Why Nationalism?

[Kulturkampf]

Originally Posted by mburbank

I'm going to need you to define this brief post civil war pre 1890 American identity. A.) I still haven't heard you say what all that would be, and B.) Why would our National Character during this brief historic window, whatever it may have been, be our true national character as opposed to any of the other, longer held charcateristics before and after?

I think this period would be solidified because it was a time in which the ideals were well established through the abolition of slavery and freeing of all men (a point that haunted American history up to that point). Furthermore, America was spreading from sea to sea and the frontier was established. America could be viewed as a very independent, forward thinking nation based strongly on free individuals carving out a way of life for themselves.

People were not dependent on the government, and people generally had a philosophy of live and let live to the point where Teddy Roosevelt, while in North Dakota living as a cowboy, witnessed a man pulled from his bed and beaten terribly -- as he tried to intervene, everyone grabbed him and pulled him off, and said "Whatever this man did, it is between those two."

I think really... There was a hearty pioneer spirit and extreme manifestations of individualism, though not in a modern sense of Ayn Rand, but rather in the sense of a frontier and a people founding a nation.

If you want to argue someplace like Korea, with a history thousands of years old, truly has a national charcater, I think the content might be debatable, but the idea that there might be one is pretty solid.

True.

I think you have a severe case of identity anxiety.

I do not think about those things -- I do not think about your psychology. I do not know who you are.

"I hate the excuses they give for promiscuous sex, drug abuse, homosexuality, etc. ad nauseum. the ideology is of the weak."

Okay. I hate the excuses you give for alchohol abuse and public brawling. You romanticize them and paint them with Frank Frazetta's air brush. The ideology of the hooligan. Plus, you let a dog lick your weiner. What the hell is wrong with you? That's not what animal husbandry is, 4H Dropout, and it's NOT what peanut butter is for. George Washington Carver is going to rie from the grave and beat your face in, which you'll probably videotape and put on the web.

LOL. I knew you would get a kick out of it.

I guess I am rather a hypocrite.