unending process of ethnic interaction. Although modern Cajuns are largely homogenous, their ancestry consists of a mixture of many ethnic groups.
Most early Acadians originated in the Centre-Ouest region of France, but others came from families of Spanish, Irish, Scottish, English, Basque, and, in a few instances, American Indian heritage. After their 1755 expulsion from Nova Scotia, Acadians seeking refuge in South Louisiana again intermixed with other ethnic groups, particularly with French, Spanish, German, and, later, Anglo-American settlers, as well as Indians (albeit to a lesser extent). Historian Carl A. Brasseaux has shown, for example, that after the Civil War over fifty percent of brides and grooms with Acadian surnames were marrying persons with non-Acadian surnames.''
From another source:
In July 1632 three hundred French settlers arrived in Acadia to carve out frontier homes near the community of Port Royal. Fifty-five percent of these Acadian "first families" hailed from the Centre-Ouest region of France (Poitou, Aunis, Angoumois, and Saintonge); of these, eighty-five percent came from the La Chausée area of Poitou. These families included Doucet, Bourgeois, Boudrot (Boudreaux), Terriault (Theriot), Richard, LeBlanc, Thibodeaux, Comeau(x), Cormier, Hébert, Brault (Breaux), Granger, and Girouard.
Most of these and later Acadian settlers derived from Old World peasant stock, shared similar cultural traits, and on the frontier developed a common Acadian identity.
According to historian Carl A. Brasseaux, the Acadian pioneers were characterized by individualism, adaptability, pragmatism, industriousness, egalitarian principles, and an ability to pull together when threatened. They also possessed extended families, and distinctive language and speech patterns. The Acadians were also typically non-materialistic, seeking only economic independence and a decent standard of living through an agrarian way of life. Some ethnic diversity did exist among the Acadians, however: a few were of English, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Basque, and even American Indian origin.
Those of French origin, however, dominated the cultural landscape, and as intermarriage occurred the Acadian population quickly became homogenized. Studies indicate that between 1654 and 1755 the Acadian population grew from 300-350 colonists to about 12,000-15,000 (despite a fifty-percent child mortality rate). Sources: Ancelet et al., Cajun Country; Brasseaux, Acadian to Cajun; Brasseaux, "Scattered to the Wind"; Domengeaux, "Native-Born Acadians"; Dormon, People Called Cajuns.''
[Emphasis mine]
So despite their fewness in number and the centuries that have passed since their arrival in North America, the Cajuns have maintained their identity as a distinct group of people. For the first century or so of their life in America, they lived side by side with various other settler groups in Louisiana, but kept their distinctivness as a people. It was not until the upheavals of the War Between the States and Reconstruction that their identity was somewhat threatened by social change.
Of that era, Julie Elizabeth Hebert says:
Several stereotypes which still accompany the idea of "a true Cajun" developed in these eras: lazy, ignorant, illiterate, and simple. Able to remain unassimilated for the most part, Cajuns continued to act in the ways they had before the war. Like all good Southerners, they still loved card games, parties, and communal get togethers, but unlike the Americans, Cajuns continued to work at their own pace, a work ethic which stood in complete contrast to the American idea of progress. James Dorman, in his work on the ethnicity of the Cajun culture, quotes several journalists of the day who described the Cajuns as follows: "a Utopian dreamer and idler...�one who sits on the skirts of progress," "the Acadian who overworks is indeed a rara avis [rare bird]," and "most of them are mere squatters on the Prairies." Southerners, in general, thought little of the Cajuns and their culture because their values negated the closely held American values of material wealth, the Protestant work ethic, and progress. Cajuns, themselves, thought little of American standards including those regarding education, and Cajun folk wisdom summed up the Cajun opinion on education: "My son is rascal enough without an education." Cajuns reveled in their illiteracy, and this attitude concerning education served as another reason why the Americans looked down upon the "poor," "stupid" Cajuns of south Louisiana.
Despite these qualities which fostered a negative stereotype of Cajuns, observers of Cajun communities repeatedly remarked upon two distinct Cajun ethnic qualities in a positive light: hospitality and family ties. Travelers in the South during the post-Civil War era commented upon the friendliness with which the Cajun family welcomed strangers into their home and their willingness to share what little they had with those in need. Motivated, not by a conscious sense of charity, but rather by an inherited trait of hospitality, Cajuns opened their homes to all who graced their doorsteps. Continuation of the strong family ties among the Cajun communities, the second positive quality of Cajun culture, survived through the institution of marriage. Cajun youth often married among their own kind. Women of Cajun descent usually married men of similar heritage; however, if a young Cajun woman decided to marry a German or Creole, the family ties, although slightly altered, still remained strong within her own family. According to most historians of this culture, the Cajun culture continued to flourish mainly because of the female population and the roles mothers played in childrearing and in the preserving of family customs and traditions. Cajun women reared their children while the men worked, and if the woman was Cajun, she reared her children to appreciate and respect their Cajun traditions and heritage.
Hebert describes how the expansion of railroads reduced the isolation of the Cajuns, and increased the trend toward cultural homogenization. However, those Cajuns who did not choose the urban lifestyle became the keepers of Cajun culture in their rural small communities.
Huey P. Long, the governor of Louisiana from 1928-1932 (and later Senator), also did his part in discouraging the isolation of the Cajuns by means of his road improvements.
Those influenced by these improvements most likely did not realize the extent to which these improvements functioned as infiltrators of their isolationism and their ethnic culture. Despite all the necessary changes brought by the Long administration, one piece of legislation issued a substantial blow to the Cajun ethnic identity: the Louisiana Constitution of 1921. Through this document, the legislature denied public schools the right to instruct children in both French and English. Most Cajun rural folk and children were monolingual and able to speak very few words of English. Louisiana legislators through this law in essence denied Cajun children the right to education in their primary language forcing them either to learn English or remain illiterate.[...]
As the ethnic ties of the community as a whole continued to unravel, the negative stereotype in regards to French speakers remained a constant on the Louisiana social landscape. Through all of this, rural Cajun culture survived almost untouched, and observers of these decades described the rural Cajuns in much the same way as others had described them in previous decades:
"Their homes are always spotless, and there is always a welcome and a cup of black coffee for any caller, even though he be a stranger," a typical Cajun "lives in his own home, usually with several relatives, besides his immediate family. He keeps a cow, some chickens, and raises a few vegetables which he sometimes sells. Sometimes he helps keep a store in the nearby village," and "an unsophisticated agrarian people who have clung tenaciously to their old customs and traditions."
Because of their "geographic, occupation, and language isolation," the rural Cajuns achieved a social isolationism "greater than that of any other American ethnic group." People in the 1920s and 1930s identified this Cajun ethnicity and began to describe the Cajun culture based on its ethnic qualities. While the urban Cajun assimilated, the rural Cajun in his isolation preserved his cultural traditions.
Later on, World War II, which took many young Cajun men far from home and heritage, further encouraged their assimilation into the larger society. Following the war, the Rural Electrification Administration brought the 'modern world' into rural Acadiana, and the spread of television in the 1950s was a further blow to traditional Cajun ways.
Other modernizing trends took their toll:
With the advent of supermarkets, the need for boucheries deteriorated, and the variety of foods available in these markets expanded the Cajun palate which undermined the traditional cuisine. The bals de maisons found their replacements in the radio, the television set, and the movie theater. Cajun music came under attack, as well, and in the 1950s others called this music "Chanky-Chank" music "suggesting the simplicity of instrumentation and rhythm as well as the characteristically reiterative harmonic line." Modernization resulted in a definite decline in the rural Cajun ethnic culture.''
And then came the 1960s, which was the beginning of a wholesale tearing-down of traditional mores in general, including those of Cajun country. But one benefit of the 1960s and 70s was a new interest in ethnicity and roots. 'Folk music' enjoyed a wave of popularity. At first, most of the 'folk music' craze was a dilettantish dabbling by academics and college students looking for something quaint and different and 'authentic'. The result was manufactured 'folk music' like that of the Kingston Trio and the college 'Hootenanny' craze. However, it did eventually lead many people to explore genuine roots music and honest-to-goodness traditional music from many sources. Cajuns benefited from this, as Cajun music became respectable and respected again, rather than being disparaged as 'chanky-chank' music. And not only Cajun music, but Cajun history, culture, and the Cajun dialect of French gained new attention.
With all this, however, the Cajun people are unmistakably part of America. There is something quintessentially American about their character along with their distinctiveness as a people. They, to my mind, are an example of a healthy ethnic group which is nonetheless part of America. There is none of the chip-on-the-shoulder, outsider victimhood mentality among Cajuns, in my experience. There may be some individuals with such attitudes but I have not encountered them.
Do I contradict myself? I now and then rail about unassimilable ethnic groups who have a stand-offish, us-vs.-them attitude towards the rest of us. I remember a discussion at Free Republic a few years ago involving Cajuns and their language, and somebody made a snarky comparison between Cajuns and Mexican immigrants who speak Spanish. The comparison incensed me; the attitudes of Cajuns and Mexicans are not comparable. At all. Cajuns love Louisiana, and they love America. Cajuns carry no residual allegiance to France or to Canada, their original home in the New World. This country, specifically Louisiana, is their home. They have no centuries-old grudge against Anglo-Americans as have Latinos. I remember no hostility in school between kids of Cajun descent and those of Anglo or other descent. Everybody got along famously; the Cajun kids were the most accepting and agreeable of all the classmates I had during my school years, despite my 'Texan' origin. There was a kind of jocular rivalry with Texans at that time, but no animosity. (And maybe it helped that I had a surname that, despite its non-French origin, was a surname borne by some Cajun families in the area.)
And somehow, along with their distinctiveness, Cajuns seem to be very much a part of the South. Their ways, although identifiably 'Cajun' are also part and parcel of the South. There is a compatibility there. There is no sense of disharmony or cultural clash between south Louisiana and, say, Texas. They differ, but there are commonalities. They are part of a larger whole: America, and the South specifically.
But the thought that crosses my mind most often these days in connection with the Cajuns is that they represent a group of people who might have disappeared centuries ago, but who have survived, despite being a small and rather vulnerable group of people, who were displaced and harried by historical events. Yet they have maintained their identity while still becoming part of the United States of America. It proves to me that if the sense of belonging to a group, and a pride in that group, is strong enough, the people and their culture can survive even if greatly outnumbered. That may be a lesson we will have to take from the Cajuns, we or our children and grandchildren, as they become an outnumbered and displaced group of people in the new 'America' or whatever takes its place.
From the website of the wonderful Cajun band, Balfa Toujours, this passage seems apposite:
Today the Cajun people are standing tall. After 400 years of almost constant pressure to conform to the larger cultures surrounding them, they have proven that their identity is too strong to be eradicated. This challenge has been increased greatly by the developments of this century, which have taken their toll on many subcultures. It appears that these challenges have largely been met in Louisiana, with many young people now taking pride in their heritage. A clear example of this is with the language. In the 1950's and 1960's, many people were punished in school for speaking French. Today, there are French immersion schools in which all classes are taught in a language that was considered shameful only a few decades ago.
This cultural revival has brought the Cajun people a lot of attention. While this is good for the Cajuns, certainly, it is perhaps not enough. It was Dewey Balfa's sincere hope that the further effect of his work would be to inspire other cultures as well. He hoped that others would see his pride and begin to feel it more strongly about their own heritage. If the story of the Cajuns can help to accomplish this, it will truly have done something marvelous.''
We who are the sons and daughters of Anglo-America can learn from the Cajuns a pride in their heritage, their people, and culture. If we can regain that, we will have half-won the battle.
However, one advantage the Cajuns had which is denied us in our 21st century America is isolation and freedom of association. They were able to have their own little area of South Louisiana in which their culture could persist and thrive, and they had the strength of community and kinship ties to sustain their culture. Our mass Tower of Babel culture does not afford us this luxury, as our communities are being purposely broken up.
Can we Americans survive as a distinct people, possibly even a minority people, in the face of the forcible multiculturalizing of our country, and despite the attempt to discredit our history and our culture? I think it will be an uphill journey unless we return to a more manageable, decentralized way of life with local control, and regain our freedom of association. Think small'; think local. Remember how destructive the mass media can be, and re-create a genuine way of life apart from the pernicious effects of television and mass pop culture.
Forum comments are here.

Labels: American Culture, American History, Assimilation, Cajuns, Ethnicity, Freedom Of Association

Recently I linked to this piece, called Pride & Guilt, from the Cordelia for Lear blog.
If you haven't read it yet, please do. We are getting more forcible doses of guilt because of who we are, and who our ancestors were, so we need to compensate for that by focusing on what we have to be proud of, rather than continue to let others define us and heap guilt on us.
From the above-linked piece:
'We have larger loyalties that are analogous to our feelings for our children. Whether it is our nation, our ethnicity, or our race, there are broader groups for which we feel a familial loyalty. Our nation or race is, in effect, our extended family in the largest sense, and our feelings for our extended family are a dilute, but broader version of what we feel for close kin. We have these feelings because this group is biologically and culturally part of us in a way no other group can be.
Who will sing your songs, pray your prayers, celebrate your heroes, honor your traditions, venerate your ancestors, love the things you love? Only your family, your extended family. Only your extended family will carry your civilization forward in a meaningful way. Only the biological heirs to the people who created a civilization have ever maintained, cherished, and advanced that civilization.''
[Emphasis mine]
I was party to a discussion in which some were lamenting that most Americans are content to let themselves be defined negatively and to be laden with guilt because they lack a real sense of who they are, where they came from, and they are bereft of any sense of pride in their supposedly non-existent culture.
Remember the quotes from Christian Lander (''Stuff White People Like") in that odious article on 'The End of White America'?
For Lander, whiteness has become a vacuum. The "white identity" he limns on his blog is predicated on the quest for authenticity�usually other people�s authenticity. "As a white person, you�re just desperate to find something else to grab onto. You�re jealous! Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they�d grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language. White culture is Family Ties and Led Zeppelin and Guns N� Roses�like, this is white culture. This is all we have."
For people who don't know who they are individually, or who their people are in a historical context, sadly, all they have is mass popular culture, which is above all, ephemeral, having no lasting value, nothing that will endure for the ages.
We constantly read articles in the increasingly hostile 'mainstream media' describing every immigrant culture as ''rich'' and ''vibrant'', as if to imply that our own cultures are dead (or moribund) and impoverished. And remember, this is in contrast to some Third-World culture which may be very primitive and crude. How does this come to be, that our Western culture which produced so many really great, truly sublime artists and thinkers and writers, is considered inferior to some ''culture'' which is one step away from the Stone Age? It may be rude to describe these 'vibrant' cultures in this way, but this constant vilification of our people and culture tends to produce the desire to respond with blunt truth, no matter how 'insensitive' it might sound to ears accustomed to politically correct lies and flatteries.
We have a culture and a heritage which is truly impressive, and which has produced great beauty as well as having devised many practical inventions which have improved everyday life for people the world over. And yet we are discouraged from taking any pride in it -- why is it, exactly? Because it may ''offend'' someone -- someone who could only be offended by his own sense of inferiority, probably.
We are not responsible for anyone's inferiority complex or their tendency to take offense; that's their problem.
It does seem as though we need to turn our attention more toward reviving interest in our cultural heritage, and to openly prefer it over the dross that is forced on us by political correctness -- inferior writers and ''artists'' whose careers are based on their representing the cult of victimhood.
And since I am a believer in the idea that culture and race go hand in hand, we need to look back at the history of our ancestors collectively, but also individually. How many Americans even know who their ancestors were beyond their grandparents? There is a growing interest in genealogy, without a doubt, but there are still far too many Americans who don't know anything of their family beyond their grandparents' generation. Some don't even know, for example, their grandmothers' maiden names. Many people have only the vaguest idea of what their ethnic origin(s) are. More depressingly, they don't care. They deem it irrelevant to their lives. They have no curiosity about where their ancestors came from or what their individual stories were.
I've alluded to genealogy occasionally on this blog; one of the fascinating things about knowing one's ancestry is that it gives an idea of just how many other Americans are potentially one's cousins. It makes one feel a real sense of kinship with many people. Because our family's collateral lines have also been traced out for some generations, I know that many of our kin settled in faraway states, and that I have cousins there whose names are known to me, but with whom I've never communicated. But I know that I have kin in many states, as well as in some foreign countries.
Reading about the lives of ancestors in old documents and putting the pieces together is also very fascinating, and it gives us a feeling of having a part in historical events, when we know that our ancestors, individually, were part of a given historical drama.
In some cases, my ancestors left writings which I have been able to read, and it's enthralling to read their own words, as if they are talking to me.
Many Americans have this odd idea that their ancestors were 'nobodies' or 'mutts' and that there is nothing of interest in the family line. How this idea became so widespread, I have no idea. But it stifles people's curiosity.
Some people are actually afraid that they will find that their ancestors were somehow bad people -- slaveowners, perhaps -- since we've all been pilloried for being the descendants of evil slaveholders. And it is true that even people in the supposedly more 'benign' Northern states owned slaves in the past; some of my New England ancestors did, I know. And more of my Southron ancestors did. Oddly I feel no guilt about that. We have to get over the tendency to try to distance ourselves from that. The past is the past; we cannot judge it by today's rather warped standards.
I think that knowing who we are, individually and as a people, can only give us more confidence and more of a sense of our place in history, and in the larger picture of us as Americans.
I suspect that if most Americans only knew their particular ancestry, they might very easily find that they have more English/British descent than they realize. There have been a number of genealogical 'urban legends' propagated, one of the most enduring being the ubiquitous ''Cherokee princess''. I've had to debunk this one more than once.
There is also an odd denial of Anglo-Saxon roots in favor of 'Celtic' roots in the South, which I have alluded to before. Where do Southron people think all those descendants of Jamestown colonists (who were overwhelmingly of English origin) went? The idea that the South was populated by Scots-Irish almost exclusively is strangely enduring, despite the lack of proof. I still cite the predominance of English surnames in the traditional South as evidence that there is a great deal of English blood there. But for some reason, it's politically unpopular to consider oneself Anglo-Saxon or British or English by descent. Why? Because somehow being of Anglo-Saxon blood is considered so bland, so ''white-bread'', to use the derogatory term which is so popular these days.
I think it would be a great thing if more of us knew exactly who our ancestors were, as far as possible.. I believe there would be a great deal of surprise on the part of those who discovered their ancestry; I think we would find a good deal more British heritage than popularly supposed -- and I also believe that many people who think their origins are much more recent would find they have some colonial stock in their family tree. Many people, having a couple of grandparents or great-grandparents who immigrated mistakenly think that ALL their ancestors arrived later, when in fact they have founding stock in their line. However, again, it's more 'hip' and cool to have ethnic ancestry than 'whitebread' old-stock blood.
And in that connection, it would be good if we reversed our priorities and began to value old-stock origins more than recent immigrant origins. Once upon a time, it was highly desirable to claim 'Mayflower ancestry', to the extent that there were spurious family trees made up by unscrupulous genealogists, creating 'Mayflower origins' for a lot of nouveau riche social climbers. Nowadays, of course, the desirable thing is to have ''ethnic'' roots or recent immigrants in the family -- so much more ''diverse'' and ''vibrant.''
We put too much value on newness and on the exotic, and too little on the traditional, the ancient. And in our aggressively demotic society, we denigrate 'high-class' origins as being undesirable. This is an inversion of what should be, and it shows how we've gone too far in our 'democratic' egalitarianism.
Some of my own family members are indifferent to their origins; the usual rationalization is ''that has nothing to do with me. I'm my own person, an individual.'' That's yet another symptom of our liberal, atomized society in which we all flatter ourselves that we 'created ourselves' and that we owe nothing to those who preceded us. There is a kind of perverse pride there, and an egocentricity which is all too characteristic of our age.
Knowing our familial origins is a way of giving ourselves a little perspective on who we are, and of seeing how we are links in a chain going back through the centuries. If we learn about our ancestors, it becomes evident that many of our tastes, habits, talents, and yes, weaknesses too, can be found in our ancestors, from whom we inherit many of our personality traits.
And we can say this on a larger scale of the peoples from whom we descend. We are all part of something larger than our immediate family; our co-ethnics are part of an extended family, the particular people or kindred of which they were part, and beyond that, of European or Western civilization. As part of that greater whole, we can stake our claim as heirs of a great civilization, and that status should give us a vested interest in honoring it, preserving it for posterity, and simply in enjoying it on its considerable merits.
For Christians, I think all this falls under the heading of the commandment to "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
And if we are in danger of losing the lands which the Lord has given us, via our ancestors, is it not in great part because we no longer honor our fathers and mothers? We have in a sense orphaned and disinherited ourselves by our disconnection from our past.
Our fathers and mothers are not just the two people who directly gave us life, but all our fathers and mothers back in time.
Let's give them the honor to which they are entitled, by learning who they were, and by honoring their gifts to us.

Labels: Alienation, American Culture, Anomie, Genealogy, Heredity, History, White Guilt

Back in the 90s, I spent some time living and working in New Jersey, and I have ex-employers and friends who still live there. I've been saddened to hear that New Jersey is now one of the more invaded states in the country, with a large illegal alien population as well as great numbers of legal immigrants, and sizeable Moslem colonies in Jersey City and elsewhere.
Today this news story appeared in the Newark newspaper:
Immigration protests draw 500 to Morristown
An estimated 500 people descended on Morristown this afternoon for dueling protests on illegal immigration and immigrants' rights. The crowd waved signs and at times chanted heatedly, but stopped short of causing any major disturbances.
Protesters grew more vocal as the afternoon wore on, with both sides waiting for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello to take the stage. Police outfitted in riot gear with helmets, batons and pepper spray surrounded the stage, while a line of reinforcements arrived to barricade South Street.
Despite some heated exchanges between the groups and two arrests, the rallies were peaceful.''
Now I know Morristown fairly well; it was not far from the small town where I lived while I was in New Jersey. The town I lived in was a safe, prosperous, 'bedroom community' with many residents who commuted to New York City to work. Morristown was a short trip from where I lived, and I often went there on weekends to shop, see a movie, or go to restaurants. It was a pleasant town, not a big town, and there was not that much 'diversity' there, although I occasionally saw Hispanic people, possibly Puerto Ricans or Dominicans. Mexicans were a rare sight there at that time.
Now, however, it looks like Morristown is now 'enriched' with diversity, enough so that hundreds of illegals and their leftist accomplices rallied there today.
But the Star-Ledger's statement that the ralllies were 'peaceful' is not what I have heard; there was apparently an assault on two of the attendees who were protesting illegal immigration. The only source which seems to give an account of this violence is this one:
Conservative activists attacked at Secure Borders Rally in New Jersey
...As two of the participants were leaving, a male and female, their vehicle was attacked. The victims were pulled from their car and beaten and the vehicle was smashed and looted. Members of a violent Marxist gang, known as the ARA, had shown up at the demonstration to scream profanities and may have been involved in the attack.
This is not the first time that violent white Marxists and/or pro-illegal alien Hispanics have attacked conservatives at public demonstrations. It has primarily happened in Southern California in the past. Far left organizations, such as the SPLC, constantly say that conservative secure border activists will promote anti-immigrant violence with their "rhetoric." However, every instance of violence has been perpetrated against conservatives, not by them.''
Wonder why the mainstream media do not report incidents such as this one, in which the illegals or their leftist sycophants commit violence? You can bet that if any of the anti-illegal, pro-borders people assaulted anyone, it would be the top of the news on all the cable channels, and trumpeted in the headlines. And next would be a pious editorial lecturing about the 'growth of hate' and xenophobia, and the usual suspects at the SPLC would be quoted about the dangers of 'righwing hate.' But when the illegals and the lefties assault someone? It's seldom reported, or it's reported only by conservative sources and goes down the PC memory hole quickly.
Some people will object to the source I linked here, the Council of Conservative Citizens website. Why? Because the usual suspects on the left have called the group a 'rightwing extremist' or 'racist' group. Quite honestly whenever these self-designated PC policemen condemn groups like the Council, I take that as an endorsement of their soundness. If they have these leftwing Politically Correct groups denouncing them, they have to be telling the truth.
I invite readers to check the website's Statement of Principles; I found nothing there to disagree with.
But most of all I am disgusted that nice towns like Morristown, though thousands of miles from the Mexican border, are now 'border towns', with American citizens squaring off against each other -- over illegals. What is wrong with this picture, America? What is wrong with America and Americans when we not only fail to protect our borders, but when, even worse, we are warring against each other over the invaders? And make no mistake; that's what is happening. The invaders have us at each others' throats.
Some will think that's hyperbole on my part, but is it? So far, mostly the war is a war of words, but words often lead to actual violence. And the rhetoric has been heating up for years, with the leftists foaming at the mouth over 'hate' and 'racism'. Does it never occur to the leftists that their language and now their actions epitomize the very thing they claim to be opposing? Do they not see the hate in their own rhetoric and in their violence against fellow Americans?
The details on the assault in Morristown are not clear; it may have been illegals who did the attacking and beating; or it may have been angry young home-grown leftists, or some combination thereof. But even if it was illegals who did the actual violence, they are being given support and encouragement by American-born people. And those renegade 'Americans' should be held to account for it.
Not so very long ago I made a fairly innocuous comment to a female relative about how a certain department store was courting illegal customers by offering credit applications all in Spanish. Now if they were legal, surely they would not need Spanish applications, would they? However this relative of mine snapped at me saying ''I would rather the Mexicans than some of these sorry white people.'' And her comments were said with a lot of anger. I thought, again, what is wrong with this picture? My own blood kin is angry at me for saying something critical of illegals, and she is saying she prefers Mexicans to some Americans. How did it come to this?
Whenever Hollywood made movies about the War Between the States, the breathless narration during the trailer always said: ''Brother against brother! Families divided!" Actually I think there were few families actually divided, with one brother in blue and another in grey; maybe in the border states where sympathies were mixed; not in the South. However this incipient civil war will pit brother against brother and families will be divided; most families have some mix of those with conservative traditional values and loyalties, and those with liberal 'we are the world' multicultist delusions. And then there are the families into which immigrants will have intermarried, further clouding loyalties and increasing divisions.
This is part of the phenomenon I blogged about the other day, 'America our house divided.' When we have a good proportion of the population inculcated with the idea that all discrimination, even the most logical and sensible, is tantamount to 'hate', which merits the harshest of punishments, then our country hasn't got much of a chance to recover control and impose sensible controls on the invasion. And the fact that our fellow citizens, including sometimes even our own neighbors and relatives, think that those with traditional values are 'haters' and 'racists' means that there can be little accommodation or compromise; somebody will have to change their thinking. Either we will have to change and conform and become docile members of the multicult, or they will have to change their thinking and realize that they are the extremists and the haters. The latter does not seem especially likely.
The present situation seems untenable, especially with the continuing influx of ever more divisive immigrants who will further destabilize our society and further catalyze the disorder.
Now it's not impossible that some liberals or 'moderates' might have epiphanies, and might be awakened by the increasing chaos and disruption in our society, but there are too many who simply blame all the trouble on us, on those of us who are merely trying to preserve our country, instead of on the intrusion of the immigrants.
Even some conservatives say that they don't blame the immigrants. I can't count the number of times I've heard a 'conservative' say 'I don't blame the illegals, they're just doing whatever they have to do to survive; I would do the same in their shoes.' My response is 'Really? You would break into someone's home and steal and lie to survive?" Did people do such things en masse during the Depression, when there was real hunger and want? Even if they had, the illegals are NOT starving and their survival is not in question. If you want to talk about survival, it's we whose survival is in question; the illegals are sitting pretty. They have successfully broken into Fort Knox, otherwise known as the U.S.A., where they have the keys to the kingdom. They've got access to Uncle Sam's bank accounts, with a free ride guaranteed them and their offspring: handouts galore, free education, free health care, interpreters, citizens who lean over backwards to be 'sensitive', churches who cater to them and put them on a pedestal, politicians who pander to them shamelessly. Please don't insult my intelligence and ask me to see illegals as poor waifs who are struggling to stay alive in a hostile world. They are on Easy Street. It's increasingly we who are out in the cold, and our wishes ignored and our voices excluded.
It would be wonderful if the current madness in our country was the result of some physiological malady which could be diagnosed and cured tomorrow -- but unfortunately it seems like a sickness of the soul, a plague of self-hatred and of hatred of those like oneself.
The liberals, always great devotees of pop psychology, are always prattling about 'self-esteem' and the vital importance of 'loving oneself' as the key to all success and fulfillment. Yet they are at the same time preaching that as a nation, we have to hate ourselves and prefer all others over our own. It's just one more contradiction, one of many in the senseless liberal worldview.
Update: Here is a much more complete account of what happened at the Morristown rally, although it does not mention the assault. It does mention the disorder and the arrests, along with the names of those arrested. They are apparently all or mostly Americans, not immigrants, judging by their names.

Labels: American Culture, Immigration, Leftism, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, Societal Decay

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, there has been an ongoing discussion at Lawrence Auster's VFR about the misuse of the word "tragedy" to describe the event. At Chronicles magazine, Thomas Fleming also touches on that point briefly in his commentary on the shootings and the strange reactions which ensued. (I was also struck by that strangeness, and commented on it at the time.)
Tragedies make sense of the human world, while these pointless murders seem to reveal a world that makes no sense. In calling them tragedies, we are essentially saying that human existence is pointless.
This is not just a "semantic point." It is all too true that most Americans are like most people everywhere in all periods of history: They speak without thinking. But unreflective peasants relied on proverbs and clichés that were deeply rooted in historical experience. Our clichés and mental tics are almost always bits of propaganda invented by liberals ignorant of human nature and human history. In our mythology, children are smarter than adults, racial minorities smarter than whites, women stronger and braver than men. We believe that we really do care about people killing each other in Nigeria, even though we do nothing about the murders taking place on the other side of town, and we insist on calling every pointless misfortune a tragedy. We can only talk this way because we have tossed away our moral compasses.
[...]
It was within hours of the shooting that the professional counselors began arriving, as predictably as ambulance-chasing lawyers at an accident scene. As a people we are grown so dependent on "professionals" we cannot even mourn the death of a friend with grief counselors or, as I heard on NPR, "grievance counselors." (Someone should start a blog to record the constant gaffes in usage, syntax, and pronunciation on NPR. I would do it here, but the errors of Renee Montaigne alone would probably exhaust our band width.)
[...]
it seems from the accounts of journalists, VT students and Blacksburg residents showed solidarity by taking part in mass rallies where they wore the school colors and chanted the school�s football cheers. There is nothing wrong per se with any of this, but it strikes me as odd to see mass murders commemorated by pep rallies. What a strange people we have become. I am happy to learn I am not the only crank. Scott Richert sent me a link to Relapsed Catholic Blog on which one "Kathy" declares:
"Please don�t indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don�t hold hands and sing bad pop songs.
Go to church. That�s what it�s for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they�re supposed to do.
Those people who hung around outside the Palace after Princess Diana�s death looked like fools and you will too if you cave to the lure of cheap grace and post-modern superficiality. Those British mourners displayed as much cringe-inducing, pan- generational learned helplessness as Katrina survivors, but their laziness and ignorance was spiritual.
Worse, you will still feel as empty as you did before, maybe more so, and wonder why.
Don�t make America look stupid and shallow to the whole world by Disneyfying your grief."
And I have to second the quote above from 'Kathy' at the Relapsed Catholic blog: I too have been dismayed at the growth of that strange ritual, which does seem rather heathenish, of constructing makeshift shrines to commemorate some 'tragedy'. The first time I saw it on such a large scale was during the apparent British breakdown after Diana's death in 1997. The public display of keening and garment-rending was unsettling, especially given the prevailing notion of the British as the most self-composed and stoic people; the old "stiff upper lip" which is no doubt a thing of the past. Liberalism seems to undermine the national culture and even the character of a people, destroying traditional virtues and national ideals and replacing them with a cheap counterfeit "compassion" which is all outward sentimental show. Hence the candlelight vigils, the maudlin rituals, the 'shrines' with piles of moldering stuffed toys out in the rain, and the wilting flowers. And above all, the passivity which insists that these events which occasion so much wailing and weeping are acts of an irresistible fate; there is no way to avoid them or prevent them except by lamenting 'violence' and the 'gun culture.'
And Dr. Fleming goes on to discuss the gun question here:
In principle I believe, as I have always believed, that an armed citizenry is the only solid basis for political liberty. However, the more I see of my fellow citizens in action, the more I am beginning to see the point of gun control. Few of them seem to have any part of the old American character, and still fewer have any understanding of republican government. Most of us, left and right alike, are consumers and subjects, but not citizens. ''
[...]
More important than protection from drive-by shooting or classroom killers is protection from the lethal sentimentality that has infected public discourse. Shun the counselors and avoid the neopagan ceremonials that are occasions for wallowing in unhappiness. And, whether you believe or not, seek solace in the Church, which has been treating the effects of sin and misery for 2000 years.''
Fleming makes many good points, and on reflection, I think I agree with his reservations about arming our fellow citizens. As he says, "Few of them seem to have any part of the old American character", but on the other hand, I would rather take my chances on my fellow citizens, however befuddled their notions are, than to give up the right to bear arms.
And to return to the new 'custom' of the piling up of toys and flowers as a 'memorial', why not do something useful to express one's respect for the dead, such as donating, not dead flowers and cheap toys, but the equivalent amount of money to a charitable fund, or a fund for the families of the deceased? The mountains of flowers and toys surely aren't much use to anyone after they sit out in the elements for several days. I remember in the days after Diana's death, seeing the huge mound of flowers, the icon-like pictures of Diana, and the jumble of stuffed toys. It reminded me, on first consideration, of those shrines to various Hindu gods in India, with piles of garlands and with garish images. Later, I simply thought it would only represent a costly clean-up job and ultimately a lot of money wasted, which could have been put to some useful purpose. It seemed to be a narcissistic thing, a way for the celebrity-struck to claim a connection to their idol. So much of the mourning by strangers in cases like that is a conspicuous kind of public grief, just as much of liberal behavior is a public acting-out of 'compassion' and morality; a way of sanctimonious preening -- which of course is encouraged in the presence of the ghoulish media.
I have noticed that whenever there is an occasion for grief involving young people, such as a fatal accident or a killing, the local news crews are Johnny-on-the-spot, filming the students' group hugs and tears. It seems like exploitation and sensationalism; in my own experience of grief, the last thing the mourners would want would be television cameras and voyeurs feeding on the raw emotion present. But in our media-driven age, nothing is sacred. Everything is ripe for exploitation, even the deep human emotions like grief and sorrow.
Dr. Fleming recommends seeking solace in the Church, but even many of the churches are now part of this heathenish culture of conspicuous public emotion; the TV crews are usually ensconced in the church at the funerals of victims of some ugly accident or crime, and the man (or woman) in the pulpit seems sometimes to be playing to the TV audience. Even the churches need to return to traditional standards of decorum and restraint in these situations.

Labels: American Culture, Liberalism, Media

Ideology.
Or at least it should be.
Daniel Larison writes:
In any case, I don�t care which side of the war debate people are on�to turn against your brother or cousin or friend because of Mr. Bush�s War is to let the hegemonists win two unjust victories, as they have managed to sever real, healthy, living bonds between two kinsmen or friends by convincing everyone involved that some lousy political question is more important than their affinities and loyalties to one another. This is to elevate either loyalty or opposition to the state above loyalty to your own, which should almost always take precedence (I would say always, but there are probably exceptional cases that aren�t springing to mind right now that would make such an absolute statement seem a little crazy). Each time someone puts politics ahead of his blood and his people, the horrid ideologues win another triumph. If they can divide us against our own flesh, they can conquer any and all of us.
If I had a brother (I don�t�I am an only child), I would hate to think that I would ever turn against him over some political quarrel, even one pertaining to a serious matter of war. Obviously, I am just about as opposed to this war as anyone can be, but to choose either the War Party or the antiwar folks over your own flesh and blood reveals the far more troubling corruption of our society. I realise that this would hardly be the first time in our history that relatives and friends have taken opposite sides of a political quarrel, but it seems to me that we may be able to locate the ultimate cause of the repeated defeats of local and particular loyalties at the hands of people spouting universalist and idealist claptrap in this tendency of some people to prefer their "cause" over their kindred in the flesh.
Here on this blog and elsewhere, I've discussed the subject of how divided Americans are these days along political lines; it seems, from a traditionalist point of view, that politics (or ideology, in the case of liberals) has almost supplanted the more primal, natural bonds that used to predominate. For instance, as our national culture and identity have been considerably weakened by our liberal culture, and as our kinship/ethnic/racial ties of blood are now being discredited if not made thought-crimes, people identify on the basis of political orientation, and these allegiances assume a strength which they never possessed in the past.
When I was a child, the Republican Party and the Democrat Party were not the bitter enemies they have become now; people differed on certain points of principle, and sometimes joked about the adherents of the other party, but in our present time, these differences have become increasingly bitter and divisive. Members of both parties seem to see each other as The Enemy, while they in many cases bear no such intense animosity towards other nations or peoples. Liberals in particular will happily turn on their own people and side with enemies. Republicans don't go to that extreme, usually, although I have had the 'pleasure' of having a rabid Republican tell me that most of the Hispanics he knew were 'better Americans' than I am. So yes, we have ideology-driven Republicans, too.
The growth of the fanatical devotion to party and ideology coincided with the decline in our national pride, and our ethnic/racial/kinship ties. Is it just a matter of ideology filling the vacuum which was left when it became unfashionable or 'bigoted' to be proud of one's blood heritage and lineage?
Even though many liberals hold the fanatical belief that each of us can create himself, that we are all 'protean' personalities who can be shaped and reinvented at will by ourselves, I think we all have a deep need to belong, and to know our place in the world, to know that we are part of something larger than ourselves. We also have a need, I think, to feel linked to the past and the future, and our family ties and lineages fill that need. We thus feel connected to our ancestors and to our progeny. The fact that many liberals see the past as irrelevant except to be mined as a source of grievances and injustices, and their ancestors are thought of as backward, unenlightened, and bigoted, is a very isolating thing. Again, many liberals choose not to reproduce until later in life, if at all. I have liberal friends, a couple who made a choice, when they were young, not to have children. These people seem to feel disconnected from both past and future, just free-floating individuals. Their main ties to other people are via their liberal ideology: they attend a liberal, activist church and participate in 'peace and justice' causes. I believe most of their friends share their political beliefs. I'm an exception because I have since 'left the left'. I have changed my political views, while they have not. It has strained our relationship, because I know that my views are now intolerable to them, and so we have to avoid anything remotely political or controversial in our conversations. I can't really speak my mind to them any longer, and this makes for a very superficial friendship.
Similarly with some liberal relatives; we have had some heated exchanges on political matters, which usually end up with offense taken and hurt feelings on their side. So far, however, blood is thicker than water, and so we work around our points of disagreement, usually by my biting my tongue and holding back what I might like to say.
In my family, however, even among the liberal members, we hold family and kin in high regard, and we really believe that blood is thicker than water. This holds true with my liberal friends so far, too, although I wonder if I fully spoke my mind, if they wouldn't excommunicate me from their lives.
Some people, bless their hearts, are not that politically minded, and are often too apathetic to get exercised over the latest outrages in the news. But these people, too, have somewhat adopted the liberal mindset which prevails in our society: they see themselves as individuals, not as part of a continuity of the generations, or of our historic culture. Often these kinds of people are non-religious as well as non-political. These people often define themselves in even shallower terms than the ideologues, identifying themselves by the consumer choices they make: wearing a certain style of clothing, driving a certain make of car, living in a certain kind of community, or following a certain sports team or teams avidly,
The fact that our society is now populated to such a degree by the apathetic, unaffiliated people is a problem in itself, too. However I wonder if these people might at least be induced to care about something beyond themselves, and the present moment, given the right circumstances? I think everybody has a hunger for something beyond themselves; even the more nihilistic and hedonistic people. They may not know what they are looking for, but there is a vacuum in their lives.
But those who have filled the vacuum with pernicious ideology like liberalism are more of a problem; they are the true believers, and they are the most intolerant, despite their pretensions to tolerance. The liberals, and I include even the right-liberals and libertarians who believe in the Proposition Nation and multiculturalism and PC, are absolutely closed-minded.
Does anybody ever 'come back' from liberalism? Is their life after liberalism? At one time, I would have said yes; people can be converted. I don't know if I am a typical example of a liberal; I was raised, as most of my age-group, in a very traditional, conservative America, and in a large, extended, loving family, in the pre-PC South where kinship, Christianity, and heritage were honored. So I may not be a typical ex-liberal.
Unfortunately I have seen a lot of 'ex'-liberals and leftists who claim to have seen the light and become conservative, but they have been incompletely converted if at all, and still hold to very liberal-to-libertarian ideas on social issues like marriage, homosexuality, drug use, and abortion. On issues like immigration and multiculturalism, they still hold their 1960s ideas intact. Feminism is still fiercely defended among many Republican women.
Sometimes in considering this question of ideology trumping all, I am reminded of the War Between the States, or the Civil War, if you insist. Was that a question of ideology overriding blood ties and kinship? Certainly there was an ideological element to the War, and we have all heard the cliches about families in which brother fought brother, one in a Confederate uniform and one in the Union blue. I think those cases may have been rarer than we are led to believe; most families knew where their allegiances were. And the fact is, the South and the North were divided from the beginning, with most of the South descending from the Cavalier colonists who came to Jamestown, and the later waves of Scots-Irish, while the North represented Yankee descendants of the original Puritan colonists and later waves of ethnic immigrants. During my childhood, spending time with my mother's Yankee family and my Texas family, the cultural differences were striking, even then. I suspect the cultural differences were even more marked a century earlier, and despite all the homogenizing of America in the 20th century, the differences remain. There were in a sense two different nations, North and South, and they were held together based more on ideological ties than on the deeper, more primal blood and culture ties. So far, history has tended to show that a country can't be held together forever based on the tenuous ties of ideology and 'propositions'.
Ideology, as Daniel Larison says, tends to be poison. And if America is further fragmented, with the introduction of ever more disparate people (thanks to liberal ideologues), the fragile ties of ideology won't be able to keep the tenuous 'proposition nation' together for long.

Labels: American Culture, Ideology, Liberalism, Politics, Proposition Nation