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Old 09-08-2010, 11:51 AM
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ilbegone ilbegone is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Twoller View Post
Agreed. Although I am weak on the notion of our culture being "American". I think we need to be more specific than that.

Our culture is the culture of the United States Citizen. Our culture is the culture of citizenship.

It's true, there are a lot of word games going on. Increasingly I think the idea of being an "American" does not include anything like being a US citizen any more.

Not only is our culture the culture of US citizenship, but we advance the idea of national citizenship for other countries as well and respect their citizenship no matter what their race. Most peoples deserves a country they can call their own that respects the borders of others as well as their own. This is a respectable enough notion that people are willing to lie about their claims to nationalism, just as people lie about claims to citizenship.
I'm not slamming you in this post, just some commentary.

American culture does change to some extent as time goes on. 1830's America was not quite the same as 1780's America, just as the early 20th century was not the same as America in the 1950's.

However, there was a continuity of something which came out of the English Civil War (fought on both sides of the Atlantic) which infused itself into a dynamic, classically American essence of American culture. However, that is being chipped away by our education system and instant gratification of short attention spans.

I would agree that we are a nation of citizens rather than a nation of immigrants, but I'm not sure if the definition of culture is that of "citizenship" as opposed to "American".

In this context I am reminded of all those people who join Fraternal organizations not because of any great desire to to be helpfully brotherly or exert oneself towards the purported charitable goals of those organizations, but rather to take benefit of the "economy boozing" to be found in many of those organizations.

So they join up for cheap drinks and spend their time forming cliques and stabbing each other in the back.

It seems that same scenario is what America is all about anymore.

God, did I just depress myself.

I'm going to go have a drink...
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