I’m Jewish, but fully recognize that I’m very much a product of America’s Anglo Saxon Protestant culture, perhaps because it shares much with Jewish culture: hard work, honesty, self sufficiency, not looking for handouts, helping others, personal responsibility, and not least the belief that one plus one really always equals two and getting your homework in on time actually matters. This culture has built an amazing country and I don’t believe that the majority of citizens, no matter where they’re originally from, are willing to throw it away. No matter what their “betters” tell them.
Very true, Karen. Yes, the WASPY-virtues are very much linked to a larger Judeo-Christian heritage that forms the ideological foundation of our civilization and that we must continually re-affirm, or else we will lose it.
These Judeo-Christian values were the air we breathed at one time. Many non-WASPS and non-Jews learned what was right and wrong being steeped in what most Christians and Jews defined that as. It is also why those who were not part of any religion still had excellent character. It was learned from others, many others.
Murphy is odious. I will never forgive him for his absolute insistence that Biden was sharp as a tack, almost every Sunday morning on every network for a year. I would not credit him with saying a single thing that he earnestly believed.
I’ve lived in the state of CT for 25 years. I can think of no Congressman who I loathe more than Murphy. And that’s saying something - CT has possibly the most contemptible Congressional contingent of any state.
As Secretary Rubio recently articulated, western European culture is central to who we are as Americans. It's our duty to defend it against all who'd denigrate it (anywhere, btw). In my view, for all its faults, western civ--with its commitments to personal liberty and autonomy, rule of law, reason etc--is the last hope for a world in trouble. You're right to stay away from the race stuff. I'm an American which means I adhere to values and norms developed first in western Europe and then advanced in the USA. When people use the term white privilege, etc, what they're actually doing is looking to a faulty hierarchy that is counterproductive to those that they purport to serve. That should be pointed out often.
I agree with your argument completely. It is strengthened when one travels a bit further back in time to see that the deepest foundations of our culture were conceived on the far eastern edge of the Mediterranean by peoples who today would not be called white.
Agree. It's ironic. I remember a controversial book on this subject from maybe 30 years ago. Black Athena it was called. It was widely attacked, but there's little doubt that the ancient Greeks were influenced by older cultures. Egyptians, Phoenicians, others. I've also seen it argued that key tenets of stoic philosophy were based on Buddhist influences on the Greeks, by way of various Persian incursions into India (Darius, I think, and Alexander.) Lots of cross-pollination from the get-go.
If Chris Murphy was at least a tiny bit intellectually honest and true to his ideology, he would have immediately surrendered his job and started campaigning for an underprivileged woman of color as better deserving to be a US senator. Yet, he is still in the Senate, virtue-signalling from the top of his lungs.
Much like Billie Eilish, who proudly proclaims “no person is illegal on stolen land”, as she receives her trophy from a culture and country with borders, and then retreats to her luxurious home with walls and gates to keep people out.
1. They rage against colonialism and stealing land, but in the same breath, declare that nobody is illegal on stolen land, essentially, promoting colonialism
2. They are inviting others to share the land that they stole, but in the same breath, declare that from the river to the sea, it is legal to burn alive those whom they declare to be on that land illegally, despite those people being on their ancestral land.
One great flaw in Eilish's argument is that it has been discovered that humans lived on the continent of America, both north and south, before the "natives," those who crossed on the great Siberian bridge, who supposedly had their land stolen from "white" people. Then there is the long history of mankind's exploration and conquering new lands, all critical in man's evolutionary advancement.
Correct EVERY race and culture has 'stolen' someone's land at one time or another over the ten's of thousands of years. Every. Single. One. of ALL our ancestors.
It’s very simple it’s all about genes, intelligence and morality. It’s not color. You could be purple for all I care, if you’re moral, decent and halfway intelligent your physical qualities don’t matter. I don’t get what this article is trying to say. We need to realize that some people are born disadvantaged through no choice of their own but they have choices once they get here. They can choose between thug life and normal, they can choose to be criminal or not. They can choose to exploit their fellow citizens or not. No one forced them to pimp out their sister, or get all their friends hooked on smack so they can get it for free. But this is normal for ghetto culture, incompatible to moral decency of a healthy society. There is an attitude that goes along with this idea of selling out to the white man culture that’s it’s somehow ok to screw everyone as long as you get yours because you got screwed, no you screwed yourself with bad choices and no morals.
Yes but unfortunately we have new generations of imbeciles that are dumb enough to speak and write these moronic ideas and disseminate them to the populace.
First, the only way to have a meaningful conversation with anyone is thru a common understanding of the words each uses. The left is very adept at using words that mean one thing to them and another to someone on the right. The perfect example is the left's use of the word 'Democracy.' This term means something completely different to the right, which causes confusion and the left knows this, and they deliberately use this to their advantage.
Second, the left's use of terms like 'race' and 'culture' and other arbitrary categorizations (like LGBTQ, etc.) that they use to assign people to groupings of their defining, is the termination point of how they view all of humanity. They see people as individuals only insofar as a means of determining which arbitrarily defined population to lump them into. (In the manner of Hogwarts Sorting Hat). AOC demonstrated this the other day in Munich when she emphatically stated that "Culture is changing. Culture always changes. Culture for the entire history of human civilization has been a fluid, evolving thing that is a response to the conditions that we live in." For her, and people like her, all of humanity is defined by whichever subgrouping she assigns them to, according to some characteristic who's definition is purposefully indeterminate and changes to fit the needs of the moment. For her, "Culture" indicates a definitional finality encompassing all of humanity, and she will look no further.
Also, in defining "culture" as a "fluid, evolving thing", she is really saying the ends are justified and defined, by her, thru whichever means she chooses to employ, which thus are also fluid, evolving things. This circularity of thought, which emanates from whoever is In Charge at the moment, like the tide, is never still. This fluidity is why it's so hard to debate them. It's why using 'facts' and 'logic' in debating them is so frustratingly ineffective.
In comparison, for an encapsulation of the view from the right, reread the last two paragraphs in this post. Particularly:
"The genius of the early Americans is that they gave us a nation that, over time, yielded a shared culture capable of recognizing the contributions of various groups while building a government based on equality under the law. At our best, we can honestly discuss the realities and differences among cultural groups while insisting that, as a matter of policy, we treat all individuals as individuals."
This, in a nutshell, is the difference between the left and the right. The left sees people as an amorphous mass to be manipulated at will, and this is where their view of humanity stops. The right sees race and culture and sexual preference and etc., as simply a part of each of us as individuals, and nothing more. In the US, our need to bring order to society has resulted in "a government based on equality under the law" where "we treat all individuals as individuals." This allows for a social structure that is based not on people's characteristics, which are definitional and ever-changing, but on an external structure of law, which applies equally to each as individuals in complete disregard to race, or skin color, or sexual predilections, or religious beliefs, or hair color, or height, or income, or preferred NFL/MLB teams, or size of feet.
The left will always see and define me, as a White Male, and nothing more. This inability to see me as anything more than a member of one of their arbitrary groupings, their inability to see my god-given individuality, is by definition, dehumanizing. And this is how they can throw around terms like Nazi and racist and misogynist and all the other pejorative labels they use, simply upon seeing my face.
The right will always see me as a discrete individual, and nothing less. There never has been, is not now, and never will be another human exactly like me. Or you. Or any other individual you happen to encounter. And as a discrete individual, I am bound by adherence not to some ideology or arbitrary political demand of the moment, but by the letter, and the spirit, of the law that as a US Citizen, I agree to abide by for the protection of my own rights and for the protection of the rights of others.
The left is completely incapable of understanding this, which is why debating them using terminology of their choice, use and definition, is pointless at best.
Senator Murphy only needed to ask Michelle Obama what White culture is. At a live event last year, promoting her new book "The Look," Mrs. Obama addresses the crowd saying:
"let me explain something to White people, our hair comes out of our head naturally in a curly pattern, so when we're straightening it to follow your beauty standards we are trapped by the straightness. That is why so many of us can't swim, and we run away from the water; people won't go to the gym because we're trying to keep out hair straight for y'all."
As we can see, the whiteness parallax extends even into the realm of race realism and racist stereotypes. Michelle Obama is allowed to openly notice the heritable traits and affirm the racist stereotypes of Black people, while Jeremy Carl can't simply suggest Whites might have noticeable characteristics as well. I wonder how Senator Murphy would've reacted had Carl offered "beauty standards" as an example of White identity.
Likewise, it seems Michelle's address to "White people" acknowledges that White people share some cultural identity. At the very least they share some cluelessness as to the texture of Black peoples hair. Might I suggest the New York Times start capitalizing White when referring to White's racism and complete ignorance of other racial groups daily struggles.
Nobody forced Michelle Obama to get her hair straightened. She would have looked nice in an Afro. She did a lot of things other people wanted her to and now complains about it on TV.
My grandmother had an afro, a natural afro, in the 70s -- mind you my grandmother was a Jew from Belorus who immigrated to the US around 1910 -- so I don't want to hear about the curly/kinky hair issue. I inherited that hair, though mine is finer and more curly than kinky.
My point is that culture is different than just skin color or hair type; it includes dress, food, religion, music, art, and many other things. Further, I'm very sorry for those who find it necessary to denigrate -- or even disavow as Murphy appears to do -- their own culture. No culture nor any society is perfect, but one hopes that every person can appreciate the good in their culture and maybe work to improve those aspects that are not so laudable.
"Personally, I don’t like the term “whiteness,” which is a Marxist coinage, and would be happy to replace the current shorthand with something better." ... 'Euro-American' ?
Chris, in addition to being a first- rate investigative reporter, you are also a real-deal historian-intellectual... very impressed with your educational base, it gives your reporting a rock-solid intellectual foundation. Hector St John de Crevecoeur? Nice!
Also: great interview with Rachel Campos Duffy last night on Watters. And on a personal note: great to see you dressed in a tie! We can't give in to the now-rampant no-tie trend, it is the exact wrong thing to do when we are trying to recover a measure of stature and respect for men and masculinity. The collapse of men and masculinity charts pretty closely with the movement of men dressing down. Look at any photo of a group of American men pre-about 1970 and compare it to today, and you will see what I mean. "Casual Fridays" has become "Casual Monday-Sunday." That must stop, if we are to rebuild the stature of men and masculinity in America.
The question I always wonder about when people use “white” or “whiteness” as a pejorative, as well as framing the history of the United States as purely an oppressive colonial project and are anti-western, is what exactly are they going after? I guess ultimately they don’t want the United States to exist anymore, and are bigoted towards white people or white culture. In other words, true haters of America. It’s frustrating we have to keep living with these people, I think we’d all be better off, including them, if they gave up their citizenship, and found a new land of greener pastures.
But they probably won’t leave. They like the conveniences, such as their Starbucks, malls, and other affordances this country offers. These leaders, much like Tim Walz who proclaimed people hiding from ICE was akin to an Anne Frank story, are guilty of keeping these rhetorical fires going. Always stirring the pot to rile people up when they are in a losing position. We need better leaders who don’t play these games, and have more respect for their constituents and this country.
As an Italian American, my parents - one from the Sicilian south and one from the northern border to Switzerland - brought different Italian cultures, languages and cuisines to America. They were hardly accepted by many existing “white” Americans (those without accents). They faced both discrimination and acceptance in their lives, strove to become as American as possible, fought in wars and developed a shared sense of American culture that was passed down to my generation. Their immigrant friends didn’t condemn them - they supported them. It’s a familiar story. What has changed is that while they became part of the American culture, they are now considered part of the white culture… the one that doesn’t exist according to some… unless it’s the oppressive white culture. It’s a familiar story.
I’m Jewish, but fully recognize that I’m very much a product of America’s Anglo Saxon Protestant culture, perhaps because it shares much with Jewish culture: hard work, honesty, self sufficiency, not looking for handouts, helping others, personal responsibility, and not least the belief that one plus one really always equals two and getting your homework in on time actually matters. This culture has built an amazing country and I don’t believe that the majority of citizens, no matter where they’re originally from, are willing to throw it away. No matter what their “betters” tell them.
Spot on. Thanks for your comment.
Very true, Karen. Yes, the WASPY-virtues are very much linked to a larger Judeo-Christian heritage that forms the ideological foundation of our civilization and that we must continually re-affirm, or else we will lose it.
Also known as the Judeo-Christian tradition.
These Judeo-Christian values were the air we breathed at one time. Many non-WASPS and non-Jews learned what was right and wrong being steeped in what most Christians and Jews defined that as. It is also why those who were not part of any religion still had excellent character. It was learned from others, many others.
Murphy is odious. I will never forgive him for his absolute insistence that Biden was sharp as a tack, almost every Sunday morning on every network for a year. I would not credit him with saying a single thing that he earnestly believed.
Murphy is a total opportunist. Hence the lies that he thinks (wrongly) benefit him.
he is the definition (as is connecticut) of white.
I’ve lived in the state of CT for 25 years. I can think of no Congressman who I loathe more than Murphy. And that’s saying something - CT has possibly the most contemptible Congressional contingent of any state.
As Secretary Rubio recently articulated, western European culture is central to who we are as Americans. It's our duty to defend it against all who'd denigrate it (anywhere, btw). In my view, for all its faults, western civ--with its commitments to personal liberty and autonomy, rule of law, reason etc--is the last hope for a world in trouble. You're right to stay away from the race stuff. I'm an American which means I adhere to values and norms developed first in western Europe and then advanced in the USA. When people use the term white privilege, etc, what they're actually doing is looking to a faulty hierarchy that is counterproductive to those that they purport to serve. That should be pointed out often.
I agree with your argument completely. It is strengthened when one travels a bit further back in time to see that the deepest foundations of our culture were conceived on the far eastern edge of the Mediterranean by peoples who today would not be called white.
Agree. It's ironic. I remember a controversial book on this subject from maybe 30 years ago. Black Athena it was called. It was widely attacked, but there's little doubt that the ancient Greeks were influenced by older cultures. Egyptians, Phoenicians, others. I've also seen it argued that key tenets of stoic philosophy were based on Buddhist influences on the Greeks, by way of various Persian incursions into India (Darius, I think, and Alexander.) Lots of cross-pollination from the get-go.
“I'm an American”. Yes. What’s wrong with just calling us all “American”? Leave all the hyphenations out out of it. Unifying. I like it.
If Chris Murphy was at least a tiny bit intellectually honest and true to his ideology, he would have immediately surrendered his job and started campaigning for an underprivileged woman of color as better deserving to be a US senator. Yet, he is still in the Senate, virtue-signalling from the top of his lungs.
Much like Billie Eilish, who proudly proclaims “no person is illegal on stolen land”, as she receives her trophy from a culture and country with borders, and then retreats to her luxurious home with walls and gates to keep people out.
I find the woke logic beyond insane:
1. They rage against colonialism and stealing land, but in the same breath, declare that nobody is illegal on stolen land, essentially, promoting colonialism
2. They are inviting others to share the land that they stole, but in the same breath, declare that from the river to the sea, it is legal to burn alive those whom they declare to be on that land illegally, despite those people being on their ancestral land.
One great flaw in Eilish's argument is that it has been discovered that humans lived on the continent of America, both north and south, before the "natives," those who crossed on the great Siberian bridge, who supposedly had their land stolen from "white" people. Then there is the long history of mankind's exploration and conquering new lands, all critical in man's evolutionary advancement.
Correct EVERY race and culture has 'stolen' someone's land at one time or another over the ten's of thousands of years. Every. Single. One. of ALL our ancestors.
It’s very simple it’s all about genes, intelligence and morality. It’s not color. You could be purple for all I care, if you’re moral, decent and halfway intelligent your physical qualities don’t matter. I don’t get what this article is trying to say. We need to realize that some people are born disadvantaged through no choice of their own but they have choices once they get here. They can choose between thug life and normal, they can choose to be criminal or not. They can choose to exploit their fellow citizens or not. No one forced them to pimp out their sister, or get all their friends hooked on smack so they can get it for free. But this is normal for ghetto culture, incompatible to moral decency of a healthy society. There is an attitude that goes along with this idea of selling out to the white man culture that’s it’s somehow ok to screw everyone as long as you get yours because you got screwed, no you screwed yourself with bad choices and no morals.
Performative nonsense that most people see thru.
Yes but unfortunately we have new generations of imbeciles that are dumb enough to speak and write these moronic ideas and disseminate them to the populace.
First, the only way to have a meaningful conversation with anyone is thru a common understanding of the words each uses. The left is very adept at using words that mean one thing to them and another to someone on the right. The perfect example is the left's use of the word 'Democracy.' This term means something completely different to the right, which causes confusion and the left knows this, and they deliberately use this to their advantage.
Second, the left's use of terms like 'race' and 'culture' and other arbitrary categorizations (like LGBTQ, etc.) that they use to assign people to groupings of their defining, is the termination point of how they view all of humanity. They see people as individuals only insofar as a means of determining which arbitrarily defined population to lump them into. (In the manner of Hogwarts Sorting Hat). AOC demonstrated this the other day in Munich when she emphatically stated that "Culture is changing. Culture always changes. Culture for the entire history of human civilization has been a fluid, evolving thing that is a response to the conditions that we live in." For her, and people like her, all of humanity is defined by whichever subgrouping she assigns them to, according to some characteristic who's definition is purposefully indeterminate and changes to fit the needs of the moment. For her, "Culture" indicates a definitional finality encompassing all of humanity, and she will look no further.
Also, in defining "culture" as a "fluid, evolving thing", she is really saying the ends are justified and defined, by her, thru whichever means she chooses to employ, which thus are also fluid, evolving things. This circularity of thought, which emanates from whoever is In Charge at the moment, like the tide, is never still. This fluidity is why it's so hard to debate them. It's why using 'facts' and 'logic' in debating them is so frustratingly ineffective.
In comparison, for an encapsulation of the view from the right, reread the last two paragraphs in this post. Particularly:
"The genius of the early Americans is that they gave us a nation that, over time, yielded a shared culture capable of recognizing the contributions of various groups while building a government based on equality under the law. At our best, we can honestly discuss the realities and differences among cultural groups while insisting that, as a matter of policy, we treat all individuals as individuals."
This, in a nutshell, is the difference between the left and the right. The left sees people as an amorphous mass to be manipulated at will, and this is where their view of humanity stops. The right sees race and culture and sexual preference and etc., as simply a part of each of us as individuals, and nothing more. In the US, our need to bring order to society has resulted in "a government based on equality under the law" where "we treat all individuals as individuals." This allows for a social structure that is based not on people's characteristics, which are definitional and ever-changing, but on an external structure of law, which applies equally to each as individuals in complete disregard to race, or skin color, or sexual predilections, or religious beliefs, or hair color, or height, or income, or preferred NFL/MLB teams, or size of feet.
The left will always see and define me, as a White Male, and nothing more. This inability to see me as anything more than a member of one of their arbitrary groupings, their inability to see my god-given individuality, is by definition, dehumanizing. And this is how they can throw around terms like Nazi and racist and misogynist and all the other pejorative labels they use, simply upon seeing my face.
The right will always see me as a discrete individual, and nothing less. There never has been, is not now, and never will be another human exactly like me. Or you. Or any other individual you happen to encounter. And as a discrete individual, I am bound by adherence not to some ideology or arbitrary political demand of the moment, but by the letter, and the spirit, of the law that as a US Citizen, I agree to abide by for the protection of my own rights and for the protection of the rights of others.
The left is completely incapable of understanding this, which is why debating them using terminology of their choice, use and definition, is pointless at best.
Ok. Thus endeth the rant.
Well stated. I really like you Hogwart's sorting hat analogy.
I have a dream that someday I will live in a country where I will not be judged by the color of my skin, but by the content of my character.
Amen.
Senator Murphy only needed to ask Michelle Obama what White culture is. At a live event last year, promoting her new book "The Look," Mrs. Obama addresses the crowd saying:
"let me explain something to White people, our hair comes out of our head naturally in a curly pattern, so when we're straightening it to follow your beauty standards we are trapped by the straightness. That is why so many of us can't swim, and we run away from the water; people won't go to the gym because we're trying to keep out hair straight for y'all."
As we can see, the whiteness parallax extends even into the realm of race realism and racist stereotypes. Michelle Obama is allowed to openly notice the heritable traits and affirm the racist stereotypes of Black people, while Jeremy Carl can't simply suggest Whites might have noticeable characteristics as well. I wonder how Senator Murphy would've reacted had Carl offered "beauty standards" as an example of White identity.
Likewise, it seems Michelle's address to "White people" acknowledges that White people share some cultural identity. At the very least they share some cluelessness as to the texture of Black peoples hair. Might I suggest the New York Times start capitalizing White when referring to White's racism and complete ignorance of other racial groups daily struggles.
Nobody forced Michelle Obama to get her hair straightened. She would have looked nice in an Afro. She did a lot of things other people wanted her to and now complains about it on TV.
Exactly. SHE made the final decision to do what was recommended to her.
My grandmother had an afro, a natural afro, in the 70s -- mind you my grandmother was a Jew from Belorus who immigrated to the US around 1910 -- so I don't want to hear about the curly/kinky hair issue. I inherited that hair, though mine is finer and more curly than kinky.
My point is that culture is different than just skin color or hair type; it includes dress, food, religion, music, art, and many other things. Further, I'm very sorry for those who find it necessary to denigrate -- or even disavow as Murphy appears to do -- their own culture. No culture nor any society is perfect, but one hopes that every person can appreciate the good in their culture and maybe work to improve those aspects that are not so laudable.
add work ethic
This is what happens when you weaponize language in power struggles.
"Personally, I don’t like the term “whiteness,” which is a Marxist coinage, and would be happy to replace the current shorthand with something better." ... 'Euro-American' ?
Anglo culture is a good term, I think.
Chris, in addition to being a first- rate investigative reporter, you are also a real-deal historian-intellectual... very impressed with your educational base, it gives your reporting a rock-solid intellectual foundation. Hector St John de Crevecoeur? Nice!
Also: great interview with Rachel Campos Duffy last night on Watters. And on a personal note: great to see you dressed in a tie! We can't give in to the now-rampant no-tie trend, it is the exact wrong thing to do when we are trying to recover a measure of stature and respect for men and masculinity. The collapse of men and masculinity charts pretty closely with the movement of men dressing down. Look at any photo of a group of American men pre-about 1970 and compare it to today, and you will see what I mean. "Casual Fridays" has become "Casual Monday-Sunday." That must stop, if we are to rebuild the stature of men and masculinity in America.
The question I always wonder about when people use “white” or “whiteness” as a pejorative, as well as framing the history of the United States as purely an oppressive colonial project and are anti-western, is what exactly are they going after? I guess ultimately they don’t want the United States to exist anymore, and are bigoted towards white people or white culture. In other words, true haters of America. It’s frustrating we have to keep living with these people, I think we’d all be better off, including them, if they gave up their citizenship, and found a new land of greener pastures.
But they probably won’t leave. They like the conveniences, such as their Starbucks, malls, and other affordances this country offers. These leaders, much like Tim Walz who proclaimed people hiding from ICE was akin to an Anne Frank story, are guilty of keeping these rhetorical fires going. Always stirring the pot to rile people up when they are in a losing position. We need better leaders who don’t play these games, and have more respect for their constituents and this country.
Our partisan divide is, more than anything, a divide between those for whom honesty is a principle and those for whom sophistry is an achievement.
If I could only figure out how to make wine out of "whine" and champagne out of "complain" the Murphy herd would make me rich!
As an Italian American, my parents - one from the Sicilian south and one from the northern border to Switzerland - brought different Italian cultures, languages and cuisines to America. They were hardly accepted by many existing “white” Americans (those without accents). They faced both discrimination and acceptance in their lives, strove to become as American as possible, fought in wars and developed a shared sense of American culture that was passed down to my generation. Their immigrant friends didn’t condemn them - they supported them. It’s a familiar story. What has changed is that while they became part of the American culture, they are now considered part of the white culture… the one that doesn’t exist according to some… unless it’s the oppressive white culture. It’s a familiar story.