The president is not randomly attacking these players. He is attacking them because they're kneeling during the national anthem. And the national anthem is not a white-supremacist symbol.When Henderson responded with "Some of the words of the national anthem are white supremacist," it surprised me. I thought about the first verse — the only verse that's sung at games and the only verse I have uploaded to memory — bombs bursting in air? dawn's early light? land of the free? — and briefly considered whether "land of the free" celebrates white supremacy before vaguely remembering reading something about some other verse.
A quick google got me to "Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem" at The Root, which I read and puzzled over. There's a line in the third verse, "No refuge could save the hireling and slave," which The Root says exults at the idea of Americans killing freed slaves who were fighting with the British in the War of 1812. "'The Star-Spangled Banner' is as much a patriotic song as it is a diss track to black people who had the audacity to fight for their freedom."
Wikipedia says: "A diss track or diss song is a song primarily intended to disrespect people," and gives examples, including John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" which lashed out at Paul McCartney. Every line of that — from "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead" to "You live with straights" — was aimed at Paul. "The Star-Spangled Banner" may have one line about slaves in verse 3, but even that one line isn't aimed at slaves. It's aimed, like the rest of the song, at the British.
I'm not going to attempt to resolve the question of what was in the mind of Francis Scott Key when he mentioned slaves in that verse we don't sing at sports events and maybe don't even ever sing,* but here's a beautiful monument to him in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco:
CC — King of Hearts
Is that on the list of tear-downs?
Back to "Meet the Press." Stephen Henderson said, "Some of the words of the national anthem are white supremacist," and Rich Lowry seemed surprised: "You think the national anthem is racist?"
Henderson said: "I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words." He had no chance to explain which words or to argue about why they are racist, which might make us think that he's only making the weaker argument that because the country has been racist, the song must reflect that racism.
Lowry's parry — "Well, it's also a nation with very important ideals that have worn down those injustices over time and created a more just society" — makes it most likely that viewers will think Henderson was only making the weaker argument.
Meanwhile, on State of the Union, the host Jake Tapper was talking to Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who's now a CNN commentator, and she said it was "utterly ridiculous" for Trump "to pick up this fight" about protesting the anthem. Tapper said he had "a feeling" she's right and that "this is going to drive people to Kaepernick's side." Tapper asked Turner if she thought "it's an accident that he's talking about predominantly African-American players." She said:
Not at all. Look at his audience. It's no accident. He doesn't do anything by accident, he's very strategic about this.So Trump is not the chaotic, impulsive, crazy man?! He's got it all planned out. Turner went all Scott Adams there for a second. She continues:
And this kind of (INAUDIBLE) is right up his alley. He loves when all this chaos and confusion -- this feeds his agenda.Oh, so it only seems like "chaos and confusion," but that's what's so deviously strategic about it. Maybe Turner got an advance copy of Scott Adams's forthcoming book.
_____________________
* The song has 4 verses. Have you ever heard anyone sing them all? I have a feeling I've heard at least one other verse sung, but the 3d verse is completely alien to me and, I presume, to the vast majority of American sports spectators who care about the opening ceremony. I went looking for the full version, and this was the finest one I found, by Tom Callinan (even though he botches the word "hireling" in the crucial line):
Midway through that recording, I suddenly wondered whether I was enjoying it because of whiteness. Colin Kaepernick is not going to allow us to go back to our lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
Posts
213 comments:
1 – 200 of 213 Newer› Newest»Not an original point, but it is amazing to me how recently this became a problem, an intolerable burden on the woke.
Let's let them have this. They will no doubt relax, satisfied that the rest of us have come around to their point of view.
I'm just kidding, of course. They will move on to the next outrage that we have somehow lived with up until now but NO MORE!
I doubt that American slaves were in Francis Scott Key's mind. He just needed another word in there to go with "hireling" and a lot of the "Hessians" were in fact serfs pressed into service by their landlords and let out for rent.
Again, what the fuck are they protesting?
This country needs an enema. Soon.
We live in crazy times when stupid people are given the microphone. There really is a stunning amount of stupidity afoot.
LOL - the NFL is 70% black. And judging by the latest voting stats, probably 80% of them are Democrats and voted for Hillary. Meanwhile, the 30% that are white or Hispanic probably broke 50-50 for Trump.
So, to summarize the math: NFL 70% black. NFL Hillary supporters = 56% black, 15% white/hispanic = total Hillary supporters 71%!
SO what are the chances that the "take the Knee" would be lead by WHITES? Its led by Blacks, because Blacks make up 70% of NFL.
"Colin Kaepernick is not going to allow us to go back to our lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Brilliant.
I am Laslo.
Couldn't history undergo a transformation, like people having a sex change?
Since we can't really nuke the country from orbit... (it would kill the cancer along with the patient) so, lets go to the next available option.
Just identify the United States as a non-white supremacist country... open the borders and have a ceremony burning the anthem, the constitution and the flag ;)
"When Henderson responded with "Some of the words of the national anthem are white supremacist," it surprised me."
It shouldn't have.
You are a fundamentally broken society. There are no longer any common interests, no common culture, nor even a rough idea of what constitutes a culture, and certainly no common values. The highest honors for one group are the lowest depths for the other.
There isnt even a shared understanding of material existence, at the leading edges of the cracks that are splitting you. And Im not kidding here.
The US cannot fight any enemy in this state, and certainly cannot retain its position of global power. You need to resolve your ongoing civil wars first.
The national anthem has the word "slave" in it, so it was racist when it was written, and two hundred years later it's still racist.
The Democratic Party used to promote slavery, but that was a long time ago and has no relevance to the current year.
Stephen Henderson strikes me as the kind of guy who'd find racism in Carly Simon songs.
THe Democrat-media complex shows that just because someone has no idea what you're talking about should not prevent anyone from making strong and insulting statements. The fact that national anthem has zero to do with racial anything is not relevant -- the Democrat-media complex declares it to be so, so it is so.
As a wise man once said, the people who know what they are talking about are not talking and the one who knows nothing talks a lot.
Nobody sings past the 1st verse because the other verses suck.
If the Star Spangled Banner is "white supremacist" then George Washington and the founding fathers were "White Supremacists" which means America and the Constitution are "White Supremacists".
So, bottom line the USA is "White Supremacists", and all us White people should just kill our selves.
Okey-dokey.
And the sooner you resolve it, on the side of tradition, the better off you will be. Because the othe r side is simple chaos.
The revolutionary generation often used slavery-related terminology to refer to the oppression of the American colonists by the British Government. This reflects their (at least) ambivalence about actual slavery. As we all know, some leaders of the Revolution, including most famously Washington and Jefferson, were slave-holders who felt that slavery was wrong, although they didn't do anything to end it. Many people hoped that after the slave trade was abolished and slavery was barred in the Northwest Territory the institution would fade away. It was only during the generation leading up to the Civil War that the slavocracy of the South developed a full-throated idealogy of slavery as a social good.
I say the claim that the National Anthem is white supremacist is pants-on-fire false.
I've always thought "America the Beautiful" was a better national anthem but 1000-1 the Left thinks that song is "White Supremacist" too.
We've now gotten to the point where the Left doesn't even have to make arguments that make sense or with words that mean anything.
I wonder how long it will be before we get an American Lenin or we have a civil war.
This has all gone beyond too far. Let the real fighting begin.
People wanking on about the founding fathers being slave holders are usually the same types that wank on about "Stealing land from the poor Indians".
My suggestion: Just kill yourself whitey. Or give your house to the nearest Indian and go back to Europe.
Otherwise, you're just a recipient of stolen property and beneficiary of slavery,
After all this began, it must have been very exciting for them to discover that line.
They can all go to Hell except Cave Seven.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave'
The Star Spangled Banner laid out a vision for the future, where diversity (e.g. racism) would be relegated to small bands of advocates and activists, and abortionists would line the chambers they enthusiastically prepared for their victims who had no voice to protest nor arms to defend their lives.
Unfortunately, both diversity and elective abortions are resurgent in the age of pogressive liberalism under the State-established Pro-Choice Church.
It seems that civilization spends more time at the twilight fringe than at the dawn's early light.
Kneeling to spite Trump helps Trump because it associates him to the flag and to showing people respect.
2016 was the respect election. Hillary lost it because she couldn't be bothered to even fake it. Fake respect isn't always submission: sometimes it's politeness.
Hardin is wrong because not ostentatiously showing disrespect for the anthem is simple politeness. I'm a Canadian, and I stand for it, because that's what polite people do. Kaepernick isnt the only one who is ostentatiously disrespectful. The Westboro Baptists are ostentatiously disrespectful. Would Trump be wrong to criticize them, because forced respect is submission?
I will bet a thousand dollars Stephen Henderson never heard of the song's "racist" verse before reading that silly article.
From the Press site's page on him: "Henderson's opinions come down hard on excessive partisans, those who betray the public trust and the foolishness inside and outside of Detroit."
I guess reading comprehension is not one of his strengths.
BTW, the NFL noise seems to be completely overshadowing the St. Louis protests.
What the criticism of the Star-Spangled Banner as "white supremacist" tells you is that the left will stop at nothing. They will exploit anything they can in the culture war. They will tear down anything that stands in their way. They hate this country.
I like the fifth verse myself--
Kill the Left, Kill them dead
Put a pike through their head
Salt the ground where they lay
Burn their bones, lest spirits stray
Keep it up, leftists.
Don't double-down.
Triple-down, even
Don't let up.
Keep pushing it, and by all means? Get in the faces of those who disagree with you.
I feel the same way about the national anthem that I do about the Twin Towers: I resent it because it’s grandiose and ugly, and I resent it that saying so might cause me to be conflated with dopey America-haters.
Maryland Public Television has been broadcasting an OK documentary on FSK. He was a backer of sending freed slaves to Africa. And he was Roger Taney's brother-in-law. http://ww2.mpt.org/station_relation/FSK2/FSKey%20After%20the%20Song-National_Final.docx
I'm a Canadian, and I stand for it, because that's what polite people do.
Right back atcha: I always stand for the Canadian anthem. Glad to. In fact, I sing along with it. It's a very nice anthem, very stirring. I greatly enjoy singing both anthems at the Chi Blackhawk games.
I can't imagine any hockey player being so crass and asinine to kneel in protest or do some such. For one thing, he'd get his ass kicked. And rightly so. There would be consequences.
BTW, now having viewed the video of all four verses, I do remember having heard the 4th verse in my childhood. I THINK, but am not sure, that in school we used to sing verses 1,2, and 4. I grew up in New England and maybe the school board was uncomfortable about "hireling and slave" -- but to be honest, given the rhyme scheme, what other word could Key haved used? "Dave"?
Just how do we know for sure the NFL kneelers aren't praying?
Colin Kaepernik ain't ever getting his old life back, I'll wager
I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy,
As compared to whom?
What's interesting about the post-Marxist Left is that their philosophy of history is a moral judgement on history & not much else. In most other philosophies of history, history through a moral lens is considered quite an inadequate way of doing history. The question for the Left becomes -- what is your moral philosophy & why do you think it's so air tight that history can be squeezed into its Procrustean bed?
Take, for example, slavery. It was ubiquitous in human history. Why? To say "it was wrong" tells you pretty much nothing about its varied history. It's like history as taught by Mr. Mackey, the guidance counselor on South Park --- "Kids, Slavery's wrong, mmmmkay?" If there was no slavery, would it have been replaced by something worse e.g. mass murder of conquered peoples?
The reason that the modern Left is so whack is because there's nothing coherent at the ideological or philosophical level to underpin it. The old Marxism could produce great evil, but at least it was more or less coherent. The modern Left is both evil (well, less evil, at least so far) & incoherent.
We are just back from GG Park today, and drove by that very statue not an hour ago. Its got all the bits of "Star Spangled Banner" inscribed on it. It is a leftover from when there was a common idea of the United States, even in, or especially in, a city like San Francisco, which was in those days majority foreign-born. All those foreigners were eager to be Americans.
And for that matter, they are a symbolic claim of unity of all of Western culture, more or less, as parts of the heritage of this country. Most of those statues in the park were, in one way or another, a claim by one such group or another to belong, and to be bringing something to the table. So there are, in that part of the park, spread around the large central patriotic symbol to Francis Scott Key (and it had to be a musical reference as it is opposite the band shell) statues to Goethe and Schiller, to Cervantes, to Verdi, a Greek warrior, Robert Emmett (Irish patriot), etc.
These things, and very many others, were raised by subscription by the cosmopolitan communities of the city of the turn of the 20th century - Irish, Italian, German, Hispanic (Basque and Latin American), Greek, French, Slavic and many others.
I need a shovel.
The BS is getting too deep, and definitely not in an intellectual sense. It's more in the sense of a high school sophomore taking a history class from a socialist teacher and becoming woke.
I was there 50 years ago. It was just as stupid and pretentious then.
Those foreigners were extremely eager to adopt the symbols and rituals of the country, because thats what tribes do, they have symbols and rituals. They wanted to join the tribe, and they did.
The modern American PTB want to break the tribe, and they have succeeded.
You all know that what the left is about here is not promoting justice or the common good or anything along those lines. It is about power. It is a hallmark of leftist thinking that power must be secured before justice can be dispensed. The dispensation of justice is contingent on holding and exercising power. And those who hold and exercise power do so in the name of the people but not in consultation with the people. They are the revolutionary vanguard, the nomenklatura, the deciders. They are "those who are." They want what they want and they will use any means to get it. They will use violence and sow disorder in order to undermine and collapse society and secure power, and once they are in power they will use revolutionary terror to broaden their hold and tighten their grasp on power. You all know this. It is no secret. It is playing out before our very eyes.
Bill From Texas makes the best point. What, really, are these guys protesting? At least Trump gave them something they could protest about.
Here's an idea. Just rip off the Canadian Anthem and change the lyrics, It'll be easier on bands at Hockey games:
O America! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True West strong and free!
From far and wide, O America,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O America, we stand on guard for thee.
O America, we stand on guard for thee.
"The modern American PTB want to break the tribe, and they have succeeded."
The Democrats don't want immigrants to assimilate or love America - they want them to hate Whitey and vote Democrat.
What, really, are these guys protesting?
Those who know what they're doing, who are clear-eyed about it and not mere dupes and dumbshits, are doing it to get power. They're not really protesting anything. Protest is a tactic. Their objective is power.
The Westboro Baptists are ostentatiously disrespectful. Would Trump be wrong to criticize them, because forced respect is submission?
Not only would Trump be wrong, the professional talking heads would position it as just more evidence of his support for white supremacy.
Chuck would immediately condemn his rhetoric as juvenile and unhelpful. And others on this forum, who didn't know how they felt about the Westboro Baptists up to that point, would rush to support their cause.
In SF these days there is no sense at all of a nation.
There is no sense of a community even, in any sense.
I have been to a great number of school board meetings where there was not an iota of human understanding.
And these people are, using the Russian term, nekulturny. They know nothing. You can ask anyone, any prosperous looking character jogging past Goethe or Schiller or Cervantes or Verdi, college graduates each for certain, and they simply dont know who or what these things are.
Henderson could say the same thing about pretty much every country and most artistic works from the nineteenth century (to say nothing about all earlier periods). Mozart has a famous line in Zauberflote that birds can be black, so why not men (referring to Monostatos, a character who checks off several boxes that would drive Henderson bonkers). The Star Spangled Banner does quite well on that scale by comparison. The idea of racial superiority is both ancient and close to universal (usually coupled with a conviction that one's own race is at the top of the pecking order) until very recent times. The idea that individuals should be judged by their race is common today, especially among lefties.
What's weird about statements like Henderson's is how tone deaf it is. In today's political context, his view that America and everything about it is incurably racist plays well only to the lefties the fringe of the identity politics crowd. That there are so many in the Dem base who insist on having a Dem nominee toe the line on all of that, together with the 'white privilege', BLM, and 'you white guys are all unconsciously racist' stuff, is a recipe for minority status (in more ways than one).
Colin Kaepernick is not going to allow us to go back to our lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
Until recently all the Left had to do was chant "racist-sexist-Nazi-white privilege" and their opponents were expected to shut up and comply with whatever outlandish demand was made.
Trump is changing that. He's serving as the spokesman for people who refuse any longer to swallow the latest codswallop the Left tries to shove down everyone's throat.
Trump, and the Left's reaction to his election and his administration, has stripped the mask off progressives and their agenda. They're not wise, they're not compassionate, they don't care about the people they profess to speak for, they're not moral or ethical. All they care about is accumulating power and ruthlessly using it to enrich themselves and destroy their enemies. Accommodate one demand and tomorrow there will be another.
Hillary Clinton's election would have been a climacteric. Progressives would have allowed her and her grasping, greedy family to accumulate wealth while they would be free to use the levers of government to harass the Republicans into extinction. It was close, but it was avoided. Trump, even if he's a one-term president, has put an end to their ambition. No wonder the Left's reaction has been so unhinged.
Gee, where is all this White Supremacy coming from? Five, ten, twenty years ago, nobody said boo about 'white supremacy'. Now it's oozing out of the woodwork. It's everywhere, inescapable. Lurking in every shadow!
By the way, is that the same Stephen Henderson who wrote an editorial advocating killing Republicans? Why, yes it is.
Everything's racist, don't you know? White cats, white dogs, white people, white lines painted on the highways, everything white. I'm sure that's the last thing that went through the minds of Goodman and Schwerner as they were murdered down in Philadelphia, Miss., how incurable racist they were.
The symbolism of blacks kneeling before standing whites is twofold. First, it represents submission of blacks to whites, an acceptance of slavery. Second, because it is done during the Anthem, it is an admission that America is a white country.
Plainly, the players haven't thought this out.
At some point, as identitarian politics takes hold in whites as well as minorities, sports that are 85% black will have no attraction for whites, and they will collapse.
The Left is going to keep on pushing until someone pushes back.
They've got "their eyes on the prize".
And we have to stop them, or give in.
Henderson was on the show in order to make his crazy claim. Nice work NBC, race baiters.
Just rip off the Canadian Anthem and change the lyrics, It'll be easier on bands at Hockey games
God? Really? What kind of a theocratic monster are you? Kill him!
"Kap" is 1/2 white, by the way. And he was raised by a white foster parents, in a Lilly-white community.
But now he hates America, and is down for the struggle with his black brothers and sisters.
Y'know, like that guy from Hawaii, what's his name.
@Roughcoat,
Protest is a tactic. Their objective is power.
That's because they, as good post-modernists, believe that all discourses are simply covers for the Will to Power. For them, they are doing politics as everyone does politics.
The Marxists believed that free market liberalism was in reality the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, & that, as the next stage of historical development, it needed to be replaced by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Po-Mos don't believe in historical inevitability. They believe that those who define the terms of possible discourses define reality, & that defining of reality is the end game of the Will to Power.
Y'know, like that guy from Hawaii, what's his name.
Hush your mouth! We don't use the O-word in polite society.
I love "The Star Spangled Banner." I find it very stirring and uplifting. I like to hear it and sing it. I love the flag as well. I love the song and the flag because of what they mean and represent. I'll fight for what they mean and represent. In fact I already have fought what they mean and represent and am currently involved in endeavors along those lines. But I'm ready, now, to throw down and take this whole thing to the next level.
Republicans are always stupid. Unless we're nefarious and devious, just pretending to be stupid. No, wait, we're stupid again. It's just so damn nefarious!
I would think it appropriate for the Rocket Man to point out that our "land of the free" quite readily supports racism, sexism, Christianism, matrimonialism, pro-natalism, prayers, anthems, oaths and moments of silence on those of us who happen to be black, female, atheist, single, gay, transgender and childfree.
@Saint Croix: THis is what the Democrat-media complex sounds like:
Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers...
No community can survive making it a value to be single, atheist, homosexual, "transgender" and especially child-free.
All of those things, if made popular by approbation, exterminate peoples. They are the way of death and futility, nothing else.
(a) I know all the verses by heart except the second. The third verse is my favorite.
(b) I don't think the third verse has anything to do with racism. Note that it condemns the "hireling" equally, that is, the soldier who's fighting for pay. Key is rejoicing in the deaths of soldiers who fight to take away American freedom: "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution." It's little different from the Marseilliase, with it "Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons" ("Let [their] impure blood water our furrows"), referring to the soldiers who fight for the monarchy and aristocracy.
(c) "Hireling and slave" may not even mean two different groups of people, but one group, at whom two different insults are directed. It was common in the rhetoric of the time to describe subjects of monarchs as "slaves." See for example Patrick Henry's "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" I understand that in Spain at roughly the same time, the two political factions were the supporters of constitutional government and freedom of expression, or "liberals," and the supporters of king, established church, and army, or "serviles."
Well, if we make America the Beautiful the new national anthem, all will not be for nought.
""Colin Kaepernick is not going to allow us to go back to our lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
What BS nonsense this is.
I never knew or cared a twit about this pathetic little man before his knee-job and I certainly care even less now. He's a not very bright, unemployed guy of limited talent trying desperately to whine and intimidate his way back into a $1million+ job while spilling all his mental issues on our living-room floor.
If the NFL, NBA etc wants to side with such jerks, I wish them Good Luck With That.
This is simply another payback the American nation/culture gets from eight years of Barack Obama
I predict Colin K and Michelle are destined to be a pair and run for the White House. Hopefully, this time we'll be wise to this scam.
Yes, the Left believes the National Anthem is racist. They believe America is racist - not just back "then", but today.
And that's why they should be defeated. And if not defeated - then continually mocked and ridiculed.
YoungHegelian:
Yes. Will to power: a.k.a. Machgetlust.
The notion of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be merely pernicious and silly if it hadn't inspired the commission of so much evil in the world. As Paul Johnson pointed out, the existence of an industrial proletariat as Marx conceived was a very limited and short-lived phenomenon. The concept created confusion among proponents of Marxism in countries where there was no industrial proletariat, e.g. China; and in countries where the industrial proletariat was small and vastly outnumbered by the rural population, e.g. Russia. Which circumstance caused Lenin and his Bolsheviki henchmen to corrupt Marxist theory (which is like saying they corrupted a corruption) by introducing the notion of a revolutionary vanguard. Or which induced Mao to introduce something that might be called agrarian Marxism but which was really nothing more than a ferociously murderous Oriental despotism gussied up in the trappings of Marxist ideaology. They -- Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. -- couldn't wait for "History" with a capital "H" to kick in and cause the state to "whither away" in part because they recognized that this could and would never happen. In other words: Marxist theory and economic theory was pure hooey and bushwah. It was, from the very beginning, about power: Machtgelust. Hence the concept of the DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat. Marx did not conceive of a "consenual government of the proletariat" because that's not what he wanted form "History". He wanted power.
I'm not going to attempt to resolve the question of what was in the mind of Francis Scott Key when he mentioned slaves in that verse
Hirely no doubt means mercenary, like the Hessians during the Revolution. Slaves in that context similarly no doubt means those who had been pressed into service by the British.
It's obvious. Unless of course you are determined to manufacture racism around every corner.
Meanwhile, wasn't Lowry one of those mocking Trump in the days of Charlottesville for saying that they would go after guys like Jefferson, et al. too?
Who's the real idiot, Rich?
HBlogger buwaya said...
And the sooner you resolve it, on the side of tradition, the better off you will be. Because the othe r side is simple chaos.
...
Just amazed that the beating the center and right are taking here, loosing ground by the day. Chaos surely isn't too far away, there just isn't any effective opposition. Despite having both houses of Congress, the SC, the President, the majority of best written material discussion on line, the police force, the armed forces, etc. A bloodbath and no street level resistance except Shapiro and Trump, lol.
The only thing that will stop it is blood in the streets. Bring it on.
It's a shame that DJT and so many other white dudes have small cocks.
Well, technically, it's not all bad. From Detroit's POV it helps to sell big trucks.
The genius thing about continuing to criticize this country because of our past is that the past cannot be changed. So you never have to stop criticizing. You can be mad for ever and ever.
And the genius thing about protesting police brutality during the national anthem is that there can never be a solution. You can protest forever and ever. You can even continue to protest once you are out of the NFL.
buwaya said...
"No community can survive making it a value to be single, atheist, homosexual, "transgender" and especially child-free."
Well, yeah. It does seem like these assholes are destined to be a flash in the pan, doesn't it. At least my kids won'r have to put up with their kids.
Maybe the NFL owners could order all the players to kneel during the National Anthem. "Down on your knees, Superstars! And give me ten while you're down there!"
Open the borders and have a ceremony burning the anthem, the constitution and the flag.
...
Five years away.
"The genius thing about continuing to criticize this country because of our past is that the past cannot be changed."
When you reference the past do you mean when the POTUS called folks very fine people when they traveled to a city that was not their own so that they could join a rally organized by racists w/ torches and chants about Jews because that community, that was not their community, used democracy to decide to get rid of monuments that were installed to protest civil rights for minorities?
Got it.
At some point, you simply have to say "no" to ignorance, no matter how much moral preening it is wrapped up in.
Would it be insensitive to point out the British those escaped slaves fought for didn't outlaw slavery until 1815, and then only in response to Bonaparte doing it first. They kept trading slaves quite profitably right up to the Civil War, and as for the progressive French, see the history of Haiti and Mexico...
"Would it be insensitive to point out the British those escaped slaves fought for didn't outlaw slavery until 1815, and then only in response to Bonaparte doing it first. They kept trading slaves quite profitably right up to the Civil War, and as for the progressive French, see the history of Haiti and Mexico..."
This is an anti-colonialist POV!
"Slaves" also could be a gibe at American "tories," or British loyalists, of whom there were still a few around during the war of 1812. That kind of language was freely slung around in Revolutionary times with no thought of a connection to the actual slaves right there next to them.
It's not Kaepernick who will enslave us. He is merely a prop of the diversity racket and its establishment Democratic Party that will spare neither life nor dignity nor fortune for the sake of political progress.
That said, who are the anti-Americans, the anti-natives, foreign and domestic? The advocates for color diversity (e.g racism), political congruence ("="), and first order forcings of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Planned Parenthood (CAPP)?
Blogger walter said...
BTW, the NFL noise seems to be completely overshadowing the St. Louis protests.
...
Shortly, there'll be a hundred simultaneous events a day. Buwaya is absolutely correct.
"They believe America is racist - not just back 'then,' but today."
Well, because it is. This isn't even disputable, and those who do are wrong.
"Slaves" also could be a gibe at American "tories," or British loyalists
There is a modern reference, offered in the same spirit, to slaves on the political plantation (PP, not to be confused with Planned Parenthood, which has an "=" character). The modern slaves are typically Democratic, but it should be known where interests overlap and converge to oppose and deny the American character, People, and Posterity.
Remember the setting of the Star Spangled Banner -- the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British NAVY. It bears noting too that one of the grounds for the U.S. to declare war on Britain in 1812 was the practice of the Royal Navy to seize merchant ships and impress the sailors into British service, i.e. reduce them to a state of servile slavery. To conduct warfare, the British also made use of privateers, i.e. hired ships.
It's not that mysterious. Even Wikipedia has all the information.
Yes, color diversity (i.e. racism) is a progressive condition
St. Louis and One woman killed, six others injured as masked gunman opens fire at Nashville church as service was ending.
It does not neatly follow color striations (e.g. rainbow spectra), but there are clearly secular or quasi-religious factions who hope that will change.
Cookie,
Is there a country that does not have a racist past?
"The reason that the modern Left is so whack is because there's nothing coherent at the ideological or philosophical level to underpin it. The old Marxism could produce great evil, but at least it was more or less coherent. The modern Left is both evil (well, less evil, at least so far) & incoherent"
...
Whoa, wrong. Chomsky's disciples, the anarcho communists (formally Libertarian Socialists) are alive, well and thriving. As Chomsky-ites, they're enormously influencial. One of them, Mike Isaacson, was trashed by Tucker maybe a week back. As nuts as he was, there was no denying his warped intelligence and hatred. A very articulate Brit LibCom is Cameron Watt, who did a bunch of YouTubes a while back but went underground. Watch a couple of his chats. Extremely well developed thinking, well read, lots of sound logic.
In ancient times (20th Century) I often had occasion to pass near a car dealership in Springfield, Ohio, where an immense American flag was displayed on a tall pole out front. It became my custom to begin singing when the flag came in sight and to sing all four verses, which I had memorized long since. I particularly enjoyed the part about the hirelings and slaves finding no refuge from the triumphal wrath of the free and the brave.
Hirelings: mercenaries who fight for money rather than for their homes and their liberty.
Slaves: subjects of a despot who fight because the alternative is starvation (cf. Dickens, Charles)
sodal ye said......
Shortly, there'll be a hundred simultaneous events a day.
--
Dunno..the "resistance summer" was pretty inconsequential.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave'
the practice of the Royal Navy to seize merchant ships and impress the sailors into British service, i.e. reduce them to a state of servile slavery. To conduct warfare, the British also made use of privateers
A clear and unimpeachable explanation for the phrase in its original context. It's amazing how well an existential crisis will focus the mind.
Another day, another black hole, another profit-making cycle for the diversity racket.
There Will Be War anthology, vol. 1 (https://www.amazon.com/There-Will-Be-War-I-ebook/dp/B00WONO0C0), introduction by (recently deceased) Jerry Pournelle.
"When you enter West Point, you find that the Army doesn't care a hang about the first verses of the Star Spangled Banner. It's the third [sic] verse that you must learn. It goes:
O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation.
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
To stand between one's home and war's desolation is an ancient and glorious military tradition, and certainly one reason why men fight."
Well, because it is. This isn't even disputable, and those who do are wrong.
I am old enough to have joined.civil rights demonstrations in college. Fifty years later I am sorry I did -- we're further away from a color blind society than ever. As before, Democrats bear part of the blame, but unlike fifty years ago this time black people themselves bear most of the blame. So Cookie is right, but for all the wrong reasons.
"It's not that mysterious. Even Wikipedia has all the information"
That will be remedied soon enough, look there for why Marines are called "leathernecks."
Would it be insensitive to point out the British those escaped slaves fought for didn't outlaw slavery until 1815 . . . . They kept trading slaves quite profitably right up to the Civil War.
Maybe it wouldn't be insensitive, but it would be wrong. Britain formally abolished slavery and the slave trade on 25 March 1807 with the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, which "made it illegal to engage in the slave trade throughout the British colonies." The passage of the Act was the result of popular sentiment against slavery and the slave trade and not a reaction to any actions undertaken by Napoleon. It is true that the slave trade continued for a short period after the passage of the act, in the Caribbean, until 1811. After that the British, and the Americans as well, acted vigorously and successfully to end the Atlantic slave trade. Quoting from Wikipedia:
"The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron (or Preventative Squadron) at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The squadron's task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa.[1] With a home base at Portsmouth,[2] it began with two small ships, the 32-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Solebay and the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Derwent. At the height of its operations, the squadron employed a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and marines. . . . Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. . . . The United States Navy assisted the West Africa Squadron, starting in 1820 with HMS Cyane, which the US had captured from the Royal Navy in 1815. Initially the US contribution consisted of a few ships, but eventually the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 formalised the US contribution into the Africa Squadron.[11][12]"
At the start of the American Civil War the British upper classes supported the Confederacy -- and, by extension, the continuation of chattel slavery in the Confederate states -- because a great deal of their wealth was derived from the textile industry which was dependent on cotton from the American South. But the British middle and lower classes were quite firm, even ardent, in their support of the Union because a Union victory would necessarily entail the abolition of slavery. Hence Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation after the Battle of Antietam. After that, British elites saw the handwriting on the wall and ceased thinking in terms of providing overt political, economic, and military support for the Confederacy.
Little known historical: In response to the support among British elites for the Confederacy, Lincoln "invited" a Russian naval squadron to take up station on the East Coast, as a deterrent to the British navy while the U.S. Navy busied itself with blockading the South.
Blogger GoodPerson_VeryFlawed said...
It's a shame that DJT and so many other white dudes have small cocks.
...
Use Google. Conservatives are overwhelmingly better looking (and no doubt better hung) than Liberals. Resentment of this fact is possibly a lefty driver.
"...the existence of an industrial proletariat as Marx conceived was a very limited and short-lived phenomenon. The concept created confusion among proponents of Marxism in countries where there was no industrial proletariat, e.g. China; and in countries where the industrial proletariat was small and vastly outnumbered by the rural population, e.g. Russia."
This is why Marx did not envision his "dictatorship of the proletariat" developing in a pre-industrial nation. He saw it as being possible of occurring only in an industrial society where a distinct "proletariat" (working class) existed which had developed a distinct consciousness of itself as a particular political (and majority) class of society. In his usage, common for his time, "Dictatorship of the proletariat" meant only "rule by the working people," who he believed would claim control of political power from the ruling elites, (then, as now, the wealthy). In his idiom, we would say today, correctly, that we live in a dictatorship of the oligarchs.
One may criticize Marx as one wishes, but it is wrong to believe he ever saw a society such as that of Soviet Russia or Mao's China as examples of what his proletariat dictatorship would be. He saw a democracy, where the people held power over their own lives. Utopian? Yes. Far-fetched and unrealistic? Almost certainly, particularly in societies of millions or hundreds of millions of people.
Michael: There really is a stunning amount of stupidity afoot.
And there's an end on't.
Don't blame the stupid people for the stupid things they're saying and doing. They're stupid.* More intelligent people who must know that this is all stupid beyond belief, who are coddling them and flattering the unintelligent people and convincing them that what they are saying and doing is serious, worthy of respect and consideration...now that's a different matter.
*I am not including people like Stephen Henderson and Nina Turner in the category of "more intelligent people who know better". They're stupid. It's remarkable how truly stupid so many journalists are.
"Cookie,
Is there a country that does not have a racist past?"
Or present?
No, of course not. (Who ever said this was so, or that America was unique? It's just that we happen to live in America.)
Does this mean we should be complacent with the only-moderate improvement in race relations in this country, or worse, should convince ourselves we have erased racism and racist behavior (not just on the personal level, but institutionally) from our society? Of course not. Everything is always a work in progress, and as anyone who makes or creates anything knows, you can't get it right if you're not always hyper-sensitive to where you're getting it wrong.
I recall taking the second-prettiest I dated (wife sometimes reads Althouse!) to a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert not long after some halfwit writing for a national news source had deconstructed* "Puff the Magic Dragon" to "prove" it contained hidden references to marijuana. So the singers offered to do the same for another popular song ...
"Oh, say can you see -- "C" standing for cocaine!
"By the rockets' RED glare"
"The BOMBS bursting in air"
Well, I guess you had to be there.
To follow up my comment at 6:36 PM:
This is why people who sing horribly are astonished when they're told they sing horribly: they can't hear that they sing terribly. They are so enamored of the idea of being singers--or artists or dancers or writers, etc.--of the idea of being special and talented, they are simply delighted with any pitiful result of their efforts to sing, paint, act, write, etc. They haven't learned how to be critics of themselves. This, above all, is necessary to do anything well.
Historically slavery was a form of exacting tribute from defeated enemies. Importing slaves without any enemies to be fought is something else altogether.
@buwaya ... Would you say this goes against most tradition
worse, should convince ourselves we have erased racism and racist behavior (not just on the personal level, but institutionally)
The only institutional racism is the US today is directed at White men and Asian university students.
The important thing is that the Pack won. I bet trump hasn't watched a pro football game since the USFL debacle. He has hated the nfl since and is just trying to harm the league because he is a sore loser.
FYI, tcrosse:
Cave 76
The only institutional racism is the US today is directed at White men and Asian university students.
The left's diversity doctrine is an institutional effort that discriminates between individuals by the "color of their skin", denies individual dignity of people everywhere, and as an overtly exploited euphemism, that has been largely normalized, engenders a progressive prejudice and bigotry in plain sight.
There's an Isaac Asimov short story, "No Refuge Can Save" in which a German spy during World War II is caught because he knows the words of The Star Spangled Banner's third stanza.
"The central character, Griswold, explains that during World War II, he was involved in US intelligence. While questioning a suspected German spy, he performed a word association test on him. When Griswold said "terror of flight," the suspect replied, "gloom of the grave." This was evidence that he was a spy who had been trained up in Americanisms, since the two phrases allude to a line in the third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and no native-born American could possibly be familiar with the third verse of the national anthem ("except for me, and I know everything," added Griswold). Most Americans only know the first verse because it is the only one of the anthem's four verses that is normally sung."
"Kap" is 1/2 white, by the way. And he was raised by a white foster parents, in a Lilly-white community.
But now he hates America, and is down for the struggle with his black brothers and sisters.
And all of it just to get laid by some leftwinger....
@Gahrie at 6:47 PM:
"Poor, poor pitiful you!"
You're wrong...as always!
To put it another way: You're a terrible singer and will always be terrible.
A hyper-sensitive society is ahistorical, and not only unachievable, but any energetic attempt to achieve it will mean paralysis and ultimate disaster.
The human norm is rather what we are seeing - you will get one, or most likely some of all of: totalitarianism, balkanization, the creation of hostile castes. Every one of these is plainly evident already.
I don't mind people waxing poetic about the founding ... But it must be admitted that the Constitution took a definite step down from moral high plane of the Declaration ... Uninformed and uninvolved indeed. Thus last century was ceded to Marxism ... Fascism and socialism are siblings. Americans have been patting themselves for defeating one at the best of the other. How much longer uninformed and uninvolved?
At the behest
The worse problem any left-intellectual should care about, as blowback from the obsession with race, and multiculturalism, is that each generation of the left itself is becoming ever more ignorant of, not just the basics of their own cultural patrimony, but of anything properly described as culture at all.
The old communists were well versed in the European classics.
The current lot know nothing, nothing. They really are blank slates.
"Kap" is 1/2 white" That O, Steph, and Kap prefer to pass as black tells you all you need to know about racism today.
The current lot know nothing, nothing. They really are blank slates.
Entirely by design.
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,”
I see a little problem with reading comprehension here. It you believe slave means American slaves, the words make no sense. Why would Francis Scott Key want to drive away or kill all of the slaves? We were not fighting against American slaves.
And the century before to slavery.
Almost forgot my footnote from the comment at 6:40. But, yes, I'm aware that the verb "to deconstruct" was still decades in the future.
You're wrong...as always!
Really? Then who else is it legally permissible, and even mandated, to discriminate against today?
Two NFL teams played in London. They unanimously stood for the British national anthem, but some players took the knee for ours. WTF.
Steve Uhr said...
The important thing is that the Pack won"
For the first time in a long time, I didn't watch the game. I don't care that they won. I don't give a shit anymore. And I was a big Packer fan.
I'm actually thinking of buying the jersey of Alejandro Villanueva - Army major, veteran of 3 tours of Afghanistan, son of Spanish immigrants - because he was the sole Steeler who had the guts to stand for the Anthem. (but I won't buy one from a NFL site). Just yesterday, I would have puked at the thought of buying a Steelers jersey.
The old communists were well versed in the European classics.
The current lot know nothing, nothing. They really are blank slates.
9/24/17, 7:05 PM
They're barbarians.
Neither America's national charter nor organizing document adopt or represent the terms of color diversity (i.e. racism), and are, in fact, a conservation of principles, including that individuals have a unique dignity (i.e. character) and value (i.e. pro-life). Both of which are moral principles that are targeted for deconstruction, albeit selectively, by generational liberals and progressives.
I remember when the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2011. The left was fired up and screaming over Scott Walker and yet the state came together to celebrate the victory. Someone jokingly commented in a thread that in Wisconsin there is no Right nor Left when it comes to football, all are united under the Packer cause.
And now leftists have destroyed that because SWJs destroy everything they touch. The NLF just had to politicize football, and when Trump pushed back, sheeple like Steve Uhr blame Trump.
Cook:
And one may support Marx as one wishes, but nothing one could say in this regard will change the fact that Marxist political/economic systems have never worked anywhere they have been tried. They cannot and will not work because Marxism is flawed, root and branch, in its premises. Soviet and Chinese Marxism developed as they did because "classical Marxism" was a non-starter. When Marx bleated that he was "not a Marxist" he was correct, but he failed to recognize that what passed as Marxism at the time had formed as a reaction to the clown-cuckoo-land nature of his own theories. In simple terms, his theories were bogus and, as such, impossible to implement and completely indefensible.
Your idiomatic definition of "dictatorship" is hogwash. It has nothing to do with democracy, and is in fact antithetical to the very idea of democracy. The meaning of dictatorship has not changed since Roman times: it means, and has always meant, dictatorial rule, not democratic rule and certainly not democratic governance. I.e., power in the hands of the few exercised (dictated) over the many.
You give away the game in that regard when you say that it means "rule" by the working people: rule, not governance, by a privileged class that would muscle their way to societal dominance by "claim[ing](i.e., seizing) control of political power from the ruling elites" . . .and also from the rural populace -- which constituted the real majority everywhere in the world at the time Marx was formulating and writing up his nonsensical theories. At that time the only countries in the world where something vaguely resembling an industrial proletariat existed were Germany and Great Britain, and even there the rural populations far outnumbered urban industrial workers. Marx did not understand the role of agriculture and the rural populace in the workings of an integrated economic system and he was too stupid to achieve much less articulate any meaningful understanding of that role. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the agricultural sector and rural populaces have always suffered horrendously wherever Marxist "rule" has been implemented. This is all of piece with Marx's larger and utter failure to understand how wealth is produced in complex societies.
And that's all I want or intend to say about Marxism. Let others take up the cudgels, if they will.
My sense this afternoon is that the kneelers are already being widely clowned at the fan level. I'm guessing that in a couple of weeks the league and the players will be desperate not to talk about this. Good try but...white dollars matter.
I don't remember all the details, but I remember this about Roseanne Barr's rendition of the National Anthem. She grabbed her crotch and expectorated. Pres Bush (the elder) criticized her. As I remember, the usual suspects came to Roseanne's defense. She wasn't making fun of the National Anthem but rather of crude ball players. Bush was too stupid to understand her comedy........In some quarters the National Anthem isn't all that sacred and can be used as a comedy prop. This protest, at least, sigbnifies its importance.
Two quotes from the great Malcolm Muggeridge that speak to this issue:
“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.”
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”
As someone suggested above, there will be blood.
@Sodal,
Whoa, wrong. Chomsky's disciples, the anarcho communists (formally Libertarian Socialists) are alive, well and thriving.
No, they're not. They are an escape from history, a part of the old class-based Left that seeks to distance itself from the horrors of Marxist-Leninism by bootstrapping themselves into a political ideology that has never ruled anything. They buy themselves moral purity by selling their political relevance. The Marxist-Leninists not only murdered people, but they also built factories, built armies, & picked up the garbage on a regular basis. The Anarcho-Communists have done absolutely nothing except hector people, mostly in academic settings.
These people are not Kropotkinist Anarcho-Communists. There is, in their propaganda, no hatred of the state because the state can be nothing but an instrument of oppression no matter who runs it. None of them are setting up autonomous anarchist communes in the outback of Montana. Anarchists do not jibber-jabber at conferences at Ivy League universities. Anarchists work among the masses, one by one, to create a community where no one exploits the labor of another, much like Orwell describes Catalonia in Homage to Catalonia.
As you might can tell, I have a nostalgic attachment to Anarchism. My first readings in political philosophy were works by Kropotkin when I was 14. It just burns my keister to see all these assholes like Antifa & Chomsky claim the mantel of Anarchism when they are basically Lefties who want to hide from the burden of 100 million dead at the hands of their comrades.
No American institution will survive, because all that have not yet been politicized will be. And the process is speeding up because the true state of affairs is being revealed so quickly now.
In a weekend a major sport, almost universally followed, has become enemy territory, or at least extremely suspicious, for the bulk of its fans. This is amazing.
It's good to hear that the NFL players stood for the British National Anthem, but a few of the Irish players should have taken the knee. It very important to keep old wounds fresh and bleeding.
Just turned on the television to the Sunday night football game. As fate would have it, it was at the end of the National Anthem. NBC focused their cameras on the Raider contingent sitting with arms locked. Turned the TV off - screw 'em. They don't need me.
It's not white supremicist. It's just failing to recognize that slavery is wrong.
Which, historically, it wasn't, until it became economically obsolete, made obsolete by the free market. A slave contributes more working in his own interest than as a slave, in a free market.
The previous economic system was hit the guy on the head and take his stuff. It spends too much on defense to advance, and gets fewer benefits of trade.
You left out Tapper's insightful closer on the alleged racist intent of Trump's statements:
TAPPER: You -- you were -- you were talking about the racial component of this. You don't think it's an accident that he's talking about predominantly African-American players.
TURNER: Not at all. Look at his audience. It's no accident.
TAPPER: >>>In Alabama.<<<
They really, really hate Black football players in Alabama.
Thought experiment: was it wrong to hit the other guy on the head and take his stuff.
It was a pretty universal system.
Something about hitting the other guy on the head and taking his stuff ought to be in the national anthem. It's just a question of writing another verse for it.
Sousa wrote a national anthem but it didn't have words and was heavy on tubas.
Maybe Mendelssohn could have written lyrics for Sousa.
Mining for racism
Gotta keep people separated and angry
over lies from CNN
taking a knee to show support for Hillare-eeeee
The national anthem is a waltz and waltz me matilda is a march.
This is the way I look at it:
1. The NFL, MLB, and major college sports are entertainment.
2. To the extent I follow them, it is as a diversion from the cares of everyday life (see 1 above).
3. This is a free country, and people can say or do whatever they like.
4. Players who show little respect for our country (see 3 above) get little respect from me, and they mildly annoy me (see 2 above).
5. If I am not entertained but rather than am annoyed I will stop watching (see 1 above).
6. The sports entertainment business is playing with fire, and they may get burned.
7. I love to sing "The Star Spangled Banner". LOUDLY!! Every chance I get!
Obama's father was a Luo. This minority tribe in Kenya have been subjected to various government abuses and even massacres. Many of them live in refugee camps where the women are raped by the UN peacekeepers who are supposed to guard them. Sadly, when Obama visited Kenya, he did not take the knee when they played the Kenyan national anthem. There would have been no better way to honor his father's memory and make the Kenyan people "woke" to their past crimes. Well, maybe on his next visit.
I'd prefer a barcarolle for the anthem, as forms go. I think they're in 12/8 mostly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2qigBb_bEU
They're perfect for rocking the boat.
Anarchists of the Durruti-CNT sort never actually made a go of self-management. In 1936-38, in spite of having the bulk of Spanish industrial capacity in their hands, they performed very poorly in the matter of supplying the Republican armies.
Contrarily the Nationalists were effective at wringing the most of what they had, having no romantic delusions about economic justice. Its no accident that, in the massive expansion of the armies which both sides undertook, in those categories of armament in which Spain was self sufficient pre-war, the Nationalists almost exclusively retained the standard pre-war Spanish patterns and ammunition, while the Republicans were far more prone to use imported foreign weapons and were bedeviled by a lack of uniformity.
My piece a week and a half ago at National Review assembles some of the evidence that "slave" was probably not a racial reference:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451416/star-spangled-banner-racist-anthem
Why is it only the American National Anthem that needs to be protested. Just about every country in the world has treated its minorities poorly and has had unjustified wars with its neighbors.........Maybe there's an upside to this. Napoleon used to look across the channel to England and the acrimonious debates between the Tories and the Whigs. He thought this was a sign that England was falling apart. By contrast, the plebiscites he presented to the French people routinely passed with 90% majorities........We're a divided nation, but the divisions are out in the open and debated. Maybe something good will come of this.
It's a shame that DJT and so many other white dudes have small cocks.
Maybe it's just that you have a really big mouth.
khematite said...
"Most Americans only know the first verse because it is the only one of the anthem's four verses that is normally sung."
Towards the end of Ken Burns' The Civil War, there is a voice over of an eyewitness description of the raising of the US flag over Ft. Sumpter after the war's end. The author of the piece (I can remember who it was, other than it was a woman) states that all 4 verses of the Star Spangled Banner were sung, which was unusual because most people only knew the first verse.
@BP,
Anarchists of the Durruti-CNT sort never actually made a go of self-management.
I never claimed that the Catalan Anarcho-Syndicalists could ever tell shit from apple butter, especially in matters of realpolitik where you're caught between the anvil of the Nationalists & the hammer of the communists in a bloody civil war. I just used them as an example of the closest we have in recent history of an anarcho-syndicalist society. I'd like to note here, for the record, that in 1936-38 Catalonia it was not full of Noam Chomskys who rolled their Rs.
RH goes Aspberger over the national anthem.
Its consistent with his contrarianism and idea that everyone is just out for $$$. If only everyone would follow Milton Friedman and the Constitution everything would be fine.
Yeah, race, nationalism, ethnic pride, and every other emotion doesn't exist. Its all about the greenbacks and math.
LOL
Britain was never put to the stresses France was in the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars.
France lost at least 2.5million men dead 1792-1815. And France was kept together very effectively, recruiting and supplying replacements at a terrific rate right to the point of disaster, overwhelmed by the combined forces of a united Europe in 1814.
Britain was never tested like this.
Blogger GoodPerson_VeryFlawed said...
It's a shame that DJT and so many other white dudes have small cocks"
Speak for yourself, cracka.
Are you checking out cocks in the restroom, PB? I thought that was kind of a no-no for straight men.
Said Stephen Henderson
Are all black authors ridiculous since Sowell retired?
buwaya said...No community can survive making it a value to be single, atheist, homosexual, "transgender" and especially child-free.
Although atheism is necessary for a non-trivial understanding of humanity, the US and probably most other societies definitely don't "make it a value", what with states' unconstitutional religious tests, mostly ignored, and privileging religious objections to certain laws over secular objections.
I love how liberal white dudes talk about white dudes in the third person, as if they're not crackas themselves. As if they get honorary non-white status for dissing their own race.
No wonder black radicals hate white liberals even more than they hate white conservatives.
Robert Cook: Everything is always a work in progress, and as anyone who makes or creates anything knows, you can't get it right if you're not always hyper-sensitive to where you're getting it wrong.
Being completely insensitive to the possibility that that you might be "getting it all wrong" in your basic assumptions is a more fundamental failing, Cookie.
I would say that any thinking (and reasonably well-informed, and tolerably worldly) person, observing the passing scene, would consider the possibility that the form that contemporary American (pan-Western, really) "anti-racism" has taken is not only an anomaly, not only not a virtue, but a virulent pathology.
At any rate, life is short, Cookie, and the universe is full of fascinating and interesting things. And you know what? "Fixing racism", as "racism" exists in present-day America, isn't one of those interesting things to me. (Putting aside here that in the end you can't "fix" what is inherent in human nature. Not that people like you aren't willing to destroy whole societies trying to socially engineer your diversitopias into existence. And putting aside that we've been beaten over the head about how "racist" we are for the last half-century, and, apparently, that approach has done nothing but make race relations worse.)
You're welcome to be as hypersensitive as you please about *your* racism. As a matter of fact, anyone seeking perfection in some area, who really wants to "not get it wrong" in something that matters to him, should put his energy into self-criticism, and stop worrying about where other people fall short. Even more so, anybody criticizing "institutional racism" needs to get himself straight before presuming expertise on the whys and wherefores of that, er, situation.
Myself, "not being 'racist'" doesn't even make my own top-100 list of "perfections of human virtue and character that I would like to be able to pursue in my brief lifetime". I don't think "not being racist" is much of a virtue. I've known vicious and unjust "anti-racists", and I've known just and kind people who had many "racist" beliefs. I also think there's way too much grifting, hustling, and "junk sociology" involved in "solving" "institutional racism" for me to buy what you uncritically assume - that disparities at the institutional level are of course caused by racism, which can be ferreted out with enough criticism, self- and otherwise.
So given a choice between improving myself in some area of character that I consider important, or in some art or skill that interests me, or working on "not being racist", I'll take a pass on the latter every time. But by all means, don't let me stop your devoting your entire existence to purifying yourself of this alleged sin.
Black guy does something. Trump criticizes.
Media: Trump sure seems to criticize black people a lot. What a racist!
Fuck Jake Tapper. This "everything is white supremacist ” bullshit is so transparent.
US history is racist. World history? Racist.
Reality? Raaaaaacist.
Gettin old.
Is NFL commissioner Godell black? It's ok for Trump to attack that guy, isn't it??
Fuck the Media.
F,
That is a very narrow objection I think.
Atheism is the default and near-necessary state in the US intelligentsia, based on social, employment and institutional pressure. Leftover laws from an earlier age are irrelevant. Society is far more than just its laws.
Thanks for that self-promotion Walter Olson. The folks here already pretty definitively established the point -- although apparently the best you could come up with was "probably" not a racial reference.
If you’re smart enough to write a piece for National Review, Walter Olson, you’re smart enough to google
how to create a hyperlink.
I, for one, do not give a fuck about anything said by Stephen Henderson. He is a huge part of Detroit's Culture of Corruption.
Treat people as individuals.
Like the BLM guy said the other day (pbuh)--"I don't hate cops--I hate BAD cops."
Trump is going to drive people to Kaepernick's side? I dunno. Exactly which group of people? Are we talking folks on the extreme left end of the bell curve? And speaking of extreme left end, isn't that where the "left" belongs on the IQ distribution. I mean you either "feelz" or you "think". I submit that the two are mutually exclusive.
One hundred thousand blacks fought for the Union in the Civil War. The second most popular song among Union soldiers was The Battle Cry of Freedom:
Yes we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
We will rally from the hillside, we’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
As a result of the Union victory in the Civil War slavery ended. Blacks joining the Union Army was the most effective way to end slavery. What would be the most effective way in the present day for blacks to achieve present day goals? I just can't feel that these football protests are the way. They will cause a decline in attendance at NFL games negatively impacting the major networks and the player salaries. But what will they achieve? Will they get jobs? improve schools? No
This protest is trying to get all whites to think they are all the same as the KKK. It would really be quite a dangerous state of affairs if whites ever did think that way. But this is not what is likely. What is likely is a sort of silent widespread disengagement - an inner taking the knee, as it were - from reform of any kind along with non-attendance at any forum or venue, sports, TV, movies where woke people might be getting one's money.
But what will insulting Americans and American symbols do for black jobs or inner city schools or the number of blacks shot in Chicago or the number of abortions - 1/3 of them black babies - or family breakup among the blacks? Isn't Foxconn what Wisconsin blacks need? Aren't charter schools what Milwaukee black kids need? Are we just going to applaud football players who take a knee and then take a knee of our own about real issues?
Like the BLM guy said the other day (pbuh)--"I don't hate cops--I hate BAD cops."
If the 95 percent of good cops would stop covering for the 5 percent of bad cops, illegal police violence against blacks and whites would instantly cease.
"If the 95 percent of good cops would stop covering for the 5 percent of bad cops"
Is that you, Brookzene ?
How about a list of incidents.?
I really don't think this the eve of Armageddon. Some football players are taking the knee, and some football fans are objecting to the practice. I'm in the latter category, but it's not an issue that will affect my life very much no matter how this SJW morality play turns out. Kaepernick is not very appealing or likable, but he doesn't inspire all that much loathing. He's got to up his game if he wants to become a martyr.
I bet trump hasn't watched a pro football game since the USFL debacle. He has hated the nfl since and is just trying to harm the league because he is a sore loser.
He really is living in your head, isn't he ?
Whites are forever being asked to check their privileges. Ok, but why can't blacks check their resentments, They're way over the top on this and any number of other issues.......In this past generation, Africa has been the worst practioner of ethnic slaughter. We're doing something right, and they're doing something wrong.
Its not the eve of Armageddon, just a rather significant step on that path.
A very important shared institution is now not so shared, not culturally neutral, not politically neutral, not innocent. Its easy to dismiss this but one has to consider what thoughts are now running in the backs of the minds of millions. Those are set there, now, and will never go away.
“'No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,'
"I see a little problem with reading comprehension here. It you believe slave means American slaves, the words make no sense. Why would Francis Scott Key want to drive away or kill all of the slaves? We were not fighting against American slaves.
9/24/17, 7:10 PM"
Wikipedia:
"According to British historian Robin Blackburn, the words 'the hireling and slave' allude to the thousands of ex-slaves in the British ranks organized as the Corps of Colonial Marines, who had been liberated by the British and demanded to be placed in the battle line 'where they might expect to meet their former masters.'[7] Conversely, Professor Mark Clague, a professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, writes that the 'middle two verses of Key's lyric vilify the British enemy in the War of 1812' and 'in no way glorifies or celebrates slavery.'[8] Clague writes that 'For Key ... the British mercenaries were scoundrels and the Colonial Marines were traitors who threatened to spark a national insurrection.'[8] This harshly anti-British nature of Verse 3 led to its omission in sheet music in World War I, when Britain and the U.S. were allies.[8] Responding to the assertion of writer Jon Schwarz of The Intercept that the song is a 'celebration of slavery,'[9] Clague said that: 'The reference to slaves is about the use, and in some sense the manipulation, of black Americans to fight for the British, with the promise of freedom. The American forces included African-Americans as well as whites. The term "freemen," whose heroism is celebrated in the fourth stanza, would have encompassed both.'"[10]
Let me get this straight. In the war of 1812 the British Army invaded the States by three sea borne offensives. The one that burned DC was watched by Key from a British ship where he was a captive, watched while the Limeys got blocked at the American Fortress outside Baltimore and had to bombard it to open the way. But failed.
How that affects the treatment of traitors who fought for England against the United States is unclear. The black slaves and freedmen who fought for the USA against the other mass British Navy invasion sent to the Gulf of Mexico to sack New Orleans and take the Mississippi River (and control of Texas and the Mid-west for England) picked the right side. Andy Jackson gave them their freedom and the French Pirates full pardons. The Pirates were Haitian escaped slaves that the British would have re-enslaved.
"And you know what? 'Fixing racism,' as 'racism' exists in present-day America, isn't one of those interesting things to me."
Apparently, you have not experienced racism as an everyday aspect of your life. I haven't, either. We're both very lucky. Many aren't so lucky.
atheism is necessary for a non-trivial understanding of humanity
A separation of logical domains (e.g. Christian philosophy) is necessary for a non-trivial understanding of humanity. We can strive to understand our corporal selves in the scientific domain. And, since we cannot discern between origin and expression, we strive to understand our whole in the faith domain, where character (e.g. morality) is conceived and evolves.
And, you being rather self-involved, it seems, misread me. I don't spend time examining my own racism in the hope of extirpating every faint whisper of it that I may find. I wasn't talking about that at all. (I think I'm pretty non-racist--though I may have a blind spot about it, as most of us do.) I was talking about our societal and institutional racism. You may deny it exists as many do; most here do. This is simply laziness or selfishness of perception, willful blindness, an unwillingness or inability to see the world as it is.
I would be like Bobby Duval in "Apocalypse Now" except with tons of scared chicks begging for me to protect them if war were to break out, which sounds like a bitchin' good time to me.
This idea Americans should be afraid of a civil war is third-world masturbation type stuff, limp wishcasting sad dreams that even if fulfilled aren't worthy of much note given the totality of American exceptionalism in wealth, art, and technology.
The past is a different country in every country, not just here. Funny I have to point this out to people smarter than I am and near-infinitely better-read.
I guess some folks just forget all the reasons why America should have failed so many times before but just didn't over the long term compared to any other state-sized entity in existence.
That is always always always just thrown out as if it's irrelevant and not in fact the most important indicator of our future success compared to any other country.
"I met a girl who sang the blues, and asked her for some happy news." - American Pie the song
"Why is it only the American National Anthem that needs to be protested."
Because those protesting it live in America and it is personal to them.
Watching Goodell botch this whole thing up is like watching youtube footage of a guy in a Lamborghini towing a boat and trying to launch it into a lake but instead he hits the gas too much and backs the entire thing, car in all only to disappear in a cloud of bubbles. You really hate to see something so unnecessary. The backbone of the NFL viewing base is patriotic and hates to see these ridiculous displays. Rachel Maddow is not your core viewing audience. Wake up before its too late!
Whitney Version.
One thing about Robert Cook is he's 100% humorless. Grim guy. Very grim.
One thing about Robert Cook is he's 100% humorless. Grim guy. Very grim.
There's a reason I call him Comrade Marvin.
I mean you either "feelz" or you "think". I submit that the two are mutually exclusive.
Althouse disagrees with us.
Raiders sat for the National Anthem. And what did putting politics first get them?
They got their ass kicked.
If you are going to go on the field for a game, play football. Otherwise, go home.
There's an unofficial fifth stanza to The Star Spangled Banner, written by poet Oliver Wendell Holmes during the Civil War. As befitted the time of its composition, there's a warning aimed at "a foe from within" and a hope for the soon-to-be "millions unchain'd."
When our land is illum'd with Liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down, with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchain'd who our birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.
buwaya said...
No community can survive making it a value to be single, atheist, homosexual, "transgender" and especially child-free.
All of those things, if made popular by approbation, exterminate peoples. They are the way of death and futility, nothing else.
You can if you allow the elites to import a new electorate.
Of course it wouldn't be the same community but the elites get cheap labor!
Robert Cook said...
I was talking about our societal and institutional racism. You may deny it exists as many do; most here do. This is simply laziness or selfishness of perception, willful blindness, an unwillingness or inability to see the world as it is.
Cook is totally right. Let's examine this racism.
First it primarily exists in inner cities that have been under democrat control for decades. A huge number of black people live in cities that do not allow them to be armed and defend themselves. Crime is rampant in these corrupt shit holes. They are dominated by progressives.
The public school system is particularly racist and segregated by race and socioeconomic status. Black and Hispanic children are served poorly in these public schools in a systematic fashion. The public school system is dominated by progressives.
It just looks like progressives moved the plantation to the cities is all.
And the sooner you resolve it, on the side of tradition, the better off you will be. Because the other side is simple chaos.
Bu, you think we should just start the mill now? What should we wait for? Should we have started earlier? Is it too late? Or must this be avoided at all costs? Then what would those costs be, of course.
GoodPerson_VeryFlawed said...
It's a shame that DJT and so many other white dudes have small cocks.
Those of us who are well hung, PBJ, don't go on and on about it.
That's what our women are for.
Isaac Asimov wrote a fact article titled "All Four Verses", extensively explaining the song's history in his inimitable style. You can read it here: http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2010/09/dowdifying_asim.html
Asimov's article starts with the words "When I was going to college". Use ctl-f in your browser to search for it.
"This is why people who sing horribly are astonished when they're told they sing horribly: they can't hear that they sing terribly. They are so enamored of the idea of being singers--or artists or dancers or writers, etc.--of the idea of being special and talented, they are simply delighted with any pitiful result of their efforts to sing, paint, act, write, etc. They haven't learned how to be critics of themselves. This, above all, is necessary to do anything well."
I am constantly getting in trouble for this. Esp my insistence on singing Happy Birthday (and celebrating with ther holidays with lyrics to that melody). My partner has banned me from doing so to her kids. And my dancing is no better, esp from her view, with a degree in dance. But her math is no better, which is where my undergraduate degree was.
”One thing about Robert Cook is he's 100% humorless. Grim guy. Very grim.”
Hahaha! Wrong.
"I was talking about our societal and institutional racism. "
Any thoughts on the church shooting in Nashville ?
White parishioners,
Mug shot of mass shooter here.
Formerly attended the church.
Once again, the media and the left (but I repeat myself) are totally misreading the situation. I'm reminded of an article I saw a few months ago explaining that enrollment at Mizzou was down because people didn't want to attend a racist school.
As someone else said, the press is going to spend the weekend defending multimillionaire athletes calling the US in general, and football fans in particular, racist bigots. And they wonder how Trump could have won.
Robert Cook: I was talking about our societal and institutional racism.
Yeah, I know. You mentioned that explicitly and I addressed that point specifically. Talk about lazy misreading.
You may deny it exists as many do; most here do. This is simply laziness or selfishness of perception, willful blindness, an unwillingness or inability to see the world as it is.
Yeah, I addressed this lazy belief of yours that you *know*, without any serious critical examination, that all disparities at societal and institutional levels are due to "racism", and all your "understanding" proceeds from that, which you won't for a minute subject to any kind of skeptical examination.
That's why it's funny when you start banging on about other people's "unwillingness or inability to see the world as it is".
Just read a snippet of a Wall Street Journal editorial about this subject. The editors of the WSJ still think they are smarter and more politically savvy than Trump.
Robert Cook: Apparently, you have not experienced racism as an everyday aspect of your life. I haven't, either. We're both very lucky. Many aren't so lucky.
I think it's far more apparent that, as we have such widely diverging opinions on the subject of "racism", we have far different life experiences in this area.
The WSJ became unreadable in the 90s when it became a lifestyle newspaper.
It started going downhill when they lost Jude Wanniski, who unfortunately himself went 'round the bend on gold. He snatched up the wrong theory and stuck with it, but was good before that explaining stuff.
Racism today is covering for the average IQ disparity between blacks and whites.
Stabilized by using outcome-based tests instead of opportunity-based tests, so everybody will always be mad, the blacks at being discriminated against (see, the tests prove it) and the whites at being accused of stopping blacks when they're giving them every chance they can.
The path out is go with good character, which might mean put fathers back in the picture.
I'd go with the "national anthem doesn't matter" because, first, it's true; and second, it defuses the outrage over protests which themselves depend on the national anthem perception as mattering.
Protests usually depend on a mistake about mattering.
It's terrorism that works on things that matter, like blowing stuff up.
There are blacks here and there publically calling for good character.
Are these blacks smart or dumb? Nobody knows. The question doesn't come up.
Good character takes the field.
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