Explosion And Deaths At Ariana Grande Concert

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Since day 1, the U.S. has been 'multicultural' as you put it. The first group of settlers were English in the Virginia area, followed by Dutch in New York, followed by Germans in Pennsylvania, followed by importation of African slaves in the South. That's all pre-Revolution, post revolution included large migration of Scottish to the south, Irish to the north, French(via Quebec) to the north-east, and the absorption of Mexicans in the western territories (Mexican-American War), that was all pre-Civil War. Brush up on your own history before accusing others of ignorance in the area. Your post is high on emotion, low on evidence.

edit: I forgot the most important group, the Native Americans, who have been here since before day 1.

Last edited by Aristophanes on 25 May 2017, 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

That seems like quite an advantage all of Central and South America and the Middle East have going for them. Since they are "brown" "darkies" as the liberals say, denying them anything is purely racist as the liberals claim. All that bending over backwards to accommodate them has been and will continue to be exploited to the Nth degree.

Last edited by EzraS on 25 May 2017, 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Multiculturalism carries more meaning than the literal, America is a country built on the rejection of old world customs & ideas and the adoption of a new shared American identity. What is our countries official motto again? Our country's history has been far more culturally imperialist than multicultural, force has been used at times and as glorious as the victories have been I don't think a society constantly in flux and at conflict with each other is a good thing. It's not racist to want stability and better living standards, people forget or are ignorant of the sacrifices made to get where were are today. This flagellantism for your religious ideology isn't something you should force on the rest of society, it's a recipe for death and destruction.

It's precisely that flux and conflict that creates innovation. A closed society that doesn't accept the challenge of new ideas becomes stale and never evolves. Case in point: the same Arabic nations that are the undertone of this entire debate.

Kind of a meaningless platitude, I wouldn't say those Arabic countries are free of change or conflict but what they really could use right is a bit of stability. They need less extreme ideology, from Islamic extremists as well as overly idealistic and utopian western liberals. Not sacrificing your nation and people at the alter of globalism doesn't mean you're a closed society, if we are to give value to all cultures then there should be no issue in preserving our own. The US hasn't been a open bordered "multicultural" country, that's not a real version of history.

Great. Now History is fake news.

Yes the best way to deal with these things is finger pointing and isolationism.

Umm it has actually been a multicultural country, any 'american culture' we have only exists because of people of various cultures immigrating here. Also no one is saying to have completely open borders with no security, of course you need security measures and can't let the entire world flood into one country for instance, just that refugees shouldn't all be turned away and ignored...especially when it has a lot to do with the U.S and other 'western' nations that the region is so destabilized in the first place. Also how do you plan to get less islamic extremists by refusing entry to refugees trying to get away from it?

Also I don't see what western liberals have to do with islamic extremism, I don't think it is common among liberals to support Islamic extremism.

Meanwhile lots of people all over the world of all different beliefs(including muslims) are coming together to support each other and condemning this horrible attack....and all you can do is stir the pot.

If it's just a platitude, how do you explain change, i.e. evolution? If a culture isn't challenged it has no impetus for change, and thus it does become stale. If the Middle East isn't the example you're looking for you can go back to the Western dark ages as an example, or the Greek dark ages, or probably the best example ancient Egypt. If anyone's utopian it's the far-right and their idea that an authoritarian state will bring about peace, again, look at the Middle East, how peaceful are they under authoritarianism?


Accepting that there's a world outside one's own borders is not bowing to any altar, it's just a practical fact. Refusing to engage that world is not only foolish, it's detrimental. The isolationism of 1870's -1890's crippled the economy of this nation, which exploded at the turn of the last century when we opened up trade with the Orient and Europe. The isolationism of 1920's - 30's kept us from engaging with a Europe that soon developed fascism, something our influence could have blunted, and a problem we had to rectify with half a million U.S. servicemen's lives. Isolationism is in effect ignoring a problem, and those problems will grow until we're forced to deal with them one way or the other-- best to be proactive than reactive.

As for multicultural, we've accepted immigrants from a whole host of different cultures since before this country was even a country, it's as American as apple pie if not more so. You can argue that we need less immigrants or tighter control on immigration but to deny that immigration is part of America is to deny reality: how did all the white people get here in the first place? Each one of those groups is now a part of American culture: Octoberfest that so many Americans enjoy came from the Germans, St. Patty's day the Irish, Thanksgiving, the most American of holidays outside the 4th of July can be traced to Native Americans. These are all parts of the American experience and none of them originated from our early English-protestant heritage. Without those groups we may as well just be England-west, what an aspiring dream to live up to...

Do you speak German? How many Native Americans are there nowadays? No, America has not been multicultural in the modern sense of the word which as I said infers a lot more than just literally being made up people from different places. Do you believe in the melting pot or do you believe in multiculturalism, multiculturalism is opposed the former altho that be the historic American position.

If you follow the conversation what I was saying about western liberalism is forcing it down the throats of foreign countries, it's not our responsibility or in authority to decide how these other countries govern themselves. Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all; entangling alliances with none. That is the foreign policy that our founders intended for us to follow, not be the world police.

I'm not stirring the pot with anything, I was responding to someone saying that 7.5 million people isn't that big of a number for 'refugees' which is just a nuts thing to say.

What are you talking about?

What is this shared american identity exactly? I have never really observed anything I would say is exactly unadulterated 'american' culture most of american culture is bits of other cultures. Well unless we talk about Native American cultures but everything after that is multiple cultures mixed together.

Also isolationism is a pretty old world custom and idea.

No one said it is racist to want stability and good living standards, more like a bit racist to think only Caucasian or properly 'westernized' people of other ethnicities are more entitled to those things than those other people who come from different cultures, and speak another language. And that these 'other' people will dirty it all up.

And at least in the U.S the main people trying to force religious ideology are the alt right and and religious conservative/republicans in the government.

How do I explain progress? Hard work and sacrifice? It's not divinely ordained or inevitable, it's fragile and needs protection. When I say sacrifice I don't mean it as in they're martyrs, as you probably would agree our history so black and white and a lot of what our country did in the past isn't seen the same way it was then. In order to get where we are today, our country has done some very bad ugly things.

You are showcasing your ignorance when you sum up culture as simply food and a day you get drunk on.

Again, taking literally a concept that you don't understand.

Nope, just keeping it simple so you can follow along and understand it. You don't teach high school physics to a 1st grader and expect them to understand.

I don't speak German but some americans do and my next door neighbors speak russian. Also there are lots of native americans the western invaders did not actually kill them all off you know. Also based on this definition:
multicultural
adjective
1.
of, relating to, or representing several different cultures or cultural elements:
a multicultural society.
the U.S certainly seems pretty multicultural in the modern sense. But what is the definition you are using?

I'd say multiculturalism describes it better than melting pot, for it to be a melting pot everything would have just merged into one huge frankenculture. But there are little areas and corners more specific to some cultures than others, states have varying cultures ect...its not like we all have a single well defined 'american' identity throughout the entire country.

Also not sure how liberals tie in with policing the world or telling other countries how to live...if I recall back after 9/11 it was a republican administration that sort of initiated the lengthy war/conflict going on over there in the middle east. Wasn't it that we needed to bring 'freedom and democracy' to the middle east by force and defeat terrorism. I cannot really think of any examples of western liberals forcing liberalism on foreign countries or trying to decide how other countries should govern themselves....do you have an example?

Immigration in the 19th century to America was pretty quick considering the means of travel and technology of the day. If they could have come here faster, I'm sure they would have.
And those very same immigrants were constantly perceived as hostile. Benjamin Franklin, normally the best of the founders, spoke badly about the Palatine Germans coming to America, fleeing war and poverty. He claimed they were unassimilatable, said they were incapable of understanding free government as they had come from autocratic rule, and yet bemoaned how they took part in American elections. Same could be said about how Irish Catholics were perceived. Yet it turns out, none of this was true. Other than a few fanatics, what evidence is there that Syrian refugees are hostile to our way of life?