Any authentic culture but our own

I have never heard anyone other than a college student claim that they "hate" Western culture. By the time you finish college or shortly thereafter you usually figure out that western culture is incredibly variable anyway. Now, if what you really mean is middle American, middle class values I still think that the hating thing is mostly done by children (Im including college kids here who arent working to support themselves). That leaves a few adults among the celebrity class and some intellectuals who in actual numbers probably equal those who believe every word of the Bible must be taken literally and require their wives to live in a tent while having their period (maybe those old Jews were on to something there). I really think this is much ado about nothing but it sells well.

Now if we are talking about something weaker than hate it is a different story. In my eight years in the military I got to see other parts of the world. There are some pretty nice things/people to see out there. Different cultures often do things differently than we do but that doesnt make it worse or better. Sometimes it is worse (or better) but most of the time it is just different. Most of my liberal and conservative friends appreciate bits of other cultures and sometimes express envy of those qualities. My conservative friends who have worked in Japan seem to wish we had more of the sense of tradition they have and the importance of working things out as a group.

There is a group of conservative minded folks who seem to think that the USA is "the best" and any suggestion that we could learn something from other cultures must mean that you hate America. There is a sector of liberals that thinks America needs to change and that government is the way to do that. They often look at what has been tried in other countries and want to try it here.I dont think that necessarily means they hate western culture. My wife is always trying to improve me (with little success) but I dont think that means she hates me. I think that most of this then, is just something that both sides use to keep things polarized and keep both sides hating each other.

So, I could be wrong but just keep track and see if you actually hear any adults say that they really 'hate" western values. Is it unpatriotic to want to change one's country? One's values? Both political parties and conservatives as well as liberals are trying to change our values all the time. Conservatives may claim they are just trying to make things the way they used to be when America was great. They want to get rid of abortion which is the way things used to be. but is also used to be an accepted cultural value that a person of color really couldnt vote or eat the same places whites did. It wasnt that long ago that the first black made it into baseball if you want to look at a real concrete example that is easy to find and verify. i dont really believe that conservatives want to go back to that also yet that was part of our western culture then.

If you talk with real people and not just listen to these think tanks and attack groups that make big bucks keeping us all mad at each other I think you will find that your concern is way overblown.

Steve

ITA with Steve. I've found that when you actually talk to real adults (not college students, who are trying on lifestyles and values like new outfits) about everyday life, we value many of the same things regardless of political views.

We live in a large and powerful country which allows us to be isolated in our own culture. The thing about discovering other cultures from the outside is that it's very easy to succumb to "the grass is always greener" phenomenon. The same is true when looking back in time. Perhaps liberals are more prone to idealize other cultures, while conservatives are more prone to idealize the past. Dunno, just a thought.

Perhaps hate--for your average multiculturalist (meaning most educated folks nowadays)--is too strong a word. But this is something I've often wondered about as well, particularly when it comes to issues like immigration. Now, I grew up on National Geographic magazine articles and public television documentaries lamenting the displacement of traditional societies or the globalization of western tastes and fashion, and I'll be the first to admit, as a Chestertonian conservative, that these changes sadden me. They sadden me in the abstract, and they saddened me during my decade-long sojourn in (mostly) rural Japan.

But what I've never been able to understand is how educated folk can laud the battle of some group overseas to preserve their culture against the onslaught of foreign influences while at the same time declaring racist the attempts of the people about whom Rod writes so often who are trying to preserve their own way of life from a foreign "onslaught" in suburban Dallas. How is it any different? I personally don't see how it can be, unless one ascribes lesser value to the lives those suburban folks have built for themselves than one does to the lives of folks in, say, rural Japan. Yet, how can one do so if one is consistent in one's multiculturalism?

The interesting things is, of course, that this attitude can be read in two ways. The first is as pure condescension and disdain; the second is, ironically, as the assumption that suburban American culture is, unique among world societies, a blank slate. It is, in some way, normative--as Rod suggested above, the foundation to which any exotic cultural accouterments can be added without harming the underlying cultural form. Thus, the assumption of the multiculturalist may, in the end, be alarmingly ethnocentric.

Now, in response, I'm sure to get the argument that turnabout is fair play: Since we've exported our culture abroad, we have no right to resist the incursion of foreign cultures on our own. Two responses come immediately to mind: First, having a McDonalds plopped down in your traditional neighborhood is materially distinct from having your schools inundated with students who can't speak English and many of whose families aren't motivating their children to achieve academically (to take just one example of the costs of illegal immigration). Second, the folks in the suburban communities facing the largest influx of illegal aliens I would submit aren't the folks responsible for exporting our culture abroad; if anyone should bear the costs, it should be our own elites. If it's just for illegal immigrants to impose a cost on someone in our society, let them impose it on, say, folks living in Beverly Hills or the Upper West (East? don't know New York, sorry) Side. They're the ones doing the exporting: Let them bear the costs of publicly educating illegal immigrants; let them bear the depressed home prices that result when the house next door is rented by three families who don't keep up the property and who play loud music late into the night.

If you talk with real people and not just listen to these think tanks and attack groups that make big bucks keeping us all mad at each other I think you will find that your concern is way overblown.

Amen to that, Steve! Of course, if you do that, you don't get as many blog hits. You might have to start posting recipes or something. ; )

Speaking of which, I agree that "white-bread" is not a racial comment. It refers to the really, really BAD white bread that most people bought at the supermarket back in those wonderful old fifties and sixties when everything was so great and the boomers hadn't taken over the world and ruined everything. (sarcasm) Fortunately, I never had to eat it because my mother always baked our bread--or I did, once I learned how. We loved to go to our friends' houses and eat Wonder (tm) bread, though, because it was fun to play with. You could squish it up into something resembling play dough.

Back in the day, my father used to refer to the kind of people who ate white bread and iceberg lettuce and served casseroles as "WASPS," and he was every bit as contemptuous of them as these mythical leftists supposedly are of "white-bread" culture. But from the other side. He thought they were not conservative enough. Go figure.

We had roast chicken last night for dinner, and it was darn good. I wanted it to come out browner than last time, so I put the whole thing in the big pot with some onions and sauteed it for awhile, then rubbed it with herbs and roasted it. I heard chicken cooked with beer was good, so I poured about half a bottle of Peg Leg Imperial Stout into the body cavity. It certainly created some delicious juice. This was a free-range chicken from the local butcher. My son the Nipper, who is visiting, said it was "succulent."

We also had mashed potatoes and broccoli di rape. I ran out of garlic, but I wanted to make it interesting. So I sauteed it in walnut oil with chopped walnuts and a bit of balsamic vinegar. But then it seemed kind of bitter. So I put in just a tiny bit of maple syrup, which might seem weird, but it sort of balanced the flavors of bitter and sour, and brought out the taste of the walnuts. It made a good lunch the next day, too--cold, right out of the plastic box, with a little slice of Gouda.

Peas are out, though. They are absolutely no good unless fresh. Although you can, imho, put the frozen ones in with rice and saffron and stuff if you're making arroz con pollo.

I'm only reporting all this to help you out, Rod. In case peace and love break out and you have to support yourself on recipes.

Here's the thing. We all someone else living a more authentic life than we lead. Here's a good example from Rod:

"But I think it's time for me to recognize that I'm probably never going to have a presidential candidate I can fully believe in. If such a person were to exist, he wouldn't be running for president, but pushing a Lucky Dog cart in the French Quarter."

In the same way "multicultis" believe people in Third World countries live more authentic lives, folks like Rod think the hot dog vendor lives a more authentic life than he does. The fetishization of authentic rural life, for instance, is a much a pose as suggesting people in Ecuador live a more authentic life.

Or maybe it isn't. Maybe recognizing people who don't live our own affluent, overthinking lives may actually be more authentic isn't so bad.

This was a TV ad. Have you talked with a real person telling you the same kind of stuff?

Among the more liberal? Yeah. They didn't react real well when I pointed out that they're free to move overseas whenever they want.

Oops, scrambled that sentence up at the end. This:

"Most don't really think about what they're saying of the assumptions they're making."

Should read "Most don't think about the assumptions underlaying what they're saying."

Liberals hate western culture? I didn't know that. I thought that they only hated conservatives.

Just kidding.

Seriously. I married into an extremely liberal family. My husband is the most conservative of the bunch. He's always making jokes about the relatives. At gatherings he says things to get them going. For instance, he'll mention that my son went hunting when he visited my parents. He'll talk about the good things the large company that he works for is doing. He's the only one who works in the private sector of the whole bunch. I know liberals, and I've never heard them say or do anything that would make me think that they hate western culture.

That doesn't mean that they don't want to learn about other cultures or find other cultures interesting. One family took the kids out of school and moved to Mexico for 6 months to learn Spanish and teach the kids about life in Mexico. They enjoyed the experience, but they were all glad to come home.

I dated a guy once who was extremely liberal. He hated everything. After 3 months, he even hated me(save the comments, please). One time we were driving down the road and we passed a station wagon(this was in the 80's when mothers drove wagons rather than minivans). He said, "I hate those things." At the time, I didn't understand the contempt. I looked at him like he was a nut and said, "It's a car. How can you hate it so much?" He said, "I hate what it represents. Typical America. No style. Mothers carting little brats all over the place." He named a few more things, but I can't remember. So...I guess those kinds of liberals exist, but most liberals that I know like kids and family and drive cars without style.

Now I understand his contempt for a car. I hate Hummers like he hated the wagons.

Speaking of which, I agree that "white-bread" is not a racial comment.

Denial.

Hi, Rod. I just wanted to say thanks for linking to me.

I agree with those saying that "white bread" is not generally a slur against the white race. Probably some people who use it think of that meaning as a sort of double entendre after the fact, but I don't think it was coined as a racial comment.

I also think Derek Copold is right in his response to those asking whether liberals say they hate Western civilization: it's not a stated hatred; it's implicit and I don't doubt it's sometimes unconscious even on their part. It's hard to claim someone doesn't hate Western civilization when they're strongly insinuating that a society is barbaric, uncivilized, and unworthy of any respect or honor if it doesn't offer same-sex marriage or socialized medicine or whatever the cause du jour is.

Well lookie here, a polemicist put up a straw man, knocked it down and some of the folks here are acting like something more than yet another rhetorical exercise has been performed.

Feh...

I hope you had a nice time in Ireland John Rich :)

Exotic is not a word I think many people in Ireland would use to describe Bud especially these days as we are getting flooded with eastern European beers.

It is worth remembering western culture != American culture. America is only a large subset of the west.

And in Mexico, Corona was a cheap watery beer made for laborers, the Mexican equivalent of Budweiser (or worse.) When I was honeymooning in Mexico in 1987 they were actually giving the stuff away just like Coke (the beverage) on the various bus tours, etc., because you couldn't drink the water. For whatever reason Corona became a popular yuppie beer in the U.S. later on, but basically it's crap. People who know beer know this, but you can't tell this to the yupsters who think they're hip because they drink an import.

Insulting the majority culture (e.g., "white-bread") is just a silly form of elitism. I live in Cobb County, Georgia - a place commonly mocked as full of rednecks, fundamentalists, etc. The truth of the matter is its a great place to live. To be completely un-PC, I think diversity is wildly over-rated. I prefer a common culture, language, religion, cuisine, etc... Flame away.

watsy
So...I guess those kinds of liberals exist, but most liberals that I know like kids and family and drive cars without style.

Most 'liberals' are people who are worried about their mortgage and medical bills, or who live in cities and think mass transit is actually a good idea. This 'elite' concept is just crap. The population is slightly more Democratic than Republican, and it's completely impossible that western culture would continue to exist in the US if more than half the people in it hated it.

Yeah, there's a tiny tiny fraction of 'liberal elite' looking down at the US's culture and talking gibberish about other places, but, on the right, there's a larger fraction of 'conservative elite' looking down at poor people.

The difference is the left doesn't elect theirs to office. (We, instead, often elect conservative elite, because we are total morons or something.)

Hermes
It's hard to claim someone doesn't hate Western civilization when they're strongly insinuating that a society is barbaric, uncivilized, and unworthy of any respect or honor if it doesn't offer same-sex marriage or socialized medicine or whatever the cause du jour is.

What do you mean? The idea that a society without 'socialized medicine' is uncivilized is firmly within the bounders of Western civilization, unless by 'Western civilization' you mean just 'America'.

That's not hating Western civilization, that's pointing out how the US is falling behind the rest of Western civilization. Same with pointing out our lack of mass transit. Or our decision to start torturing people. Pointing out how we fall short of the rest of Western civilization is implicitly accepting Western civilization as the 'best' civilization.

Of course, there are plenty of ways we lead. Absolutely freedom of speech, for example.

"there's a tiny tiny fraction of 'liberal elite' looking down at the US's culture and talking gibberish about other places"

They just happen to be the ones running the media, the entertainment industry, and the universities.

"there's a larger fraction of 'conservative elite' looking down at poor people."

Please.

"That's not hating Western civilization, that's pointing out how the US is falling behind the rest of Western civilization."

Except that the "rest of Western civilization" is rapidly ceasing to be "Western" at all, so, frankly, who the hell cares how we compare to them?

All lefties hate Western Civilization? Please.

As usual, no distinctions made between liberals and progressives, moderates liberals and socialists, or any of the other thousand divisions. We "lefties" all march in lock-step, which is why the Democratic Party has held total power for so long.

Maybe the "quest for authenticity," left or right, is about fleeing a mass-market culture where attitudes, styles and even manners of speech follow sit-coms and ad campaigns. Where families face backruptcy because they think that owning is the measure of their worth. Who has a problem with that? Anyone?

Or maybe conservatives are angry and straining for absolutes.

Sig - thanks for the idea on rapini.

What I think is ironic, is that many liberals are protesting the wrong aspects of their own culture, without realizing it. They think, rightly in my opinion, that our larger culture is missing something. They then point to all the exterior signs - costume, customs, food. (Okay, so the food IS better - be it Indian or Mexican or Ethiopian.)

What they don't realize is that the missing piece is the close kinship and community ties which are so common in cultures of the developing world. The truth is, they are no more willing to sacrifice their almight individuality to an "oppressive" communal good, than are the staunchest UN conspiricasts out in Idaho.

There are plenty of legitimate problems with tribalism, ethnic violence, and misogynism is these traditional cultures. Those can't be ignored. But a large part of the missing piece in our culture, besides the inexplicable disappearance of herbs and spices from our stewpots, is our crippling individual aloneness, which is bad for individuals and bad for our world at large. We've lost all perspective and celebrity culture and consumerism have rushed to fill in the vacuum.

I guess that's where us Crunchy Types are meeting in the middle in this vast and sometimes sill "culture war."

I absolutely love Carolina barbecue and fried chicken.

Guess I'll have to throw my ACLU card in at the next book-burning ;-P

"We bourgeois want the simulacrum of cultural exoticism without the smelly, messy, chaotic, semi-barbaric aspects of various cultures whence it came."

But you can have it all! Move back to Louisiana, Rod!

After Russia, I took a good, long, hard look at Western culture and came to the same realization that the ancient (and modern) Japanese did with regards to foreign religion, language, and culture: take what you like, throw the rest out. I looked at western (and especially Anglo-American) culture, and found little of value. It's not that I'm against the "white bread" sort of culture, but it has never not been lacking.

That's probably why I fit in so well everywhere else. I am more than willing to take some specific cultural traits, and then blend them with wherever else I happen to be. No need to keep traditions inside yourself when they have no value, no merit. That's what we should be getting at. We have these things that we are conserving. Why? To conserve them, even as they fall apart without repair. Let the old rice sack go. no need to keep it around when it doesn't hold anything. Time to get a new one, from somewhere else. And when we have gotten the rice from that rice sack, let it fall away too. Take the rice(culture and associated wisdom), ditch the rice sack (old traditions).

I think that people who are immersed in a majority culture tend to see themselves as having little culture.
Looking at it as an outsider, mainstream USA has a lot of strong cultural characteristics, some of which are eccentric rather than good or bad - eg. what is Thanksgiving all about? It's not a traditional relgious holiday, yet who is being thanked if not God? What do a few extreme Calvinists, who were not even the first English settlers in N. America, have to do with today's USA?

Countries that are large enough to produce most of their own entertainment, TV, etc., tend to treat their background culture like air and water. I mean - a German can live most of his life as though the rest of the world does not exist, but a Dutchman cannot do that. The USA just happens to be bigger than most other places.

Oh, but in a certain sense it is. If there's no one conserving anything with permanent value from past manifestations of "Western Civilization" (which is what conservatives do) then when the moral, intellectual, artistic, cultural, etc., capital runs out what you will have left will be "Western Civilization" in name only. You can call it "Western Civilization" all you want, but it will only resemble true Western Civ. the way an empty snakeskin resembles a snake.

Oh, is that what conservatives are doing? I've been wondering about that for quite some time now.

Conserving moral capital. Hahaha.

And, more to the point, you're trying to confuse two things. Certain specific European countries might have problems with segregated communities of Muslims and other enclaves of non-Western civilization. If that keeps up, at some point you can argue they have left Western civilization, as Western civilization is basically, 'Christendom', or what is left of it.

This has nothing to do with the fact they have government-paid health care and we do not. That isn't some crazy Muslim trait that got snuck in, most of Europe has had it for decades, and aren't anywhere near the point of any country as a whole coming under Islamic law. (Almost all of them are officially Christian, in fact.)

"As for the entertainment industry, they're the ones responsible for the entire world drinking in Western civilization."

Which is fine, if you like drinking from a cesspool. What the entertainment mostly puts forward is the dregs of Western Civilization,

...which in no way disputes my claim that the entertainment industry does not hate western civilization.