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Post by Young Ireland on Jun 28, 2015 19:04:16 GMT
Obama describes it as a victory for America. How can forcing laws onto Americans be considered a victory for Americans? Between this and the attack on the Confederate flag, I bet many people in America are starting to get pretty irate... To be honest, I think that these are two different issues. One is about foisting an alien ideology on people who have expressly rejected said ideology and calling white black and vice versa. On the other hand, I do think that an African-American may legitimately object to the Confederate flag since for them it represents slavery and racial bigotry, both of which were highly immoral. It's like how a black South African might object to that country's apartheid-era flag because of what it represents. I could come up with more analogies like that. Whether this justifies the flag being banned is debatable, though I wouldn't fly it myself.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2015 23:38:27 GMT
Obama describes it as a victory for America. How can forcing laws onto Americans be considered a victory for Americans? Between this and the attack on the Confederate flag, I bet many people in America are starting to get pretty irate... To be honest, I think that these are two different issues. One is about foisting an alien ideology on people who have expressly rejected said ideology and calling white black and vice versa. On the other hand, I do think that an African-American may legitimately object to the Confederate flag since for them it represents slavery and racial bigotry, both of which were highly immoral. It's like how a black South African might object to that country's apartheid-era flag because of what it represents. I could come up with more analogies like that. Whether this justifies the flag being banned is debatable, though I wouldn't fly it myself. Young Ireland, For certain proud Christian Southerners the issues are very much of the same root. I have talked to one Southerner in particular who holds the Confederate Flag not to be a symbol of racial hatred, but of everything that makes the South different from the North. Some people might sarcastically point out that that included slavery. However, for a lot of Southerners, it is their standard of defiance in the face of what they see as the ever tightening grip on individual states by Washington - such as in the case of these forced homosexual marriage laws. In regards to the Confederate flag being seen as a symbol of racial hatred, it is true that there many people who use it as such. However, the real reason I would argue for this belief being so wide spread is thanks to the North. The North are quick and happy enough to demonise the South as barely intelligent, racist, bigoted morons. I also believe that the flag itself has been demonised in different ways, such as in film. The only time you usually see it is when it's being used by racists, usually the KKK. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think there are many positive portrayals of the flag. What I mean by that is, you don't see a character who is portrayed as good with a Confederate flag. The South is really at the mercy of the North in that regard. Edit: I should also add to my point about "everything that makes the South different from the North". This would include how Southerners see themselves (for the most part) as being more serious about their faith than people in the North. Also, many people in the South want to secede from the US altogether. I imagine they want to create their own Union with like minded states. To add to my point about such Southerners being demonised, Confederate separatist groups like this are considered "hate-groups". I have seen some of these groups, and the only thing that makes them "hate-groups" is that they hate Washington, and want the Federal government out of their states.
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Post by Ranger on Jun 29, 2015 10:31:46 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 30, 2015 20:51:15 GMT
The Confederate flag is used in some places as an expression of general defiance of authority (it used to be flown quite frequently at Cork GAA games in the 1980s as an expression of the image of Cork as "the rebel county"). It's also often pointed out that in the old DUKES OF HAZZARD TV series, set in the SOuthern states, the main characters had a Confederate battle flag painted on their car without it being portrayed as racist (given that they were defying the local political boss and his tame lawman, I suspect the anti-authority message was relevant here). That said, the battle flag is associated not only with the Confederate defence of slavery, but with Southern resistance to desegregation. I'd say those associations make it toxic, and considering the sheer brutal oppression of slavery and Jim Crow, how blacks feel about it have to be respected. Don't click on the link below if you can't bear to see photos of lynchings- www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sORyyOyP2Qand these were not private images; they were publicly circulated, and participants were quite happy to have their faces shown because until post-WWII, or even later, law enforcement didn't give a damn. It was a deliberate system of terrorism, aimed at keeping the whole black population down through fear, not just at punishing the real or alleged crimes of individuals.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 29, 2015 19:56:25 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 3, 2015 21:03:39 GMT
The American Catholic webzine CRISIS has some interesting material, but from time to time it includes items which just go off the right-wing deep end. Some time ago they praised a French neofascist who committed suicide in Notre Dame Cathedral as a protest against gay marriage (I might add that not only did the man kill himself, his last message implied he was offering himself as a human sacrifice to pagan tribal gods). Now they have published a review of a book analysing why the US Supreme Court's recent same-sex "marriage" decision is such a travesty of law, and who do they pick to review it but the well-known palaeoconservative accademic Paul Gottfried (who is not a Catholic BTW). I have come across Mr Gottfried's writings in the past, and noted that he devotes a great deal of time to sneering at everyone who disagrees with his version of conservatism and very little to explaining why anyone should actually embrace his ideology, but this piece is by a long way the worst I have seen - for while endorsing the book's analysis of why the Supreme Court decision is wrong, Mr Gottfried devotes a great deal of effort to attacking its attempts to differentiate between this decision and the late-60s Supreme Court decision which struck down state laws against interracial marriage. According to Mr Gottfried, the two cases are exactly the same, in which he agrees with the gay rights types, except that MR Gottfried thinks states should be allowed to ban interracial marriage; indeed he implies that no-one can sincerely believe interracial marriage should be permitted, since he declares that the only possible motive for the author's denunciation of antimiscegenation laws is a politically expedient desire to curry favour with racial minorities. Once again we see Mr Gottfried substituting speculation about people's motives for reasoned argument, and that is even before we reach the abhorrent nature of his views and the dodgy use he makes of historical evidence (I am glad to see some commenters in the combox have called him out on his attempts to claim that the common and civil laws historically invalidated interracial marriages.) If anyone wants to know why many people treat any form of palaeoconservatism with suspicion as racist, Mr Gottfried's article is a good place to start. What on earth were the editors of CRISIS thinking when they published this muck? www.crisismagazine.com/2015/compelling-new-book-shreds-scotus-marriage-decisionThis link is for information ONLY
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 5, 2015 20:20:39 GMT
This is a very good piece from Catholic World Report which links the recent kerfuffle about the discovery that Harper Lee conceived the righteous lawyer Atticus Finch of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (who risks his life to defend an unjustly accused black man) as someone who as a young man dallied with the Ku Klux Klan and in old age was a segregationist opponent of racially-integrated schools, with the reflections of the Catholic novelist Walker Percy (a convert from an old Mississippi plantation dynasty) about why the Southern white upper-classes who used to pride themselves on being more liberal towards blacks than the dominant populist politicians who replaced them, were indifferent or hostile to the 60s civil rights movement. One of Percy's great themes is that the stoicism of his generous and admired mentor Uncle Will, with its emphasis on style and grace in the face of inexorable fate, shades very easily into something very nasty indeed because, however noble some of its exponents, it feeds on and encourages arrogance and despair. His last novel THE THANATOS SYNDROME, if any of you have read it, takes on a whole new shade when it is recognised as partly stemming from reflection on his ancestors' slaveholding and its legacies. I thought of posting this link in the Catholic literature thread, but there are so many ways in which race is the deepest original sin of America that I thought it belongs here www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/4229/walker_percy_and_the_atticus_finch_question.aspx
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Post by assisi on Dec 2, 2015 11:52:42 GMT
This is a very good piece from Catholic World Report which links the recent kerfuffle about the discovery that Harper Lee conceived the righteous lawyer Atticus Finch of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (who risks his life to defend an unjustly accused black man) as someone who as a young man dallied with the Ku Klux Klan and in old age was a segregationist opponent of racially-integrated schools, with the reflections of the Catholic novelist Walker Percy (a convert from an old Mississippi plantation dynasty) about why the Southern white upper-classes who used to pride themselves on being more liberal towards blacks than the dominant populist politicians who replaced them, were indifferent or hostile to the 60s civil rights movement. One of Percy's great themes is that the stoicism of his generous and admired mentor Uncle Will, with its emphasis on style and grace in the face of inexorable fate, shades very easily into something very nasty indeed because, however noble some of its exponents, it feeds on and encourages arrogance and despair. His last novel THE THANATOS SYNDROME, if any of you have read it, takes on a whole new shade when it is recognised as partly stemming from reflection on his ancestors' slaveholding and its legacies. I thought of posting this link in the Catholic literature thread, but there are so many ways in which race is the deepest original sin of America that I thought it belongs here www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/4229/walker_percy_and_the_atticus_finch_question.aspxTo Kill a Mockingbird is on the GCSE English syllabus up here in the North. Interesting how the race issue is once more to the fore with the filmed killings by police of young blacks. While the Confederate states were wrong have the Union states simply ended up ghettoising most blacks - treating them with indifference?
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 3, 2015 21:52:21 GMT
Blacks were always ghettoised to some extent in the North as well, though they did have the vote (hence some political influence; Mayor Daley incorporated blacks into his machine in Chicago, albeit as junior partners, whereas in the South they were simply excluded) and had more access to middle-class status than in the South. One of the big shocks of the late 60s was the eruption of race riots in Northern cities at a time when many Northerners had thought of race as a specifically southern problem. Another was the willingness of many blue-collar whites in the North to support the Southern segregationist George Wallace.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 13, 2015 17:33:15 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2015 19:36:08 GMT
To be honest Hibernicus, I can''t agree with this at all. Seems to me like the Fr. just doesn't like Donal Trump - which is fair enough - and is deciding to be cheap and slightly childish about it by making inane and false statements about those who support him. While I'm sure there are those who support him for bad reasons, I think it's pretty obvious that many rally to him for the simple fact that he is unashamedly politically incorrect, which is seen as a nice change from the seemingly large influence of Left-Wing fascist thought police.
Also, I find something slightly hypocritical - from a priest of all people - talking about Donal Trump being unChristian (except when it suits him), but in the same point making cheap shots about his hair, teeth, and supposed face-lifts.
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Post by Young Ireland on Dec 18, 2015 20:18:25 GMT
Antaine, there's certainly an argument that Fr. Longenecker might be uncharitable in his criticism of Trump, but there is a good deal of truth in what he says. Just because Trump get the backs up of the liberals is no reason to support him, given not only his support for abortion, but also because the White House is no place for recklessness, which I'm sorry to say he has in spades. And that is putting it mildly...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2015 20:51:39 GMT
O, don't misunderstand me. I'm not a Trump supporter myself. But politics is a pendulum. If you strain it too much to one side, the pressure builds up and the swing is severe. Trump is a big difference for many US citizens who see most if not all other Republican candidates as being continuously watered-down Conservatives (even if Trump himself does not support all things Conservative, such as saying he wouldn't defund Planned Parenthood).
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Post by Young Ireland on Dec 18, 2015 20:56:28 GMT
O, don't misunderstand me. I'm not a Trump supporter myself. But politics is a pendulum. If you strain it too much to one side, the pressure builds up and the swing is severe. Trump is a big difference for many US citizens who see most if not all other Republican candidates as being continuously watered-down Conservatives (even if Trump himself does not support all things Conservative, such as saying he wouldn't defund Planned Parenthood). OK Antaine, fair enough. I feel that we are definitely feeling this in Europe as well (e.g. the rise of the FN, Party for Freedom et al.), even if in Ireland we have yet to feel it. It's a very tempting impulse, I admit, but it's one I think that we ought to resist.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 18, 2015 23:01:37 GMT
Antaine - I've just re-read Fr Longenecker's statements about Donald Trump. Most of them are specifically about Trump himself, and only denounce his supporters insofar as supporting such a charlatan and blowhard calls their judgement severely into question. Indeed, I can think of some things about Trump that Fr Longenecker doesn't mention. For example, he doesn't mention that Trump has been bankrupt three times (presumably this relates to holding companies rather than to him personally) which casts serious doubt on his claim that as a wealthy businessman he knows how to run things.
Again, I am old enough to remember Trump's earlier flirtations with running for the Presidency. The first time he played with it was in 1999-2000; he rang up the shock-jock Howard Stern to declare that the difference between him and Clinton was that he would be carrying on with supermodels at the White House, rather than lowering the tone of the place with chubby interns. HE then put his model of the week (almost literally; he dumped her soon afterwards) on the phone so she could testify to his virility in front of a mass radio audience. I thought then, and I thought now, that for him to use a woman in that way, whatever she may be, qualifies him for admission to that select brotherhood, the Politicians from Below Hell.
Similarly, the last time he tried this stunt (I think in 2008) his professions of Christian faith and regular churchgoing were so ridiculously phoney (he referred to the communion wafer as a "cracker" - I believe he's a nominal episcopalian) as to be disgusting. I'd have more respect for a sincere atheist than for such a creature, and the fact that at some points in the current contest Trump has been supported by a plurality of white Evangelicals, when there were other candidates with evangelical credentials in the race, says very little for the intelligence of evangelicals.
I often point out that one of the recurring American cultural archetypes is the conman, and Trump is a fine example.
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