These guys, too.
We usually keep him locked in the attic, but he gnawed through the leather straps again, and got loose…
Bless his heart
This is the most explicit I’ve ever seen him be about his beliefs, but I don’t think it’s been a secret to anyone who’s paid attention (not that I blame anyone for NOT paying attention). He’s usually a bit more circumspect, but IME, people who are constantly crying about “anti-white racism” are generally racist.
Yeah, be he’s always been a right-wing tool. Unfortunately, his name is too close IMO to dancewithcats, who is a perfectly reasonable poster.
Sometimes I get them mixed up, and then I feel guilty towards dwc…
-Joe
I’m betting we won’t be very far into the next page before someone pits LonesomePolecat.
I normally like to stay in the pit because excellent debates grow here without the rules required in GD (also, I’m not as smart as all those guys). I was wondering, has LP ever posted his thoughts on this subject in GD?
I ask because I would be interested in seeing him attempt to build a valid case along these lines and try to defend it. I find the views he has expressed in this thread to be absolutely despicable, but I would like to see him try to defend it and get more detail on it beyond the few posts he has “contributed” to this thread.
I like to know my enemies.
Oh, why bother? Have you ever considered that he knows his POV irritates the shit out of people, and that’s why he spouts it? I’m interested in hearing his side in a rational discourse if possible, just because people who think so differently from me having something novel to offer. But Pitting him? It will accomplish nothing but giving him lots of attention and turning otherwise nice folks into shrill scolds. Why waste the energy?
Having lived through the same era, I would be very interested in an exact timeline from you that supportsd any of this contention. And by exact timeline, I would like to see specific events and specific dates that demonstrate your claims, not some vague “50s = good, 70s = bad, ergo, 60s caused problems and the changes were all from liberals.”
Right. There were no folks on the Right screaming “love it or leave it” in the 60s, no folks on the Right hurling stones and eggs and rotten fruit at those pacific marchers, no houses (and churches) being vandalized or burned (or bombed) when a person of “the wrong sort” tried to buy a house in a white neighborhood, no adults standing around screaming racial epithets at school kids for having the temerity to have been sent to schools closer to their homes or trying to get an education at a state supported college. There were no kids being expelled from school (politely I’m sure :rolleyes:) for being brazen enough to wear their hair as long as their collars. No one was ever challenged or ridiculed in public for suggesting that civil rights should be the birth right of every U.S. citizen. No one was ever harrassed for wearing odd clothing or for dancing to Rock and Roll.
The idea that civilty was only lost by and violence only encouraged from the Left has no bearing on reality. Whatever loss of civility we have suffered, (and I would agree that we have lost some), it arose from the general confusion of the times and trying to blame the Left (or trying to blame the Right), for that loss is little more than partisan revisionist history.
You’re not serious, right?
As for LonesomePolecat, I’d like to know exactly WHICH “culture” he’s talking about. New York? San Franscisco? Atlanta? Pittsburgh? shudderClevelandshudder
I don’t think this is correct. I think that the left is unquestionably responsible for the majority of change—for both good and ill. Conservatives are/were generally content with the status quo and change was instigated from the left. Again, there is good and bad to this. But I don’t see what’s wrong with hoping for the good, positive change while wishing we could avoid the increased crassness of society. Now, it may very well be that the two are inseparable, that you can’t do away with one without sacrificing the other. But that also might NOT be the case.
And this doesn’t address your post, but some of the others: there seems to be a notion that America is this neutral medium into which all these other cultures are free to change and alter. What I don’t think is appreciated is that we are a culture unto ourselves, one worthy of protecting. I think the proof of this is that so many people from around the world want to come here. I do think that the old analogy of a melting pot is apt. But today there seems to be an idea that it is more of a paella (or substitute any similar ethnic dish). In the old analogy, everyone became an American, as it was defined before they came her. The new way is that new people coming here needn’t do that. In fact, that their retaining their own culture makes ours better. I don’t buy that argument at all. This is not to say that even the old analogy kept things pure. and that is not the goal. But it slowed the change so the whatever got added took affect slowly, allowing the underlying culture to slightly redefine itself with nuance, to the degree that the change was usually imperceptible.
I’d ask those who disagree with me two questions" 1) Is the American culture worth preserving? And 2) If it is, who will do it if not ourselves?
And one final note to jayjay regarding his hothouse analogy: gardens need tending. If you want a rose garden or a flower garden to thrive, you have to pull weeds, etc. The ability of one thing to withstand another on its own is not necessarily metric of worthiness or goodness. If so, their would be weeds and kudzu dominating every garden and farm…
Excuse me. Weren’t Americans saying pretty much that exact same thing about 100 years ago? Only then, the “alien races” where the Irish, the Italians, and the Eastern Europeans. As I recall, Catholicism was seen as a large threat to America’s Protestant culture and Catholics were a dangerous threat to America’s culture.
I can’t resist. If America’s culture and civilization is being displaced by alien races and cultures from around the globe and slowly dying out, it certainly has been taking longer than we thought.
That or perhaps these things aren’t the threat some folks think they are.
You are basing this on the assumption that society is more crass now. In some ways, it is. Sexuality and drug use are more overt, language is more colorful. But sex, drugs, and cussing were all around before the 60’s, they were just dirty things that people did (and suffered for) in secret. The way people of color, gays, people of different religions, and women were treated was much crasser than now; attempts are at least made now to acknowledge equality and strive for it where it’s not present. Children have more rights than they did then.
Thus, it really depends on what you choose to define as crass. Generally, it’s what makes YOU uncomfortable (the general you, not you specifically, magellan), ignoring the crassness others suffer out of your line of sight. I’d say the net crassness of society is the same, it’s just distributed differently. That’s why people who whine about the loss of decorum, to me, seem to be whining that they are no longer being treated with kid gloves. Too bad. Change is messy.
What is “the American culture”? Baseball? Hot dogs? I don’t think either is in imminent or even foreseeable danger of being displaced… by squash and calamari, perhaps?
There’s no such thing as “the American culture”.
If you define “American culture” as “things which are American”, then by any reasonable definition, American culture is displacing the indigenous cultures of the rest of the world. Coca-Cola is the global icon of the soft drink. McDonald’s is the world’s best known restaurant. Hollywood makes the movies that the rest of the world watches. Rock and roll and hip hop dominate the airwaves. The legs of the human race are encased in Levis.
So tell me, what is American culture, and where is it going?
In some respects, Lonesome Polecat’s screed makes a little bit of sense. As an Englishman of Indian descent, I considered it reasonable for others to expect that I adopt English customs. Since I didn’t like Indian food anyway and was never asked to learn Hindi by my parents, that suited me just fine. I believe, generally, that immigrants to any country should do their best to learn the language and customs.
The problem with this position is that I’ve never met any local (white American or Briton) who said things like that and didn’t follow up with “but if it were up to me they’d all be sent home”.
I’ll answer your two questions with two of my own:
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How is American culture in danger of not being “preserved”? Give concrete examples.
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Who do you mean by “ourselves”? Only those who were born here more than 2 generations ago?
I can’t tell you how many New York Yankees hats I saw in Germany. I think there were more KFC’s in Prague than there are in Boston. (It works the other way around, too; I see Swarovski crystal shops in every mall, now.) But, chances are that whatever eventually replaces rock and roll and hip hop will get its start here, too.
Starving Artist, have you seen the movie Pleasantville? Two modern teens (except it’s a ten-year-old movie) are transported into a black-and-white, 50’s sitcom. Everyone goes about their lives without asking questions; without even the vocabulary to ask them. Where does the road out of town lead? to the other side of town; where else is there?
And the interlopers expand their horizons. They bring knowlege of art, travel, pleasure; questions, imperfections, challenges. A student misses a shot at basketball practice and everyone avoids that ball like a live grenade (not that they’d know what that is). There is great turmoil, and the local bigwigs resist the changes.
Just a movie, I know, but I always thought it was very well done; and rather daring to make such a statement about the joys and benefits of being corrupted by knowlege.
There is a reason that the standard epithet hurled at the Right from 1968 to 1973 was “reactionary.” It may be a “liberal” thrust that initiates some change, but the direction and energy of the change can easily be propelled or even controlled by the reactions to it.
A pop music group began wearing their hair longer and over their eyes. Their popularity led others to emulate or expand on that style. So far, all we have is people choosing hair styles–no violence.
In reaction, school authorities declared draconian rules that prohibited the styles (based on no good reason except that “change is bad”) and began expelling students who adopted the styles, occasionally forcibly cutting or shaving the hair off, and setting a tone that encouraged some fellow students (typically associated with the “jocks,” although hardly found exclusively among athletes or among all athletes) to begin to pick fights and harrass students with longer hair.
So a simple hair style sets in motion excessive and arbitrary rules and violence, but it is the “changes” of the “liberals” that has caused society to implode.
Nope. Don’t buy it. Won’t even rent it. Can’t make me accept it as a gift.
What?!! How can you deny that the left—the liberal, theprogressives—are the ones that initiated change? That was the point of my post which you seemed to have contorted into…well, something else. And I’m not sure what. That the left is responsible for most change is a non-partisan statement, because, as I said, they have initiated change both good and bad. Were not, are not, the conservatives usually the ones resistant to change? If so, where where does this force for change come from?
I think what tomndebb was pointing out is that you’re ascribing political motives to changes that may not have been political at all (at least, when they first started). The left isn’t some monolithic entity in which everyone who wanted change had to become some sort of card-carrying member of before-hand. Saying that anyone who initiated social/political change in the '60s or '70s is a liberal begs the question of why anyone who initiated change before then wouldn’t be a liberal too. The Mormons in the 1820s-30s started massive social changes within their group until forced into exile in Utah weren’t liberals. The Founding Fathers changed both the entire political and social order (relatively speaking for the time) by breaking away and declaring that all (white, land-owning) men were considered political equals and entitled to a vote. Change is created by those with vision, whether considered good or bad at the time or by posterity - not just by liberals.
Regarding Lonesome Polecat’s anger, I’m going to risk raising an uproar that I don’t have time to deal with, but I think it’s something that needs to be said if we’re all going to be open and honest here.
I may be wrong, and I hope he will correct me if so and I will apologize, but I think the burr under his saddle is illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Time and time again I’ve seen and heard conservatives accused of racism because they object to the utterly unprecedented influx of illegal Mexican immigrants into this country. And what is the reason for this conservative objection? It’s illegal!!! But no, not according to the left. Predictably, they contend that conservative objection to the illegality of it is simply a mask to cover racism, just like any other conservative objection to anything involving non-whites is called racism.
I don’t know of any country in the world that allows people to flood willy-nilly and almost totally unchecked through its borders. Passports and visas exist for a reason, and that is to control immigration. Every country does it.
But not here. At least not when it comes to Mexico. No, we allow them to flood into the country, and thanks to the left we have movements afoot to give them drivers’ licenses, health care paid for with U.S. tax dollars, legislation to require Spanish language alongside English in government offices (and undoubtedly required of private business soon, if the typical slippery slope kicks in).
Now, how in the hell liberals can look people in the eye and claim this is all okay and call people who object to it racist is a complete mystery to me. These people are breaking the law! They are not supposed to be here! This is just more of the same PC bullying that the left has engaged in for the last forty years or more. The objection has nothing to do with race! Period! My next door neighbor is from Mexico and she came here legally. She applied, went through the waiting period, got approved and is now the supervisor of three McDonald’s stores. She is pissed off as hell that all these people are being allowed to come here illegally and get away with it. She is also pissed that the left in this country is agitating for citizenship and government assistance for them.
I’m with jayjay regarding the benefits and enjoyment to be derived from a multi-cultural society, but I’m adamantly opposed to illegal immigration and the would-be social programs and benefits related to it.