Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Captain Virgil Hilts on July 02, 2004, 06:36:07 AM
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Ever Wonder Why?
Part I
When you have seen scenes of poverty and squalor in many Third World countries, either in person or in pictures, have you ever wondered why we in America have been spared such a fate?
When you have learned of the bitter oppressions that so many people have suffered under, in despotic countries around the world, have you ever wondered why Americans have been spared?
Have scenes of government-sponsored carnage and lethal mob violence in countries like Rwanda or in the Balkans ever made you wonder why such horrifying scenes are not found on the streets of America?
Nothing is easier than to take for granted what we are used to, and to imagine that it is more or less natural, so that it requires no explanation. Instead, many Americans demand explanations of why things are not even better and express indignation that they are not.
Some people think the issue is whether the glass is half empty or half full. More fundamentally, the question is whether the glass started out empty or started out full.
Those who are constantly looking for the "root causes" of poverty, of crime, and of other national and international problems act as if prosperity and law-abiding behavior were so natural that it is their absence that has to be explained. But a casual glance around the world today, or back through history, would dispel any notion that good things just happen naturally, much less inevitably.
The United States of America is the exception, not the rule. Our national birthday on the Fourth of July is an appropriate time to ask what has made American society one to which people are fleeing from other societies around the world.
Once we realize that America is an exception, we might even have a sense of gratitude for having been born here, even if gratitude has become un-cool in many quarters. At the very least, we might develop some concern for seeing that whatever has made this country better off is not lost or discarded.
Those among us who are constantly rhapsodizing about "change" in vague and general terms seem to have no fear that a blank check for change can be a huge risk in a world where so many other countries that are different are also far worse off.
Chirping about "change" may produce a giddy sense of excitement or of personal exaltation but, as usual, the devil is in the details. Even despotic countries that have embraced sweeping changes have often found that these were changes for the worse.
The czars in Russia, the shah of Iran, the Batista regime in Cuba, were all despotic. But they look like sweethearts compared to the regimes that followed. For example, the czars never executed as many people in half a century as Stalin did in one day.
Even the best countries must make changes and the United States has made many economic, social, and political changes for the better. But that is wholly different from making "change" a mantra.
To be for or against "change" in general is childish. Everything depends on the specifics. To be for generic "change" is to say that what we have is so bad that any change is likely to be for the better.
Such a pose may make some people feel superior to others who find much that is worth preserving in our values, traditions and institutions. The status quo is never sacrosanct but its very existence proves that it is viable, as seductive theoretical alternatives may not turn out to be.
Most Americans take our values, traditions and institutions so much for granted that they find it hard to realize how much all these things are under constant attack in our schools, our colleges, and in much of the press, the movies and literature.
There is a culture war going on within the United States -- and in fact, within Western civilization as a whole -- which may ultimately have as much to do with our survival, or failure to survive, as the war on terrorism.
There are all sorts of financial, ideological, and psychic rewards for undermining American society and its values. Unless some of us realize the existence of this culture war, and the high stakes in it, we can lose what cost those Americans before us so much to win and preserve.
Part II
Ever wonder why some people hate America so?
This is not a new phenomenon nor one confined to foreigners. More than 20 years ago, Eric Hoffer said: "Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America."
Note that it is not the downtrodden masses but the pampered Ph.D.s who most vent their spleen at the country that protects and indulges them. When a friend who teaches at Harvard put an American flag sticker on his car, his astonished colleagues demanded to know: "What is that?!"
An American flag on a car or a home would have brought a similar outcry of amazement and disgust at Berkeley -- and on elite campuses in between, all across the country.
Nor is such a posture confined to academia. Movie-maker Michael Moore is going around the world saying that the United States is "a crappy country" and its people "stupid" -- while his movie "Fahrenheit 911" is being praised to the skies in the press and among the intelligentsia, as it puts its anti-American message on the screen.
What is there about America that sets off such venom -- among Americans, of all people? One answer might be to look at the kinds of countries praised, defended, or "understood" by the intelligentsia.
For many years, the Soviet Union was such a country. After too many bitter facts about the Soviet Union came to light over the years to permit its rosy image to continue, much of the intelligentsia simply shifted their allegiance or sympathies to other collectivist countries, such as China, Cuba, or Vietnam in the Communist bloc or India, Tanzania and other collectivist regimes outside it.
It did not make a dent on intellectuals that people were fleeing the countries they praised, often at the risk of their lives, to try to reach the countries they were condemning -- especially the United States of America.
What is wrong with America, in the eyes of the intelligentsia? The same things that are right with America in the eyes of others.
If one word rings out, and echoes around the world, when America is mentioned, that word is Freedom. But what does freedom mean?
It means that hundreds of millions of ordinary human beings live their lives as they see fit -- regardless of what their betters think. That is fine, unless you see yourself as one of their betters, as so many intellectuals do.
The more the American vision of individual freedom prevails, the more the vision of the anointed fails. The more ordinary people spend the money they have earned for whatever they want, the less is available to the government as taxes to spend for "the common good" as Hillary Clinton recently put it.
The more people who raise their own children by their own values, the less is there a place for the collectivist notion that "it takes a village to raise a child," as Hillary has said elsewhere. Too many of our schools are convinced that they are that village.
Cars and guns are both instruments and symbols of personal independence -- and both are targets of hostility and even hatred by those who are convinced that they can run other people's lives better than those people can run their own lives. All sorts of claims are made against cars and guns, without the slightest interest in checking those claims against readily available facts.
When America frees ordinary people from the domination of their betters, and prevents them for being used as guinea pigs for the vision of the anointed, the more America insults the very presumptions that enable the anointed to think of themselves as special, as one-up on the rest of us.
Countries that impose a collectivist vision from the top down will be forgiven many atrocities, while a country like the United States that lets individuals go their own way will not even be forgiven its successes, much less its shortcomings.
As we celebrate both our country's independence and our individual independence on the Fourth of July, we should never forget that this independence is galling to those who want us to be dependent on them.
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Educated pple = commies!
lets rehabilitate them.. OFF TO THE LABOUR CAMPS!!!
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Originally posted by Saintaw
Educated pple = commies!
lets rehabilitate them.. OFF TO THE LABOUR CAMPS!!!
YES! Welcome to the conservative movement. You are now officially declared to be a nonfrenchman. Congratulations. BTW you must spell as proper Americans spell not in the incorrect Engish fashion. Labor is proper spelling.
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You are now officially declared to be a nonfrenchman.
Finaly!!!!!! I R RECOGNISED!
Mind if i use this in my sig line? ;)
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"Cars and guns are both instruments and symbols of personal independence -- and both are targets of hostility and even hatred by those who are convinced that they can run other people's lives better than those people can run their own lives. All sorts of claims are made against cars and guns, without the slightest interest in checking those claims against readily available facts. "
I couldn't have said it better myself.
And saint... If you think that an American flag lapel pin or decal on a car for a proffessor at one of our universities wouldn't be met with scorn then you don't know anything about our accademics.
lazs
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"When America frees ordinary people from the domination of their betters, and prevents them for being used as guinea pigs for the vision of the anointed, the more America insults the very presumptions that enable the anointed to think of themselves as special, as one-up on the rest of us."
Is that why American considers itself exempt from War Crimes is it special or just one-up on the rest of us, or are you waiting for Kissenger and Bosch to kick the bucket first?
"If one word rings out, and echoes around the world, when America is mentioned, that word is Freedom. But what does freedom mean?"
What freedoms did American bring to countries like the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Chile, Nicaraguan, El Salvadore just to name a few. America since post WWII has denied many people of many different countries their own birthright to choose their own govn't and instead imposed with coups or assassinations a dictators that was friendly to American corporate interests with little thought towards individual rights or freedom.
Heck it took a huge civil rights movement just back in 1964 to get the ideology of your consitution rolling at home and still today Gays are denied the same rights as Heteros and you're trying to sell subscriptions abroad, oh the irony of all men are created equal.
what was the article about again?
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America is not exempt from war crimes but we do not think of other countries as our betters any more than we think our self proclaimed intelectuals are. You can keep your world court... don't really like the way you run your own courts or countries.
not gonna argue about which bannana repulic despot was better or worse than the other.
The civil rights movement was fought by republicans against democrats who were in violation of our constitution. since then the democrats have tried to buy the negroes by giving them rights that are counter to the constitution and take away other races rights.
And... what rights are gays dennied?
lazs
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Gays are not denied the right to get married. They can marry anyone as long as they are not of the same sex.
Civil rights. we've done this before, so I'll be brief.
Dems voted against it with Al GORES father voteing no twice. Sen KKK BYRD held the longst filabuster in modern history against it.
More Rebs as a % of sitting Sen. voted for civil rights. It's just The Reb. have lost the fight in the media that it was them that past civil rights.
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Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
Eric Hoffer said: "Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America."
Nowhere has nationalism been as rampant as in Germany during the 30s and 40s or the USSR during the cold war... Look where those governments are today.
These educated Americans that Hoffer speaks of can sit around and loathe their country from the comfort of their homes and spew their opinions from the safety of federally-protected protest-rallies all they want. Fact of the matter is, it'll be a cold day in hell before any significant portion of this so-called intelligencia decide to pick up and move to any of the countries which they cite, on a regular basis, as examples of benevolent, enlightened societies.
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Originally posted by lazs2
If you think that an American flag lapel pin or decal on a car for a proffessor at one of our universities wouldn't be met with scorn then you don't know anything about our accademics.
I'd like to know what experience you have at any university. Do you work at a college, attend college, or simply getting more of your verbage verbatim from AM radio?
I do, and I know of no incidents where a professor or colleague from another institution was met with adversity or violence by wearing the national colors on a lapel or on their car.
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Originally posted by JBA
Gays are not denied the right to get married. They can marry anyone as long as they are not of the same sex.
That's not true, they marry someone of thier sex as well.
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Originally posted by Thrawn
That's not true, they marry someone of thier sex as well.
congrats Thrawn!
where are you going on the honeymoon?
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Wow. How cleverly you have put my sexuality into question.
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Originally posted by Thrawn
Wow. How cleverly you have put my sexuality into question.
Was there ever really any question?
:p
-Sik
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red tail... where did I say violence? profs don't do violent things unless they are part of a mob. I have not attended any school for a couple of years.. before that I took one or two clases a year.
lazs
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By Thomas Sowell
Ever wonder why? Part III
Thomas Sowell
July 6, 2004
Ever wonder why people who hate America live in America?
At a soccer match between Mexico and the United States a few years ago, the stands were full of Mexican flags. The fans booed when "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played and those few fans who raised American flags were pelted with debris, as were the American soccer players.
This would have been rotten behavior if it had taken place in Mexico City. But it took place in Los Angeles. So it's scary.
We already have enough homegrown America-haters in this country without importing any more, whether from Mexico or the Middle East. But neither political party has the guts to put a stop to it.
Politicians will not even enforce our existing immigration laws, much less pass new ones. If they did, they would not only lose minority voting blocs, they would be so vilified in the media as to lose the votes of those mainstream Americans who take the media seriously.
Many of those in the media, and among the intelligentsia in general, see themselves as citizens of the world, and they see the United States as just the country that happens to be lucky enough to be graced by their presence.
To these elites, immigration is just one more issue on which to engage in moral preening and attribute nasty motives to ordinary Americans who disagree with them. From the way many discussions of immigration are conducted, you might never dream that we are talking about the permanent alteration of the American people and the American culture.
Even drug addiction is not so permanent, for some people can give it up and, if they can't, maybe their children can. But a woman can cross the border from Mexico to have a baby in Texas or California and that baby's descendants will be American citizens long after all of today's American citizens are dead and gone.
Most of the people who come here, legally or illegally, undoubtedly do so just to better themselves, as immigrants have done for centuries. But people who crossed an ocean to get here came here to become Americans, not to remain foreigners, much less to become America haters.
The difference today is that organized activists and a multicultural ideology that has become dogma among educators and the media combine to keep foreigners foreign in language, culture and allegiance. What happened at the Los Angeles soccer match is just one of many indications of how well they have succeeded.
None of this is peculiar to people from Mexico. There are people here from the Middle East who demand rights that they never had in their native countries, but who take on no corresponding obligation of loyalty to America. Instead, many teach hatred of those Americans who were born here who happen to be Jewish.
Our tolerance has led to importing intolerance.
American citizenship is no longer prized as it once was. Indeed, it is no longer necessary for living permanently in the United States. In California, illegal immigrants not only go to the state universities, they pay lower tuition than American students who are from other states.
Both legal and illegal immigrants who don't feel like bothering to learn the language used by the American people will have government agencies and private institutions alike provide them with information in their own languages.
The argument that immigrants "take jobs that other Americans don't want" leaves out the crucial factor of pay. If legal or illegal immigrants came here and worked as journalists or college professors at half the pay that American journalists or college professors receive, the intelligentsia would probably have no trouble seeing the fallacy in what they are saying.
One of the reasons many Americans will not take many low-paying or arduous jobs is that the welfare state makes it unnecessary for them to do so. But get those Americans off the gravy train, and take away employers' supply of cheap foreign labor, and Americans would resume doing jobs that they did for centuries.
More important, we would no longer be importing so many people who don't want to be Americans.
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On the mexican thing... Most Americans that are of mexican decent that I know... dislike the criminal wetbacks as much as we do... they hate the la raza crap and are much more outspoken than I am on the subject. They would shock most of you on how they speak of illegals. I know some who have moved to places like kansas to "get away from all the mecicans"
They don't consider themselves mexicans but Americans. They wonder, as I do, Why these la raza and illegals hate America so much that they would like it to become a dung hole exactly like the place they left.
lazs