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Take Up The Cross
Topic Started: Nov 24 2011, 04:34 AM (1,983 Views)
Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
I can deal with change, Mr. D'Oh. If you leave my field for five years, you may not have the skills to successfully re-enter. So I know change very well.

But there should be a positive reason for change.

If you don't believe that, quit your job and start divorce proceedings in the morning. You'll have all kinds of change, very little which you would like.

(Of course, you can come back with a snappy comment and say that type of change might suit you well, but the little lady would probably brain you with a frying pan.)
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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The 89th Key
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Haven't really read the whole thread, just saw the first post.

Quite frankly, my first reaction is...do you really need a cross to remind you of your faith?

I can only speak for myself, but as long as I could have a bible, that's all I'd need.
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Jolly, you're showing an interesting knack for making one argument, and then substituting another one for it. You were the one who brought up the melting pot as some ideal that we were supposedly doing well back in the 50s. Now, you seem to be implying that all the social issues you've detailed are actually in some way the *result* of the actual melting pot - not the mythical one of the 50s - that we have now. So which is it - is the melting pot bad, or good? Do new immigrants in this country need to simply throw out their own racial and ethnic cultural influences and adopt "our" (i.e., white male Anglo-American) culture? Are you saying that these social issues that you've detailed are the result of foreign racial and ethnic cultures entering our pre-existing culture and corrupting it with their inherent inferiority? I hope that's not what you're really saying. Personally, I don't think that's what's behind our society's ills.

But to answer your questions:

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And you think this crap we have today is a superior culture?


Yes, I have no doubt that overall, our culture today is vastly superior to what existed in America in the 1950s. I don't think it's even remotely arguable.

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You think abortion on demand is a superior culture?


No, I do not. I mourn the loss of unborn children who are forfeited to the callous use of abortion as birth control. And I personally believe that abortion should be resorted to only when the life of the mother is in danger - not even in cases of rape or incest. I speak as a person who quite possibly might not even be here today, if abortion were legal in 1960. I think that our obsession with abortion is one of our society's most hideous failures.

But despite the sickening overuse of abortion, I consider it a societal improvement that my daughters have the ability to legally live according to the dictates of their own conscience, and not be bound by mine, as regards any potential decisions regarding abortion in their own lives.

I also don't believe that the increased number of actual abortions performed is automatically a measure of a worsened society. What makes a society ill isn't the actual execution of an allegedly immoral act; the illness is seen in the internal desire for the immoral act, whether it is available or actually carried out. Based on that, I'm not convinced that our country's actual sexual morality is significantly different from what it was in 1955.

Finally, I do not believe that the number of abortions performed in this country have a single thing to do with the influx of "outside" cultures, in some way "corrupting" our halcyon mid-century existence.

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You think a divorce rate of 50% is a superior culture?


No, I do not. I think that it's sad. On the other hand, as I just said, I don't see the implementation of divorce as the illness in society, but rather, the desire to be divorced - and again, I do not suspect that there is a higher percentage of married couples who want out of an unhappy marriage today versus the 1950s.

The positive aspect of today's society regarding marriage is that couples today do not feel that they have to get married in order to be accepted in society. They will get married not because society tells them they must, in order to be accepted as "decent people," but because they actually want to get married and think they have a shot at succeeding at it. This was not the case in the 1950s - and with the increased social stigma of divorce then, people stayed in unhappy, toxic marriages that resulted in psychological and emotional - and all too often, physical - harm to the spouses, and often their children. I see divorces that prevent that kind of societal damage a good thing.

And again - I do not see the increased divorce rate as being the result of an influx of inferior or undesirable racial or ethnic cultures coming in and corrupting the pre-existing culture.

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You think two-wage earner families are superior to one wage-earner families?


I don't think that two-wage earner families are inherently any less preferable than single-wage earner families. I think that every adult, male and female, having the opportunity to have both career and family is a highly positive societal development. I don't believe that having one parent only marginally involved in the child-rearing and housework, because s/he is always at work, earning that single paycheck, is inherently socially preferable to two parents sharing wage earning, parenting, and homemaking more equitably. Double-income households may replicate the social patterns of the worst single-income households; and single-income households may replicate the social patterns of the best double-income households. What matters is how the household is run, not the number of paychecks.

And again - whether is is a positive, negative, or neutral societal phenomenon, I do not see the rise of two-paycheck households as being the result of an influx of undesirable or inferior cultural influences from outside.

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You think a 24/7 society is better than a society that has home time, such as the traditional M-F workweek?


I think the 24/7 society has nothing to do with whether a family has home time.

And again.... well, by now you get the picture.

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You think this culture which produces children who cannot read, much less do simple mathematics superior to a culture with a higher rate of literacy?


No, I think it's a tragedy. Do you believe that this tragedy is the result of other cultures coming in and affecting our culture, as opposed to laying aside their cultures and adopting "ours"? Aren't some of those cultures with a higher rate of literacy some of the very cultures that we should, according to your argument, tell to put aside their inferior cultural influences in favor of ours? Do you think the lower percentage of college graduates in the 50s to be a superior culture?

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You think the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate of today is a superior culture?


No, I don't. On the other hand, I see the much better health care system, which has resulted in countless children surviving premature birth, birth defects, and infant illnesses, to be a vast improvement over the culture of the 50s.

Is out of wedlock pregnancy a result of the corruption of our society by other cultures who changed our society, versus just adopting the culture they found when they got here?

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Do you think the rate of welfare usage of today shows a superior culture?


No, I don't at all. Do you think the rate of polio and smallpox of the 1950s shows a superior culture?

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I could go on, but I want you to show me how today's culture is superior to that which we had 50 years ago...aside from some civil rights areas, I don't think you can.


I do. You've identified civil rights, which is hardly a minor advancement. To that, I've referred to several others where our culture today is vastly superior, including health care, higher education rate, increased opportunity for women. To that, add higher standard of living, increased lifespan, increased access to police, fire, and medic services, at-your-fingertips information, commerce, work, banking, recreation, and communication via your laptop, iPad, or smartphone; improved transportation networks (land and air) to facilitate personal movement and cost-effective commercial and industrial transportation; increased access to music, art, theater, libraries, and other cultural resources to increasingly remote locations. I could go on, too, but I'll wrap up here saying that the good old days of the 50's weren't good for everyone, and even for the ones they were good for, they weren't nearly as good overall as today. I truly don't think that's even remotely arguable.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
I think it quite arguable and I don't see where you have successfully challenged those things I cited. As I told Mr. D'Oh, change is not always favorable for the individual or the society at large.

As for the melting pot, this is a reference to how we used to do things which were superior to how we do them today...we used to teach, coerce, shovel, bend, fold or mutilate people's sensibilities when they came to America...and produced Americans.

To extrapolate your current view of the melting pot is to create a fractured culture. Witness the push to fly the Mexican flag in many of our border states.

You cannot create out of the many one, when one is celebrated above the many.
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Jolly, you will never get the brainwashed "multiculturalists" to see your point, and even if they do, they'll never admit it. They will simply do what Dewey has done - demonize your viewpoint, insinuate racism, and then dismiss you as being ignorant.

An example - you'll be accused of wanting to put blacks back in the back of the bus, never once seeing what you're really saying - that you're not wanting to put blacks in the back of the bus, you're wanting to discuss the moral decline that has occurred after 60 years of flirting with their "multiculturalist"/"diversity" experiment that has left us with a society where if you look at the black sitting in the front of the bus the wrong way you might get your throat slit.

I see that as what you're trying to explain, and I agree with you. But you'll never get anyone like Dewey to understand you, because he's still having his brain turned into mush by today's seminary system.

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Jolly
Nov 27 2011, 06:20 PM
I think it quite arguable and I don't see where you have successfully challenged those things I cited. As I told Mr. D'Oh, change is not always favorable for the individual or the society at large.

As for the melting pot, this is a reference to how we used to do things which were superior to how we do them today...we used to teach, coerce, shovel, bend, fold or mutilate people's sensibilities when they came to America...and produced Americans.

To extrapolate your current view of the melting pot is to create a fractured culture. Witness the push to fly the Mexican flag in many of our border states.

You cannot create out of the many one, when one is celebrated above the many.
Quote:
 
I think it quite arguable and I don't see where you have successfully challenged those things I cited. As I told Mr. D'Oh, change is not always favorable for the individual or the society at large.


I agree, change is not always favorable - many times, it's far worse, and I agreed with you on several of the examples you offered. I could offer other examples, too. But neither is it always unfavorable. There were a lot of societal ills in the 1950s that are hardly a dim memory today. While I agree that there have been losses in some areas, I really think the overall status of our culture is vastly improved.

Quote:
 
As for the melting pot, this is a reference to how we used to do things which were superior to how we do them today...we used to teach, coerce, shovel, bend, fold or mutilate people's sensibilities when they came to America...and produced Americans.


Sometimes. More often, all of our coercion, bending, folding, and mutilating people's sensibilities had negative consequences, and only produced "Americans" who weren't a product of much of a melting pot at all. The melting pot of the 50s was "get rid of all of your culture, and be as close to us white Anglo males as you can be." The greatest danger to any society is when it believes it's reached the pinnacle, and cannot better itself by altering itself to adapt to changing circumstances and realities. Eventually, such a society is at such a disjoint with those new circumstances and realities that it is susceptible to all sorts of upheaval, revolt, and rebellion - often manifesting itself in the most horrible of alternatives to the current society.

A big part of the causes for rebellion in this country in the 60s was precisely this kind of insular attitude about the "right" culture in America throughout the 50s. That culture made itself impervious to accepting the social changes that people were gradually hoping for (and note that this was change hoped for just as much within the Anglo American culture itself as it was in black and other racial groups). The eventual outcome of that resistance to change, and the opinion that those other voices were illegitimate or of less value than "our" views made their rebellion even worse, and in some cases, extreme - an extremism that could have been avoided if the dominant culture had been willing to realize that things were going to have to change from "the way we've always done things," and the inerent assumption that this was, and always would be, the "best" way.

So when we were doing all that coercing, what we were often producing weren't "Americans," but rather, disgruntled citizens who felt they had no real say in society and who felt of little or no value. That's a very dangerous and unhealthy - not to mention stupid - place for a culture to place itself, as time proved out in many ancient cultures, and in this culture.

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You cannot create out of the many one, when one is celebrated above the many.


I agree completely. The very problem is that one culture - white Anglo male culture - was celebrated over the many other cultures coming together to make a *real* American culture, for far too long - so long that the members of that culture assumed dominance within the overall culture as their birthright, and something that never needed alteration. In a true melting pot culture, everyone ends up different. The dominant pre-existing culture does not remain unaffected; it has to change to some extent, too. If it doesn't, the culture is eventually destined to implode on itself, not because of the different people and cultures entering it, but because of the dominant culture's failure to recognize its need to change to accommodate new realities.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
Then the Centurion lay down his sword and took a barbarian bride.

Dewey, God Bless you, you don't have a clue...
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
You are the one who don't have a clue, Jolly. Of course two-wage-earner families are superior to one-wage-earner families -- a simple risk-management concept to grasp.

C'mon, admit it already ... you just miss the 1950's income tax and union participation rates.
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
No Jolly, I've got more than a clue. I agree with you that our culture has serious problems. But I don't view the overall health of our culture as worse now than it was in the 50s. It's definitely different, but overall, if I have to work within the problems of a culture, I'd take the current problems over those of 60 years ago any time.

I grew up in an area that actually did experience some of the real melting pot. Poles, Italians, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Slovenians, Syrians, Lebanese, and a dozen or so more ethnic groups settled in the area alongside the Anglo and German farmers, and amazingly, the area adopted a hybrid ethnic culture that wasn't purely any of those separate cultures, but drew from all of them. And when I was growing up, it wasn't at all uncommon to encounter old men on the street speaking Polish or Italian, or the parents and grandparents of my childhood friends speaking in the native language of their home country. And even while all these immigrants "assimilated," they never relinquished their distinct character, either. The people they were assimilating toward were also changed in the process. And the result was a better, stronger, more tightly-knit culture than existed where that kind of multilateral melding didn't take place.

So I've never been afraid of cultural changes, and I don't see various ethnic or racial groups' not completely jettisoning their cultural roots in favor of all "acting Anglo American" as unseemly or inappropriate, or a refusal to assimilate into our culture. I think it's a mistake to think that assimilation has to be a one-way street, and that *that,* not the influx of different cultures itself, is what creates cultural instability. And I flatly reject the implication that our society's woes have transpired because of tolerance for diversity within our culture.

No, I don't see the non-Anglos who have entered our culture and become part of it as being invading barbarians. I see them as bringing new life and new strength, new vitality, new knowledge, new arts. Their not completely abandoning their culture of origin, while still affirming their allegiance to this country, is one of our culture's greatest strengths - or at least it can be, if we allow it.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Axtremus
Nov 27 2011, 08:40 PM
C'mon, admit it already ... you just miss the 1950's income tax and union participation rates.
I think Jolly is a union man or if he recently retired, was.
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
Jolly
Nov 27 2011, 05:01 PM
I can deal with change, Mr. D'Oh. If you leave my field for five years, you may not have the skills to successfully re-enter. So I know change very well.

But there should be a positive reason for change.
There's always a reason - whether it's positive or not is often very difficult to determine. You don't like some of the changes. My point was that it doesn't really matter whether you like it or not, it's happened. The only choices open to us are to either accept this fact, or to try to hold on to our old lives. In general, the first option works a lot better than the second.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Jolly
Nov 27 2011, 03:15 PM
And you think this crap we have today is a superior culture?

You think abortion on demand is a superior culture?

You think a divorce rate of 50% is a superior culture?

You think two-wage earner families are superior to one wage-earner families?

You think a 24/7 society is better than a society that has home time, such as the traditional M-F workweek?

You think this culture which produces children who cannot read, much less do simple mathematics superior to a culture with a higher rate of literacy?

You think the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate of today is a superior culture?

Do you think the rate of welfare usage of today shows a superior culture?

I could go on, but I want you to show me how today's culture is superior to that which we had 50 years ago...aside from some civil rights areas, I don't think you can.

Actually our great grandparents' and grandparents' generations gave us by far the superior cultural experience on a global scale. An arms race that led to the crucible called WWI. The rise of totalitarianism, mass political terror and WWII. The Cold War and its nuclear arms race.

Yeah the 50's were a great time.

As far as I'm concerned there isn't very much to rhapsodize about the good old days.

But keep that old Jolly Codger flying high, Captain Blood.

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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
Six pages and still no 'lick the road clean' sketch. I'm impressed.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
Renauda
Nov 28 2011, 10:42 AM
Actually our grandparent's and great grandparent's generations gave us by far the superior cultural experience on a global scale. An arms race that led to the crucible called WWI. The rise of totalitarianism, mass political terror and WWII. The Cold War and its nuclear arms race.
Don't forget Spam. Those assholes.

Actually, that's just a rumour. I'm sure only the most hygienic parts of the alimentary canal were used.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Ah yes, Spam, Klik, Spork and other *lucheon* delicasies derived of sweepings from the abattoir floor. May sometimes contain meat.

I hear from local barbarians who vacation in more tropical climes during the winter months, it remains a staple food in the State of Hawaii.
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