0 comment Wednesday, October 8, 2014 | admin
American Denial is the title of a piece at American Thinker.
The subject of denial is one that comes up here on this blog with some regularity, but in general when we discuss it here, it has to do with the denial of certain politically incorrect truths that are at the root of many of our current problems and crises.
Steven McCann's perception of American denial concerns the unwillingness of many Americans to believe that ''the worst'' could occur in our country. It is true that many Americans are happy to continue to believe that our country is immune to many of the woes and dangers that exist elsewhere. Many Americans do believe that somehow, because we have heretofore not known the kind of devastation and want that many other nations have known, it is unthinkable that such things could possibly occur here.
The description of the woman in Revelation 18:7 comes to mind.
"I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow."
McCann's piece continues:
''While this characteristic is found across all political and economic strata, it is particularly rampant among the current ruling class in the United States, who by their control of the culture and education, have ingrained that sort of thinking into the psyche of the vast majority of Americans.''
Do our ruling classes believe this, or do theyteach us this? Maybe, but do they believe it? I am sure they are confident that they themselves will never experience ''the worst''; they will be insulated from any such suffering themselves. They probably have reasons for their smugness. But if they teach us to be unduly secure about our future, it is only to lull us into complacency and to assuage any misgivings or fears we have about our 'leaders.'
''Overwhelming peace and prosperity, over the past many decades, has sown the seeds that will lead to rapid erosion in the American way of life. As the United States has not experienced a major national catastrophe in over 146 years, coupled with no significant economic hardships since 1940, the view across the landscape as far as the mind's eye chooses to see is of never-ending affluence and freedom from strife. ''
Have we been free from national catastrophes for 146 years? What about Pearl Harbor, or 9/11? Those things were pretty traumatic for many Americans. Regardless of what we think about the real story behind 9/11, the fact is, it was an event that changed our country in some ways forever, though not perhaps enough. Who would have imagined on, say, September 12, 2001, that 10 years later we would still have wide-open borders, lax immigration policies, and especially more Moslem immigration? The fact that there is still relatively little outcry about these things shows that nothing was learned on 9/11 about multiculturalism, mass immigration, and about the folly of blind 'tolerance.'
As far as our lack of economic hardships, I think more Americans, every day, have the conviction that we are in fact in a depression, and that things may never be as they were even a few years ago. Only this last week I've heard a couple of heartbreaking stories about people in dire economic straits, formerly middle-class people who are now officially homeless, living with relatives or friends, or people with serious illnesses and a bleak future. Most of us are aware that we are in hard times, though as always, there are some who are prospering in spite of (or perhaps profiting from) others' losses.
I don't know what circles Mr. McCann moves in, but there are many people out there who no longer have unbounded confidence in our prosperity or our system. Many people have shed their illusions, however comforting those illusions may have been for a while.
Here is where McCann really loses me:
''The United States is unique among nations because of its founding principles, geography and mix of cultures and races. Those factors enabled the country to overcome a myriad of tribulations in its early years and develop an atmosphere conducive to an overwhelming barrage of creativity, ingenuity and individual advancement. But those days are rapidly receding into the pages of history as the oppressive hand of government, now encroached into the day-to-day lives of all Americans, has nearly made that nation a relic of the past.''
I feel certain my readers will notice that first sentence, and take exception to it. The United States is unique, but not because of its 'mix of cultures and races.' First of all, for the first couple of hundred years, there was little mixture of cultures and races. There was not any large-scale immigration until the 19th century, when various European immigrants began to arrive in large numbers. Even then, most of the immigrants, at first anyway, were of a very compatible type, being closely related to the founding stock.
I should not even have to point this out, but America was a remarkable country before all the immigrants started to arrive in vast numbers. It was remarkable even when it was populated mostly by the descendants of the original colonists, else why would so many of the later arrivals have found this country so attractive, such a desirable destination?
I can't count the number of times I've heard how 'immigrants built America' or 'immigration made this country great' and so on. This might be flattering to the immigrants and their descendants, but flattery is often based on exaggerations or falsehoods, meant to mollify or manipulate.
The fact is America was great because of those who founded it. Later arrivals may have contributed certain non-essential things, but if this country had remained a mostly Anglo-Saxon/northwest European country by origin, it would not have been any less great. In fact, if such had been the case, we would not have many of the problems that plague us so today. We would not have ''political correctness'' stifling our speech, as we strive not to slight someone or hurt delicate feelings. We would not, in fact, likely have the whole cultural Marxist system which is in large part the reason for the overbearing 'big government' apparatus which McCann laments.
If we had no mass immigration (legal as well as illegal) and no wide-open southern 'border', we would have no need for the Patriot Act, and the many encroachments on our freedoms associated with the 'war on terror'.
If we had had no mass immigration from certain countries, we would not be committed to exorbitant amounts of 'foreign aid' doled out to certain countries. Our ties to many nations by virtue of the presence of large numbers of their people living in our country would not be nearly so oppressive and demanding.
And perhaps we would be more inclined to non-intervention, as our Founding Fathers intended for us to be, rather than involving ourselves in many wars to 'bring democracy' to people incapable of it.
Instead of scattering our wealth abroad, we might put it to better use at home, and not be subject to being taxed so onerously to be the world's sugar daddy.
If Americans are in denial, which I've often said we are, as a people, then perhaps the fact that our current multicultural regime requires us to 'live by lies' may have much to do with it. I believe many Americans have learned that they have to acquiesce in a great many lies (all men are equal; there is no such thing as race; gender is irrelevant;America is founded on ideas, not kinship)in order to be accepted, and to get along in this disintegrating society.
I think a great many Americans feel helpless, because they know we can't discuss many things openly in public, so they choose to be silent, keep a low profile, focus on trivial and materialistic things. When the ruling ideology is so all-pervasive, and the propaganda so thoroughly entrenched in media and education,
honest people want to withdraw from it. Denial then becomes a way of life. If we can't go against the monolithic system, then it's better for some people to try to ignore it, and distract themselves, or comfort themselves in some way.
For many people, partisan politics is a way to make believe that things are normal, or at least that we can rectify what is wrong by electing new faces, people of ''our'' party. For many White Americans, party has taken the place of ethnic or racial loyalty. For other, less politically inclined people, sports teams take the place of ethnic or political loyalty.
For many women, their allegiance to their 'sisters' takes precedence over other loyalties.
It's all a game, a distraction, a form of denial.
Yes, there is denial, but until America (and the rest of the Western world) is ready and able to get to the root of our situation, denial will persist, and may be our downfall.
The subject of denial is one that comes up here on this blog with some regularity, but in general when we discuss it here, it has to do with the denial of certain politically incorrect truths that are at the root of many of our current problems and crises.
Steven McCann's perception of American denial concerns the unwillingness of many Americans to believe that ''the worst'' could occur in our country. It is true that many Americans are happy to continue to believe that our country is immune to many of the woes and dangers that exist elsewhere. Many Americans do believe that somehow, because we have heretofore not known the kind of devastation and want that many other nations have known, it is unthinkable that such things could possibly occur here.
The description of the woman in Revelation 18:7 comes to mind.
"I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow."
McCann's piece continues:
''While this characteristic is found across all political and economic strata, it is particularly rampant among the current ruling class in the United States, who by their control of the culture and education, have ingrained that sort of thinking into the psyche of the vast majority of Americans.''
Do our ruling classes believe this, or do theyteach us this? Maybe, but do they believe it? I am sure they are confident that they themselves will never experience ''the worst''; they will be insulated from any such suffering themselves. They probably have reasons for their smugness. But if they teach us to be unduly secure about our future, it is only to lull us into complacency and to assuage any misgivings or fears we have about our 'leaders.'
''Overwhelming peace and prosperity, over the past many decades, has sown the seeds that will lead to rapid erosion in the American way of life. As the United States has not experienced a major national catastrophe in over 146 years, coupled with no significant economic hardships since 1940, the view across the landscape as far as the mind's eye chooses to see is of never-ending affluence and freedom from strife. ''
Have we been free from national catastrophes for 146 years? What about Pearl Harbor, or 9/11? Those things were pretty traumatic for many Americans. Regardless of what we think about the real story behind 9/11, the fact is, it was an event that changed our country in some ways forever, though not perhaps enough. Who would have imagined on, say, September 12, 2001, that 10 years later we would still have wide-open borders, lax immigration policies, and especially more Moslem immigration? The fact that there is still relatively little outcry about these things shows that nothing was learned on 9/11 about multiculturalism, mass immigration, and about the folly of blind 'tolerance.'
As far as our lack of economic hardships, I think more Americans, every day, have the conviction that we are in fact in a depression, and that things may never be as they were even a few years ago. Only this last week I've heard a couple of heartbreaking stories about people in dire economic straits, formerly middle-class people who are now officially homeless, living with relatives or friends, or people with serious illnesses and a bleak future. Most of us are aware that we are in hard times, though as always, there are some who are prospering in spite of (or perhaps profiting from) others' losses.
I don't know what circles Mr. McCann moves in, but there are many people out there who no longer have unbounded confidence in our prosperity or our system. Many people have shed their illusions, however comforting those illusions may have been for a while.
Here is where McCann really loses me:
''The United States is unique among nations because of its founding principles, geography and mix of cultures and races. Those factors enabled the country to overcome a myriad of tribulations in its early years and develop an atmosphere conducive to an overwhelming barrage of creativity, ingenuity and individual advancement. But those days are rapidly receding into the pages of history as the oppressive hand of government, now encroached into the day-to-day lives of all Americans, has nearly made that nation a relic of the past.''
I feel certain my readers will notice that first sentence, and take exception to it. The United States is unique, but not because of its 'mix of cultures and races.' First of all, for the first couple of hundred years, there was little mixture of cultures and races. There was not any large-scale immigration until the 19th century, when various European immigrants began to arrive in large numbers. Even then, most of the immigrants, at first anyway, were of a very compatible type, being closely related to the founding stock.
I should not even have to point this out, but America was a remarkable country before all the immigrants started to arrive in vast numbers. It was remarkable even when it was populated mostly by the descendants of the original colonists, else why would so many of the later arrivals have found this country so attractive, such a desirable destination?
I can't count the number of times I've heard how 'immigrants built America' or 'immigration made this country great' and so on. This might be flattering to the immigrants and their descendants, but flattery is often based on exaggerations or falsehoods, meant to mollify or manipulate.
The fact is America was great because of those who founded it. Later arrivals may have contributed certain non-essential things, but if this country had remained a mostly Anglo-Saxon/northwest European country by origin, it would not have been any less great. In fact, if such had been the case, we would not have many of the problems that plague us so today. We would not have ''political correctness'' stifling our speech, as we strive not to slight someone or hurt delicate feelings. We would not, in fact, likely have the whole cultural Marxist system which is in large part the reason for the overbearing 'big government' apparatus which McCann laments.
If we had no mass immigration (legal as well as illegal) and no wide-open southern 'border', we would have no need for the Patriot Act, and the many encroachments on our freedoms associated with the 'war on terror'.
If we had had no mass immigration from certain countries, we would not be committed to exorbitant amounts of 'foreign aid' doled out to certain countries. Our ties to many nations by virtue of the presence of large numbers of their people living in our country would not be nearly so oppressive and demanding.
And perhaps we would be more inclined to non-intervention, as our Founding Fathers intended for us to be, rather than involving ourselves in many wars to 'bring democracy' to people incapable of it.
Instead of scattering our wealth abroad, we might put it to better use at home, and not be subject to being taxed so onerously to be the world's sugar daddy.
If Americans are in denial, which I've often said we are, as a people, then perhaps the fact that our current multicultural regime requires us to 'live by lies' may have much to do with it. I believe many Americans have learned that they have to acquiesce in a great many lies (all men are equal; there is no such thing as race; gender is irrelevant;America is founded on ideas, not kinship)in order to be accepted, and to get along in this disintegrating society.
I think a great many Americans feel helpless, because they know we can't discuss many things openly in public, so they choose to be silent, keep a low profile, focus on trivial and materialistic things. When the ruling ideology is so all-pervasive, and the propaganda so thoroughly entrenched in media and education,
honest people want to withdraw from it. Denial then becomes a way of life. If we can't go against the monolithic system, then it's better for some people to try to ignore it, and distract themselves, or comfort themselves in some way.
For many people, partisan politics is a way to make believe that things are normal, or at least that we can rectify what is wrong by electing new faces, people of ''our'' party. For many White Americans, party has taken the place of ethnic or racial loyalty. For other, less politically inclined people, sports teams take the place of ethnic or political loyalty.
For many women, their allegiance to their 'sisters' takes precedence over other loyalties.
It's all a game, a distraction, a form of denial.
Yes, there is denial, but until America (and the rest of the Western world) is ready and able to get to the root of our situation, denial will persist, and may be our downfall.
Labels: American Exceptionalism, Cultural Marxism, Multiculturalism, Social Decay
0 comment Friday, August 29, 2014 | admin
One of the worst things that the Left has done in their transformation of Western society is that they have killed off traditional values and attitudes in a number of ways.
The most obvious way is by infiltrating and subverting Christianity, either directly, or indirectly, by implanting via education and media ideas that are antithetical to Christianity.
Psychology, with its exaltation of the 'self' and 'felt needs', and the religion of 'tolerance' are examples.
Reading this thread from Free Republic is a sad experience, as I knew it would be when I read the headline: An uncertain future after jobless benefits expire
The story which is being discussed is that of a 55-year-old man who finds himself still unemployed as his benefits run out. I won't focus on the merits of that particular man or his story, but on the larger issues of 'hard times' and social cohesion.
A commenter says:
Now for all the Freepers and their "Well, the bum should FIND A JOB!!!" Either most are unaware of the true market in some areas of the US, or just willfully ignorant.
11 posted on 01/29/2011 5:04:39 PM PST by autumnraine''
Actually she (I assume it is a she) is correct that the ''the bum should find a job!!!'' theme is the one that is heard most often over at FR or any other Republican/conservative forum or blog.
There have been times in this country when all that was needed to find work was a willingness to work and minimal qualifications.However, such is not the case now. I know of a number of people who have been out of work for a year to two years, despite a solid employment history and experience. Those that have found work have had to accept jobs that were low-paying and physically demanding. This is especially sad when one is a man in his mid-50s and not as strong as he was. And age discrimination is a reality; hardly anyone gets sued for it, but it is known to happen. Over 40 is over the hill, for most employers.
One man I know of found a job after more than a year, only to have that job eliminated after a couple of months. Sure, you may say this is anecdotal stuff, but it is becoming much more common. Jobs are not growing on trees out there, and employers who are hiring can be extremely selective about hiring, given that it is so much an employer's market. Add to the poor economy the factor of a few million (as far as we know) immigrants every year, as jobs disappear, and things look bleak for many people.
The stereotypical 'conservative' will say of the unemployed ''well, they should have saved or invested better when times were good.'' Yes, but savings and other resources get depleted very quickly in these times. Unexpected things can happen. These days, with wages and benefits being cut, and the cost of living growing quickly, money does not go as far.
I can say honestly that I never had to draw unemployment benefits, but that does not mean that I condemn those who do have to draw them. There but for the grace of God, etc.
Yes, initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility are cardinal virtues, and ones that conservatives uphold, or should uphold. By no means do I disagree that those things are important, or even vital. But bad things do happen to good people sometimes. Not everybody who is experiencing hard times is a lazy no-account who deserves his misfortune, which is what I hear conservatives saying all too often.
Do we forget that other things are also 'conservative values', things such as empathy for kinsman, neighborliness, filial piety, civic pride, and so on? What I see all too often among the average conservative or Republican types is 'everybody for himself, the devil take the hindmost.'
What I think is partially to blame here is that many 'conservatives' are not conservative at all in the sense of revering traditional values and preserving our shared past and heritage. Instead, they tend to react against the excesses of the Left and go to the opposite pole. If liberals/leftists preach about compassion, then the 'right' decides that compassion is just more liberal twaddle. If the left insists that we owe the world a living, (which of course we don't) we go even farther to the 'right' and deny that we even owe anything to our brother, or our kinsman.
Add to this, the fact that in recent years, the libertarian element in 'conservatism' has grown until it eclipses the eternal verities, and leaves us with the 'every man for himself' ethos, the 'every man is an island', I-owe-nothing-to-nobody philosophy.
The sad fact seems to be that the Left with their excess of sentimentality and faux charity have discredited charity and kindness for too many conservatives. With their 'brotherhood of man' claptrap, they have produced the opposite reaction on the right, the idea that nobody is my brother. 'I am a rugged individualist who asks nothing and offers nothing to others', seems to be the motto of the tough-minded 'conservative.'
My recent post about the Great Depression asked whether we would be able to survive such hard times in our era. I think most of us would agree that we probably wouldn't. We lack the communal spirit, and too many have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man. I acknowledge that it's true that the Left has abused and perverted the innate altruism of our people, to the extent that many of us (including myself, I admit) feel cynical at the left's manipulation of our emotions when they guilt-trip us about the bleeding Third World.
During the Reagan Administration and later, when the 'homeless problem' first became a big issue, there was talk about people suffering from 'compassion fatigue' towards the homeless. For myself, I know that I used to sympathize with the rare panhandler who would approach and ask for money. Actually, in the old days, even the few beggars had some pride, in that they would not ask a woman for money, or at least not a young woman as I was then. But I was at one time quite moved by their obvious condition and would try to help. But as the numbers of beggars, most of them quite brazen and obnoxious started to multiply, I quickly became jaded to their pleas. I don't like feeling that way, but it seems there is a limit to the amount of sympathies that we can extend to strangers. And that is probably how it should be. We need to emphasize personal responsibility, but there has to be some balance with concern for our neighbors and kinsmen, the latter first, of course.
What the Left has done is that they have exhausted our normal feelings of compassion, in many cases. Their excessive use of guilt and sympathy for the underdog has produced something of a backlash, or an overload, at least among some of us.
I often think that liberals are immune from this condition because they themselves do not feel guilt; they see us, the non-liberal normal people, as being rightfully guilty, while they see themselves as the 'good guys', the virtuous ones who are never guilty of things like racism or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever other social sin they have dreamed up.
Their 'compassion' is often just a show, not a genuinely felt emotion. It's been shown that liberals are not the best givers of charity.
And I notice that all the lefties who cry crocodile tears over the poor illegals are not taking said illegals into their own homes to house and feed them.
There has been much talk of the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy', apparently due to Glenn Beck's belaboring that subject on his TV show. What that strategy is said to be is an effort to destroy capitalism by overloading the government's resources. Maybe what they are doing to our character is something like this; they weary us and wear us down, asking us to care for the poor and downtrodden, the underdogs and victims of the world. They spend untold amounts of money in an effort to fix all the world's woes, and things only get worse. They are not only stripping us of financial resources, but I think they have, wittingly or not, stripped many 'conservatives' of their old-fashioned values of neighborliness and old-fashioned charity, in every sense of that word.
And in so doing, they have created a living caricature of the hard-hearted conservative who sneers at his neighbor's misfortune and washes his hands of any kind of civic responsibility. This is the stereotype that the left has always used to discredit conservatives, and it is now being translated into reality more and more. This does not help anybody but our enemies.
Am I proposing that we become like gushy liberals, weeping crocodile tears over the 'victims' of the world? Hardly. I am just reminding us that the old America once had a proper balance between the emphasis on personal initiative and the realization that we are all in this together, and we can't sustain a society based on the atomized invididual who looks out for number one only.
Our parents and grandparents maintained something of a balance, but we seem to be losing that, or have already lost it.
The left, I think, wants it that way. They want a society in which people care only about self, or at most their own spouse and children, a society in which people neither know nor trust their neighbors, much less form bonds with them.
I see some very troubling signs on the right, what with many 'conservatives' ever more willing to jettison the old as ''too costly'' -- without even considering the consequences of, say, stopping all social programs cold turkey. There are lives involved; real human beings, who matter more than abstract principles.
I see a danger that many on the right are becoming ideologues in the same sense that Libertarians and Leftists are ideologues -- devoted to abstract ideas rather than to what works in reality, or to what the real-life consequences of ideas are.
Even among ethnopatriots, I see a mere handful who seem to care about all our folk, and not just about those who agree 100 percent with us politically. I see quite a few who can't say anything good about their people, and that is not promising for our future. If we don't like or care for each other, what's ethnopatriotism about?
We seem to have been trapped into repudiating some of the old verities, into thinking that any kind of community is 'communism' and any kind of altruism is manipulation, or that any kind of interdependence is 'slavery'.
This is the worst thing, really, that the leftists have done. In corrupting our culture, by distorting or weakening our better qualities, they have done real damage. Can we undo it?
The most obvious way is by infiltrating and subverting Christianity, either directly, or indirectly, by implanting via education and media ideas that are antithetical to Christianity.
Psychology, with its exaltation of the 'self' and 'felt needs', and the religion of 'tolerance' are examples.
Reading this thread from Free Republic is a sad experience, as I knew it would be when I read the headline: An uncertain future after jobless benefits expire
The story which is being discussed is that of a 55-year-old man who finds himself still unemployed as his benefits run out. I won't focus on the merits of that particular man or his story, but on the larger issues of 'hard times' and social cohesion.
A commenter says:
Now for all the Freepers and their "Well, the bum should FIND A JOB!!!" Either most are unaware of the true market in some areas of the US, or just willfully ignorant.
11 posted on 01/29/2011 5:04:39 PM PST by autumnraine''
Actually she (I assume it is a she) is correct that the ''the bum should find a job!!!'' theme is the one that is heard most often over at FR or any other Republican/conservative forum or blog.
There have been times in this country when all that was needed to find work was a willingness to work and minimal qualifications.However, such is not the case now. I know of a number of people who have been out of work for a year to two years, despite a solid employment history and experience. Those that have found work have had to accept jobs that were low-paying and physically demanding. This is especially sad when one is a man in his mid-50s and not as strong as he was. And age discrimination is a reality; hardly anyone gets sued for it, but it is known to happen. Over 40 is over the hill, for most employers.
One man I know of found a job after more than a year, only to have that job eliminated after a couple of months. Sure, you may say this is anecdotal stuff, but it is becoming much more common. Jobs are not growing on trees out there, and employers who are hiring can be extremely selective about hiring, given that it is so much an employer's market. Add to the poor economy the factor of a few million (as far as we know) immigrants every year, as jobs disappear, and things look bleak for many people.
The stereotypical 'conservative' will say of the unemployed ''well, they should have saved or invested better when times were good.'' Yes, but savings and other resources get depleted very quickly in these times. Unexpected things can happen. These days, with wages and benefits being cut, and the cost of living growing quickly, money does not go as far.
I can say honestly that I never had to draw unemployment benefits, but that does not mean that I condemn those who do have to draw them. There but for the grace of God, etc.
Yes, initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility are cardinal virtues, and ones that conservatives uphold, or should uphold. By no means do I disagree that those things are important, or even vital. But bad things do happen to good people sometimes. Not everybody who is experiencing hard times is a lazy no-account who deserves his misfortune, which is what I hear conservatives saying all too often.
Do we forget that other things are also 'conservative values', things such as empathy for kinsman, neighborliness, filial piety, civic pride, and so on? What I see all too often among the average conservative or Republican types is 'everybody for himself, the devil take the hindmost.'
What I think is partially to blame here is that many 'conservatives' are not conservative at all in the sense of revering traditional values and preserving our shared past and heritage. Instead, they tend to react against the excesses of the Left and go to the opposite pole. If liberals/leftists preach about compassion, then the 'right' decides that compassion is just more liberal twaddle. If the left insists that we owe the world a living, (which of course we don't) we go even farther to the 'right' and deny that we even owe anything to our brother, or our kinsman.
Add to this, the fact that in recent years, the libertarian element in 'conservatism' has grown until it eclipses the eternal verities, and leaves us with the 'every man for himself' ethos, the 'every man is an island', I-owe-nothing-to-nobody philosophy.
The sad fact seems to be that the Left with their excess of sentimentality and faux charity have discredited charity and kindness for too many conservatives. With their 'brotherhood of man' claptrap, they have produced the opposite reaction on the right, the idea that nobody is my brother. 'I am a rugged individualist who asks nothing and offers nothing to others', seems to be the motto of the tough-minded 'conservative.'
My recent post about the Great Depression asked whether we would be able to survive such hard times in our era. I think most of us would agree that we probably wouldn't. We lack the communal spirit, and too many have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man. I acknowledge that it's true that the Left has abused and perverted the innate altruism of our people, to the extent that many of us (including myself, I admit) feel cynical at the left's manipulation of our emotions when they guilt-trip us about the bleeding Third World.
During the Reagan Administration and later, when the 'homeless problem' first became a big issue, there was talk about people suffering from 'compassion fatigue' towards the homeless. For myself, I know that I used to sympathize with the rare panhandler who would approach and ask for money. Actually, in the old days, even the few beggars had some pride, in that they would not ask a woman for money, or at least not a young woman as I was then. But I was at one time quite moved by their obvious condition and would try to help. But as the numbers of beggars, most of them quite brazen and obnoxious started to multiply, I quickly became jaded to their pleas. I don't like feeling that way, but it seems there is a limit to the amount of sympathies that we can extend to strangers. And that is probably how it should be. We need to emphasize personal responsibility, but there has to be some balance with concern for our neighbors and kinsmen, the latter first, of course.
What the Left has done is that they have exhausted our normal feelings of compassion, in many cases. Their excessive use of guilt and sympathy for the underdog has produced something of a backlash, or an overload, at least among some of us.
I often think that liberals are immune from this condition because they themselves do not feel guilt; they see us, the non-liberal normal people, as being rightfully guilty, while they see themselves as the 'good guys', the virtuous ones who are never guilty of things like racism or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever other social sin they have dreamed up.
Their 'compassion' is often just a show, not a genuinely felt emotion. It's been shown that liberals are not the best givers of charity.
And I notice that all the lefties who cry crocodile tears over the poor illegals are not taking said illegals into their own homes to house and feed them.
There has been much talk of the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy', apparently due to Glenn Beck's belaboring that subject on his TV show. What that strategy is said to be is an effort to destroy capitalism by overloading the government's resources. Maybe what they are doing to our character is something like this; they weary us and wear us down, asking us to care for the poor and downtrodden, the underdogs and victims of the world. They spend untold amounts of money in an effort to fix all the world's woes, and things only get worse. They are not only stripping us of financial resources, but I think they have, wittingly or not, stripped many 'conservatives' of their old-fashioned values of neighborliness and old-fashioned charity, in every sense of that word.
And in so doing, they have created a living caricature of the hard-hearted conservative who sneers at his neighbor's misfortune and washes his hands of any kind of civic responsibility. This is the stereotype that the left has always used to discredit conservatives, and it is now being translated into reality more and more. This does not help anybody but our enemies.
Am I proposing that we become like gushy liberals, weeping crocodile tears over the 'victims' of the world? Hardly. I am just reminding us that the old America once had a proper balance between the emphasis on personal initiative and the realization that we are all in this together, and we can't sustain a society based on the atomized invididual who looks out for number one only.
Our parents and grandparents maintained something of a balance, but we seem to be losing that, or have already lost it.
The left, I think, wants it that way. They want a society in which people care only about self, or at most their own spouse and children, a society in which people neither know nor trust their neighbors, much less form bonds with them.
I see some very troubling signs on the right, what with many 'conservatives' ever more willing to jettison the old as ''too costly'' -- without even considering the consequences of, say, stopping all social programs cold turkey. There are lives involved; real human beings, who matter more than abstract principles.
I see a danger that many on the right are becoming ideologues in the same sense that Libertarians and Leftists are ideologues -- devoted to abstract ideas rather than to what works in reality, or to what the real-life consequences of ideas are.
Even among ethnopatriots, I see a mere handful who seem to care about all our folk, and not just about those who agree 100 percent with us politically. I see quite a few who can't say anything good about their people, and that is not promising for our future. If we don't like or care for each other, what's ethnopatriotism about?
We seem to have been trapped into repudiating some of the old verities, into thinking that any kind of community is 'communism' and any kind of altruism is manipulation, or that any kind of interdependence is 'slavery'.
This is the worst thing, really, that the leftists have done. In corrupting our culture, by distorting or weakening our better qualities, they have done real damage. Can we undo it?
Labels: Altruism, Cultural Marxism, Ethnopatriotism, Leftism, Liberalism, Social Decay
0 comment Thursday, July 10, 2014 | admin
I haven't been in New York City for some time. Over the years of my experience of that city, when I lived there at two different periods of my life, I grew to have a love/hate relationship with it. Whatever may be said about New York City, it is a different world for those of us who come from small-town or heartland America.
When I first laid eyes on New York City, in the latter part of the 70s, I was young and naïve, and having come directly from a Texas town of about 5,000 people, naturally I experienced quite a culture shock, and I never really got my bearings in the place, despite my living and working there for a time.
Later on, I came back for a longer sojourn, and learned to acclimate myself to the place and the people, and I felt I 'conquered' it in a sense, at least to the extent that I was able to live there. I even appreciated some aspects of life there. Ultimately, though, I concluded that to stay there would mean becoming something other than myself. I could only really be myself in my own natural environment.
I came across a set of old photos of New York, of Brooklyn, to be precise, taken in the 1970s, not too long before I first laid eyes on New York. The pictures show it looking very much like my first glimpse of it. To be honest, I was utterly dumbfounded by what I saw at first: the graffiti, the squalor, the noise, the harried atmosphere.
The graffiti you see in the pictures at the link may seem unremarkable now, because most of our urban (and suburban) areas are equally plagued with this blight. Now, it is commonplace and some are even bold enough to call it 'art', a description with which I heartily disagree. When I first saw graffiti like this, I was appalled and shocked. It seemed, in some places, to be on every wall and signpost, even all over subway cars, inside and out, on statues, everywhere.
I suppose the younger generations who grew up with this atmosphere of decay take it for granted. It's a part of our environment that seems to be here to stay, because everyone has become tolerant of it, like so many other forms of blight and decay.
I posted, above, the video of New York City in an earlier era, just as a contrast to the images of 1970s New York. Granted, change is inevitable to some extent, but the contrast between the two eras in startling, to me.
Change the people, change the place. The people make the place, as I often say. Make of the pictures what you will.
New York City and the changes it has undergone over the decades is just an accelerated instance of the kind of transformation the rest of the country is undergoing even now. We see the results more starkly in New York City because the process was so much more rapid.
Just something to ponder. As New York goes, so goes the country? Or maybe not. It all depends.
Labels: American Diversity, History, Social Change, Social Decay, Urban Decay
0 comment Wednesday, May 7, 2014 | admin
I have had this post simmering for a day now, and I have been dragging my heels about writing it, but I suppose it will keep nagging at my mind until I write it.
We have likely all heard the often-repeated saying ''A society (or civilization) can be judged by how it treats the least (or weakest) of its members.'' Who said that? It is credited to several people, including Mohandas Gandhi, (the MLK of India and the hero of lefty new agers everywhere). A close approximation of that sentence was also spoken by Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat politician and presidential candidate who was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968.
Pearl S. Buck, a popular writer and leftist activist of the mid-20th century said something similar:
"Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members."
This piece by Tim Heydon, about the National Health Service report on elderly care in the UK hospital system, posted at Sarah, Maid of Albion provoked a kind of strong reaction in me. I reacted, understandably, to the disturbing content of the article -- and to the comments attached thereto at Sarah's blog.
And it was more than that. It was the cumulative effect of a number of callous comments, or downright hateful comments posted by 'conservatives' of various stripes, everywhere from Free Republic to the comments section on this blog, over the last few months.
We've been hearing a lot about the proposed government-run health care system that looms in our future, and its proposals to curtail health care for those over 60 and those with chronic conditions. The gist of it all is that such people are being increasingly talked of as being a drain on the economy and a waste of space and resources. And in a way, this is all the culmination of many decades of propaganda which exalts youth, beauty, and perfect health, as being the epitome of human worth. The counterculture of the 60s, with its adolescent narcissism and its unhealthy obsession with 'health' has taken its toll. It's been a long time since America respected its elder citizens.
No doubt there have always been people who did not respect their elders, even their own parents, but they have not been brazen or bold enough to display their callousness and resentment openly, as we see now. And this is even among 'conservatives', many of whom name the name of Christ, and profess to believe the Bible.
I blame the decades of leftist propaganda. Leftists are odd in that they claim to care for society's ''weakest members'' and the helpless and the poor, but when you look at what they actually do, they clearly don't care. They have had their consciences seared 'as with a hot iron.' They claim to care about children, but support abortion.
But they don't even pretend to care about the old and the infirm, unless said old and infirm are of a victim group of some sort. They obviously, emphatically, don't care about their own blood kin and countrymen.
And I am going to make the same charge against many of the callous fiscal conservatives who would pull the plug on granny, their own and everyone else's, if it meant lower taxes for them, or less of a burden on them financially. And if their granny is sitting on a sizable fortune, so much the better if she pops her clogs sooner rather than later.
When I had deserted the liberal camp, I still, for a long time, could not bring myself to identify as a 'conservative' because to me, conservatives were all too often grasping and mean (in both senses of the word), eager to judge others who they deemed 'deadbeats'. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in the context of the debate over extending unemployment benefits. There is incredible hardness of heart among many Republicans and among many libertarians who spent their adolescence reading Ayn Rand. They truly do believe selfishness is the ultimate virtue. They truly despise the man who is experiencing hard times.
That's to be expected if one is a nonbeliever, but it is just not possible to hold those attitudes if one is a Christian.
I truly think we are being sifted now, and that we will see who is a real Christian, and who has a heart for his neighbor or his brother, and who is living only for Self and money.
And even if this does not matter to you on moral grounds, think of it this way: do we really love our people, or are we really even loyal to our folk if we despise some large segment of them?
For some people, their despised group is Christians. Well, that category includes most of our ancestors up until recently, so if you loathe Christians, you loathe your own forefathers, your blood and kin, as well as your European and American heritage, which was bound up, like it or not, with Christianity. Our ancestors lived and died for it. Go ahead and despise them and all they believed in, but forfeit your right to claim you care about your people or heritage.
And can anyone say he cares about ''the existence of our people'' if he hates his elders, or the elders of our people in general? I say categorically: no. It is not possible to have contempt and a cold heart towards your elders and still claim you care about our people, your people, or your nation.
So I say, if you name the name of Christ, you cannot hate your own people, especially your elders who raised you and taught you and nurtured you when you were weak and helpless and dependent.
Despise the weak, if it makes you feel tough, but remember you too will likely be weak one day, or ill one day, and possibly broke one day. How much comfort will Ayn Rand be then?
And if you claim to be an ethnopatriot yet loathe large segments of your people, then your claim is dubious.
I am reminded of an old 'Peanuts' cartoon, in which 'crabby' Lucy Van Pelt says ''I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.''
Do you hate the old, or Christians or the Europeans or the Anglo-Saxons/WASPs, White women -- and still claim you love your race? You can't love an abstract notion of your people, or your idealized version of your people. You have to love the flesh-and-blood, imperfect people that you see around you.
It seems that for some people, loving their folk means that they love those people who are exact mirror images of themselves: people with the same ideology or belief system, people of similar ethnic identification, people who speak the same shibboleths. What kind of love is it that loves only that which mirrors onself very closely? Loving those like ourselves is a necessary balance to the insane xenophilia that is force-fed to us day in and day out, but it can be carried too far. If we love only that very small coterie that is on the same page with us ideologically, or generationally, then our love is too narrow to enable us to prevail in this crisis.
Like many of us, I have family members whose political views are absolute anathema to me, yet I can still love them as my flesh and blood. After all they might come around and see common sense one day. That is where 'charity' comes in; I may not like my lost relatives very much but I can be patient with them and loyal to them when the chips are down. That is all that is required for the disparate elements among our people to work together. Your family, warts and all, will always be your family.
We don't all have to love each other in the warm and fuzzy sense. We should be loyal to one another if we intend to continue as a people.
We cannot afford the division and constant infighting.
Our enemies are trying to ensure that we all turn on each other and become hopelessly divided. Divide and rule.
In fact, I am going to have to convince myself, for the sake of keeping up my morale, that all the cold-hearted ones out there, the misanthropes and the nihilists are really just provocateurs or operatives pretending to be on our side, in order to sow division. If I believed there really were so many hard, bitter hearts on our side, people who would turn their backs on their elders, I would not be able to continue this effort any longer. What would it all be for? Why save a people that is no longer a cohesive and loyal group in any case? Why save a people that won't save their own? Why save a people that have so little love for their own kin?
Some people on our side, when accused of being 'haters', have offered the rote response that we don't hate anybody; we are acting out of love for our own people. Well, where is the evidence of that love? It is increasingly hard to find out there.
Maybe the charge of 'hatred' fits -- but only in the sense that many of us hate our own, far more than we hate the sainted Others. And that is sad.
The most tragic thing about a protracted struggle like ours, and the long-term onslaught of propaganda, is that we have started to believe the rhetoric of the Left, and have become a kind of reflection of the Left. We merely react to their manipulations, and have lost track of what we once were, and become something our ancestors would not even recognize.
As for me and this blog, I had hoped that I would be able to post more positive things about our heritage and our people, to call us back to an awareness of what we might be at our best.
Can it be done? Can we change things? Awash as we are in this sea of ugliness and lies, it becomes harder and harder to see the other shore.
We have to believe it's possible, as an act of sheer will.
We have likely all heard the often-repeated saying ''A society (or civilization) can be judged by how it treats the least (or weakest) of its members.'' Who said that? It is credited to several people, including Mohandas Gandhi, (the MLK of India and the hero of lefty new agers everywhere). A close approximation of that sentence was also spoken by Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat politician and presidential candidate who was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968.
Pearl S. Buck, a popular writer and leftist activist of the mid-20th century said something similar:
"Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members."
This piece by Tim Heydon, about the National Health Service report on elderly care in the UK hospital system, posted at Sarah, Maid of Albion provoked a kind of strong reaction in me. I reacted, understandably, to the disturbing content of the article -- and to the comments attached thereto at Sarah's blog.
And it was more than that. It was the cumulative effect of a number of callous comments, or downright hateful comments posted by 'conservatives' of various stripes, everywhere from Free Republic to the comments section on this blog, over the last few months.
We've been hearing a lot about the proposed government-run health care system that looms in our future, and its proposals to curtail health care for those over 60 and those with chronic conditions. The gist of it all is that such people are being increasingly talked of as being a drain on the economy and a waste of space and resources. And in a way, this is all the culmination of many decades of propaganda which exalts youth, beauty, and perfect health, as being the epitome of human worth. The counterculture of the 60s, with its adolescent narcissism and its unhealthy obsession with 'health' has taken its toll. It's been a long time since America respected its elder citizens.
No doubt there have always been people who did not respect their elders, even their own parents, but they have not been brazen or bold enough to display their callousness and resentment openly, as we see now. And this is even among 'conservatives', many of whom name the name of Christ, and profess to believe the Bible.
I blame the decades of leftist propaganda. Leftists are odd in that they claim to care for society's ''weakest members'' and the helpless and the poor, but when you look at what they actually do, they clearly don't care. They have had their consciences seared 'as with a hot iron.' They claim to care about children, but support abortion.
But they don't even pretend to care about the old and the infirm, unless said old and infirm are of a victim group of some sort. They obviously, emphatically, don't care about their own blood kin and countrymen.
And I am going to make the same charge against many of the callous fiscal conservatives who would pull the plug on granny, their own and everyone else's, if it meant lower taxes for them, or less of a burden on them financially. And if their granny is sitting on a sizable fortune, so much the better if she pops her clogs sooner rather than later.
When I had deserted the liberal camp, I still, for a long time, could not bring myself to identify as a 'conservative' because to me, conservatives were all too often grasping and mean (in both senses of the word), eager to judge others who they deemed 'deadbeats'. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in the context of the debate over extending unemployment benefits. There is incredible hardness of heart among many Republicans and among many libertarians who spent their adolescence reading Ayn Rand. They truly do believe selfishness is the ultimate virtue. They truly despise the man who is experiencing hard times.
That's to be expected if one is a nonbeliever, but it is just not possible to hold those attitudes if one is a Christian.
I truly think we are being sifted now, and that we will see who is a real Christian, and who has a heart for his neighbor or his brother, and who is living only for Self and money.
And even if this does not matter to you on moral grounds, think of it this way: do we really love our people, or are we really even loyal to our folk if we despise some large segment of them?
For some people, their despised group is Christians. Well, that category includes most of our ancestors up until recently, so if you loathe Christians, you loathe your own forefathers, your blood and kin, as well as your European and American heritage, which was bound up, like it or not, with Christianity. Our ancestors lived and died for it. Go ahead and despise them and all they believed in, but forfeit your right to claim you care about your people or heritage.
And can anyone say he cares about ''the existence of our people'' if he hates his elders, or the elders of our people in general? I say categorically: no. It is not possible to have contempt and a cold heart towards your elders and still claim you care about our people, your people, or your nation.
So I say, if you name the name of Christ, you cannot hate your own people, especially your elders who raised you and taught you and nurtured you when you were weak and helpless and dependent.
Despise the weak, if it makes you feel tough, but remember you too will likely be weak one day, or ill one day, and possibly broke one day. How much comfort will Ayn Rand be then?
And if you claim to be an ethnopatriot yet loathe large segments of your people, then your claim is dubious.
I am reminded of an old 'Peanuts' cartoon, in which 'crabby' Lucy Van Pelt says ''I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.''
Do you hate the old, or Christians or the Europeans or the Anglo-Saxons/WASPs, White women -- and still claim you love your race? You can't love an abstract notion of your people, or your idealized version of your people. You have to love the flesh-and-blood, imperfect people that you see around you.
It seems that for some people, loving their folk means that they love those people who are exact mirror images of themselves: people with the same ideology or belief system, people of similar ethnic identification, people who speak the same shibboleths. What kind of love is it that loves only that which mirrors onself very closely? Loving those like ourselves is a necessary balance to the insane xenophilia that is force-fed to us day in and day out, but it can be carried too far. If we love only that very small coterie that is on the same page with us ideologically, or generationally, then our love is too narrow to enable us to prevail in this crisis.
Like many of us, I have family members whose political views are absolute anathema to me, yet I can still love them as my flesh and blood. After all they might come around and see common sense one day. That is where 'charity' comes in; I may not like my lost relatives very much but I can be patient with them and loyal to them when the chips are down. That is all that is required for the disparate elements among our people to work together. Your family, warts and all, will always be your family.
We don't all have to love each other in the warm and fuzzy sense. We should be loyal to one another if we intend to continue as a people.
We cannot afford the division and constant infighting.
Our enemies are trying to ensure that we all turn on each other and become hopelessly divided. Divide and rule.
In fact, I am going to have to convince myself, for the sake of keeping up my morale, that all the cold-hearted ones out there, the misanthropes and the nihilists are really just provocateurs or operatives pretending to be on our side, in order to sow division. If I believed there really were so many hard, bitter hearts on our side, people who would turn their backs on their elders, I would not be able to continue this effort any longer. What would it all be for? Why save a people that is no longer a cohesive and loyal group in any case? Why save a people that won't save their own? Why save a people that have so little love for their own kin?
Some people on our side, when accused of being 'haters', have offered the rote response that we don't hate anybody; we are acting out of love for our own people. Well, where is the evidence of that love? It is increasingly hard to find out there.
Maybe the charge of 'hatred' fits -- but only in the sense that many of us hate our own, far more than we hate the sainted Others. And that is sad.
The most tragic thing about a protracted struggle like ours, and the long-term onslaught of propaganda, is that we have started to believe the rhetoric of the Left, and have become a kind of reflection of the Left. We merely react to their manipulations, and have lost track of what we once were, and become something our ancestors would not even recognize.
As for me and this blog, I had hoped that I would be able to post more positive things about our heritage and our people, to call us back to an awareness of what we might be at our best.
Can it be done? Can we change things? Awash as we are in this sea of ugliness and lies, it becomes harder and harder to see the other shore.
We have to believe it's possible, as an act of sheer will.
Labels: Christian Charity, Division, Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnopatriotism, Social Decay