0 comment Monday, November 24, 2014 | admin
It's a little late for a Thanksgiving video, but I didn't get around to posting this when I meant to -- so here it is. Thanksgiving in old America, along with a little irony in the message, in light of what is going on in 2010.
Labels: Holidays, Old America
0 comment Monday, October 20, 2014 | admin
Tom Piatak writes about attending a live broadcast of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio show.
I have been listening, on and off, to Keillor�s show for many years, and I�ve read several of his books. The interesting thing about Keillor is not that he is a Democrat, but that, despite his liberal politics, the show he produces has a strong conservative, even reactionary, streak.
Last night�s show was no exception. We heard, as is typical for Keillor, a lot of old American music, including a song from the 1932 campaign. Although an unabashed liberal, Keillor is a Christian, and his show often features old hymns and Gospel songs, and last night�s program had a moving hymn about the Good Shepherd.''
I, too, was a listener to PHC some years ago, and I found a certain charm in the program, and in Keillor's soothing, mellow delivery and style. I love the old-time music which was usually featured on the show.
And although, like Piatak, I never lived in a town which closely resembled Lake Wobegon, the small-town old America motif was universal enough that all Americans, at least those old enough to remember the old America, could relate to many of the endearing qualities of Lake Wobegon as described on the show.
I was also able to relate somewhat to the Scandinavian-tinged culture of the fictional Lake Wobegon through my experience of the Northwest, which in times past had a strong Scandinavian presence and cultural influence. The 'new' Northwest is fast losing that character and is on the way to becoming just another multicultural Nowheresville.
When I used to listen to PHC, I was still quite the liberal, and I sensed very much that Keillor and the gang were of the same persuasion. You see, liberals, especially of the baby boom generation, have a certain kind of slumming nostalgia for the 'old America', in the form of liking vintage clothes for dress-up, antique furnishings and gewgaws, and old-time music, especially of the 'downmarket' variety such as bluegrass, honkytonk, and blues. It's a kind of American multiculturalism: aren't those hillbillies and hayseeds quaint and funny? And aren't we oh-so-sophisticated for condescending to listen to their primitive music?
That kind of cultural tourism and condescension is one of the things that I find most irritating about my own jaded generation. And I perceived it in spades on Keillor's show. So as I became a fully-fledged conservative recanting all the liberal nonsense that had accreted in my life, I rather lost my taste for Keillor and his somewhat arch portrayal of middle America. With liberals, there is often a fine line between nostalgia and a certain kind of snickering at old America as sophisticated folks would snicker at their awkward country cousins.
Keillor is not, I am sure, a Christian in the sense that perhaps Tom Piatak understands it. I suspect where the 'Christian content' of his show is concerned, it derives from Keillor's 'cultural Christianity.' Christianity, specifically of the Lutheran variety, seemst to be a central part of the old American culture of Minnesota, just as some variety of Bible-believing Christianity is a central part of all small-town Southern communities. It's part of the culture, and everybody who grew up in the old American South imbibed some of it, even if they were not churchgoers, or real believers. Keillor is a 'cultural Christian' or perhaps simply a liberal Christian, which involves liberal politics dressed up in clerical robes, speaking Christian lingo.
I recalled this story about Keillor from just after the 2004 elections:
Born-agains should not have right to vote
Posted: November 15, 2004
Speaking in the aftermath of the presidential election, Democrat radio host Garrison Keillor says he is on a quest to take away the right of born-again Christians to vote, saying their citizenship is actually in heaven, not the United States.
Keillor, host of the popular National Public Radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," made the comments during a speech at Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and during his radio monologue the Saturday after the election.
"I am a Democrat � it's no secret. I am a museum-quality Democrat," Keillor said. "Last night I spent my time crouched in a fetal position, rolling around and moaning in the dark."
According to a report in the University of Chicago's Chicago Maroon, Keillor told the audience: "If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?"
And yes, some said, 'oh well, he's just kidding, just being satirical.'
Here, however, on this blog Keillor's response to a reader who questioned his statement is quoted. The reader had asked whether he had in fact meant to say 'postmillenialists' and not 'born-again' Christians:
Caroline,
I grew up among post-millenialists and probably that's why I conflated them with born-agains in one big ball of wax and I apologize for my inaccuracy. However, I don't think that the term "post-millenialist" would instantly register with our public radio audience, so one is forced to use shorthand. Thanks for your thoughts...
Keillor then went on to another subject entirely, his memories of singing the Star Spangled Banner.
So, after reflection, Keillor says he does not advocate a constitutional amendment taking the vote away from all born-again Christians -- just some of them. Thanks for the clarification.
Addendum (11/20/04): I received the following e-mail regarding Ms. Sato's (and Garrison Keillor's) use of terms:
Caroline Sato is incorrect. It's dispensational premillennialists who believe the world is going to hell in a handbasket. They believe in an always imminent rapture. Postmillennialists believe that through the preaching of the gospel, the world can be transformed.''
I find it curious that a Protestant, even a liberal one, would put down 'born-again Christians.' First of all, he would be aware that the Lord said 'except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.'
So in truth, all real Christians must be considered born-again. However, I've noted that liberal Christians often scorn that term, as do many Catholics. But if Keillor thinks 'born again' is a disparaging term, he is not a Christian in the Biblical sense, then.
Here, in the Wikipedia entry, there are many quotes from Keillor. For example, here's what he thinks of Republicans:
Keillor calls Republicans "hairy-backed swamp developers, corporate shills, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads. .. .tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, nihilists in golf pants."
While claiming that his book describes "the politics of kindness, Keillor also says that Republicans are "criminal" and worse, "evil, deeply evil."
Well, a few years ago I would have been quite incensed by that tirade, but now, given my lowered opinion of Republicans and self-described 'conservatives', I have to say it's not 100 percent false. The truth hurts sometimes. Some Republicans are corporate shills, and all the rest.
The sad part is, many Democrats are worse, albeit their sins and crimes are simply different from those of the Republicans. But I suspect that Keillor's seething hatred of Republicans extends to real conservatives, and all of us who hold within us the old America, that of the era in which Keillor goes slumming and rummaging on his show.
As far as Keillor's own identity, which many are assuming he is drawing on in his performances, the Wikipedia article also contains quotes indicating that Keillor's on-air persona, with many references to Norwegian-Americans and Lutherans, is all fictional. He is not Norwegian by ancestry (his name should give that fact away) nor is he Lutheran by religious affiliation. Apparently his frequent references to Lutherans simply indicate his cultural familiarity with Lutherans in his native Minnesota. He says his family were members of an obscure group called the Plymouth Brethren.
Reflecting on all this, I can see that liberals like Keillor may wax nostalgic over old America, but the old America which they mine for quaint cultural relics is not the real old America, the one realists remember fondly. They put a liberal veneer on the past in order to make it acceptable by their standards. They expunge the parts of our cultural history that embarrass them. The bowdlerized liberal version of our past is, for some liberals, simply censored and cleansed of the un-PC parts. That's the Keilloresque version. It's apolitical for the most part.
For some, usually filmmakers, the view presented is a politically revisionist view of old America, in which political correctness reigned, and 'racists' were few and far between and were quickly put in their place by anachronistic liberals who saved the day. I've noticed how most movies of today have to inject some politically correct bits in order to show that the illiberalism they object to so much is the anomaly in our history, while their liberal, multicultural America was always there in an incipient form, at least. Movies like 'Gods and Generals', with the obligatory racial commentary scene, or The Patriot, which had its noble slave scene, and so on.
Liberal nostalgia is the cultural form of revisionist history; liberals like to conjure up a 'real' old America in which people make speeches full of 21st century cliches about tolerance and inclusiveness, and in which the people who represented the real beliefs and attitudes of the era portrayed are shown as slimy villains.
Keillor's Lake Wobegon may be a kinder and gentler kind of liberal nostalgia than the Hollywood preachy kind, but it's ironic that liberals who like to sentimentalize about certain aspects of the past are hellbent on destroying everything that remains of that past, content, it seems, to turn our heritage into a quaint museum piece, which is long-gone, and deservedly so.
In what appears to be willful ignorance, they refuse to see that the Lake Wobegons of our country are the unique creations and reflections of the people, the specific group of people who inhabit that place. The Norwegian bachelor farmers of Keillor's Minnesota created a distinct place which will never be the same once it is dominated by Mexicans, Somalis, or Hmongs. Those who believe that people are interchangeable and that the place makes the people, and not vice-versa, are taking a sledge-hammer to our unique heritage, and wreaking untold damage.
I have been listening, on and off, to Keillor�s show for many years, and I�ve read several of his books. The interesting thing about Keillor is not that he is a Democrat, but that, despite his liberal politics, the show he produces has a strong conservative, even reactionary, streak.
Last night�s show was no exception. We heard, as is typical for Keillor, a lot of old American music, including a song from the 1932 campaign. Although an unabashed liberal, Keillor is a Christian, and his show often features old hymns and Gospel songs, and last night�s program had a moving hymn about the Good Shepherd.''
I, too, was a listener to PHC some years ago, and I found a certain charm in the program, and in Keillor's soothing, mellow delivery and style. I love the old-time music which was usually featured on the show.
And although, like Piatak, I never lived in a town which closely resembled Lake Wobegon, the small-town old America motif was universal enough that all Americans, at least those old enough to remember the old America, could relate to many of the endearing qualities of Lake Wobegon as described on the show.
I was also able to relate somewhat to the Scandinavian-tinged culture of the fictional Lake Wobegon through my experience of the Northwest, which in times past had a strong Scandinavian presence and cultural influence. The 'new' Northwest is fast losing that character and is on the way to becoming just another multicultural Nowheresville.
When I used to listen to PHC, I was still quite the liberal, and I sensed very much that Keillor and the gang were of the same persuasion. You see, liberals, especially of the baby boom generation, have a certain kind of slumming nostalgia for the 'old America', in the form of liking vintage clothes for dress-up, antique furnishings and gewgaws, and old-time music, especially of the 'downmarket' variety such as bluegrass, honkytonk, and blues. It's a kind of American multiculturalism: aren't those hillbillies and hayseeds quaint and funny? And aren't we oh-so-sophisticated for condescending to listen to their primitive music?
That kind of cultural tourism and condescension is one of the things that I find most irritating about my own jaded generation. And I perceived it in spades on Keillor's show. So as I became a fully-fledged conservative recanting all the liberal nonsense that had accreted in my life, I rather lost my taste for Keillor and his somewhat arch portrayal of middle America. With liberals, there is often a fine line between nostalgia and a certain kind of snickering at old America as sophisticated folks would snicker at their awkward country cousins.
Keillor is not, I am sure, a Christian in the sense that perhaps Tom Piatak understands it. I suspect where the 'Christian content' of his show is concerned, it derives from Keillor's 'cultural Christianity.' Christianity, specifically of the Lutheran variety, seemst to be a central part of the old American culture of Minnesota, just as some variety of Bible-believing Christianity is a central part of all small-town Southern communities. It's part of the culture, and everybody who grew up in the old American South imbibed some of it, even if they were not churchgoers, or real believers. Keillor is a 'cultural Christian' or perhaps simply a liberal Christian, which involves liberal politics dressed up in clerical robes, speaking Christian lingo.
I recalled this story about Keillor from just after the 2004 elections:
Born-agains should not have right to vote
Posted: November 15, 2004
Speaking in the aftermath of the presidential election, Democrat radio host Garrison Keillor says he is on a quest to take away the right of born-again Christians to vote, saying their citizenship is actually in heaven, not the United States.
Keillor, host of the popular National Public Radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," made the comments during a speech at Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and during his radio monologue the Saturday after the election.
"I am a Democrat � it's no secret. I am a museum-quality Democrat," Keillor said. "Last night I spent my time crouched in a fetal position, rolling around and moaning in the dark."
According to a report in the University of Chicago's Chicago Maroon, Keillor told the audience: "If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?"
And yes, some said, 'oh well, he's just kidding, just being satirical.'
Here, however, on this blog Keillor's response to a reader who questioned his statement is quoted. The reader had asked whether he had in fact meant to say 'postmillenialists' and not 'born-again' Christians:
Caroline,
I grew up among post-millenialists and probably that's why I conflated them with born-agains in one big ball of wax and I apologize for my inaccuracy. However, I don't think that the term "post-millenialist" would instantly register with our public radio audience, so one is forced to use shorthand. Thanks for your thoughts...
Keillor then went on to another subject entirely, his memories of singing the Star Spangled Banner.
So, after reflection, Keillor says he does not advocate a constitutional amendment taking the vote away from all born-again Christians -- just some of them. Thanks for the clarification.
Addendum (11/20/04): I received the following e-mail regarding Ms. Sato's (and Garrison Keillor's) use of terms:
Caroline Sato is incorrect. It's dispensational premillennialists who believe the world is going to hell in a handbasket. They believe in an always imminent rapture. Postmillennialists believe that through the preaching of the gospel, the world can be transformed.''
I find it curious that a Protestant, even a liberal one, would put down 'born-again Christians.' First of all, he would be aware that the Lord said 'except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.'
So in truth, all real Christians must be considered born-again. However, I've noted that liberal Christians often scorn that term, as do many Catholics. But if Keillor thinks 'born again' is a disparaging term, he is not a Christian in the Biblical sense, then.
Here, in the Wikipedia entry, there are many quotes from Keillor. For example, here's what he thinks of Republicans:
Keillor calls Republicans "hairy-backed swamp developers, corporate shills, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads. .. .tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, nihilists in golf pants."
While claiming that his book describes "the politics of kindness, Keillor also says that Republicans are "criminal" and worse, "evil, deeply evil."
Well, a few years ago I would have been quite incensed by that tirade, but now, given my lowered opinion of Republicans and self-described 'conservatives', I have to say it's not 100 percent false. The truth hurts sometimes. Some Republicans are corporate shills, and all the rest.
The sad part is, many Democrats are worse, albeit their sins and crimes are simply different from those of the Republicans. But I suspect that Keillor's seething hatred of Republicans extends to real conservatives, and all of us who hold within us the old America, that of the era in which Keillor goes slumming and rummaging on his show.
As far as Keillor's own identity, which many are assuming he is drawing on in his performances, the Wikipedia article also contains quotes indicating that Keillor's on-air persona, with many references to Norwegian-Americans and Lutherans, is all fictional. He is not Norwegian by ancestry (his name should give that fact away) nor is he Lutheran by religious affiliation. Apparently his frequent references to Lutherans simply indicate his cultural familiarity with Lutherans in his native Minnesota. He says his family were members of an obscure group called the Plymouth Brethren.
Reflecting on all this, I can see that liberals like Keillor may wax nostalgic over old America, but the old America which they mine for quaint cultural relics is not the real old America, the one realists remember fondly. They put a liberal veneer on the past in order to make it acceptable by their standards. They expunge the parts of our cultural history that embarrass them. The bowdlerized liberal version of our past is, for some liberals, simply censored and cleansed of the un-PC parts. That's the Keilloresque version. It's apolitical for the most part.
For some, usually filmmakers, the view presented is a politically revisionist view of old America, in which political correctness reigned, and 'racists' were few and far between and were quickly put in their place by anachronistic liberals who saved the day. I've noticed how most movies of today have to inject some politically correct bits in order to show that the illiberalism they object to so much is the anomaly in our history, while their liberal, multicultural America was always there in an incipient form, at least. Movies like 'Gods and Generals', with the obligatory racial commentary scene, or The Patriot, which had its noble slave scene, and so on.
Liberal nostalgia is the cultural form of revisionist history; liberals like to conjure up a 'real' old America in which people make speeches full of 21st century cliches about tolerance and inclusiveness, and in which the people who represented the real beliefs and attitudes of the era portrayed are shown as slimy villains.
Keillor's Lake Wobegon may be a kinder and gentler kind of liberal nostalgia than the Hollywood preachy kind, but it's ironic that liberals who like to sentimentalize about certain aspects of the past are hellbent on destroying everything that remains of that past, content, it seems, to turn our heritage into a quaint museum piece, which is long-gone, and deservedly so.
In what appears to be willful ignorance, they refuse to see that the Lake Wobegons of our country are the unique creations and reflections of the people, the specific group of people who inhabit that place. The Norwegian bachelor farmers of Keillor's Minnesota created a distinct place which will never be the same once it is dominated by Mexicans, Somalis, or Hmongs. Those who believe that people are interchangeable and that the place makes the people, and not vice-versa, are taking a sledge-hammer to our unique heritage, and wreaking untold damage.
Labels: Cultural Marxism, Historical Revisionism, Nostalgia, Old America, Old Days, Vanishing America
0 comment Tuesday, October 7, 2014 | admin
Recently I had a conversation with someone -- actually it's an ongoing discussion -- about something like this blog piece from April of 2008.
How the Oldtimers Survived the Great Depression and Why We May Not Measure Up
Arguably, things have gotten worse economically since that blog piece was written -- way back before the 2008 election. In fact I hardly know anyone who is not feeling the effects of the economic situation. I suspect all of us know people who are out of work after years of employment, unable to find a job, or people whose income has been drastically reduced, and I think we all notice that the cost of food and other necessities has gone up noticeably.
The blog entry linked above is an interesting one, and I agree with many of the points made.
One of the reasons why we may not fare as well in a depression is the subject of this piece, from a few months ago, painting a rather stark picture of the de-industrialization of our country.
''The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.''
Read the rest. The writer concludes his piece by asking
''If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.''
I am interested to hear if anyone believes that we can return to what we were in prosperous times, given that we seem to manufacture very little in this country anymore.
Another subject of discussion with my friend is the fact that many of our foods are grown or processed in some other part of the world, such as Asia or South America. Yet most of our foods grown here seem to be destined for other parts of the world, not local consumption. In other words, the fact that we don't seem to grow much of the food we eat or produce many manufactured goods is not a good sign. We are nowhere near as self-sufficient as we once were.
I know there is a movement among some people to grow food in home gardens or at least, failing that option, to buy locally-grown produce where possible. And now Senate Bill 510 may interfere with our right to grow fruits and vegetables.
The blogger at Code Name Insight, in the first linked article, pinpoints many of the features of old America which enabled them to survive the economic hard times. This piece too delineates how people helped one another during the Great Depression by voluntary giving, personal charity, within their own circle and community. This is something that is rather rare today. I live in a town where people do give rather generously to charity, but I know that much of what is done by the churches involves digging wells in Africa and tending to the people there, or in Central America -- meanwhile there are people in need in this area, people who cannot afford to pay their heating bills or to buy gas for their cars, and so on. Much of the food bank's stock goes to 'immigrants', as donations are insufficient to the demands.
There is a crying need for stronger community bonds and more mutual assistance. This is something that is within our control, even though we can't do much about the other issues, like the fact that our country has lost so many jobs to deindustrialization and offshoring.
Lately I have felt the urge to try to wake my neighbors up to the fact that they need to focus on local needs, and stop trying to save the Third World.
I know I am not the only one who thinks about these issues, and who feels helpless to make a difference as far as the larger economic picture. The globalist elites, who are playing a big game with us as pawns, plainly don't care about our wishes, the will of the people, or about our well-being and prosperity.
I hate that this post sounds rather Glenn Beckish, (minus the chalkboard), but what do the rest of you think about all this? How do things look from where you are?
How the Oldtimers Survived the Great Depression and Why We May Not Measure Up
Arguably, things have gotten worse economically since that blog piece was written -- way back before the 2008 election. In fact I hardly know anyone who is not feeling the effects of the economic situation. I suspect all of us know people who are out of work after years of employment, unable to find a job, or people whose income has been drastically reduced, and I think we all notice that the cost of food and other necessities has gone up noticeably.
The blog entry linked above is an interesting one, and I agree with many of the points made.
One of the reasons why we may not fare as well in a depression is the subject of this piece, from a few months ago, painting a rather stark picture of the de-industrialization of our country.
''The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.''
Read the rest. The writer concludes his piece by asking
''If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.''
I am interested to hear if anyone believes that we can return to what we were in prosperous times, given that we seem to manufacture very little in this country anymore.
Another subject of discussion with my friend is the fact that many of our foods are grown or processed in some other part of the world, such as Asia or South America. Yet most of our foods grown here seem to be destined for other parts of the world, not local consumption. In other words, the fact that we don't seem to grow much of the food we eat or produce many manufactured goods is not a good sign. We are nowhere near as self-sufficient as we once were.
I know there is a movement among some people to grow food in home gardens or at least, failing that option, to buy locally-grown produce where possible. And now Senate Bill 510 may interfere with our right to grow fruits and vegetables.
The blogger at Code Name Insight, in the first linked article, pinpoints many of the features of old America which enabled them to survive the economic hard times. This piece too delineates how people helped one another during the Great Depression by voluntary giving, personal charity, within their own circle and community. This is something that is rather rare today. I live in a town where people do give rather generously to charity, but I know that much of what is done by the churches involves digging wells in Africa and tending to the people there, or in Central America -- meanwhile there are people in need in this area, people who cannot afford to pay their heating bills or to buy gas for their cars, and so on. Much of the food bank's stock goes to 'immigrants', as donations are insufficient to the demands.
There is a crying need for stronger community bonds and more mutual assistance. This is something that is within our control, even though we can't do much about the other issues, like the fact that our country has lost so many jobs to deindustrialization and offshoring.
Lately I have felt the urge to try to wake my neighbors up to the fact that they need to focus on local needs, and stop trying to save the Third World.
I know I am not the only one who thinks about these issues, and who feels helpless to make a difference as far as the larger economic picture. The globalist elites, who are playing a big game with us as pawns, plainly don't care about our wishes, the will of the people, or about our well-being and prosperity.
I hate that this post sounds rather Glenn Beckish, (minus the chalkboard), but what do the rest of you think about all this? How do things look from where you are?
Labels: Charity, Economic Depression, Globalism, Localism, Old America, Poverty, Self-Sufficiency
0 comment Saturday, October 4, 2014 | admin
Here's another video glimpse of old America, if you have 25 minutes or so to watch it. It's dedicated to the 'Woman American', and the flim was made by 'the Chevrolet Division of GM', rather ironic considering recent events with GM and with the sad state of American manufacturing generally.
The film is about, among other things, our old American virtue of thrift, as practiced by the typical American wife and mother. It is a nostalgic look back at the daily life of a time when most people, even the middle-classes and upper-middle classes, practiced a simpler way of life, with few pretensions. America was at its height of prosperity and plenty when this film was made (circa 1962) but people lived more modest lives then.
For those who remember the time, this is nostalgic; so much of this is familiar to me as part of my childhood.
Yes, I know those times are dead and gone, and can never be brought back. I say this because there is always someone who has to remind us of this when we look back. But though we can't enter a time machine and go back, we can look back to glean what we can from those times, and perhaps try to correct some of the missteps we took along the way to today.
Just a caveat: some Lincolnolatry at the beginning, and beware some proto-Political Correctness and a nod to 'diversity' towards the end.
The film is about, among other things, our old American virtue of thrift, as practiced by the typical American wife and mother. It is a nostalgic look back at the daily life of a time when most people, even the middle-classes and upper-middle classes, practiced a simpler way of life, with few pretensions. America was at its height of prosperity and plenty when this film was made (circa 1962) but people lived more modest lives then.
For those who remember the time, this is nostalgic; so much of this is familiar to me as part of my childhood.
Yes, I know those times are dead and gone, and can never be brought back. I say this because there is always someone who has to remind us of this when we look back. But though we can't enter a time machine and go back, we can look back to glean what we can from those times, and perhaps try to correct some of the missteps we took along the way to today.
Just a caveat: some Lincolnolatry at the beginning, and beware some proto-Political Correctness and a nod to 'diversity' towards the end.
Labels: Family Unit, Nostalgia, Old America, Old Days, Vanishing America
0 comment Tuesday, September 30, 2014 | admin
Over at TakiMag, Paul Gottfried has a piece about Christianity, specifically Protestant evangelical Christianity and the Obama cult, as manifested in a Northern Michigan election party. He relates how a friend sent him clippings about the behavior of many young Christians in northern Michigan upon Obama's election:
In this heavily Protestant and very Nordic region of the country, the youth had trouble containing their joy on the outcome of this year�s election, according to the Northern Weekly Express. Throngs of young adults gathered at an election day party at the InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City, where the full house "rocked the rafters" as they watched Obama storm to victory. "Some of the biggest cheers that night came when images of African-Americans were shown on the big screen, WEEPING FOR JOY at the election of Barack Obama." The paper hastens to remind the reader that this victory was 'by any measure, one of the MOST SIGNIFICANT events in the history of the United States." Even without the use of caps, the Northern Weekly Express conveyed the ecstasy of the hour by showing the glowing faces of the Northern Michigan young standing beside cardboard images of their black savior. The election party looked more like a revival meeting than a Friday night bash, and it radiated something akin to the joy of being cleansed of one�s sins.
[...]
I think this hysteria that I�ve been observing is religious in nature. It is not confined to the atheist, social engineering Left; it is also very much alive and well among religious Protestants, and particularly among the Evangelicals and Mennonites of my acquaintance. These people are anything but non-believers. Nonetheless they entirely agree with Obama�s remark, made to Pastor Rick Warren, indicating that sin means "sexism, racism, and homophobia." A neighbor, who is a very orthodox Mennonite minister and who has the Nicene Creed on his wall, was campaigning for Obama, as an act of overcoming the ingrained racism of his community.
[...]
The exaltation of the supposedly downtrodden, as an act of group atonement for social sins and for thinking bigoted thoughts, and as the prelude to building a truly egalitarian society, have become characteristic of those seeking righteousness. Religious fervor has now been turned toward the task of validating designated minorities, including illegals streaming across our Southern borders. Such behavior is no longer specific to professional atheists, raging at the Christian Right. It is now to all appearances an epidemic spreading through the American religious community and one that is likely to continue to spread. And unlike its manifestations in non-Protestant America, in Protestant America, the advocacy of multiculturalism is definitely aimed at the displacement of traditional ethnic-cultural communities�or of what remains of them.''
I am not sure that I understand that last sentence, and from what I read it to mean, I don't agree. How is 'non-Protestant' America less guilty of promoting the displacement of traditional communities when it supports mass immigration?
The PC Christian phenomenon he is describing is not something that began with the Obama campaign, although Obama provided a figure around which these multicult 'Christians' might rally. The present-day trend in mainstream Christianity, towards embracing leftist positions on all social matters, has been going on for some time. Rick Warren gets a passing mention in the article, though he should be front and center; he has been a big influence in this trend among formerly conservative Christians towards leftist, politically correct values, and away from the Biblically-based faith of their fathers. Warren, with his emphasis on pop psychology and the 'self', along with a warmed-over social gospel, has brought many Christians into line with mainstream liberal ideology. It's no coincidence that Warren is rubbing elbows with the Bono types, and with globalists.
The brand of Christianity that Warren and his followers promote is the kind of thing which causes many outside the Christian sphere to denounce Christianity as being detrimental to Western peoples and their survival.
It's no secret that the mainstream Christian denominations have been heavily infiltrated by leftists since at least the 1940s, if not sooner. The WCC has long been known to be sympathetic to leftist radical causes. The left, as we know, has been fairly open about its longstanding effort to infiltrate and subvert from within all the institutions of our society, and the churches are not exempt; far from it. Influencing Christians away from the Word of God and towards the leftist/socialist/globalist worldview is a strategy aimed at removing one of the last obstacles to the remaking of the world, the erasure of borders, and the breakdown of family and extended kin loyalties.
The fact is, however, this is not just something that can be blamed on Protestantism or those dreaded 'WASPs' again. All branches of Christianity are to some extent affected by the new politically-corrected counterfeit Christianity.
I don't think that it is peculiar to Protestantism, although the TakiMag commentariat might be likely to suggest that, at least those with an open Catholic or Orthodox bias. Obviously the Catholic hierarchy has been in the forefront of activism in favor of open borders, especially when the borders being erased separate us from Latino Catholics, who are now being eagerly welcomed by the Church hierarchy. I've been told by some that the Church rank and file are not as fervently open-borders as the leadership, but I am not sure about that.
However, Protestant churches have been moving towards globalist politically correct ideology, too. Personally, I think it's all a part of a larger trend in Christianity, in which Christians of all denominations seemingly believe that to be a good Christian, one has to embrace one's exact opposite. To champion the rights of those who are not only extremely 'Other' in relation to us is seen as a virtue, and embracing those who are openly hostile to us, even our avowed enemies, is seen as the highest virtue, as saintliness.
We could see the recent events in the Castro District of San Francisco in the light of this. A group of Christians have been going into the Castro to pray and witness to the ''gay community.' However, in the aftermath of the recent furor over Proposition 8 in California, many of the local 'gays' were enraged by the presence of the Christians and by their public singing and praying. So they set upon the Christians, shouting obscenities and threats, and apparently even attempting to molest some of the Christians.
The Christians in question mostly reiterated how they loved their attackers, and forgave them, refusing to press charges for molestation or sexual assault.
I am certain many Christians will say this is exemplary, highly Christian behavior, and that all good Christians might hope to show such character in a similar situation.
I won't try to argue that point; it deserves another post to itself. But it exemplifies the seeming value today's Christians seem to attach to those who are the most hostile towards us. This is how you prove your mettle as a Christian: to lay down and passively accept abuse by others, or to sacrifice yourself so as to benefit some 'Other' who is either indifferent or hostile towards you. I wonder if our forefathers would have interpreted Christianity this way. They certainly did not embrace self-destruction as peoples in the name of Christianity.
Again, I know those who despise Christianity will say that this is exactly why they despise Christianity: because it makes us the doormats of the world. It makes us self-abasing and self-abnegating, and downright masochistic in some cases. I hate to use Freudian jargon but the term masochistic seems to be the only term available to describe those who find some kind of gratification in being mistreated or abused by others. And that sums up much of the Western world's behavior these days, as our leaders avidly seek people to come and loot our countries.
There may be an element of seeking redemption for our supposed collective 'sins' of xenophobia and 'racism'. We have collectively been seized by an apology mania, in which we are desperately seeking someone to whom we can apologize and make restitution for our past 'sins' or the transgressions of our fathers. In Catholic terms this is a seeking of absolution from another human being. But this is not Biblical Christianity; Christians know that we can only be redeemed by Christ, not by another human being or group of human beings.
The comments following are the usual mixed bag, with the usual axes being ground. There is usually at least one in the TakiMag comment box who has to blame the Protestant Reformation for all the evils in the world. But there are a couple of good comments, one by Condor.
Another commenter later in the discussion turns the discussion to the usual condemnation of 'WASPs', saying that the Kennedys, for example, were merely emulating WASP culture, assimilating to WASP 'Boston Brahmin' norms. That argument never dies. It's usually resorted to by those of later immigrant stock, who are still resentful generations after their families immigrated here, resentful of the WASPs -- who gave them the opportunity to become Americans. It shows that no good deed goes unpunished.
The same anti-WASP commenter cites David Hackett Fischer and his work 'Albion's Seed.' I've read Albion's Seed, and it's an interesting book, a sizeable, hefty book, with a lot of information, but it is not Gospel. Fischer is not the last word, and it's really getting very old to hear people citing him in support of their pet theories. The anti-WASP faction really love Fischer. It's too bad he has gained this cult status, and his interpretation seems to go unchallenged.
Gottfried seems to imply in his article that WASPs somehow deserve the animus the various ethnic groups direct towards them, because they ''excluded" the various ethnic immigrants of the Ellis Island wave. Well, there is another side to that story. I might easily say that the various ethnic immigrant groups who have this monumental, generations-long grudge against WASPs are people who suffer from inferiority feelings, and who felt envy towards the WASPs who built the country to which their ancestors sought admission. It seems to be human nature to resent someone to whom you are beholden. We see this with all the minority 'victim' groups, and in fact their cult of victimology, which has done so much harm in our day, could be said to have been pioneered by the various ethnic immigrants. It is they who, to this day, bemoan the supposed 'discrimination' their ancestors suffered when they landed here from the Old Country. The Irish have their centuries-old vendetta against the English for having 'stolen' their country and their culture and their language. That anti-English tradition must have colored their perceptions of the Anglo-Protestants they met here. The rhetoric is exactly the same as that of Third World peoples, American Indians, and others. It might be argued that all the opportunistic 'huddled masses' of today are following the template established by the Ellis Islanders and their descendants.
The whole cult of anti-White or anti-Western resentment might be seen as being based, ultimately, in the 'undeveloped' world's resentment and envy of European man's accomplishments and successes. Look at the Anglo-Saxon as being sort of the epitome of Western strength and dominance (think of the British Empire at its height, or American dominance during its heyday) and success. The most successful are always regarded with a mix of envy and resentment. Sometimes the resentment escalates to hatred and desire for revenge, the desire to pull down the most successful and destroy his accomplishments, which are seen as an affront to the less successful peoples.
The Anglo-Saxon male is the target mostly because he inspired so much envy and resentment by his successes -- and also by his generosity. Sometimes generosity is despised as weakness, even by those who are the recipients of that generosity.
''Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides." - Pliny
So, again, we have the usual blaming of Christians, and the blaming specifically of Anglo-Saxon Protestants for the perils we are facing now.
How long will this continue? I could blame the later waves of immigrants for their grudges and resentments, and their tendency to champion The Other out of spite towards WASP America.
It is not just the nonwhite victim groups that have fostered this White Protestant guilt syndrome, but all the other immigrant victimhood-cultists. Many White Protestants who are not identified with some ethnic victim group end up absorbing some of the blame and guilt directed at old-stock Anglo-Americans.
We could see that we are all in this together, and that what happened in the mid-19th century should be put aside in the name of saving what remains of our heritage. Can we do that, or will we continue to snipe and one another and undercut one another?
In this heavily Protestant and very Nordic region of the country, the youth had trouble containing their joy on the outcome of this year�s election, according to the Northern Weekly Express. Throngs of young adults gathered at an election day party at the InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City, where the full house "rocked the rafters" as they watched Obama storm to victory. "Some of the biggest cheers that night came when images of African-Americans were shown on the big screen, WEEPING FOR JOY at the election of Barack Obama." The paper hastens to remind the reader that this victory was 'by any measure, one of the MOST SIGNIFICANT events in the history of the United States." Even without the use of caps, the Northern Weekly Express conveyed the ecstasy of the hour by showing the glowing faces of the Northern Michigan young standing beside cardboard images of their black savior. The election party looked more like a revival meeting than a Friday night bash, and it radiated something akin to the joy of being cleansed of one�s sins.
[...]
I think this hysteria that I�ve been observing is religious in nature. It is not confined to the atheist, social engineering Left; it is also very much alive and well among religious Protestants, and particularly among the Evangelicals and Mennonites of my acquaintance. These people are anything but non-believers. Nonetheless they entirely agree with Obama�s remark, made to Pastor Rick Warren, indicating that sin means "sexism, racism, and homophobia." A neighbor, who is a very orthodox Mennonite minister and who has the Nicene Creed on his wall, was campaigning for Obama, as an act of overcoming the ingrained racism of his community.
[...]
The exaltation of the supposedly downtrodden, as an act of group atonement for social sins and for thinking bigoted thoughts, and as the prelude to building a truly egalitarian society, have become characteristic of those seeking righteousness. Religious fervor has now been turned toward the task of validating designated minorities, including illegals streaming across our Southern borders. Such behavior is no longer specific to professional atheists, raging at the Christian Right. It is now to all appearances an epidemic spreading through the American religious community and one that is likely to continue to spread. And unlike its manifestations in non-Protestant America, in Protestant America, the advocacy of multiculturalism is definitely aimed at the displacement of traditional ethnic-cultural communities�or of what remains of them.''
I am not sure that I understand that last sentence, and from what I read it to mean, I don't agree. How is 'non-Protestant' America less guilty of promoting the displacement of traditional communities when it supports mass immigration?
The PC Christian phenomenon he is describing is not something that began with the Obama campaign, although Obama provided a figure around which these multicult 'Christians' might rally. The present-day trend in mainstream Christianity, towards embracing leftist positions on all social matters, has been going on for some time. Rick Warren gets a passing mention in the article, though he should be front and center; he has been a big influence in this trend among formerly conservative Christians towards leftist, politically correct values, and away from the Biblically-based faith of their fathers. Warren, with his emphasis on pop psychology and the 'self', along with a warmed-over social gospel, has brought many Christians into line with mainstream liberal ideology. It's no coincidence that Warren is rubbing elbows with the Bono types, and with globalists.
The brand of Christianity that Warren and his followers promote is the kind of thing which causes many outside the Christian sphere to denounce Christianity as being detrimental to Western peoples and their survival.
It's no secret that the mainstream Christian denominations have been heavily infiltrated by leftists since at least the 1940s, if not sooner. The WCC has long been known to be sympathetic to leftist radical causes. The left, as we know, has been fairly open about its longstanding effort to infiltrate and subvert from within all the institutions of our society, and the churches are not exempt; far from it. Influencing Christians away from the Word of God and towards the leftist/socialist/globalist worldview is a strategy aimed at removing one of the last obstacles to the remaking of the world, the erasure of borders, and the breakdown of family and extended kin loyalties.
The fact is, however, this is not just something that can be blamed on Protestantism or those dreaded 'WASPs' again. All branches of Christianity are to some extent affected by the new politically-corrected counterfeit Christianity.
I don't think that it is peculiar to Protestantism, although the TakiMag commentariat might be likely to suggest that, at least those with an open Catholic or Orthodox bias. Obviously the Catholic hierarchy has been in the forefront of activism in favor of open borders, especially when the borders being erased separate us from Latino Catholics, who are now being eagerly welcomed by the Church hierarchy. I've been told by some that the Church rank and file are not as fervently open-borders as the leadership, but I am not sure about that.
However, Protestant churches have been moving towards globalist politically correct ideology, too. Personally, I think it's all a part of a larger trend in Christianity, in which Christians of all denominations seemingly believe that to be a good Christian, one has to embrace one's exact opposite. To champion the rights of those who are not only extremely 'Other' in relation to us is seen as a virtue, and embracing those who are openly hostile to us, even our avowed enemies, is seen as the highest virtue, as saintliness.
We could see the recent events in the Castro District of San Francisco in the light of this. A group of Christians have been going into the Castro to pray and witness to the ''gay community.' However, in the aftermath of the recent furor over Proposition 8 in California, many of the local 'gays' were enraged by the presence of the Christians and by their public singing and praying. So they set upon the Christians, shouting obscenities and threats, and apparently even attempting to molest some of the Christians.
The Christians in question mostly reiterated how they loved their attackers, and forgave them, refusing to press charges for molestation or sexual assault.
I am certain many Christians will say this is exemplary, highly Christian behavior, and that all good Christians might hope to show such character in a similar situation.
I won't try to argue that point; it deserves another post to itself. But it exemplifies the seeming value today's Christians seem to attach to those who are the most hostile towards us. This is how you prove your mettle as a Christian: to lay down and passively accept abuse by others, or to sacrifice yourself so as to benefit some 'Other' who is either indifferent or hostile towards you. I wonder if our forefathers would have interpreted Christianity this way. They certainly did not embrace self-destruction as peoples in the name of Christianity.
Again, I know those who despise Christianity will say that this is exactly why they despise Christianity: because it makes us the doormats of the world. It makes us self-abasing and self-abnegating, and downright masochistic in some cases. I hate to use Freudian jargon but the term masochistic seems to be the only term available to describe those who find some kind of gratification in being mistreated or abused by others. And that sums up much of the Western world's behavior these days, as our leaders avidly seek people to come and loot our countries.
There may be an element of seeking redemption for our supposed collective 'sins' of xenophobia and 'racism'. We have collectively been seized by an apology mania, in which we are desperately seeking someone to whom we can apologize and make restitution for our past 'sins' or the transgressions of our fathers. In Catholic terms this is a seeking of absolution from another human being. But this is not Biblical Christianity; Christians know that we can only be redeemed by Christ, not by another human being or group of human beings.
The comments following are the usual mixed bag, with the usual axes being ground. There is usually at least one in the TakiMag comment box who has to blame the Protestant Reformation for all the evils in the world. But there are a couple of good comments, one by Condor.
Another commenter later in the discussion turns the discussion to the usual condemnation of 'WASPs', saying that the Kennedys, for example, were merely emulating WASP culture, assimilating to WASP 'Boston Brahmin' norms. That argument never dies. It's usually resorted to by those of later immigrant stock, who are still resentful generations after their families immigrated here, resentful of the WASPs -- who gave them the opportunity to become Americans. It shows that no good deed goes unpunished.
The same anti-WASP commenter cites David Hackett Fischer and his work 'Albion's Seed.' I've read Albion's Seed, and it's an interesting book, a sizeable, hefty book, with a lot of information, but it is not Gospel. Fischer is not the last word, and it's really getting very old to hear people citing him in support of their pet theories. The anti-WASP faction really love Fischer. It's too bad he has gained this cult status, and his interpretation seems to go unchallenged.
Gottfried seems to imply in his article that WASPs somehow deserve the animus the various ethnic groups direct towards them, because they ''excluded" the various ethnic immigrants of the Ellis Island wave. Well, there is another side to that story. I might easily say that the various ethnic immigrant groups who have this monumental, generations-long grudge against WASPs are people who suffer from inferiority feelings, and who felt envy towards the WASPs who built the country to which their ancestors sought admission. It seems to be human nature to resent someone to whom you are beholden. We see this with all the minority 'victim' groups, and in fact their cult of victimology, which has done so much harm in our day, could be said to have been pioneered by the various ethnic immigrants. It is they who, to this day, bemoan the supposed 'discrimination' their ancestors suffered when they landed here from the Old Country. The Irish have their centuries-old vendetta against the English for having 'stolen' their country and their culture and their language. That anti-English tradition must have colored their perceptions of the Anglo-Protestants they met here. The rhetoric is exactly the same as that of Third World peoples, American Indians, and others. It might be argued that all the opportunistic 'huddled masses' of today are following the template established by the Ellis Islanders and their descendants.
The whole cult of anti-White or anti-Western resentment might be seen as being based, ultimately, in the 'undeveloped' world's resentment and envy of European man's accomplishments and successes. Look at the Anglo-Saxon as being sort of the epitome of Western strength and dominance (think of the British Empire at its height, or American dominance during its heyday) and success. The most successful are always regarded with a mix of envy and resentment. Sometimes the resentment escalates to hatred and desire for revenge, the desire to pull down the most successful and destroy his accomplishments, which are seen as an affront to the less successful peoples.
The Anglo-Saxon male is the target mostly because he inspired so much envy and resentment by his successes -- and also by his generosity. Sometimes generosity is despised as weakness, even by those who are the recipients of that generosity.
''Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides." - Pliny
So, again, we have the usual blaming of Christians, and the blaming specifically of Anglo-Saxon Protestants for the perils we are facing now.
How long will this continue? I could blame the later waves of immigrants for their grudges and resentments, and their tendency to champion The Other out of spite towards WASP America.
It is not just the nonwhite victim groups that have fostered this White Protestant guilt syndrome, but all the other immigrant victimhood-cultists. Many White Protestants who are not identified with some ethnic victim group end up absorbing some of the blame and guilt directed at old-stock Anglo-Americans.
We could see that we are all in this together, and that what happened in the mid-19th century should be put aside in the name of saving what remains of our heritage. Can we do that, or will we continue to snipe and one another and undercut one another?
Labels: Christianity, Ethnic Division, Ethnic Identity, Globalism, Liberalism, Old America, Political Correctness, Wasps
0 comment Sunday, September 28, 2014 | admin
Someone asked for more 'old America' items, and this makes for 10 minutes or so of pleasant images of small town life back then.
Labels: Nostalgia, Old America
0 comment Saturday, September 20, 2014 | admin
Where our traditions and our culture are concerned, it's all important. It all matters, even the simplest of things.
This article informs us that according to an 'international survey of travellers', the 'full English' breakfast is the world's top breakfast, with American breakfasts in second place.
See the photo if you are not familiar with the English 'fry-up.'
It's not too dissimilar to the breakfasts I remember, back in my childhood in Texas, minus, of course, the baked beans and black pudding.
The breakfasts on the other side of the Atlantic differ too in that the sausages and bacon are not the same. The English bacon is more similar to Canadian bacon, or 'back bacon', and their sausages are not much like those we eat in this country. I prefer the American ones, but I suppose we all prefer what we've grown up with.
The sliced tomatoes are usually included in our breakfasts along with the fried eggs, bacon, and sausage. I don't think this is generally true for Yankee-style breakfasts, but I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
Breakfasts in the South, too, often include distinctive foods like grits, a food item which has never caught on up North. Also, breakfast in the South may include toast but more traditionally would include biscuits, preferably made from scratch, not those counterfeits which you buy in a can from the dairy case at the grocery store. Those are all right in their way, but they can't compare to the homemade ones. The biscuits preferably should be eaten with molasses and butter, at least in my opinion.
This topic reminded me of a post which Sarah Maid of Albion posted a while back. The post was titled 'Losing things of value.' She discussed English food traditions like soft-boiled eggs with 'soldiers', or dip fingers, then discussed the importance of what may seem on the surface to be small things, trivial traditions. Yet food is something which is closely tied to all our memories, and which often stirs up recollections of happy times (or not-so-happy times). Aromas and tastes have the power to conjure up very vivid memories.
''Egg and soldiers, buttered scones, Yorkshire pudding, crumble, custard roast beef or muffins. The simple pleasure of such simple treats, enjoyed before us by generations of English men and women is something we can share with those who went before us, even if was are no longer permitted to share their certainty of their role within the world or their pride in what we are as a people.''
A few years ago on this blog I think we touched on the idea of how multiculturalism has even been imposed on our culinary habits and preferences. If I recall correctly, the discussion was started by another blogger (are you out there, JS?) and continued briefly on this blog. I strongly feel that we are being colonized in matters of food as well as in the more obvious ways. A few years ago I used to watch the Food Network a good bit, and I began to notice that they were featuring more 'diversity' in the program hosts and recipes. In our local grocery stores, too, Mexican foods (imported from Mexico, not Americanized 'Mexican' food) take up more and more shelf space, until whole aisles are now given over to Mexican foods and beverages. My town has quite a few people with roots in a Northern European country, but the foods of that country which used to be available in our stores is now banished to make way for Mexican foods. How symbolic.
Increasingly our tastes run to spicy foods containing ingredients like Jalapenos, chipotle peppers, salsa, and so on. It's trendy. Eating plain old American food is dull and boring, so the popular idea seems to have it.
Even alcoholic drinks show the Mexican influence.
Sarah in her piece discusses how the English have been taught to devalue their own foods and culinary traditions in favor of more exotic stuff, just as we Americans have been led to do. She mentions music also as being subject to the same process of devaluation and denigration. We can say this about our own music, too, though it has been a gradual process here. For some years, it seems as though American music has been dominated by black styles, going back at least to the turn of the century if not to the mid-19th century with 'minstrel' shows.
Since then almost all youth-oriented music has been black music, although I am not one of those who believe that rock 'n roll is primarily a black style of music.
Now rap and related forms of 'music' seem to prevail among the very young, at the expense of our rightful, European-derived musical traditions. And of course our tastes have been debased as a part of this process.
So far, Mexican music has not made many inroads into our culture, although the music moguls keep pushing Latino 'entertainers' who do a more 'urban' style of music, rather than the noises that your Mexican neighbors blast from their car stereos.
But as Sarah points out, this is all part of a larger agenda to demolish what is left of our real Western traditions and cultures.
''The point is to so devalue our culture in our eyes that we will not care what happens to it. After all, a man will only fight to defend that which he loves whilst he still loves it, if he ceases to love it why would he fight for it? Of course, if he is never taught what he has he will not miss it when its taken from him, and if he's never seen the stars he will never know their beauty and will not care if they cease to be.
[...] That may sound a tiny issue, but there are a million different experiences, feelings thoughts and objects which come together to create a national identity, we can lose them one by one until we lose them all.''
It all matters, even these trivial things such as what we eat for breakfast. The warm memories of my childhood are bound up with the smell of breakfast cooking, the sights, the smells, the feeling, of sitting in my grandmother's kitchen enjoying her home-cooked foods, the same foods generations of our ancestors enjoyed.
The music we listened to, or sang and played during long summer evenings, it all evokes very vivid memories. It ties all the generations together, the absent ones as well as those still present, here in this troubled time, this 'present darkness.'
It's all important. All of it. And if we don't value it, if we are content to give it all away without a whimper, then it will be a thing of the past very soon, along with the freedoms we've also ceased to value as we should.
This article informs us that according to an 'international survey of travellers', the 'full English' breakfast is the world's top breakfast, with American breakfasts in second place.
See the photo if you are not familiar with the English 'fry-up.'
It's not too dissimilar to the breakfasts I remember, back in my childhood in Texas, minus, of course, the baked beans and black pudding.
The breakfasts on the other side of the Atlantic differ too in that the sausages and bacon are not the same. The English bacon is more similar to Canadian bacon, or 'back bacon', and their sausages are not much like those we eat in this country. I prefer the American ones, but I suppose we all prefer what we've grown up with.
The sliced tomatoes are usually included in our breakfasts along with the fried eggs, bacon, and sausage. I don't think this is generally true for Yankee-style breakfasts, but I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
Breakfasts in the South, too, often include distinctive foods like grits, a food item which has never caught on up North. Also, breakfast in the South may include toast but more traditionally would include biscuits, preferably made from scratch, not those counterfeits which you buy in a can from the dairy case at the grocery store. Those are all right in their way, but they can't compare to the homemade ones. The biscuits preferably should be eaten with molasses and butter, at least in my opinion.
This topic reminded me of a post which Sarah Maid of Albion posted a while back. The post was titled 'Losing things of value.' She discussed English food traditions like soft-boiled eggs with 'soldiers', or dip fingers, then discussed the importance of what may seem on the surface to be small things, trivial traditions. Yet food is something which is closely tied to all our memories, and which often stirs up recollections of happy times (or not-so-happy times). Aromas and tastes have the power to conjure up very vivid memories.
''Egg and soldiers, buttered scones, Yorkshire pudding, crumble, custard roast beef or muffins. The simple pleasure of such simple treats, enjoyed before us by generations of English men and women is something we can share with those who went before us, even if was are no longer permitted to share their certainty of their role within the world or their pride in what we are as a people.''
A few years ago on this blog I think we touched on the idea of how multiculturalism has even been imposed on our culinary habits and preferences. If I recall correctly, the discussion was started by another blogger (are you out there, JS?) and continued briefly on this blog. I strongly feel that we are being colonized in matters of food as well as in the more obvious ways. A few years ago I used to watch the Food Network a good bit, and I began to notice that they were featuring more 'diversity' in the program hosts and recipes. In our local grocery stores, too, Mexican foods (imported from Mexico, not Americanized 'Mexican' food) take up more and more shelf space, until whole aisles are now given over to Mexican foods and beverages. My town has quite a few people with roots in a Northern European country, but the foods of that country which used to be available in our stores is now banished to make way for Mexican foods. How symbolic.
Increasingly our tastes run to spicy foods containing ingredients like Jalapenos, chipotle peppers, salsa, and so on. It's trendy. Eating plain old American food is dull and boring, so the popular idea seems to have it.
Even alcoholic drinks show the Mexican influence.
Sarah in her piece discusses how the English have been taught to devalue their own foods and culinary traditions in favor of more exotic stuff, just as we Americans have been led to do. She mentions music also as being subject to the same process of devaluation and denigration. We can say this about our own music, too, though it has been a gradual process here. For some years, it seems as though American music has been dominated by black styles, going back at least to the turn of the century if not to the mid-19th century with 'minstrel' shows.
Since then almost all youth-oriented music has been black music, although I am not one of those who believe that rock 'n roll is primarily a black style of music.
Now rap and related forms of 'music' seem to prevail among the very young, at the expense of our rightful, European-derived musical traditions. And of course our tastes have been debased as a part of this process.
So far, Mexican music has not made many inroads into our culture, although the music moguls keep pushing Latino 'entertainers' who do a more 'urban' style of music, rather than the noises that your Mexican neighbors blast from their car stereos.
But as Sarah points out, this is all part of a larger agenda to demolish what is left of our real Western traditions and cultures.
''The point is to so devalue our culture in our eyes that we will not care what happens to it. After all, a man will only fight to defend that which he loves whilst he still loves it, if he ceases to love it why would he fight for it? Of course, if he is never taught what he has he will not miss it when its taken from him, and if he's never seen the stars he will never know their beauty and will not care if they cease to be.
[...] That may sound a tiny issue, but there are a million different experiences, feelings thoughts and objects which come together to create a national identity, we can lose them one by one until we lose them all.''
It all matters, even these trivial things such as what we eat for breakfast. The warm memories of my childhood are bound up with the smell of breakfast cooking, the sights, the smells, the feeling, of sitting in my grandmother's kitchen enjoying her home-cooked foods, the same foods generations of our ancestors enjoyed.
The music we listened to, or sang and played during long summer evenings, it all evokes very vivid memories. It ties all the generations together, the absent ones as well as those still present, here in this troubled time, this 'present darkness.'
It's all important. All of it. And if we don't value it, if we are content to give it all away without a whimper, then it will be a thing of the past very soon, along with the freedoms we've also ceased to value as we should.
Labels: American Traditions, Culinary Traditions, Multiculturalism, Old America, Southron Foods, Vanishing America
0 comment Tuesday, September 9, 2014 | admin
A pretty good montage of old movie scenes -- although I'd leave out the 1970s ones.
Labels: Old America, Old Movies
0 comment Wednesday, August 20, 2014 | admin
The photo above encapsulates the situation in our country, the erstwhile 'United States of America,' in 2011. The picture shows the statue of George Washington in Columbia, SC, hidden by a box during an NAACP rally.The NAACP put a box around the statue so as not to 'offend' attendees of the rally.
I've often said that the impostor 'America' of today is not the country of which Washington was the revered father. MLK is the father (or as somebody (perhaps James Edwards) put it, the 'baby daddy' of today's 'America.' The picture attests to that fact. Washington is being (or has been) deposed and another put in his place. How long before the statue is pulled down, making it more or less official?
Meanwhile, in the various comments around the internet on this event, there are any number of self-professed conservatives claiming MLK as a 'conservative' and exalting him as one who would never dishonor George Washington or engage in divisive rhetoric. This is so far off from reality that I am seriously starting to wonder if people are not literally being brainwashed to repeat the party line.
Some of you may remember the movie The Manchurian Candidate, specifically the original classic movie, (not the PC remake) in which the mention of the name Raymond Shaw elicits the rote line in response: ''Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.''
If you remember that movie, you know that the people who recited that line had been conditioned to repeat it. I wonder if these conservatives have been subjected to similar manipulation to repeat the saccharine twaddle they repeat, praising MLK. I mean this seriously. I know we often say people are brainwashed by the media or the educational system, but we say it metaphorically, to indicate how certain ideas are inculcated into people at every turn. But I haven't usually intended it to be taken literally, until lately, as I see more people reacting like Pavlov's dogs, not thinking for themselves, repeating rote phrases and shibboleths.
It's really disheartening to see and hear people from the South falling under the sway of this kind of thing.
Any 'old Americans' who still remain are truly a shrinking remnant.
Labels: American History, Cultural Marxism, Founding Fathers, Old America
0 comment Monday, July 28, 2014 | admin
At Western Voices World news, there is this piece, cited as being from an e-mail, about today's ''green'' culture as contrasted to earlier generations.
In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the 'green thing' back in my day". The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment."
He was right, that generation didn't have the green thing in its day.''
Following that introduction is a list of many ways (see the list at the link) in which the habits of earler eras were in fact more 'environmentally-friendly'' than those of today's self-satisfied ''environmentally-conscious'' green types.
Past generations were not ''environmentally conscious'' in today's terms; the way they lived had nothing to do with guilt about how evil [White] humans polluted Mother Earth. Nor was it inspired by fear and panic about something called ''Global warming'' or, to use the revised name, ''climate change.''
The fact is, older generations lived as they did, in an era when many things were re-used, and few things were disposable, just because it was frugal and commonsensical to do so.
The piece cites things like walking to many destinations rather than driving, hanging clothes out to dry on a clothesline, the use of re-usable glass bottles (which one took to the grocery story for a refund of deposit money), and handing down clothes among children in a family.
Further examples which come to mind: having shoes re-soled or repaired rather than tossing them out. A friend and I were talking about that recently. Every neighborhood had shoe repairmen in the old days. People made their shoes last much longer by taking good care of them and having them re-soled or having new heels put on when the heels became worn down. Does anybody do this now, or does everyone just head for Wal-Mart to buy another shoddy pair of made-in-China shoes? Sadly, even the more upscale stores sell poorly-made merchandise made in the Third World, although at higher prices than Wally World.
And what about darning socks? That is something that all girls used to learn how to do, as part of 'domestic science' classes in school, that is, if your mother had not already taught you basic needle skills at home. How many young people are taught how to sew on buttons or do basic mending these days? When we can buy cheap new clothing at the big discount retailer, why bother?
In the past, many products were not over-packaged as they are now; it seems that much of the packaging on various consumer items is wasteful, not to mention difficult to open. I am thinking of those blister-packs which require serious tools to unseal. Many of our grocery items, such as produce, now come in some kind of disposable packaging which is hardly environmentally-smart, and our meats likewise are pre-packaged in plastic or styrofoam trays with plastic wrap. I remember when most grocery stores had a butcher there who would grind meat for you or cut it to your specifications, and then wrap it in ''butcher paper'', sealed with tape, which was much less waste.
As for the 'paper or plastic' choice at the supermarkets, we are supposed to feel bad that trees must die for our paper sacks, but yet the flimsy plastic sacks are environmentally unfriendly also. Lately I've read that those 'reusable' grocery bags being promoted everywhere (I have several of them) have toxins in them.
It appears most of them are made in China, which is always a red flag for me. So much for those things being 'earth-friendly'.
In the old days, some people did use cloth bags to carry food from the grocery store, which is far preferable
to using those toxic Chinese bags which are made out of some mysterious substance or other.
Another factor today in wastefulness is that most of what we buy, even the big-ticket items like major appliances, seems to be disposable and 'throw-away', not meant to last more than a few years, if that. Refrigerators and freezers and kitchen stoves used to be made to last decades, and some of those from my parents' day are still around, still working. By contrast, most of what we buy today will end up in landfills in a short time. And yes, lower prices make up for that somewhat, but I'd rather pay more for better quality things that last. In the long run, that is more dollarwise.
My parents' generation, who came up during the Great Depression and World War II had a slogan: ''use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.'' While excessive frugality can become an obsession, that saying is common sense, although it seems extreme or just quaint to many people today. Yet if we are on the verge of an economic crisis which may involve real scarcity and lingering hard times, it is advice we should heed.
In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the 'green thing' back in my day". The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment."
He was right, that generation didn't have the green thing in its day.''
Following that introduction is a list of many ways (see the list at the link) in which the habits of earler eras were in fact more 'environmentally-friendly'' than those of today's self-satisfied ''environmentally-conscious'' green types.
Past generations were not ''environmentally conscious'' in today's terms; the way they lived had nothing to do with guilt about how evil [White] humans polluted Mother Earth. Nor was it inspired by fear and panic about something called ''Global warming'' or, to use the revised name, ''climate change.''
The fact is, older generations lived as they did, in an era when many things were re-used, and few things were disposable, just because it was frugal and commonsensical to do so.
The piece cites things like walking to many destinations rather than driving, hanging clothes out to dry on a clothesline, the use of re-usable glass bottles (which one took to the grocery story for a refund of deposit money), and handing down clothes among children in a family.
Further examples which come to mind: having shoes re-soled or repaired rather than tossing them out. A friend and I were talking about that recently. Every neighborhood had shoe repairmen in the old days. People made their shoes last much longer by taking good care of them and having them re-soled or having new heels put on when the heels became worn down. Does anybody do this now, or does everyone just head for Wal-Mart to buy another shoddy pair of made-in-China shoes? Sadly, even the more upscale stores sell poorly-made merchandise made in the Third World, although at higher prices than Wally World.
And what about darning socks? That is something that all girls used to learn how to do, as part of 'domestic science' classes in school, that is, if your mother had not already taught you basic needle skills at home. How many young people are taught how to sew on buttons or do basic mending these days? When we can buy cheap new clothing at the big discount retailer, why bother?
In the past, many products were not over-packaged as they are now; it seems that much of the packaging on various consumer items is wasteful, not to mention difficult to open. I am thinking of those blister-packs which require serious tools to unseal. Many of our grocery items, such as produce, now come in some kind of disposable packaging which is hardly environmentally-smart, and our meats likewise are pre-packaged in plastic or styrofoam trays with plastic wrap. I remember when most grocery stores had a butcher there who would grind meat for you or cut it to your specifications, and then wrap it in ''butcher paper'', sealed with tape, which was much less waste.
As for the 'paper or plastic' choice at the supermarkets, we are supposed to feel bad that trees must die for our paper sacks, but yet the flimsy plastic sacks are environmentally unfriendly also. Lately I've read that those 'reusable' grocery bags being promoted everywhere (I have several of them) have toxins in them.
It appears most of them are made in China, which is always a red flag for me. So much for those things being 'earth-friendly'.
In the old days, some people did use cloth bags to carry food from the grocery store, which is far preferable
to using those toxic Chinese bags which are made out of some mysterious substance or other.
Another factor today in wastefulness is that most of what we buy, even the big-ticket items like major appliances, seems to be disposable and 'throw-away', not meant to last more than a few years, if that. Refrigerators and freezers and kitchen stoves used to be made to last decades, and some of those from my parents' day are still around, still working. By contrast, most of what we buy today will end up in landfills in a short time. And yes, lower prices make up for that somewhat, but I'd rather pay more for better quality things that last. In the long run, that is more dollarwise.
My parents' generation, who came up during the Great Depression and World War II had a slogan: ''use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.'' While excessive frugality can become an obsession, that saying is common sense, although it seems extreme or just quaint to many people today. Yet if we are on the verge of an economic crisis which may involve real scarcity and lingering hard times, it is advice we should heed.
Labels: Environment, Old America, Toxic Chinese Products
0 comment Sunday, July 27, 2014 | admin
After the article I linked to the other day, about the Chinese-American academic talking about immigrants replacing old White males, this kind of thing is becoming old hat.
Actually it's been 'old hat' (or should I say old hate) for some time now; it just seems to be receiving a tad more attention now than a few years ago, which is good, I suppose. Good, that is, if it results in people becoming more alert to what is being done. However, will that happen, or will the opposite happen, with people greeting this kind of rhetoric with a ho-hum? Another day, another diatribe denouncing old White males.
What can I say that hasn't been said many times?
I will say this: it's interesting (not surprising, though) that it takes 12 comments before someone notes the obvious: Mr. Rich's ethnicity. Obviously I know that to note his ethnicity is somewhat, shall we say, discouraged at AmRen; I gather that the idea is to court Jewish support, or perhaps not to alienate the more sensitive, politically correct readers. But it is disturbing to read comment after comment describing Rich as a self-hating White man, or a Disingenuous White Liberal.
I think that if we subtracted certain ethnic groups from those we call 'self-hating White liberals' we would find that there are far fewer actual 'self-haters' than is supposed. Or are there?
This reminds me of a recent post from Vox Day titled 'America A is no more', "America A" being what I have called Old America.
He notes how Tom Friedman of the NY Times laments the decline of this country, yet over the years, Friedman has avidly supported everything that contributed to this decline:
''This is extraordinarily ironic, coming as it does from an elite Jewish liberal. He quite clearly doesn't recognize that it is the very causes he has championed for decades, from diversity, equality, and secularization to free trade, immigration, and globalization, that have so weakened America in the manner that concerns him now. While he is correct in saying that a successful and powerful America committed to its core values could again become a world leader, his definition of those core values almost surely includes those values that have proven so pernicious to American success, power, and world leadership.
The North American landmass isn't going to disappear. There will still be Americans proper - descendants of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded the nation on principles derived from the Bible and the Magna Carta - as well as those who call themselves Americans but have no cultural, ethnic, or religious connection to the historical America that is now essentially gone. The results of the great experiment are now sufficiently observable that we can pronounce the failure of the Viral America hypothesis.
It is now clear that one cannot catch Americanism. Just as the Irish, German, Scandinavian, and Italian immigrants never fully grasped the English concepts of liberty and limited government*, thereby transforming what had been a voluntary union of sovereign states into an involuntary empire ruled by a sovereign central government, the subsequent wave of immigration from Mexico and other third-world nations has transformed what had been a rich and powerful empire into an impoverished and corrupt one.
[...]
From the New York Times: "In 1980, the foreign-born population in the United States was about 4.5 million. By 2000, it had reached 11.3 million, bringing the foreign-born population to about 13 percent of the total. In the early 20th century, after the last big wave of immigration to the United States, immigrants had reached 15 percent of the population."
Therefore, Friedman is wrong as one cannot expect to make America A work when it has been transformed into America A + (M+I2+G+S+J+3). America A no longer exists. This is the B-Ark nation.''
I read the comments on the blog piece when it was first posted, and I found it a depressing discussion, as the consensus seemed to be that Anglo-Saxon colonial stock Americans did not really have that much to do with America. And this from self-described descendants of the later immigrants. Everybody wants to create his own mental 'America' in which his ethnic group has pride of place: it was really the Scots-Irish who made America great, one person says, or the Germans, or the Irish, and on and on, which proves Vox's point to some extent.
There are many instances of people like Friedman, Rich, Wise, and so many other journalists, academics, and politicians, who see themselves as apart from and in opposition to historic White Christian America, and work to weaken it, consciously or not.
And in regards to the comments at Vox Day's blog on that piece, never do I feel so alienated from my 'fellow Americans' as when I am reading that my ancestors really had no significant contribution to this country. I never used to feel estranged from descendants of the later immigrant waves, believing what I was taught as a child, that we are 'loyal Americans all'. Once upon a time that may have been so, because people were taught the true history of this country, and everybody assimilated more or less to the existing culture and traditions -- which were Anglo-Protestant by origin. Whether one likes that fact or not, it is just a fact. But now, whether influenced by liberal rewritings of history along ethnic lines, or whether because many Americans now make up their own subjective personal history of America, there is just too little common ground.
So America A may be gone, never to return. And I agree with Vox that the old America cannot be sustained by other peoples who had no part or lot in the original. But if, IF we are ever to recover our country, or try to rebuild it from the wreckage, we will need some common basis on which to unite and build. As of now, I don't see much of that, except perhaps in the South. And coincidentally (or not), the South was the area which had the greatest degree of homogeneity among White people, having not been as affected by mass immigration.
But as of now, we have people like Rich, who feel estranged from traditional America interpreting events for us, claiming to represent us, claiming to be our voice. If America is ever to be resurrected, we will have to find our own voice, and a united one at that.
Actually it's been 'old hat' (or should I say old hate) for some time now; it just seems to be receiving a tad more attention now than a few years ago, which is good, I suppose. Good, that is, if it results in people becoming more alert to what is being done. However, will that happen, or will the opposite happen, with people greeting this kind of rhetoric with a ho-hum? Another day, another diatribe denouncing old White males.
What can I say that hasn't been said many times?
I will say this: it's interesting (not surprising, though) that it takes 12 comments before someone notes the obvious: Mr. Rich's ethnicity. Obviously I know that to note his ethnicity is somewhat, shall we say, discouraged at AmRen; I gather that the idea is to court Jewish support, or perhaps not to alienate the more sensitive, politically correct readers. But it is disturbing to read comment after comment describing Rich as a self-hating White man, or a Disingenuous White Liberal.
I think that if we subtracted certain ethnic groups from those we call 'self-hating White liberals' we would find that there are far fewer actual 'self-haters' than is supposed. Or are there?
This reminds me of a recent post from Vox Day titled 'America A is no more', "America A" being what I have called Old America.
He notes how Tom Friedman of the NY Times laments the decline of this country, yet over the years, Friedman has avidly supported everything that contributed to this decline:
''This is extraordinarily ironic, coming as it does from an elite Jewish liberal. He quite clearly doesn't recognize that it is the very causes he has championed for decades, from diversity, equality, and secularization to free trade, immigration, and globalization, that have so weakened America in the manner that concerns him now. While he is correct in saying that a successful and powerful America committed to its core values could again become a world leader, his definition of those core values almost surely includes those values that have proven so pernicious to American success, power, and world leadership.
The North American landmass isn't going to disappear. There will still be Americans proper - descendants of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded the nation on principles derived from the Bible and the Magna Carta - as well as those who call themselves Americans but have no cultural, ethnic, or religious connection to the historical America that is now essentially gone. The results of the great experiment are now sufficiently observable that we can pronounce the failure of the Viral America hypothesis.
It is now clear that one cannot catch Americanism. Just as the Irish, German, Scandinavian, and Italian immigrants never fully grasped the English concepts of liberty and limited government*, thereby transforming what had been a voluntary union of sovereign states into an involuntary empire ruled by a sovereign central government, the subsequent wave of immigration from Mexico and other third-world nations has transformed what had been a rich and powerful empire into an impoverished and corrupt one.
[...]
From the New York Times: "In 1980, the foreign-born population in the United States was about 4.5 million. By 2000, it had reached 11.3 million, bringing the foreign-born population to about 13 percent of the total. In the early 20th century, after the last big wave of immigration to the United States, immigrants had reached 15 percent of the population."
Therefore, Friedman is wrong as one cannot expect to make America A work when it has been transformed into America A + (M+I2+G+S+J+3). America A no longer exists. This is the B-Ark nation.''
I read the comments on the blog piece when it was first posted, and I found it a depressing discussion, as the consensus seemed to be that Anglo-Saxon colonial stock Americans did not really have that much to do with America. And this from self-described descendants of the later immigrants. Everybody wants to create his own mental 'America' in which his ethnic group has pride of place: it was really the Scots-Irish who made America great, one person says, or the Germans, or the Irish, and on and on, which proves Vox's point to some extent.
There are many instances of people like Friedman, Rich, Wise, and so many other journalists, academics, and politicians, who see themselves as apart from and in opposition to historic White Christian America, and work to weaken it, consciously or not.
And in regards to the comments at Vox Day's blog on that piece, never do I feel so alienated from my 'fellow Americans' as when I am reading that my ancestors really had no significant contribution to this country. I never used to feel estranged from descendants of the later immigrant waves, believing what I was taught as a child, that we are 'loyal Americans all'. Once upon a time that may have been so, because people were taught the true history of this country, and everybody assimilated more or less to the existing culture and traditions -- which were Anglo-Protestant by origin. Whether one likes that fact or not, it is just a fact. But now, whether influenced by liberal rewritings of history along ethnic lines, or whether because many Americans now make up their own subjective personal history of America, there is just too little common ground.
So America A may be gone, never to return. And I agree with Vox that the old America cannot be sustained by other peoples who had no part or lot in the original. But if, IF we are ever to recover our country, or try to rebuild it from the wreckage, we will need some common basis on which to unite and build. As of now, I don't see much of that, except perhaps in the South. And coincidentally (or not), the South was the area which had the greatest degree of homogeneity among White people, having not been as affected by mass immigration.
But as of now, we have people like Rich, who feel estranged from traditional America interpreting events for us, claiming to represent us, claiming to be our voice. If America is ever to be resurrected, we will have to find our own voice, and a united one at that.
Labels: American History, Biased, Divide And Rule, Ethnic Division, Mass Immigration, Media, Old America, Race Replacement
0 comment Friday, July 25, 2014 | admin
The reader comments on my post called Defenses Against Reality prompt me to pose a question to you all. I've asked the question in the past, probably a couple of years or more ago, and perhaps some of you weren't here then. So I'll ask it again.
How did you start to question ''political correctness'', multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and all those things which are now proving to be so disastrous for our people? Was there a clear defining moment or turning point, an epiphany or ''awakening?" Or was your experience more like mine, a gradual reversion to the values you learned as a child from your elders?
Some of my readers have said that they've always held their present attitudes, while others have had experiences that led to more traditional or realist views.
I don't ask to be intrusive, but I am always interested in how those who once held the standard 'mainstream' views came to be more ethnopatriotic or ethnonationalistic. Is there something about personality types that make some people more conforming or others more questioning and less susceptible to propaganda? Is it innate, or due to upbringing and experience, or some combination? And as somebody here once asked, is there some way to pass on our immunity, if that's what it is?
How did you start to question ''political correctness'', multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and all those things which are now proving to be so disastrous for our people? Was there a clear defining moment or turning point, an epiphany or ''awakening?" Or was your experience more like mine, a gradual reversion to the values you learned as a child from your elders?
Some of my readers have said that they've always held their present attitudes, while others have had experiences that led to more traditional or realist views.
I don't ask to be intrusive, but I am always interested in how those who once held the standard 'mainstream' views came to be more ethnopatriotic or ethnonationalistic. Is there something about personality types that make some people more conforming or others more questioning and less susceptible to propaganda? Is it innate, or due to upbringing and experience, or some combination? And as somebody here once asked, is there some way to pass on our immunity, if that's what it is?
Labels: Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnocentrism, Ethnopatriotism, Kin Loyalty, Old America, Realism
0 comment Thursday, July 24, 2014 | admin
This is a video montage of a town called Lorain, Ohio. I've never been there (to my recollection) but the scenes of this town could be your town or mine, back in the old days. The people could be your neighbors or mine.
I can't tell you who the singer is, singing the accompanying song, but it's very touching.
The comments at You Tube are the usual combination of ignorance and profanity, and many of them indicate that Lorain has deteriorated. It looks like it's the familiar story: changing demographics, according to this page.
So in a way, it is a prototypical American town. Lorain's story seems to be the story for too many of our towns today.
Still, the scenes of the town in its better days show us the America that once was, just as a reminder of what we have lost, or are losing.
Labels: Demographics, Old America, Small-Town Life
0 comment Sunday, July 6, 2014 | admin
The photo above, taken sometime in the 1920s or 30s, depicts Border Patrolmen apparently trying to apprehend a suspect who is straddling the border, attempting to re-enter Mexico.I found this picture at How To Be a Retronaut, which is a pictorial blog with a lot of very interesting stuff from past eras. The photo above is apparently part of a National Geographic collection. I recommend clicking over to the Retronaut blog and seeing the whole set of photos from the 20s and 30s, which depict people from just about every state, in various activities. It's a colorful essay on life in the USA at that time.
Labels: Cultural History, Old America, Usa, Vanishing America
0 comment Monday, June 30, 2014 | admin
I hope my readers don't mind if I take a brief break from posting about the usual subjects until after Christmas. It seems only appropriate to have a Christmas cessation of hostilities, though our adversaries don't take a break from their relentless warfare.
My fondness for old movies is something that I blog about occasionally here, and I've mentioned Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and the movies based on that story as favorites. Among all the versions of the familiar Dickens story, I like the old black-and-white versions, such as the one with Alistair Sim and the one with Reginald Owen, but my real favorite is the 1970 musical version, Scrooge with Albert Finney as the title character.
I love the way the film seems to capture the feel of the time and place, and I enjoy the songs. Many people these days dislike movie musicals, and the musical seems to be a dead genre, but I think this one works well, and the tunes are memorable. It seems it isn't Christmas until I see this movie.
Everybody has seen the Frank Capra Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life. For a while, in the 1980s, that movie was so frequently shown on so many channels that I think many of us became weary of it but despite its overexposure, it endures as a favorite for many of us. By today's cynical standards, Capra tugs at the heart-strings a little too obviously but nonetheless, it works, and I am usually misty-eyed by the time the final scene plays out. Capra's movies are by today's lights probably too sentimental and 'corny' but that only tells us how jaded we've become. Many conservatives are suspicious of populism, which was usually at the heart of Capra's messages, but there is the populist streak in me which is cheering for the 'little guy', the everyman, like George Bailey.
Likewise, the Capra movie 'Meet John Doe', which I've written about here before, shows how the underdog everyman, 'John Doe' (Gary Cooper) can prevail against the seemingly invincible 'elites' who are attempting to use and manipulate him from behind the scenes.
I mention this as a Christmas movie, although it is not that specifically, because of the memorable climactic scene on a snowy Christmas Eve, with Gary Cooper planning to jump to his death from a tall building.
There are other movies which are not necessarily about Christmas but which have Christmas scenes, movies which I always think of at Christmastime. Meet John Doe is one of them; another is 'The Man Who Came to Dinner', a comedy with Monte Woolley as the title character. It's not exactly a movie with a Capraesque sentimental quality, but it has its moments.
Another movie with a Christmas background is a rather obscure one called Remember the Night, with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck.
It's a movie which I only discovered about five or six years ago, and it's become a favorite of mine. In the movie, MacMurray is a young assistant district attorney in New York, who prosecutes a young woman (Stanwyck) who is accused of shoplifting a diamond bracelet.
In a rather complicated set of events, MacMurray, feeling sorry for the young woman as Christmas finds her in jail, has her bailed out, and ends up offering her a ride to her family's home, which is not far from his hometown in Indiana. Implausible, but it's a nice, heartwarming story, as both rather hard-bitten characters soften as they interact in the idyllic setting of MacMurray's hometown and family hearth.
There's one scene, with the family singing 'When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day' around the piano, by the fire; it's classic Americana, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way.
Another rather quirky movie I often think of at Christmas is The World of Henry Orient, a movie from 1964. Again, not a well-known movie, and I don't actually like many movies from that era, because it was on the cusp of all the change that was about to overtake society. But it is a film about two very naïve young girls with an innocent crush on a celebrity, an avant-garde pianist, a very inept pianist actually, played by Peter Sellers.
Such a movie couldn't be made today; first, there are few 13 or 14-year-old girls with such naivete and innocence, and their behavior in following their unlikely idol would be called 'stalking' today. But in the context, it was perfectly innocent.
It's really about adolescence and friendship, as well as family ties, and again, there are Christmas scenes. It's very interesting to see New York City as it was half a century ago.
One more film in which the opening scene is on Christmas Eve is an oddity called Beyond Tomorrow' or alternatively, Beyond Christmas.The plot is hard to sum up, but it involves three wealthy old gents who invite a couple of young strangers into their shared home for Christmas dinner. The plot has the three old gentlemen dying in a plane crash, and coming back as ghosts to help the young couple. The theology is questionable, but still, it's possible to suspend disbelief and enjoy it. The message is uplifting, as was the case with so many of the old movies.
Today, the world has forgotten how to envision happy endings or even personal redemption, as so many of these old movies did. Now these movies may be derided as childish or fatuous but it's good, if only at Christmas, to take off the jaundiced spectacles with which we see this world (and heaven knows, the world in itself is corrupt enough) and try to remember a time when things were not as dark as they are today.
Most of us have some favorite Christmas-themed movie which has many associations of Christmases past, or which causes us to think beyond the limitations of this present darkness, and it's well worth it to put aside 'the world' for these brief moments of Christmas each year.
Labels: Christmas, Old America, Old Movies
0 comment Monday, June 23, 2014 | admin
I posted the following (excerpted) article a couple of years ago, but I think it's worth re-posting, for those of you who were not reading this blog when I first posted it. It's from a magazine article of 55 years ago, and it ties in with what I've been writing about our therapeutic, pop-psychology outlook of today, vs. old American common sense.
[All emphasis in the following is mine.]
What Happened to Common Sense?
by Mary Ellen Chase, from Coronet Magazine, May, 1954
Whenever I return to the isolated Maine village where I spend every summer, I am pleasantly surprised by the way in which my neighbors there hold on to certain old terms.
One of these is grit, with its companion, gumption; another is get up and get, which in Maine means to depend on oneself; yet another is common sense. These words describe the human qualities which my neighbors, fishermen and their wives, extoll above all others. For fishing is a hard calling. It demands gumption, or in more polite terms, self-reliance, the power of decision and the determination not to be downed by adverse circumstances.
My neighbors are frankly suspicious of anyone who lacks these old American virtues. They voiced their common judgment of a man who had lost his lobster traps in a northeast gale and had been bewailing his fate with too little reserve.
"Why don't he shut his mouth and pick up his feet?" they said, "You can't set sail straight by takin' time to bawl about bad luck."
They and I stem from the same rural background. In the country school of my childhood, precepts were written on the blackboard, each Monday morning by our "old-fashioned" teachers who knew it to be their duty to instill iron in our souls as well as common fractions in our minds. Through the years those precepts have proved salutary to me in moments of indecision and anxiety. Usually they were in terse prose:
"It takes a live fish to swim upstream, but any old log can float down."
Don't expect others to bear your troubles; they have their own.
Life isn't all you want, but it's all you have; so have it."
Occasionally a rhyme enlivened us. One I recall as a favorite.
The mind of man has no defense
To equal plain, old common sense.
This homely virtue don't despise,
If you would be happy as well as wise.
Parents, too, 50 years ago dealt out such robust aphorisms liberally, sometimes even sternly, in the upbringing of children. I was taught early by both precept and example that a job once undertaken has to be completed whatever the cost, and that no one but the maker of them ought to be expected to pay for mistakes.
[...]During my life as a teacher I have often questioned whether we have discovered any worthy substitutes for those precepts and teachings which, outmoded as they seem, are rooted deeply in our history and our ways of life.
In place of the old sayings we use today new words and terms to describe our states of mind and our meetings of those difficulties and questions which will always beset us. We are now insecure, or ill-adjusted, or frustrated, or made ineffective by a sense of inferiority. These new words lack the optimism of the old. Implicit in them is the notion that we are surrounded by foes difficult to defeat.
The new vocabulary comes into use early. We hesitate to look upon our children as simply ill-mannered or spoiled. We fear that they are problem children who need expert care lest they become neurotics or uncontributive members of society.
In high school and college they are surrounded by advisers on what they would best study, what work in life they are best fitted for. They are too seldom encouraged to face problems by themselves, to make their own decisions and to pay the consequences of their own mistakes.
Nor are adults free from waves of anxiety. Too many of us are looking about for some panacea which will ease the burdens of our past and present errors in judgment and lighten our fears of the future. Something, we feel, is wrong somewhere, and without making any stout attempts on our own to discover what it is, we turn to professional advice which guarantees to show us how to understand ourselves.
Even a cursory reading of such books reveals nothing but what we used to call plain old common sense. They urge upon us a calm and objective weighing of ourselves; a frank and even merciless recognition of our weaknesses and failures, a determination to oust at any cost oversensitiveness, which is but a form of self-indulgence; a sense of personal responsibility for the well-being of our families and communities; a fresh start; in short, reliance on our own powers of self-discipline.
No one in his senses would suggest that such books are not often helpful to the anxious mind. But the assumption that most of us have somehow acquired emotional conflicts which we cannot cope with by ourselves surely has its dangers.
We Americans have since our beginnings been known for our self-reliance, for our gumption and common sense. We are, or at least we were, adventurers and our history is the story of a game played against tremendous odds and gloriously won. Why not recall the tough moral fiber which made the winning possible? Isn't it about time that we return as individuals to those values and practices which we have not forgotten so much as neglected?
[...]Life may not be all we want, but it's all we have, as my old school precept said, and it's high time that we have it. We shall not find its secrets or its possible riches in the advice of others, however wise, unless we complete that counsel with our own grit, gumption, and common sense."
[All emphasis in the following is mine.]
What Happened to Common Sense?
by Mary Ellen Chase, from Coronet Magazine, May, 1954
Whenever I return to the isolated Maine village where I spend every summer, I am pleasantly surprised by the way in which my neighbors there hold on to certain old terms.
One of these is grit, with its companion, gumption; another is get up and get, which in Maine means to depend on oneself; yet another is common sense. These words describe the human qualities which my neighbors, fishermen and their wives, extoll above all others. For fishing is a hard calling. It demands gumption, or in more polite terms, self-reliance, the power of decision and the determination not to be downed by adverse circumstances.
My neighbors are frankly suspicious of anyone who lacks these old American virtues. They voiced their common judgment of a man who had lost his lobster traps in a northeast gale and had been bewailing his fate with too little reserve.
"Why don't he shut his mouth and pick up his feet?" they said, "You can't set sail straight by takin' time to bawl about bad luck."
They and I stem from the same rural background. In the country school of my childhood, precepts were written on the blackboard, each Monday morning by our "old-fashioned" teachers who knew it to be their duty to instill iron in our souls as well as common fractions in our minds. Through the years those precepts have proved salutary to me in moments of indecision and anxiety. Usually they were in terse prose:
"It takes a live fish to swim upstream, but any old log can float down."
Don't expect others to bear your troubles; they have their own.
Life isn't all you want, but it's all you have; so have it."
Occasionally a rhyme enlivened us. One I recall as a favorite.
The mind of man has no defense
To equal plain, old common sense.
This homely virtue don't despise,
If you would be happy as well as wise.
Parents, too, 50 years ago dealt out such robust aphorisms liberally, sometimes even sternly, in the upbringing of children. I was taught early by both precept and example that a job once undertaken has to be completed whatever the cost, and that no one but the maker of them ought to be expected to pay for mistakes.
[...]During my life as a teacher I have often questioned whether we have discovered any worthy substitutes for those precepts and teachings which, outmoded as they seem, are rooted deeply in our history and our ways of life.
In place of the old sayings we use today new words and terms to describe our states of mind and our meetings of those difficulties and questions which will always beset us. We are now insecure, or ill-adjusted, or frustrated, or made ineffective by a sense of inferiority. These new words lack the optimism of the old. Implicit in them is the notion that we are surrounded by foes difficult to defeat.
The new vocabulary comes into use early. We hesitate to look upon our children as simply ill-mannered or spoiled. We fear that they are problem children who need expert care lest they become neurotics or uncontributive members of society.
In high school and college they are surrounded by advisers on what they would best study, what work in life they are best fitted for. They are too seldom encouraged to face problems by themselves, to make their own decisions and to pay the consequences of their own mistakes.
Nor are adults free from waves of anxiety. Too many of us are looking about for some panacea which will ease the burdens of our past and present errors in judgment and lighten our fears of the future. Something, we feel, is wrong somewhere, and without making any stout attempts on our own to discover what it is, we turn to professional advice which guarantees to show us how to understand ourselves.
Even a cursory reading of such books reveals nothing but what we used to call plain old common sense. They urge upon us a calm and objective weighing of ourselves; a frank and even merciless recognition of our weaknesses and failures, a determination to oust at any cost oversensitiveness, which is but a form of self-indulgence; a sense of personal responsibility for the well-being of our families and communities; a fresh start; in short, reliance on our own powers of self-discipline.
No one in his senses would suggest that such books are not often helpful to the anxious mind. But the assumption that most of us have somehow acquired emotional conflicts which we cannot cope with by ourselves surely has its dangers.
We Americans have since our beginnings been known for our self-reliance, for our gumption and common sense. We are, or at least we were, adventurers and our history is the story of a game played against tremendous odds and gloriously won. Why not recall the tough moral fiber which made the winning possible? Isn't it about time that we return as individuals to those values and practices which we have not forgotten so much as neglected?
[...]Life may not be all we want, but it's all we have, as my old school precept said, and it's high time that we have it. We shall not find its secrets or its possible riches in the advice of others, however wise, unless we complete that counsel with our own grit, gumption, and common sense."
Labels: American Character, Aphorisms, Common Sense, New England, Old America, Proverbs, Self-Help, Self-Reliance, Vanishing America
0 comment Thursday, June 12, 2014 | admin
Nostalgia is something I like to indulge in now and then; it seems it's good to remind ourselves of what we once were, despite all the madness which fills the news lately.
Over at Chronicles, Clyde Wilson wrote a piece about things he missed from the past. There's a fairly long thread with reader's additions to the list of things, and it's good to look back now and again.
In the spirit of that piece, I will add a few things I remember -- and miss -- from my early life.
Sleeping on the screened-in porch in the hot summer. It seems there was no concern about security or safety then, and we never heard of trespassers or burglars in our neighborhood.
The milkman, and the fruit-and-vegetable man who drove a horse-drawn wagon through the streets, calling out ''cantyloupes, cantyloupes, watermelons, home-grown tomaters...' Of course the best watermelons were the ones given to us by cousin Zack, from his patch. My grandmother, when she gave us children watermelon, simply gave us all spoons and half a watermelon, and let us dig in, out in the back yard. We loved doing that.
There was also the bread man, who delivered not only bread but sweet rolls and other baked goods to our door. You paid him at the end of the month, as with the milk man.
Actually, though, for quite a while we got all our milk from my aunt's husband, who brought us a gallon of raw milk from his cows every day.
Dr. Wilson mentions getting a soft drink from the 'cold water of an old-fashioned drink box.' I remember those coolers; at Miss Viola's store, the bottles always had sort of rust stains on them because of the minerals in the (very hard) water.
Old-fashioned soda fountains, where you got a coke for a nickel. The coke was mixed at the counter, by combining the flavored syrup with the carbonated water, served in a glass, and sipped through a paper straw.
Drive-in hamburger places, with carhops. I realize there are still a few such places left, but not many, seemingly. The hamburgers were made to order, not made up in advance, and left under a heat lamp, as in fast-food places of today. The burgers came wrapped in waxed paper, and in my childhood they cost about 15 cents.
Drive-in movies. They were not just 'passion pits' for the teenagers but places where the whole family could go, and enjoy a double feature. Incidentally, do double features (let alone triple features) still exist? Not that movies these days are worth watching, anyway.
Dime stores, where you could buy a little of everything, most of it under a dollar or two in price, and some things actually costing only a dime.
Penny candy. Certain candies, like peanut patties, which seem to have been sold mostly in the South. Also fried pies; people in the North seem not to know what a 'fried pie' is.
Dr. Wilson mentions women wearing dresses, a subject we were discussing recently on the 'old America' thread. I miss not only the dresses but I would like to see hats make a comeback. When I was a child, to be well-dressed, man or woman, you really needed a hat. Women needed white gloves, and the purse and shoes had to match. I know most people of today think that kind of thing was constricting and oppressive, but it gave life a certain elegance. Special occasions were more special because we put on our best for them.
I remember, too, that the older gentlemen would doff their hats in the presence of a lady. Yes, I know there are not many ladies left these days, in fact lady has become a dirty word with the feminist crowd, but life was more genteel back then, and the word 'lady' was a compliment.
The word 'gentleman' used to mean something as well; nowadays whenever some police spokesman (I mean spokesperson) is being interviewed for TV news about an arrest, they refer to the perpetrator or the accused as a ''gentleman'' --"I saw the gentleman wielding a knife..." how absurd. Criminals are not ''gentlemen''; the word should be reserved for those who merit it.
What memories do you all have of the past, of your childhood?
Over at Chronicles, Clyde Wilson wrote a piece about things he missed from the past. There's a fairly long thread with reader's additions to the list of things, and it's good to look back now and again.
In the spirit of that piece, I will add a few things I remember -- and miss -- from my early life.
Sleeping on the screened-in porch in the hot summer. It seems there was no concern about security or safety then, and we never heard of trespassers or burglars in our neighborhood.
The milkman, and the fruit-and-vegetable man who drove a horse-drawn wagon through the streets, calling out ''cantyloupes, cantyloupes, watermelons, home-grown tomaters...' Of course the best watermelons were the ones given to us by cousin Zack, from his patch. My grandmother, when she gave us children watermelon, simply gave us all spoons and half a watermelon, and let us dig in, out in the back yard. We loved doing that.
There was also the bread man, who delivered not only bread but sweet rolls and other baked goods to our door. You paid him at the end of the month, as with the milk man.
Actually, though, for quite a while we got all our milk from my aunt's husband, who brought us a gallon of raw milk from his cows every day.
Dr. Wilson mentions getting a soft drink from the 'cold water of an old-fashioned drink box.' I remember those coolers; at Miss Viola's store, the bottles always had sort of rust stains on them because of the minerals in the (very hard) water.
Old-fashioned soda fountains, where you got a coke for a nickel. The coke was mixed at the counter, by combining the flavored syrup with the carbonated water, served in a glass, and sipped through a paper straw.
Drive-in hamburger places, with carhops. I realize there are still a few such places left, but not many, seemingly. The hamburgers were made to order, not made up in advance, and left under a heat lamp, as in fast-food places of today. The burgers came wrapped in waxed paper, and in my childhood they cost about 15 cents.
Drive-in movies. They were not just 'passion pits' for the teenagers but places where the whole family could go, and enjoy a double feature. Incidentally, do double features (let alone triple features) still exist? Not that movies these days are worth watching, anyway.
Dime stores, where you could buy a little of everything, most of it under a dollar or two in price, and some things actually costing only a dime.
Penny candy. Certain candies, like peanut patties, which seem to have been sold mostly in the South. Also fried pies; people in the North seem not to know what a 'fried pie' is.
Dr. Wilson mentions women wearing dresses, a subject we were discussing recently on the 'old America' thread. I miss not only the dresses but I would like to see hats make a comeback. When I was a child, to be well-dressed, man or woman, you really needed a hat. Women needed white gloves, and the purse and shoes had to match. I know most people of today think that kind of thing was constricting and oppressive, but it gave life a certain elegance. Special occasions were more special because we put on our best for them.
I remember, too, that the older gentlemen would doff their hats in the presence of a lady. Yes, I know there are not many ladies left these days, in fact lady has become a dirty word with the feminist crowd, but life was more genteel back then, and the word 'lady' was a compliment.
The word 'gentleman' used to mean something as well; nowadays whenever some police spokesman (I mean spokesperson) is being interviewed for TV news about an arrest, they refer to the perpetrator or the accused as a ''gentleman'' --"I saw the gentleman wielding a knife..." how absurd. Criminals are not ''gentlemen''; the word should be reserved for those who merit it.
What memories do you all have of the past, of your childhood?
Labels: Nostalgia, Old America, Old Days
0 comment Thursday, May 29, 2014 | admin
I just came across this post, which is from several months back, on Stuff Black People Don't Like. The subject is Turner Classic Movies.
Pre-Obama America (POA) is gone, dead for the ages. Acting as celluloid mausoleums interning and memorializing a long dead nation, movies depict this era that has passed into the pages of history, haunting all those who view the images and forever taunting them with a glimpse of stability and an uncompromising belief that tomorrow would be better than the next day.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a channel devoted to showcasing the glories of Pre-Obama America, as chronicled in film. Timeless classics that still resonate with viewers who watch them today (look over the American Film Institute�s Top 100 Films ever made and notice this startling truth � that POA is immortalized in motion pictures and they will forever plague those who bemoan that era for wanton cruelty) realize all that has been lost in the span of a few generations by the vivid reminder that John Wayne, Cary Grant and James Stewart provide.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies represents a window into a past that few could ever believe existed, were it not for films starring such men such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Charles Bronson among others.
No, these films remain vestiges of a time that taunt us with simplicity, reminders of a greatest generation that dies daily and would rather cling to memories of a past then remain agitated by glimpses of a horrific future broadcast on the nightly news.
And that, is the most potent weapon that Disingenuous White Liberals and those who find employment and promotion thanks to BRA fear. Memory, remembrance of things past and that could be once again.''
Overall it's a very good piece, with the comments being the weak point, degenerating into arguments and straying off topic, unfortunately. It should have been a good discussion, sadly.
The blogger implies that because of the nature of the films shown on TCM, and because of the fact that old movies keep alive the memory of a vanished era, it would be subversive to today's powers-that-be. It is too ''hideously White'', and it shows a past that is greatly at variance with today's moral dictates as delineated in politically correct dogma.
Regular readers here know that I am an old movie fan, and that I was a watcher of TCM since the 1980s, and in more recent times, a frustrated observer of the changes that have been taking place at TCM over the last several years.
I am not sure if the blogger is aware that TCM is doing its own little PC soft shoe, with a great to-do about 'Black History Month' every February, and occasional marathons of old movies with all-black casts, those movies being made for black movie theaters way back when. And TCM has also prominently featured the black movie critic, Elvis Mitchell, probably to fulfill the 'diversity' mandate and avoid charges of being 'racist.'
One way in which TCM seems to be trying to evade the 'subversive' charge from blacks and the PC left is by showing increasing numbers of newer movies, those from the era when political correctness and 'diversity' became mandates. Starting in the late 60s, or even the earlier 60s, suddenly it became de rigueur to have a certain number of black characters in movies. Movies of that era, overall, began to carry counterculture messages and leftist themes, as well as sexually explicit and profane content.
Was this just a reflection of a changing America? It should be evident to anybody who pays attention that the movies from the 60s onward depict an America, or a world, that bears little resemblance to the old America as seen in the true classic movies. Someone who had never seen America might think that the post-1960s movies depicted another country altogether. Yet to my surprise few people born after the start of the PC era seem to notice the sharp divide between the old movies and the later post-60s movies.
I often wonder if TCM will slowly phase out the old movies altogether, or show them occasionally as museum pieces, for historical interest. I've noticed when certain very politically incorrect movies have been shown in the past, especially movies which involve blacks, there will be some sort of interpreter from the 'African-American community', who will tell us in professorial tones how the movie was racist, and how such unfortunate attitudes were extant in those day. We apparently need to be lectured and given warnings about the violations of taboos with certain movies.
TCM has also made a great show of having 'gay and lesbian' themed movies, with similar sermonettes by some guest representing the GLBT (did I get that right?) ''community.''
In other words, TCM, instead of just showing us some wonderful old movies, feels the necessity of telling us what to think about the movies, or issuing caveats about the naughty content.
I think it's well to remember the example of American Movie Classics, or AMC, which once showed uncut, no-commercials, old movies, most of which were from the 30s through the 60s. Slowly AMC morphed into a commercial-ridden channel which shows third-rate movies from the 70s and 80s, along with their own series like 'Mad Men' which seems to be highly popular. But it is no longer the home of the classic old movies, as its name once indicated.
TCM, with its increasing emphasis on post-70s movies, is in danger of becoming AMC's twin.
TCM is, I think, subversive in a good way, a necessary way. Just as I've written in other posts, I think that we are being manipulated to forget the past, the old America which was not shackled by political correctness and contrived 'diversity.' It's vital that we keep some visual reminder of that past, or we will lose our moorings, and become more and more an amnesic people.
I asked a few paragraphs ago if the movies merely reflected a spontaneously changing society, or if they actually played a part in engineering those changes. Obviously I think the answer is the latter. The movies -- and the other arts -- have given birth to this upside-down world in which we live. Life comes to resemble art, not vice versa. As people become dumbed-down and passive they become something resembling blank slates on which the manipulators can write what they choose.
Mindless, sensationalistic, shocking entertainment dulls the sensibilities and creates a jaded, cynical populace. What we take in through our senses while we passively watch entertainment can have a real impact on us. This is why many billions are spent on advertising and media: it works. It leads and shapes our attitudes and preferences and wants.
As long as TCM still does its innately subversive thing in showing old America in enjoyable and well-made movies, it is or can be a force for good. I hope it is not censored off the air, or given the death of a thousand cuts like AMC, making it a shell of its former self.
One last thing: there are always the cynics and curmudgeons who say, of old movies, that ''the world was never like that. It's all fantasy. It's a whitewash.'' I say no, there once was an America much like that in the movies. Of course some things are prettied up, as with all movies, but the movies for the most part captured the old America as I know it from experience and from the stories told by my elder relatives. It did exist. The naysayers simply want to have us believe that it never existed because they want people to think there is no alternative to this dystopian world in which we now find ourselves.
Don't believe them.
Pre-Obama America (POA) is gone, dead for the ages. Acting as celluloid mausoleums interning and memorializing a long dead nation, movies depict this era that has passed into the pages of history, haunting all those who view the images and forever taunting them with a glimpse of stability and an uncompromising belief that tomorrow would be better than the next day.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a channel devoted to showcasing the glories of Pre-Obama America, as chronicled in film. Timeless classics that still resonate with viewers who watch them today (look over the American Film Institute�s Top 100 Films ever made and notice this startling truth � that POA is immortalized in motion pictures and they will forever plague those who bemoan that era for wanton cruelty) realize all that has been lost in the span of a few generations by the vivid reminder that John Wayne, Cary Grant and James Stewart provide.
[...]
Turner Classic Movies represents a window into a past that few could ever believe existed, were it not for films starring such men such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Charles Bronson among others.
No, these films remain vestiges of a time that taunt us with simplicity, reminders of a greatest generation that dies daily and would rather cling to memories of a past then remain agitated by glimpses of a horrific future broadcast on the nightly news.
And that, is the most potent weapon that Disingenuous White Liberals and those who find employment and promotion thanks to BRA fear. Memory, remembrance of things past and that could be once again.''
Overall it's a very good piece, with the comments being the weak point, degenerating into arguments and straying off topic, unfortunately. It should have been a good discussion, sadly.
The blogger implies that because of the nature of the films shown on TCM, and because of the fact that old movies keep alive the memory of a vanished era, it would be subversive to today's powers-that-be. It is too ''hideously White'', and it shows a past that is greatly at variance with today's moral dictates as delineated in politically correct dogma.
Regular readers here know that I am an old movie fan, and that I was a watcher of TCM since the 1980s, and in more recent times, a frustrated observer of the changes that have been taking place at TCM over the last several years.
I am not sure if the blogger is aware that TCM is doing its own little PC soft shoe, with a great to-do about 'Black History Month' every February, and occasional marathons of old movies with all-black casts, those movies being made for black movie theaters way back when. And TCM has also prominently featured the black movie critic, Elvis Mitchell, probably to fulfill the 'diversity' mandate and avoid charges of being 'racist.'
One way in which TCM seems to be trying to evade the 'subversive' charge from blacks and the PC left is by showing increasing numbers of newer movies, those from the era when political correctness and 'diversity' became mandates. Starting in the late 60s, or even the earlier 60s, suddenly it became de rigueur to have a certain number of black characters in movies. Movies of that era, overall, began to carry counterculture messages and leftist themes, as well as sexually explicit and profane content.
Was this just a reflection of a changing America? It should be evident to anybody who pays attention that the movies from the 60s onward depict an America, or a world, that bears little resemblance to the old America as seen in the true classic movies. Someone who had never seen America might think that the post-1960s movies depicted another country altogether. Yet to my surprise few people born after the start of the PC era seem to notice the sharp divide between the old movies and the later post-60s movies.
I often wonder if TCM will slowly phase out the old movies altogether, or show them occasionally as museum pieces, for historical interest. I've noticed when certain very politically incorrect movies have been shown in the past, especially movies which involve blacks, there will be some sort of interpreter from the 'African-American community', who will tell us in professorial tones how the movie was racist, and how such unfortunate attitudes were extant in those day. We apparently need to be lectured and given warnings about the violations of taboos with certain movies.
TCM has also made a great show of having 'gay and lesbian' themed movies, with similar sermonettes by some guest representing the GLBT (did I get that right?) ''community.''
In other words, TCM, instead of just showing us some wonderful old movies, feels the necessity of telling us what to think about the movies, or issuing caveats about the naughty content.
I think it's well to remember the example of American Movie Classics, or AMC, which once showed uncut, no-commercials, old movies, most of which were from the 30s through the 60s. Slowly AMC morphed into a commercial-ridden channel which shows third-rate movies from the 70s and 80s, along with their own series like 'Mad Men' which seems to be highly popular. But it is no longer the home of the classic old movies, as its name once indicated.
TCM, with its increasing emphasis on post-70s movies, is in danger of becoming AMC's twin.
TCM is, I think, subversive in a good way, a necessary way. Just as I've written in other posts, I think that we are being manipulated to forget the past, the old America which was not shackled by political correctness and contrived 'diversity.' It's vital that we keep some visual reminder of that past, or we will lose our moorings, and become more and more an amnesic people.
I asked a few paragraphs ago if the movies merely reflected a spontaneously changing society, or if they actually played a part in engineering those changes. Obviously I think the answer is the latter. The movies -- and the other arts -- have given birth to this upside-down world in which we live. Life comes to resemble art, not vice versa. As people become dumbed-down and passive they become something resembling blank slates on which the manipulators can write what they choose.
Mindless, sensationalistic, shocking entertainment dulls the sensibilities and creates a jaded, cynical populace. What we take in through our senses while we passively watch entertainment can have a real impact on us. This is why many billions are spent on advertising and media: it works. It leads and shapes our attitudes and preferences and wants.
As long as TCM still does its innately subversive thing in showing old America in enjoyable and well-made movies, it is or can be a force for good. I hope it is not censored off the air, or given the death of a thousand cuts like AMC, making it a shell of its former self.
One last thing: there are always the cynics and curmudgeons who say, of old movies, that ''the world was never like that. It's all fantasy. It's a whitewash.'' I say no, there once was an America much like that in the movies. Of course some things are prettied up, as with all movies, but the movies for the most part captured the old America as I know it from experience and from the stories told by my elder relatives. It did exist. The naysayers simply want to have us believe that it never existed because they want people to think there is no alternative to this dystopian world in which we now find ourselves.
Don't believe them.
Labels: Cultural Marxism, Diversity, Old America, Old Movies, Political Correctness
0 comment Wednesday, May 7, 2014 | admin
Despite the skepticism toward Takuan Seiyo which I expressed in an earlier post, I found his latest installment of the 'Meccania to Atlantis' series a worthwhile read. It's called The True Horrors in Hitchcock Films.
He uses the dramatic changes in San Francisco since the mid-20th century as an illustration of the changes in all of America since then, and I think it's apt. Granted, San Francisco is not what I would call 'typical' traditional America; it may well have been closer to that at an earlier time in its existence, but by the time I first visited it in the late 60s, at a time of my youthful naivete, it was already rather a law unto itself, with topless bars and men dressed as women, and of course Haight-Ashbury, with its bizarre display.
Seiyo, however, contrasts the San Francisco of Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' with the sci-fi version of San Francisco in the 21st century, with its air of brazen decadence. I had to smile at his mention of the Chinese-American lesbian police chief, who has been conspicuous in TV news coverage of San Francisco, dressed in a uniform which looks as though it was designed for a male of considerably larger proportions. That itself is rather appropriate in an ironic way, and it's a testament to how insanely devoted to political correctness our age has become.
I've written on several occasions about my love for old movies, by which I really mean old, not five years old, but real old relics of the pre-PC era. I've written about how watching such movies often leaves me with a wistful feeling, evoking my childhood memories of real America, traditional America, before we were forcibly 'enriched' with 'diversity', and before we were taught to speak and think in that quaintly sinister language of euphemisms and lies called 'political correctness.'
Sometimes old movies cause a feeling of nostalgia and longing for the past, but sometimes they inspire a fierce, smoldering indignation at what has been done to my country, and at what is still being done.
Old movies can be an educational experience for those who have enough common sense to notice the jarring disconnect between the old America on the screen and the 'new' America which they see around them. The new and 'improved', diverse America is graffiti-defaced, crowded, often squalid, full of people who are strangers to each other in every possible way.
Whenever I speak about the lost world of the old movies, somebody, usually someone of the liberal or leftist persuasion, will bluntly claim that 'that world never existed. The movies whitewashed things and censored things, covering up the injustices and hatreds that were really there.' And the leftist or liberal is always adept at finding some flaw or failing in the old America: ''people were sexist and misogynist! There were no African-Americans in these movies except in subservient roles!"
My response is that while the movies may have presented a slightly manicured and polished version of reality, the underlying truth of old America was presented as it was. So when we see the well-dressed, presentable, civilized citizens of San Francisco, we are seeing the America that truly existed then, which was an America of mostly clean, well-behaved people, a place where order and common sense and civility still prevailed.
Seiyo mentions the role played by mass immigration in the drastic transformation of California, from the images seen in Vertigo and in 'North by Northwest'. This goes without saying. but it's amazing how few people seem to want to see a connection; many people act as if what is happening to California or to their own towns is some kind of fluke, due to blind forces of nature, rather than a conscious, malicious policy.
I know I have visited these themes repeatedly, but I will pose the same questions again, even if I am only asking myself: what happened to the people who inhabited the old America, the people who are seen as the extras in the Hitchcock movies? Are they all dead and six feet under now? Some, obviously, are still with us, but how did the good, common-sense inhabitants of the old America become the docile, vacant, 'pod people' as Seiyo calls them, of today? How did they go from sanity to becoming PC pod people, acquiescing meekly and passively to this grotesque experiment that is being carried out on our country and our people?
We can revisit the same explanations: brainwashing, due to leftist control of the media and the educational system; the fall of organized Christianity to the same pernicious influences, the culture of passivity reinforced by TV and video-game addictions, the therapeutic culture, which accentuates narcissism and neurotic self-obsession, the hedonism which diverts the attention and the energy of many young people who should be exercising leadership. We could go on and on. Some focus on the Jewish role in all this; some say Christianity is to blame (although Christianity's influence is waning), some say it's feminism and the destruction of the family. Some even suggest that the fluoride in our water supply induces passivity.
There are elements of truth, I think, in all of these.
If we believe any of these, or all of these, does heredity hold the power that I believe it does? Certainly heredity is not all, but neither is its influence negligible or nil, as leftists and tabula rasa believers insist. Are we merely passive products of our environment? Can we go from being self-respecting, self-confident, assertive, sensible people to being vacant receptacles for propaganda in such a short time, as the deterioration of our society suggests?
If the former is true, if environment is paramount and people can be shaped or re-shaped by the manipulative elites, then there seems little hope, since they hold all the cards, it appears. But if there is such a thing as hereditary influence on temperament and character, then perhaps we might hope that our ancestors' strength will re-assert itself.
I have not mentioned the idea that our problem is in large part a spiritual deficit; we've abandoned the faith of our fathers and we've made ourselves idols, among them self and pleasure and power. Many of us place our faith in flawed human beings or institutions, which is not what our forefathers counseled, and not what Christianity teaches.
Many of those who call themselves Christians are being led astray by 'wolves in sheep's clothing', either church leaders or popular writers of 'religious' books. Some are being led astray by political wolves in sheeps's clothing, or political parties and personages (Republicans, mainly) which become idols for some Christians. In any case, we are in need of a spiritual awakening as well as a political one.
I get the sense that things are accelerating, and being moved along very fast now; it's evident in some of the news stories that are being discussed here and elsewhere. Are they testing the waters? Trying to provoke a response from the few holdouts who haven't fully submitted?
Whether the 'elites' are intending it or not, they are showing their hand; it's obvious now that there is an agenda, a 'new world order' plan, and that all Western countries are on the same track. Their brazenness can help things for us; it might alert some of the somnolent ones among us, and it might also show us just how passive most people have become.
I say as I've always said that it's always the few who bring about real changes; the question is, will it be the few who are truly driving this multicult madness, or will it be the few on our side, the patriots, the people who love their kin and honor their fathers?
He uses the dramatic changes in San Francisco since the mid-20th century as an illustration of the changes in all of America since then, and I think it's apt. Granted, San Francisco is not what I would call 'typical' traditional America; it may well have been closer to that at an earlier time in its existence, but by the time I first visited it in the late 60s, at a time of my youthful naivete, it was already rather a law unto itself, with topless bars and men dressed as women, and of course Haight-Ashbury, with its bizarre display.
Seiyo, however, contrasts the San Francisco of Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' with the sci-fi version of San Francisco in the 21st century, with its air of brazen decadence. I had to smile at his mention of the Chinese-American lesbian police chief, who has been conspicuous in TV news coverage of San Francisco, dressed in a uniform which looks as though it was designed for a male of considerably larger proportions. That itself is rather appropriate in an ironic way, and it's a testament to how insanely devoted to political correctness our age has become.
I've written on several occasions about my love for old movies, by which I really mean old, not five years old, but real old relics of the pre-PC era. I've written about how watching such movies often leaves me with a wistful feeling, evoking my childhood memories of real America, traditional America, before we were forcibly 'enriched' with 'diversity', and before we were taught to speak and think in that quaintly sinister language of euphemisms and lies called 'political correctness.'
Sometimes old movies cause a feeling of nostalgia and longing for the past, but sometimes they inspire a fierce, smoldering indignation at what has been done to my country, and at what is still being done.
Old movies can be an educational experience for those who have enough common sense to notice the jarring disconnect between the old America on the screen and the 'new' America which they see around them. The new and 'improved', diverse America is graffiti-defaced, crowded, often squalid, full of people who are strangers to each other in every possible way.
Whenever I speak about the lost world of the old movies, somebody, usually someone of the liberal or leftist persuasion, will bluntly claim that 'that world never existed. The movies whitewashed things and censored things, covering up the injustices and hatreds that were really there.' And the leftist or liberal is always adept at finding some flaw or failing in the old America: ''people were sexist and misogynist! There were no African-Americans in these movies except in subservient roles!"
My response is that while the movies may have presented a slightly manicured and polished version of reality, the underlying truth of old America was presented as it was. So when we see the well-dressed, presentable, civilized citizens of San Francisco, we are seeing the America that truly existed then, which was an America of mostly clean, well-behaved people, a place where order and common sense and civility still prevailed.
Seiyo mentions the role played by mass immigration in the drastic transformation of California, from the images seen in Vertigo and in 'North by Northwest'. This goes without saying. but it's amazing how few people seem to want to see a connection; many people act as if what is happening to California or to their own towns is some kind of fluke, due to blind forces of nature, rather than a conscious, malicious policy.
I know I have visited these themes repeatedly, but I will pose the same questions again, even if I am only asking myself: what happened to the people who inhabited the old America, the people who are seen as the extras in the Hitchcock movies? Are they all dead and six feet under now? Some, obviously, are still with us, but how did the good, common-sense inhabitants of the old America become the docile, vacant, 'pod people' as Seiyo calls them, of today? How did they go from sanity to becoming PC pod people, acquiescing meekly and passively to this grotesque experiment that is being carried out on our country and our people?
We can revisit the same explanations: brainwashing, due to leftist control of the media and the educational system; the fall of organized Christianity to the same pernicious influences, the culture of passivity reinforced by TV and video-game addictions, the therapeutic culture, which accentuates narcissism and neurotic self-obsession, the hedonism which diverts the attention and the energy of many young people who should be exercising leadership. We could go on and on. Some focus on the Jewish role in all this; some say Christianity is to blame (although Christianity's influence is waning), some say it's feminism and the destruction of the family. Some even suggest that the fluoride in our water supply induces passivity.
There are elements of truth, I think, in all of these.
If we believe any of these, or all of these, does heredity hold the power that I believe it does? Certainly heredity is not all, but neither is its influence negligible or nil, as leftists and tabula rasa believers insist. Are we merely passive products of our environment? Can we go from being self-respecting, self-confident, assertive, sensible people to being vacant receptacles for propaganda in such a short time, as the deterioration of our society suggests?
If the former is true, if environment is paramount and people can be shaped or re-shaped by the manipulative elites, then there seems little hope, since they hold all the cards, it appears. But if there is such a thing as hereditary influence on temperament and character, then perhaps we might hope that our ancestors' strength will re-assert itself.
I have not mentioned the idea that our problem is in large part a spiritual deficit; we've abandoned the faith of our fathers and we've made ourselves idols, among them self and pleasure and power. Many of us place our faith in flawed human beings or institutions, which is not what our forefathers counseled, and not what Christianity teaches.
Many of those who call themselves Christians are being led astray by 'wolves in sheep's clothing', either church leaders or popular writers of 'religious' books. Some are being led astray by political wolves in sheeps's clothing, or political parties and personages (Republicans, mainly) which become idols for some Christians. In any case, we are in need of a spiritual awakening as well as a political one.
I get the sense that things are accelerating, and being moved along very fast now; it's evident in some of the news stories that are being discussed here and elsewhere. Are they testing the waters? Trying to provoke a response from the few holdouts who haven't fully submitted?
Whether the 'elites' are intending it or not, they are showing their hand; it's obvious now that there is an agenda, a 'new world order' plan, and that all Western countries are on the same track. Their brazenness can help things for us; it might alert some of the somnolent ones among us, and it might also show us just how passive most people have become.
I say as I've always said that it's always the few who bring about real changes; the question is, will it be the few who are truly driving this multicult madness, or will it be the few on our side, the patriots, the people who love their kin and honor their fathers?
Labels: Demographics, Old America, Old Movies, Political Correctness, Race Replacement, Societal Decay, Vanishing America