The problem is that "whiteness" is entirely a leftwing, neo-Marxist word designed to set people at each other's throats while the purveyors of such disingenuous nonsense use this deliberately manufactured discord to grab power. "Look, squirrel!"
America is not a "white" nation anymore than Liberia is a "black" nation. Culture, not skin color, is the controlling social dynamic.
Bada bing! What these leftwing nuts and Marxist psychos really mean by "Whiteness" is Western Civilization. Europe, from the Renaissance on has created the greatest achievements and progress in history. The. losers of the left can't abide that.
The long arc of western civilization has been toward individual freedom and laws that are fair and without favor. That's why the west is rich in personal resources and ideas. Not because of race or oppression. That's why the Marxist psychos really want everything to be about anything other than individual freedom and responsibility.
The conundrum that Western Civilization (aka Christendom) has not yet solved is neatly exemplified by Marx. We have liberated ourselves from the orthodox tribal world of the Agricultural Era without disciplining ourselves spiritually. We have confused liberty with license. Too many of us have used our freedom to make gods of ourselves. We prefer comfort to struggle. The American Founders consciously knew that the ultimate success of their experiment with self-government depended entirely upon whether their posterity were willing to embrace and socially reinforce civic virtue.
We can chide the left all we want, but we Americans are all responsible for the state of affairs in our nation. Marx and his thousands of descendants are the children of our very dysfunctional family. Fortunately, we have equally numerous examples (Abraham Lincoln comes to mind) who demonstrated how to embody the necessary virtues.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
How many of us here could follow Lincoln's advice?
Whiteness is a social construct that exists primarily in the US as a political identity and in other countries as a result of pop culture consumption. Every European i've ever known considered themself German or English or Swiss, not white. And they still hold on to their old world grudges and language identity.
Was in Lichtenstein not too long ago, and asked some girls at a local shop what the official language was. The younger one replied Swiss German. The older one looked disapprovingly and said it was Allemanish. They started arguing. Legislation as I understand it is written in regular German . Everybody speaks english. All this in a country of about 600,000 people. Imagine asking these girls if they are white.
As an American, I find the old world mentality a mixture of somewhat amusing, extremely inefficient and rather petty. But the white identity is equally absurd, and I can understand why divide and conquer politicians want to break up this voting block into smaller, more manageable chunks.
I was in Liechtenstein a few years ago. Its about 40k people, the capital is only 7000 people, we stayed for a few nights.
What you see is that despite being so small Vaduz had many construction cranes, what was inferred is that tougher banking regs in Switzerland meant a lot of that dark money was shuffling over the border.
To quote a phrase “If you build it they will come”. Of course it’s gibberish, but it means something to some people, just like “Swiss-German @ v “Allemagnish”. Same identity, different words. Wars exist for that simple reason.
Also, anti-hilariously, while it's no scandal when a Supreme Court candidate can't define what a woman is, the absence of that-which-cannot-be-defined is still grounds for outrage -- an all-male crew for Artemis 3:
And, yes, you're right -- all of these avatars are really straw-man stand-ins for Western Civilization. That's what is being opposed. That's what they want to destroy.
Right. I think in 100-years-ago America, Italians and Germans and Poles and Irish and English people never joined hands and celebrated their "whiteness" together. LOL. Sometimes, actually, they were at each other's throats. The fact that from time to time one would mistake one for the other is incidental.
In Chicago in the post War WWII Years Catholic churches were often heavily one ethnicity or another. Their mainly Irish-Catholic sports teams were not politically correct when playing Polish-Catholic sports teams for instance. You could tell someone's ethnicity by the church they attended.
Totally. Still true today. All the various Orthodox churches are heavily ethnically specific. Really definitionally! There are even very stark differences between, say, Greek and Macedonian Orthodox churches. They hang out together, speak the same language, same ornamentry, Largely the same services, indistinguishable physical characteristics, etc, but at joint functions, everyone there knows exactly who are the Greeks are and who are the Macedonians! Very tribal-
There's a really funny Cheers episode where Woody and his fiancee come from slightly different Christian churches. His fiancee laments the fact that in the Afterlife they'll be separated by dogs or something. Totally Hilarious!
Ain't that the truth. My dad was Irish and my uncle Italian. Oh boy, one crazy idea from my uncle sent my dad storming off. Nobody was holding hands. 😂
the ugly history of how the americo-liberian minority dominated the native majority in liberia for over a century easily dispels 'toxic whiteness' nonsense, but i doubt many of the purveyors of such nonsense can find liberia on a map.
One could argue that the Liberians (repatriated former American slaves) themselves adopted 'toxic whiteness' in order to engage in plantation style slavery of Africans.
Obviously, the reason that Africans became the most common slave commodity in the Atlantic was the already thriving African slave trade in West Africa.
The innovation of the European colonizers in the Americas was the development of heavily labor dependent peri-industrial plantation commodity agriculture. Tobacco, sugar, cotton. (Or, should I say revival of plantation agriculture? One of the downfalls of the Roman Empire was the supplanting of freehold farms with huge slave plantations.)
Before that increased demand, slavery was much more dispersed and common. Most slaves were servants and more prosperous people were expected to own slaves.
I'm pretty sure lots of butthurt guys in sheets (not to mention various civil institutions and law-making bodies) have had lots to say on the subject of "whiteness" - and they ain't exactly "leftwing" or "neo-Marxist."
He's a troll. Pops up every so often to offer his bon mots of idiocy. Usually they are just incomprehensible and I ignore them. Couldn't do that with his stupid comment above.
How about this latest report - coming to you from "Massachusetts is nuts".
AI Overview :
Hopkinton Public Schools completely prohibit all students from carrying knives or pocket knives, with one strictly regulated exception. The district permits Sikh students to carry a kirpan (a small ceremonial blade) on school grounds as a religious article of faith, provided it remains sheathed and does not exceed 3 inches in length.
Hopkinton Schools Weapons Policy: The district’s policy regarding weapons (Policy JICI) is strictly enforced with the following guidelines for religious exceptions:Religious Exception: Permitted only for students of the Sikh faith who have been formally initiated and hold a sincere religious belief.
Size Constraints: The kirpan blade must be 3.0 inches or less in length and dulled.Safety Protocols: The blade must be worn under clothing, sheathed, and secured at all times.
Zero Display: The kirpan cannot be drawn while the student is in school, at events, or on school transport.
Approval: Families must sign a specific agreement with the school district prior to the student carrying the artifact.Aside from this specific religious accommodation, standard pocket knives and other weapons are strictly banned for general students.
Wild. So Sikh students in Mass are prohibited from expressing their faith by unsheathing and brandishing their ceremonial kirpans at school? So basically, they have to hide their religious objects in shame. What kind of anti-Sikh, whitewash crap is that?
Until the 90's there was an accepted notion that immigrants would do their best to integrate into their new countries' customs and social mores rather than attempt to force their host country to bend to their needs. Create a merging of the host country and the immigrant's culture, not a "foreign country inside the host country". ie. New York's Chinatown, not "China in New York". It's past the point where we go back to insisting that this social contract be enforced. If people don't like it, they can remigrate back to their original country.
Great point and something I think about a lot. When our grandparents came here from Europe, yes, they were looking for a better life (jobs, money, freedom) but that wasn't to the exclusion of becoming part of American culture. They wanted to assimilate! That seems to be all but gone now and is one of the things dividing the world into incompatible cultural enclaves that the Left uses to sow discord.
I think you gloss over a bit about our grandparents and assimulation. They did want to become accepted members of American societies, but that full acceptance happened at about the 3 generation. My great father never was fully fluent in English despite coming here when he was 19 years old in the early 1910s and living until his 80s. My great grandmother on my other side also never fully learned English couldnt but sign her name and died at 99 after arriving in this country in her early 20s. Both of my parents were fully integrated proud Americans, but both brought traditions unique to their grand parents culture to my family. Each new culture that joins the American Melting Pot changes the whole neither the new addition nor the existing culture remains the same.
As an immigrant myself, the difference between then and the Western world today is that I didn’t force my new country’s citizens to change to accommodate the traditions and thinking I brought with me from the country I left. I wanted to be an American.
Melting Pot used to work -- in Baltimore you had "Greek Town, Little Italy"
A celebration of their culture but also welcoming in both directions. You weren't banned from the Greek Orthodox festival because you weren't that religion. You were welcomed to share in their culture. Respect flowed in both directions.
I didn't mean to imply that immigrants of that time didn't hold onto traditions or didn't live near other people from their countries of origin. But I do think there was generally a very different mindset and approach whether or not the first generation was able to fully assimilate or not.
I wonder if the fall of the USSR and their Eastern block didn't lead to a collective sigh of relief? That in turn led to a relaxation in, maybe not patriotism, but in emphasizing the benefits of western culture?
Great answer Matt. My son-in-law, who is the father of my bi-racial grandkids, often expresses his exhaustion with the racial insanity that perpetuates rather than eradicates the problem.
Hit Matt. Ridiculous question from anyone who has read you for any length of time. And I agree totally. The only problem these days seems to be that "anyone" becoming an "American" no longer means aspiring to American values. Yes, freedom of religion and free speech, but also the idea that we were all one not separate. I think the Chinese in China towns came closest to Islam now but they were different. They DID retain some culture (as did the Irish and Italian), but also wanted to blend, speak English, follow our laws. I think Hispanics are the same as well. But I get the uncomfortable feeling that Muslims want to set up an alternate society here (I grew up in southern MI) and I don't like the idea of importing huge groups at once--they should have to be vetted individually or as families and acclimate more into the melting pot. LEftists seem to be trying to force multi-culturalism on us instead of Americanism, which is different. That thing we all had in common: wanting to be American. And that thing in England was just atrocious.
The racial/ethnic/sexual conflict blown up in the media is just a distraction technique by our overlords to keep us fighting each other, rather than them.
The fact that our legislators are spending their time- and our money- trying to carve out protected classes, etc, is extremely unhelpful. The only thing they should be looking at is wealth. That's color blind.
“As much as any other citizen of any other place?”
The entire non-Western world is overtly ethnonationalist. They don’t generally even have the vocabulary to describe it because it’s like a fish trying to describe being wet.
You say, “anyone can become an American overnight, provided he or she accepts a few minor guidelines.”
Can the same be said of Japan, Kenya, China, Colombia, Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia? No. A foreigner can never become Japanese, Kenyan, Saudi, etc.
So you’ve set out some irreconcilable contradictions here. Should America be as chauvinistic as citizens of other countries, or is it great that anyone can become an American? Because these are mutually exclusive propositions.
I’m trying to work it all out myself. What I know for sure is that the progressive Western establishment is a suicide cult.
Yes, Americans can allow ourselves pride in our nation - and this is not incompatible with being proud that anyone accepting our founding principles and our laws can become one of us.
But we cannot allow hordes of those who seek to destroy those principles and laws into the country without opening ourselves to the charge of cultural suicide.
I do not see ethnocentrism as anything but natural. Tribes congregate. Tolerance is a separate aspect, and that tolerance diminishes the larger the "non-ethno" percentage of population. Of course, this assumes that said population does not assimilate, but creates a society within your society, and growing ever larger.
That is something that "diversity is our strength" types will never, ever admit. They believe tribalism can somehow be therapized away, or bullied out of people via struggle sessions, in order to create some latter-day New Soviet Man. The existence of a fixed "human nature" is anathema to these folks.
The notion that we can legislate human nature out of existence is pure leftism, and leftism only. No-one over the mental age of 25 (i.e., with a fully matured brain) could believe that for one second.
I always told my children to beware of their "monkey brain". It's the most base aspect of humans incorporating; jealousy, hate and violence among other less attractive attributes. God gave humanity shame, whether you believe in God or not, that really sets us apart from our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom.
The shame came when our first parents are that apple. We lost our innocence, no other animals did. We cannot regain it, we must choose good or evil - as Bob Dylan sang, "You're gonna have to serve someone. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord . . ."
forget therapy, that is only for the docile. The rest of us would have to be "publicly shamed" (another tried and true Soviet methos of societal control) and then punished if recalcitrant. We see it in Europe today.
I marched in a 5,000 person Catholic Corpus Christi procession through streets of Portland, OR yesterday. There were Whites, Blacks, Latinos (of many flavors), Vietnamese, Poles, etc. - we were all together as the Body of Christ to proclaim the Body of Christ. This also happened in communities across America and the rest of the world.
Yes. Faith and free can lead us all to fellowship. I believe this is what our Divine Creator intended for all mankind, before, here now, and those in the future.
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want." -Hannah Arendt
This era continues because a number of people, starting with the Marxists, are very deliberately trying to dismantle Western civilization. There's a reason the new racists (as I like to call modern-day "Liberals") don't go to Egypt and say it needs to be more diverse. There's a reason they target specific countries with their inane propaganda.
It's meant to demoralize and destroy, not to bring people closer together. And they won't stop until we either laugh them out of every institution, or Western civilization fully collapses. And since we're about 20 years away from the latter, we really don't have much time left.
Swimming through public discourse feels more draining by the day. Sometimes I just want to turn off the noise and watch baseball. But checking out entirely is a risk—like falling asleep on a park bench. You never know what will shake you awake, or if you will manage to wake up at all.
The Social Justice Warriors should take a look at MLB. Used to be a LOT of black players, now it’s a lot of Dominicans and Venezuelans. I’m sure they could figure out what sordid events caused this.
One more unnecessary (and ugly) word for us courtesy of the groves of academe. Yet another being cis-gender, coined behind ivy covered walls to distinguish the vast ocean of USUAL folks from the tiny drop of "transgendered."
Cisgendered, like neurotypical, seems to come out of a compulsion to anathematize the statistically average. Even positive traits are now oppressive because dominant. My friend’s teenage stepdaughter was explaining how giraffes grew long necks when they dreamed they could reach higher. They prevailed over the “normal” majority who kept them from achieving their full potential. When I said, “The giraffes with short necks died. The long-necked ones could eat from higher tree branches. They mated while the short-necked ones starved. In most cases, normal just means you’re better adapted to survival,” she called me evil and left the room. She was probably right about me. She was definitely wrong about the giraffes.
I think you're wrong on this. It seems to me that human survival itself is what the left threatens.
Girls are told that marriage and motherhood are slavery, men see that women reject them, we promote not only abortion and homosexuality, a sterile form of relations, but the sterilization of small children in the name of "gender sympathy" or something of that nature.
What is the sole religion not vilified by the left? It's Islam, the only religion which promotes killing for its own sake, when the victims are non-Muslims, and while the Koran does not promote the genital mutilation of young girls, the cultures of the region in many cases do.
They scream about extinction from climate change, but the reality is that's all about control, not climate or human flourishing.
i think you misunderstood. research r/K theory of politics. the left does threaten civilization by crafting it in a way to ease the survival of the weak at the cost of all amd everybody else.
I’ll mull it over. Mapping evolutionary biology onto political affiliation always seemed like a reach to me. Then again, a lot of these same people think Hegelian determinism is empirical.
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement rejects government control but it's mostly leftists I hear fetishizing the same neo-Malthusian, human extinction plan. I did say they reject normality, which is often a set of traits adapted toward group survival. And the commenter above says they booby-trap conventions and normality to guarantee their own survival, not ours. If we equate power with survival we'd probably all agree.
The problem is that "whiteness" is entirely a leftwing, neo-Marxist word designed to set people at each other's throats while the purveyors of such disingenuous nonsense use this deliberately manufactured discord to grab power. "Look, squirrel!"
America is not a "white" nation anymore than Liberia is a "black" nation. Culture, not skin color, is the controlling social dynamic.
Bada bing! What these leftwing nuts and Marxist psychos really mean by "Whiteness" is Western Civilization. Europe, from the Renaissance on has created the greatest achievements and progress in history. The. losers of the left can't abide that.
All the time ignoring that Marx was a Westerner too, as were the Frankfurt dipshits.
There is a rotten apple in every bunch.
Touche amigo. You nailed it.
The long arc of western civilization has been toward individual freedom and laws that are fair and without favor. That's why the west is rich in personal resources and ideas. Not because of race or oppression. That's why the Marxist psychos really want everything to be about anything other than individual freedom and responsibility.
The conundrum that Western Civilization (aka Christendom) has not yet solved is neatly exemplified by Marx. We have liberated ourselves from the orthodox tribal world of the Agricultural Era without disciplining ourselves spiritually. We have confused liberty with license. Too many of us have used our freedom to make gods of ourselves. We prefer comfort to struggle. The American Founders consciously knew that the ultimate success of their experiment with self-government depended entirely upon whether their posterity were willing to embrace and socially reinforce civic virtue.
We can chide the left all we want, but we Americans are all responsible for the state of affairs in our nation. Marx and his thousands of descendants are the children of our very dysfunctional family. Fortunately, we have equally numerous examples (Abraham Lincoln comes to mind) who demonstrated how to embody the necessary virtues.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
How many of us here could follow Lincoln's advice?
You've got to be a bit careful with the "charity for all" bit.. it's amazing how many people will put their hands out if they see a pile of cash.
Lincoln was aspirational as were the founders. Our biggest challenge is the amount of apathy, which is caused by affluence.
Whiteness is a social construct that exists primarily in the US as a political identity and in other countries as a result of pop culture consumption. Every European i've ever known considered themself German or English or Swiss, not white. And they still hold on to their old world grudges and language identity.
Was in Lichtenstein not too long ago, and asked some girls at a local shop what the official language was. The younger one replied Swiss German. The older one looked disapprovingly and said it was Allemanish. They started arguing. Legislation as I understand it is written in regular German . Everybody speaks english. All this in a country of about 600,000 people. Imagine asking these girls if they are white.
As an American, I find the old world mentality a mixture of somewhat amusing, extremely inefficient and rather petty. But the white identity is equally absurd, and I can understand why divide and conquer politicians want to break up this voting block into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Luxembourg - Swiss German?
I like your point, but that particular fact doesn't track. Sure you don't mean Liechtenstein?
Agh brain malfunction. Edited and fixed. This is why I shouldn't write when experiencing a headache.
Sorry to be so pedantic. Retired cartographer and data analyst.
No apology required, that needed correcting. I appreciate you calling me out.
Well, the "German" part of Switzerland (Zürich, etc.) speaks Schwiizerdütsch so there is that. ... But you are right on Liechtenstein.
A bit of egg on my face but the point stands.
I was in Liechtenstein a few years ago. Its about 40k people, the capital is only 7000 people, we stayed for a few nights.
What you see is that despite being so small Vaduz had many construction cranes, what was inferred is that tougher banking regs in Switzerland meant a lot of that dark money was shuffling over the border.
Regardless, great place to visit.
Even has a Subway!!
To quote a phrase “If you build it they will come”. Of course it’s gibberish, but it means something to some people, just like “Swiss-German @ v “Allemagnish”. Same identity, different words. Wars exist for that simple reason.
Also, anti-hilariously, while it's no scandal when a Supreme Court candidate can't define what a woman is, the absence of that-which-cannot-be-defined is still grounds for outrage -- an all-male crew for Artemis 3:
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-chief-defends-all-male-artemis-3-astronaut-crew-amid-backlash-i-dont-think-anyone-should-be-reading-into-this
And, yes, you're right -- all of these avatars are really straw-man stand-ins for Western Civilization. That's what is being opposed. That's what they want to destroy.
Right. I think in 100-years-ago America, Italians and Germans and Poles and Irish and English people never joined hands and celebrated their "whiteness" together. LOL. Sometimes, actually, they were at each other's throats. The fact that from time to time one would mistake one for the other is incidental.
In Chicago in the post War WWII Years Catholic churches were often heavily one ethnicity or another. Their mainly Irish-Catholic sports teams were not politically correct when playing Polish-Catholic sports teams for instance. You could tell someone's ethnicity by the church they attended.
Totally. Still true today. All the various Orthodox churches are heavily ethnically specific. Really definitionally! There are even very stark differences between, say, Greek and Macedonian Orthodox churches. They hang out together, speak the same language, same ornamentry, Largely the same services, indistinguishable physical characteristics, etc, but at joint functions, everyone there knows exactly who are the Greeks are and who are the Macedonians! Very tribal-
There's a really funny Cheers episode where Woody and his fiancee come from slightly different Christian churches. His fiancee laments the fact that in the Afterlife they'll be separated by dogs or something. Totally Hilarious!
Right. People are actually arguing that there's no distinction to be made between a Sicilian and a Norwegian.
But there are significant differences between Watusi, Bantu, Somali, cultures, too. Lebanese culture is not identical with that of Saudi Arabia.
And Algeria is not Minorca.
And the Iranians are not Arabs. They will tell you they are Persians, which really means they are Aryans.
Ain't that the truth. My dad was Irish and my uncle Italian. Oh boy, one crazy idea from my uncle sent my dad storming off. Nobody was holding hands. 😂
Didn’t your father and uncle have the same parents? In which case they’d both “be” either Irish or Italian.
No, Uncle was married to my mom's sister
the ugly history of how the americo-liberian minority dominated the native majority in liberia for over a century easily dispels 'toxic whiteness' nonsense, but i doubt many of the purveyors of such nonsense can find liberia on a map.
Much as they can't see slavery as anything other than whites owning blacks. That isn't even simply wrong, it is cult-like in its rejection of reality.
They themselves are slaves to that cult.
One could argue that the Liberians (repatriated former American slaves) themselves adopted 'toxic whiteness' in order to engage in plantation style slavery of Africans.
Obviously, the reason that Africans became the most common slave commodity in the Atlantic was the already thriving African slave trade in West Africa.
The innovation of the European colonizers in the Americas was the development of heavily labor dependent peri-industrial plantation commodity agriculture. Tobacco, sugar, cotton. (Or, should I say revival of plantation agriculture? One of the downfalls of the Roman Empire was the supplanting of freehold farms with huge slave plantations.)
Before that increased demand, slavery was much more dispersed and common. Most slaves were servants and more prosperous people were expected to own slaves.
Exactly, Marty. And this is why I read - or listen to - this speech from Frederick Douglass every Fourth of July --- https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-1852
That great man could see beyond the flaws of the United States to the universality of its promise.
I'm pretty sure lots of butthurt guys in sheets (not to mention various civil institutions and law-making bodies) have had lots to say on the subject of "whiteness" - and they ain't exactly "leftwing" or "neo-Marxist."
You should probably read more.
Did you wander over here from Bluesky, perhaps?
He's a troll. Pops up every so often to offer his bon mots of idiocy. Usually they are just incomprehensible and I ignore them. Couldn't do that with his stupid comment above.
Did your mom smoke a lot of meth while she was pregnant with you?
Yeah, probably.
"lots of butthurt guys in sheets"
Dude, those KKKers were your coreligionists of the Democrat Party. Wake up from your drug induced slumber.
Okay, what is the American “cultural ethnicity” then? Christian?
It isn't fucking woke morons, that can't see their own tiny dicks past their shitty hand of race cards.
How about start with, everyone can carry a knife, or no one can carry a knife. Your religion's rules don't trump our's.
Or as a sometimes wise man once said, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
"You call that a knife, mate?? THIS is a knife!!"
Famous line!!
At the risk of sounding pedantic, it was “That’s not a knife. THAT’S a knife.”
Works for me.
How about this latest report - coming to you from "Massachusetts is nuts".
AI Overview :
Hopkinton Public Schools completely prohibit all students from carrying knives or pocket knives, with one strictly regulated exception. The district permits Sikh students to carry a kirpan (a small ceremonial blade) on school grounds as a religious article of faith, provided it remains sheathed and does not exceed 3 inches in length.
Hopkinton Schools Weapons Policy: The district’s policy regarding weapons (Policy JICI) is strictly enforced with the following guidelines for religious exceptions:Religious Exception: Permitted only for students of the Sikh faith who have been formally initiated and hold a sincere religious belief.
Size Constraints: The kirpan blade must be 3.0 inches or less in length and dulled.Safety Protocols: The blade must be worn under clothing, sheathed, and secured at all times.
Zero Display: The kirpan cannot be drawn while the student is in school, at events, or on school transport.
Approval: Families must sign a specific agreement with the school district prior to the student carrying the artifact.Aside from this specific religious accommodation, standard pocket knives and other weapons are strictly banned for general students.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/06/massachusetts-school-district-allows-sikh-students-to-carry-knives-as-part-of-religious-identity/
Wild. So Sikh students in Mass are prohibited from expressing their faith by unsheathing and brandishing their ceremonial kirpans at school? So basically, they have to hide their religious objects in shame. What kind of anti-Sikh, whitewash crap is that?
Practice your faith on your own time.
Every religion has its extreme practices or forms. However in my opinion they should not be allowed to bring knives to any public event.
If they use their tiny ceremonial shivs to circumcise the Jewish and Christian kids is that religious diversity?
Holy moly.
Do the student’s parents agree to be prosecuted as accessories for any crimes committed with the holy blade?
Until the 90's there was an accepted notion that immigrants would do their best to integrate into their new countries' customs and social mores rather than attempt to force their host country to bend to their needs. Create a merging of the host country and the immigrant's culture, not a "foreign country inside the host country". ie. New York's Chinatown, not "China in New York". It's past the point where we go back to insisting that this social contract be enforced. If people don't like it, they can remigrate back to their original country.
Great point and something I think about a lot. When our grandparents came here from Europe, yes, they were looking for a better life (jobs, money, freedom) but that wasn't to the exclusion of becoming part of American culture. They wanted to assimilate! That seems to be all but gone now and is one of the things dividing the world into incompatible cultural enclaves that the Left uses to sow discord.
You make me think of Roth's American Pastoral.
I think you gloss over a bit about our grandparents and assimulation. They did want to become accepted members of American societies, but that full acceptance happened at about the 3 generation. My great father never was fully fluent in English despite coming here when he was 19 years old in the early 1910s and living until his 80s. My great grandmother on my other side also never fully learned English couldnt but sign her name and died at 99 after arriving in this country in her early 20s. Both of my parents were fully integrated proud Americans, but both brought traditions unique to their grand parents culture to my family. Each new culture that joins the American Melting Pot changes the whole neither the new addition nor the existing culture remains the same.
As an immigrant myself, the difference between then and the Western world today is that I didn’t force my new country’s citizens to change to accommodate the traditions and thinking I brought with me from the country I left. I wanted to be an American.
As a fellow immigrant, I agree. And a proud American at that.
Melting Pot used to work -- in Baltimore you had "Greek Town, Little Italy"
A celebration of their culture but also welcoming in both directions. You weren't banned from the Greek Orthodox festival because you weren't that religion. You were welcomed to share in their culture. Respect flowed in both directions.
I didn't mean to imply that immigrants of that time didn't hold onto traditions or didn't live near other people from their countries of origin. But I do think there was generally a very different mindset and approach whether or not the first generation was able to fully assimilate or not.
"foreign country inside the host country"
If you were talking physiology instead of culture you're almost describing cancer.
I wonder if the fall of the USSR and their Eastern block didn't lead to a collective sigh of relief? That in turn led to a relaxation in, maybe not patriotism, but in emphasizing the benefits of western culture?
Great answer Matt. My son-in-law, who is the father of my bi-racial grandkids, often expresses his exhaustion with the racial insanity that perpetuates rather than eradicates the problem.
Hit Matt. Ridiculous question from anyone who has read you for any length of time. And I agree totally. The only problem these days seems to be that "anyone" becoming an "American" no longer means aspiring to American values. Yes, freedom of religion and free speech, but also the idea that we were all one not separate. I think the Chinese in China towns came closest to Islam now but they were different. They DID retain some culture (as did the Irish and Italian), but also wanted to blend, speak English, follow our laws. I think Hispanics are the same as well. But I get the uncomfortable feeling that Muslims want to set up an alternate society here (I grew up in southern MI) and I don't like the idea of importing huge groups at once--they should have to be vetted individually or as families and acclimate more into the melting pot. LEftists seem to be trying to force multi-culturalism on us instead of Americanism, which is different. That thing we all had in common: wanting to be American. And that thing in England was just atrocious.
That "uncomfortable feeling" is your spider sense recognizing reality.
Keep it simple, like Mom did: “My house, my rules.” It just means that as long as you observe a few basic parameters, you’re welcome.
The racial/ethnic/sexual conflict blown up in the media is just a distraction technique by our overlords to keep us fighting each other, rather than them.
The fact that our legislators are spending their time- and our money- trying to carve out protected classes, etc, is extremely unhelpful. The only thing they should be looking at is wealth. That's color blind.
Same as it ever was…
That’s a bingo!
“As much as any other citizen of any other place?”
The entire non-Western world is overtly ethnonationalist. They don’t generally even have the vocabulary to describe it because it’s like a fish trying to describe being wet.
You say, “anyone can become an American overnight, provided he or she accepts a few minor guidelines.”
Can the same be said of Japan, Kenya, China, Colombia, Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia? No. A foreigner can never become Japanese, Kenyan, Saudi, etc.
So you’ve set out some irreconcilable contradictions here. Should America be as chauvinistic as citizens of other countries, or is it great that anyone can become an American? Because these are mutually exclusive propositions.
I’m trying to work it all out myself. What I know for sure is that the progressive Western establishment is a suicide cult.
Yes, Americans can allow ourselves pride in our nation - and this is not incompatible with being proud that anyone accepting our founding principles and our laws can become one of us.
But we cannot allow hordes of those who seek to destroy those principles and laws into the country without opening ourselves to the charge of cultural suicide.
I do not see ethnocentrism as anything but natural. Tribes congregate. Tolerance is a separate aspect, and that tolerance diminishes the larger the "non-ethno" percentage of population. Of course, this assumes that said population does not assimilate, but creates a society within your society, and growing ever larger.
That is something that "diversity is our strength" types will never, ever admit. They believe tribalism can somehow be therapized away, or bullied out of people via struggle sessions, in order to create some latter-day New Soviet Man. The existence of a fixed "human nature" is anathema to these folks.
The notion that we can legislate human nature out of existence is pure leftism, and leftism only. No-one over the mental age of 25 (i.e., with a fully matured brain) could believe that for one second.
I always told my children to beware of their "monkey brain". It's the most base aspect of humans incorporating; jealousy, hate and violence among other less attractive attributes. God gave humanity shame, whether you believe in God or not, that really sets us apart from our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom.
The shame came when our first parents are that apple. We lost our innocence, no other animals did. We cannot regain it, we must choose good or evil - as Bob Dylan sang, "You're gonna have to serve someone. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord . . ."
Leftists believe that humans are perfectable....They do not accept the inherent nature of the species.
Correct they're completely delusional and dreamers.
That's the nub of the problem. All of the "big ideas" require "fundamental change."
forget therapy, that is only for the docile. The rest of us would have to be "publicly shamed" (another tried and true Soviet methos of societal control) and then punished if recalcitrant. We see it in Europe today.
Everyone on Bluesky: "It's called being a heckin decent human being!! And if you're not, you're a Nazi! And all Nazis need punching!"
The New Soviet Man has become the New EU Man.
No - they only want to eradicate it from ONE group.
Why do the most peaceful, prosperous countries seem to have homogenous populations?
I marched in a 5,000 person Catholic Corpus Christi procession through streets of Portland, OR yesterday. There were Whites, Blacks, Latinos (of many flavors), Vietnamese, Poles, etc. - we were all together as the Body of Christ to proclaim the Body of Christ. This also happened in communities across America and the rest of the world.
I applaud them. There was ethnic diversity, but not diversity of faith. People from diverse backgrounds uniting is not impossible.
Thanks, uniting across different background and skin tones was the point of the revolution that occurred 2,000 years ago. A reverse Tower of Babel.
Diversity is not strength, it's a handicap. But with faith and effort, it can be overcome.
Yes. Faith and free can lead us all to fellowship. I believe this is what our Divine Creator intended for all mankind, before, here now, and those in the future.
It’s all so tiresome, it makes me want to check out.
That is the intent...
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want." -Hannah Arendt
Yes.
Matt, Welcome back! Great answer!
This era continues because a number of people, starting with the Marxists, are very deliberately trying to dismantle Western civilization. There's a reason the new racists (as I like to call modern-day "Liberals") don't go to Egypt and say it needs to be more diverse. There's a reason they target specific countries with their inane propaganda.
It's meant to demoralize and destroy, not to bring people closer together. And they won't stop until we either laugh them out of every institution, or Western civilization fully collapses. And since we're about 20 years away from the latter, we really don't have much time left.
Those troublesome Marxists. They’re always up to some shit.
Swimming through public discourse feels more draining by the day. Sometimes I just want to turn off the noise and watch baseball. But checking out entirely is a risk—like falling asleep on a park bench. You never know what will shake you awake, or if you will manage to wake up at all.
Agreed and the indiscriminate practice of the birds doesn't help.
The Social Justice Warriors should take a look at MLB. Used to be a LOT of black players, now it’s a lot of Dominicans and Venezuelans. I’m sure they could figure out what sordid events caused this.
Oddly, we in the UK are not 'inbred'.
As you might say, 'Hell no!'
We know. Nasty is gonna nasty.
1776. 4th July. 2026. Who knew?
One more unnecessary (and ugly) word for us courtesy of the groves of academe. Yet another being cis-gender, coined behind ivy covered walls to distinguish the vast ocean of USUAL folks from the tiny drop of "transgendered."
"Cis" needs to be considered a slur.
I refuse to even acknowledge it.
It's just Newspeak for "normal."
I don't use the term, except in derision. It's (dare I say it?) deplorable.
Ha!
Cisgendered, like neurotypical, seems to come out of a compulsion to anathematize the statistically average. Even positive traits are now oppressive because dominant. My friend’s teenage stepdaughter was explaining how giraffes grew long necks when they dreamed they could reach higher. They prevailed over the “normal” majority who kept them from achieving their full potential. When I said, “The giraffes with short necks died. The long-necked ones could eat from higher tree branches. They mated while the short-necked ones starved. In most cases, normal just means you’re better adapted to survival,” she called me evil and left the room. She was probably right about me. She was definitely wrong about the giraffes.
the left is constantly trying to alter the normal human ecology and rig the human environment so they have a better chance of survival.
I think you're wrong on this. It seems to me that human survival itself is what the left threatens.
Girls are told that marriage and motherhood are slavery, men see that women reject them, we promote not only abortion and homosexuality, a sterile form of relations, but the sterilization of small children in the name of "gender sympathy" or something of that nature.
What is the sole religion not vilified by the left? It's Islam, the only religion which promotes killing for its own sake, when the victims are non-Muslims, and while the Koran does not promote the genital mutilation of young girls, the cultures of the region in many cases do.
They scream about extinction from climate change, but the reality is that's all about control, not climate or human flourishing.
i think you misunderstood. research r/K theory of politics. the left does threaten civilization by crafting it in a way to ease the survival of the weak at the cost of all amd everybody else.
I’ll mull it over. Mapping evolutionary biology onto political affiliation always seemed like a reach to me. Then again, a lot of these same people think Hegelian determinism is empirical.
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement rejects government control but it's mostly leftists I hear fetishizing the same neo-Malthusian, human extinction plan. I did say they reject normality, which is often a set of traits adapted toward group survival. And the commenter above says they booby-trap conventions and normality to guarantee their own survival, not ours. If we equate power with survival we'd probably all agree.