Retraction
Dean
LaShawn Barber tells me she never said God isn't protecting America. When I read that America is now in decline because of our attitudes about marriage, I drew an inference I shouldn't have. My apologies.
I still don't believe we are a more wicked or sinful people than we have been in the past, however, nor do I see any reason to believe we're in any sort of broad decline, moral or otherwise. And by the way, see this thread for a discussion of why our attitudes about sex today aren't as simple a matter today as some would like to suggest.
It is not a matter of your belief. It is not even a matter of whether or not we are in fact more wicked or sinful people than we have been in the past. It is a matter of public acceptance. It is one thing to admit that people are, have been, and will be nasty. It is quite another to accept that this state of affairs is OK. It is even worse to propose that this is the way thing ought to be. Civilizations have lifetimes on the order of centuries. The USA has had two so far; a couple more ought not to be taken for granted.
If you can not recognize decadence on the order of Nero proportions permeating your everyday life, then you are blind. Have you noticed lately how many people on TV have metal objects piercing their tongues? How is that a good or a normal thing? Worse, it is not even an anti-social, in-your-face statement or point, it is simply "normal". Have you noticed how homosexual behavior can no longer be quietly ignored, or swept under rugs? Instead homosexuality must be celebrated. How many up-and-coming, dominating-kick-ass cultures have celebrated homosexuality, compared to how many cultures which are decadent and in decline have celebrated homosexuality? Have we reached Sodom and Gomorrah levels yet? I don't know, maybe NAMBLA can tell us.
This is not rocket science. Americans have it too easy. They can build upon prior achievement, or they can live off prior achievement. Right now I'd say by and large they are living off prior achievement. I hope that either Muslims or Chinese eventually wake us up and get us back into the kicking ass and taking names mode.
John
As for the notion that we are reaching "decadence on the order of Nero proportions," with all due respect you can only say something that if you don't know much of anything about Rome at the time of Nero.
Get back to me when Americans put up with torture, mutilation, and routine slaughter of human life as a form of mass entertainment. When our political class regularly imprisons people for political expression or the wrong religious views--and where at their banquets they burn such prisoners to death, using their screams as entertainment. When slavery reaches the point it did in Rome where the slaves outnumbered the non-slaves and where casual rape of a slave (male or female) was considered simply a perque of ownership. Get back to me when we abolish the Violence Against Women Act and stop our national campaign against "deadbeat dads." Get back to me when Americans go back to considering drunk driving a subject of amusement rather than condemnation.
You conservatives of the "America is a depraved, wicked society" variety really have done a lot to make me certain that I'll never be a social conservative. You've constructed a mythological past that never existed in order to make America today look horrible. Shame on you guys.
Although there _were_ lynchings that are as you described, they were highly unusual events. That's why they became famous. Even when most Americans (of all races) were segregationists, it wasn't common to wish harm upon people of other races.
Racial slurs are no more un-Christian than "idiot", "fool", or any other term of contempt. It is a PC idea, not a Christian one, that mocking someone's race is worse than mocking them in other ways. I don't think the total level of mockery is any less today than it was.
And if we no longer permit duels and fisticuffs, we do let violent felons go with a slap on the wrist as long as they only victimize poor black people. We've replaced a too-aggressive culture with a too-timid culture of leaders who are unwilling to engage in violence even when necessary. I don't think that's an improvement.
Your comments about Nero are right on. How many people go to see the Roman Coliseum and all they think of is the grandeur? What about the horror? If I were writing a horror novel about someone who needed an evil place to work some nefarious ceremony, I'd pick the Roman Coliseum. It's unlikely there is a building anywhere on earth that is more steeped in suffering, horror, and human blood --all of it viewed and cheered by thousands.
As for racial slurs: the reason they're no longer acceptable is because racism itself is no longer acceptable anywhere in mainstream America. A huge moral change for the better. By the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had millions of members, situated in every state of the union. Today it's a sad pathetic shell with a few thousand members at best, all of them viewed with contempt by mainstream America.
Moreover, racial slurs are a form of profanity. Social conservatives whinge that they don't like the four-letter words but give nothing for the fact that truly hateful words are now all but expunged from the language.
The excessive romanticization of the past by conservatives must stop. We have much to be proud of in our past, no question, but the notion that people were more virtuous in general? My fucking ass.
Be sure you haven't eaten anything recently before clicking on that. Keep in mind, these are all postcards, popular ones. Notice how many people you see in so many of them. Notice also the places they were taken. Just in the south? No, you'll find Nebraska, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, and more. Rural America and urban America.
They were popular spectacles.
Also, why pick Nero? (I am not a fan of him, but I can't stand people slinging 2000 year-old lies that are plainly called lies by the ancients themselves.) Augustus literaly, in the most praising words of the historians, killed so many, and had their bodies left among the great buildings of Rome, that Rome STANK from the death and the blood. If you want to get nasty, Caesar killed hundereds of THOUSANDS of both Roman and Non-Roman peoples. Neronic society, though far more decadent and Greekish, was far more tame.
Tradian mass-murdered. Where are your decrials of his killings? Hadrian's? Or, do you only choose to use Nero because he's the only name you remember?
Dean, as for your hate Rome fetish, what do you call the 4th planet, please? It's moons? The thrid month of the year? The 6th, the 7th, the 8th? There all Roman, so if you wish to rid us of any mention of Rome, start with the calender, and the heavens. You've got an uphill battle.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/
I agree with Rhianna. If you hate Rome, you'd better change the names of all the planets, the names of the months, most of our law, and the Roman Catholic Church. If you hate the Norse, then change the names of the days of the week, and stop celebrating "Easter". If you hate Christianity, then stop celebrating "Christmas". Some people, the Politically Correct, are already doing that, including abolishing "under God", etc., in order to eradicate all religion and the whole human past. I'm against that. I'm Conservative.
Dean is right about lynchings. They were rampant in America in the early 20th century. Thousands of Negroes were lynched. That crotchety old rock-ribbed tight-fisted Republican Calvin Coolidge was one of those who opposed lynchings. We have since abolished lynchings, we have abolished segregation, we fought a Civil War to abolish slavery. Racism against Negroes is not tolerated any longer by anybody of any importance. Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court and Condoleezza Rice is Secretary of State. Race has long ago ceased to be a legitimate political issue.
There was also "anti-Semitism" half a century ago in the form of quotas against Jews in universities and law firms, but they were never enforced by any government. Today, Jew-hatred is a Left-Wing phenomenon. Conservatives, most notably the hated "neo-conservatives" and also fundamental Christians, are overwhelmingly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel.
The most controversial issues today revolve around attitudes toward human sexuality. In other words, the 3-way ideological war between Naturalists, Jehovanists, and Gnostics.
See Runswithscissors: blah,blah,blah
http://www.runswith.com/
“Seen today in the men's locker room at the gym in Montpelier:
-- A gent stripped down, showing a multiply-pierced scrotum. Looked like two or three bolts I couldn't get an exact count. I saw the flash of metal out of the corner of my eye, he turned around, facing away, before I could get a better look. He remained turned away, standing in a corner, looking down toward his nether region, hands busy doing, er, something -- impossible to tell what exactly. Checking for lint? Polishing metal ? Don't know. The other males politely ignored the guy. I considered asking him (nicely, of course) what the hell he was doing, but restrained myself, left him alone.
-- Another guy -- tall, rangy, with long feet -- toweled off, post-shower, then pulled a pair of black socks from his locker, sat down on a bench. He stretched one sock like a piece of elastic, then inserted it between his toes like a towel, running it briskly back and forth in an apparent drying/buffing operation before putting it on. Repeated the procedure with the other foot. Then stood up, pulled on clothes, sauntered out of the room, almost like a normal human being.
We're a weird bunch, we male people.”
"Have you noticed lately how many people on TV have metal objects piercing their tongues? How is that a good or a normal thing? Worse, it is not even an anti-social, in-your-face statement or point, it is simply "normal"."
One more reason I'm glad I don't watch TV. Anybody who does that deserves a severe tongue-lashing, to say the least. I say that to deliberately make oneself ugly in such a manner is reprehensibly immoral, as immoral as adultery or promiscuity or any of the other sins that are condemned. It is a sin against beauty itself, therefore against the Divine. It is blasphemy.
For the record, though, I never said that the Colosseum was built in Nero's time. I did say that mass torture and murder were popular entertainment in Nero's time--and they were. Since you know so much about it, then you know what they did with religious heretics and with captured prisoners among their many conquests (captured prisoners they didn't just slaughter on the spot I mean).
Ancient Rome is not a society to be admired.
As for the names of the planets: I have to admire an evil society because we named our planets after their mythology? Heh. Okay kids. Whatever. Yes, I find Roman mythology compelling--although I prefer the original Greek. I also admire their engineering and architecture, and I'm glad that because of them some of the great writers and mathematicians of antiquity were preserved.
I admire some of the architecture and imagery of the Third Reich too, and I think Irwin Rommel was a great warrior and leader. That means I admire Nazi Germany?
Pretending the Romans were anything other than a breathtakingly cruel and savage people is simply--and ironically--a form of romanticism. Stop pretending otherwise, m'kay? Saddam Hussein would have been admired by them as a kindly Emperor, firm when he had to be but otherwise a great one. You know I'm right about this, so stop with defending the indefensible please.
Xrlq: I don't believe God protects America because there is no God. Not relevant. People who believe there is one, and who say that we're a wicked evil people in his eyes, are telling us something about how they see their own country and their fellow countrymen. In short, they're projecting their own hatred for America onto their idea of God.
If they don't like getting called out for it, too bad. They're insulting my country--not to mention people I care a lot about.
But I note the irony: sure we've done away with public duelling, cracked down on child abuse, done away with lynching, started taking drunk driving seriously, obliterated racism as acceptable in the public square--but people are piercing their bodies and getting tattoos! American civilization is surely on the brink of collapse!
Get over it.
Spoken like a true liberal -- in the modern sense. The past must be erased, all values are relative, all are equal, there is no difference between beauty and ugliness, good and bad.
Yes, I am a Romanticist -- proudly. I don't give a damn if I'm "anti-social" -- I'm pro-beauty and anti-ugliness.
Deliberately cultivated ugliness is my business because I'm forced to look at it, that's precisely why they do it. That's why they play their "music" (crap) so damn loud also.
Now you're demanding that all conservatives abandon their values and swallow relativism or else be branded un-patriotic by you. I pledge alegiance to the Flag, the Constitution, the soldiers of my country, and to the high culture of the West of which America is inseparably a part -- not to every nihilistic fad the most degenerate or conformist youth of our day choose to take up because they see it on TV. Our Founding Fathers would have vomited.
"Get over it" is the favorite phrase of those who have no values.
That's true to an extent or except perhaps in a medical/health clinic in which the examining nurse or doctor finds multiple tooth fractures and or tongue infections on the sweet little spirit girl from the local high school sporting a metal tongue insert or worse yet a plastic one with its multi-colorable bacterially laden possibilities.
Yes, that is their choice. But please do not condemn the observers nor relegate them to anti-social status.
From what I can see, my values aren't the relative ones here.
McKiernan: Ah. Well if an activity is self-destructive, there's nothing wrong with pointing that out, although piercing these days is a relatively minor risk. Shall we compare it to the dangers of, say, football? I've known multiple guys with permanent lifelong injuries they sustained playing that in High School.
Oh Dean, just for your 'hate all Roman things' idea...you may want to take a small look at the most basic of roman roundups...you know all those 'modern' things that Rome invented. And then, find a new place to live, a new language to speak, and go back to the roundhouse...
Dean, That actually addresses my point. There are teenagers well meaning and all and innocent in their benign anti-adult expressionism that are unaware of any risk.
So who is it that rings the alarm ? A person that points to a benign statement from any obscure non-judgemental blogger diarist observer or another blogger that announces 'a relatively minor risk' ?
Not to worry.
I have opinions, and to hell with you if you don't like them.
Piercing: Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, what idiocy. Little girls with loops in their lips. It's just wrong.
Bill
"Augustus literaly, in the most praising words of the historians, killed so many, and had their bodies left among the great buildings of Rome, that Rome STANK from the death and the blood. If you want to get nasty, Caesar killed hundereds of THOUSANDS of both Roman and Non-Roman peoples."
Further quoth Rhianna:
"Tradian mass-murdered. Where are your decrials of his killings? Hadrian's?"
I condemn them all just like most of the evil Roman emperors. Why do I need to name them when I've condemned them all? Julius Ceasar was a monster. Augustus was somewhat better but not much. Tiberius was another monster, as were Nero and Caligula and so many who came after them. A few were better, relatively speaking. Constantine was a big improvement, as was Justinian in some ways. But from the Rape of the Sabine Women to the days of the coliseum, there was so much to decry in that ancient evil civilization it's difficult to know where to begin.
And I'm not enough of a moral relativist to forgive all that due to some pretty poetry and some clever engineering.
I got my ear pierced when I was 15, nearly 25 years ago. Never regretted it. Got tired of it and took it out when I was in my 20s. I doubt I'll ever bother to re-pierce it but you never know. My business either way, no?
Last I checked, in most states it's illegal for minors to get any form of piercing without parental consent and without full notification of the possible medical side effects. Adults, on the other hand---well it's a free country, is it not?
Absolutely, if a person desires to put multiple chrome plated bolts in his scrotum or any other body part, I'm all for it save for myself.
On the other hand I went to my local Whole Food Grocery store here recently south of San Francisco and a gent with no less than six earring piercings just on the superior fold of his upper front ear that blended off to the posterior segment with several more not to mention the tragus area that had more assorted stars and half moons and dangly things. On the other ear,that would be the rightear, there were about six or seven piercings suggesting disconformity to the left ear and announcing that sameness in any aspects of current society is apparently to be disavowed at all costs. Well, I really got the point as I eyed the fellow rather benignly head to toe all in a manner of 2-3 seconds. I ignored the chain link fence key chain on his belt and the askewed hair job only to be somewhat sneered at with a "what the fuck is wrong with you old bastard look".
As I drove home, I wondered: Am I normal ?
Now speaking of high school football. Why don't they have any football in Iraq, Iran, Palestine or other such violent loving countries ?
As for the multiply-pierced: looks funny to me, but I can't see it as a sign of social rot, sorry.
Do you think that a gent with 20 to 25 head piercings on his ears, nose, eyebrow area and lips is actually making a public statement ?
Then, if someone observes that person, why would the next question to the observer be:
"What are you rebelling against ? "
I was going to apologize to Dean for something I wrote in that last comment, but he just called me a racist who likes lynchings, so I'm not going to.
I shall control myself and refrain from using the language he likes so much and say only this: He is a typical liberal who has swallowed the Communist line, hook, and sinker. He is a relativist. He attacks the Romans, whose reign expired over a thousand years ago (kick 'em while they're down, huh, Dean?), but he defends the murderers of 3,000 Americans on 9/11/2001 in the name of Political Correctness. He will attack any ancient and great culture, the whole human past, just so he can defend the noise and ugliness of today's Least Generation. In their opinion, Shakespeare is no better than grafitti on a men's room wall, Beethoven than nails scratching on a blackboard. Since they were born before today's young thugs were, they must be swept away in the name of the New Wave of the Kewl Generation. You go, dude! And he goes along with it in the name of Progress.
That's the upshot of liberalism even at its best: tolerance of anything and everything, the non-judgmentality, anything goes, everything is equal to everything else. Let the young cruds do their crappy thing and nobody has a right to criticize them or else we are all racists who like lynchings.
Yes, I am conservative, reactionary, dogmatic, intolerant, judgmental, elitist, imperialist, square, and all the rest of it. No, I will not "get over it", "move on", "cool off", "chill out", "take a chill pill", "mellow out", or any of the other cliches of today's Lost Generation. They have no passion, they have no ideals, they have no values, and -- while they demand tolerance -- they will not tolerate anybody who does have values, ideals, passion. Today's generation is the Lobotomized Generation.
I know nothing of Nero, other than the cliche that he represented the decadence of Rome' fall from greatness. Excuse me! I'll try to confine myself to things I know more about. But I'm going to go out on a limb again. Rome did go from rise to fall. It had a great deal to do with changing from building and growing to turning inwards, with ruling becoming only a corrupt self serving power struggle instead of including at least a component of ruling to achieve positive results, and with a growing group of people back home who needed food and entertainment instead of a reliable code of justice and jobs to do.
Now look at one tiny aspect of the USA that you brought up. The civil rights movement was a positive, powerful thing. What has it become? It has degenerated into a feeding ground for blood suckers like Jessie Jackson. It has become a counterproductive force that actualy destroys the productivity, the hopes, and dreams of black people. It holds them down. Worse it teaches them to be angry at the people who offer them correct advice: go to school, get a job, don't have babies until you are married. New Orleans is a perfect case study. The large number of indigents standing on roof tops, looking straight up, moving their mouths, could not be more like baby birds in a nest if they tried. It provides absolute condemnation of results achieved by civil right leaders in recent decades.
All of that is deplorable, but it is not the real decay and decline. It is the outward symptom of the decay and decline. The real decay is that the system is now rigged to produce results such as New Orleans, and the people sit by and tolerate it.
Modern day wickedness and sinfulnees is exemplified by Jessie Jackson, or more blatantly by Louis Farakan, or more cause-and-effect concretely by Ray Nagin. But wickedness and sinfulness are always with us. The real problem in America right now is not the badness, but that the badness is accepted. We don't battle it.
The politicians in charge will not speak the God's honest truth. They pander; they are corrupt. The people may gripe, but they do not rise up; they do not demand what is morally right. Instead, the majority sits around disgruntled and says "Oh, well, what can you do?" That is decline.
A related example: Thank God that the people roundly booed Kayne West at the football opener. All hope is not lost. The people still have some spirit. But the "system" does not. The NFL would not condemn Kayne West (he is a big money draw). The president would not defend himself (he'd be whipped by all and sundry if he simply announced that Kayne West was dead wrong and ought to be ashamed of himself). The major media will not condemn him (the major media like the negative effect he has on Bush). Three out of three, failure to uphold the morally correct position. That is decay.
This is far too long already. I know you can counter this or that. But instead step back and look at the big picture: Long term trends derive from the sum of short term trends. The people in America right now are allowing their principals to be chipped away one step at a time. We are not over the falls yet, but we are headed that way.
As for saying I've followed the communist line: You throw the word around like the witless lefties who call people "fascists" without having the faintest idea what fascism really is. I'd be angry if I weren't so amused at how fucking silly that statement is.
Dean Esmay: "Torture, mass murder, and enslavement are unequivocally evil."
Steven Malcolm Anderson: "Moral relativist!"
Dean Esmay: "America is a wonderful country, a wonderful people that I am deeply proud of, and I hate people who treat it with contempt."
Steven Malcolm Anderson: "Communist!"
Mweh-heh. Whatever. I'm tempted to ask why on Earth Steven hasn't attacked Bush for his attempts to bring liberal democracy to the muslim world, since he respects neither liberal democracy nor muslims, but I have lost the capacity to care. I don't take being lied about very well.
JFC: You skimmed through the discussions? Okay, I just skimmed through your comment and concluded that you are a fundamentally unserious person with nothing of value to say.
In a state of nature, without the protection of Christ, humans revert to paganism, the horrors of which Dean has listed above. And the Romans were the good pagans ... the bad ones were the Carthiginians.
I'm 90 degree turned from Dean on this. Christianity was a dramatic improvement ... as sad as that sounds given Christian history.
Many of those prior horrors are gone or reduced massively in part thanks to the incredible contributions of many Christians, of course, but still...
Anyway: so far as I'm concerned we are a fundamentally moral and good people, today as much as yesterday, and if we are less moral in some ways we are much more moral in others--as I have so ably demonstrated and which so far absolutely no one seriously tried to refute (except for Steven's half-assed claim that I called him a racist, which I didn't).
I long ago grew weary of the left's obsessive need to blame all bad in the world on religion, but I confess to finding it quite tiresome to be told by the religious that those of us who reject their faith--and worse, our children--are merely skating along and are only non-dangerous because the God talk of our parents rubbed off. But, enh, I guess that's just what some people need to believe. I think it's silly, but like faith it isn't something that can be proven or disproven. [shrug]
As to the rest of the post, Dean - I'm with you 100%.
You know me - I'm autistic when it comes to movie quotes.
"Steven: I'm not the one defending the mass-murdering, torture-loving Romans. Nor am I the one who apparently finds body piercing a greater indictator of cultural rot than public lynchings as a form of entertainment."
That means that I approve of lynchings according to you. That is the Jesse Jackson Democrat Party LIE. By the way, as I've pointed out before, it was crotchety old tight-fisted Northern Republicans like Coolidge (and, before him, fire-breathing hard-liners like Thaddeus Stevens) who opposed lynchings, not your free-spending Southern Democrats.
You gleefully attack the Romans (are the Greeks next on your list? The Italians of the Renaissance? The medieval Catholics? The Egyptians? The Babylonians? The Sumerians? The Mayans? The Chinese?) -- and yet, in order to appease Political Correctness, you defend Islam as "The Religion of Peace" and anybody who dares oppose it or disagree with it in any way is a racist according to you. (There is no such thing as a Muslim "race" by the way.) You even hate Muslims who dare to break with it. Anybody who dares point out that it was Muslims who murdered 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 is a bigot. Very well, I'm proud to be a bigot. A "bigot" today is only somebody who values Western culture (of which America is inseparably a part) and refuses to appease an alien enemy. According to you, Todd Beamer was a bigot when he said: "Let's roll!" instead of "Let's roll over,"
Dean Esmay: "This is the greatest generation in history! And if you disagree -- you're un-American!"
The kids today: "Throw out all your Beethoven records! Listen to rap 'music' instead! Throw out the past! The Founding Fathers were just bigoted racist slave owners! Why be bound by their old square values? Kids piercing themselves all over like savages in the jungle, wearing baseball caps backwards, and speaking in nothing but slang and expletives -- that's where it's at, baby! Cool, dude! Conform to the latest fad! Up With Ugliness! Down With Beauty!"
That's the greatest generation in history????
You remind me of the aging "liberals" of my day, so eager to "be young again", growing their hair long, wearing "love beads", listening to the Beatles and "HAIR", smoking pot, and telling everybody that "we must listen to what the kids are trying to teach us". It was they who sold out Viet Nam in the name of "peace".
As a rock-ribbed reactionary, I say it is the elders who must teach the young and not the other way around. Young people must be made to give place to their elders, speak only when spoken to, listen and heed, shut up and obey, strive to emulate their elders and superiors. They must be made to put away their baseball caps, their dirty T-shirts, their skateboards, their profane "music" (noise), and instead wear suits and ties and (when they earn it by being men) fedoras, listen to real music, steep themselves in the grandeur of the past, learn from the errors, and strive to emulate the best of the far greater generations that came before them, not the worst they see on TV. Young people should not be allowed to watch any TV. Children need discipline, not permissiveness.
Permissiveness at home and appeasement abroad will destroy us.
This was reality, not some shit I made up.
We're better than that now. I'm proud of that.
Stop acting like we're an evil people today, Steven. The greatest thing about us--the very greatest thing--is that we can recognize such things and transcend them.
In Christian terms: all of us are sinners. All fall short of the glory of God. But my God, look how far we've come.
It is the coward who cannot recognize his own flaws.
Jesse JacksonDean Esmay. Stop saying I approve of them or think they were OK. Quit playing your fucking Democrat Psrty race card.I also say that, as soon as homosexuals can legally marry and serve in the military, then they should cease all political activity. Negroes similarly have no legitimate poitical grievances now that all segregation and anti-miscegenation laws have been repealed in the 1960s. Nor do women, who now enjoy full equality before the law.
I'll just say he's mistaken and leave it at that. I'll say he's bought into the false notion of inevitable "Progress" and so he doesn't comprehend the illogic of his present position.
I'll say it again: I disapprove of both yesterday's lynchings and today's piercings. Why is that so hard for Dean to understand?
The serious part is this: are we better now than we were just a short while ago? Your strongest example, ending of lynching, was some 50 or 60 years ago. The country was growing better then. A decade or so later, Lyndon Johnson tried to implement a Great Society. Turned out to not work so well in practice, but it was a grand idea.
What are the grand ideas today? Where's the progress lately? It may be there, but if so I am blinded by a storm of contrary indicators.
Better not dare question Dean's
Jesse Jackson'stheory of inevitable Progress (and, remember, according to Dean, Ugliness = Progress) or else he'll say you're in favor of lynching.