Is it just me or does the term “Youth for Western Civilization” sound reminiscent of “Hitler Youth” ???

I keep reading YWC as “Young White Conservatives” and not “Youth for Western Civilization.”  I suppose they both mean essentially the same thing, but I don’t see why they don’t just cut to the chase and call themselves what they are.

I guessed right on the game, but only because the first of the two mentions Christianity and the KKK explicitly bills itself as a Christian organization.

Too bad none of them seem to understand that word “civilization” too much, either.  Hint: it doesn’t mean “manifest destiny”, nor domination.

But understanding the root word “civil” would require at least a cursory understanding of “Latin”. Since “Latin America” is where them brown people are coming from, their little brains just can’t go there.

It is never a problem if it is good for them, only if for someone they consider undeserving.

I got it right too - the first quote sounded more apocalyptic and contains the words “New World Order”, while the second is more racism-with-a-thin-veneer-of-argument, the kind of thing you hear from your loveable but totally racist wingnut uncle at Thanksgiving.

Godwinned in 1. 

But since these people worship racial purity and facsit ideals, I suppose it’s best to get it out of the way.
Sometimes I wish the media actually would run these events on all outlets.
Maybe actually turning over the rock and exposing these ... heck… calling them insects demeans the vital role insects play in our ecology.

“Using “Western civilization” as a cover to bash immigrants, but Mexican immigrants especially is not only racist, but fucking stupid beyond all belief.”

I’m going to keep saying that over and over today to my anti-immigrant co-worker. Because he actually uses the phrase “Western Civilization” all the fucking time. He is an asshole about a lot of things, but he is most vocal about Mexican immigrants. In southern California.

I’m impressed they didn’t even bother with the usual phony “Judeo-” addition to Christian civilization.

So?  My late grandmother complained about Mexicans in what was a very black part of North Carolina.  “The hell?” was my reaction.  “Why would you even CARE?!?”  But then, in a very black part of North Carolina, the paper bag rules are pretty important to people like my grandmother.

What I think is far more interesting are the comments by Angela Merkel and David Cameron about the “failures of multiculturalism”, which always kind of odd in the context of their nation’s communicational sensibilities.  Since when did Germans think in terms of multicultural?  I mean, do they even *have* anti-discrimination against minorities laws on the books?  So I think the broad view of “Western Civilization” and “multiculturalism” are fermenting throughout the international reactionary right.  As such, I think the important question this leads to are “What are they actually trying to convince the citizenry of?”, and “Why do they think this rhetorical device will work?”  For example, anti-abortion dialogue amps up people’s feelings of “purity” and elites export the ideology to places like Canada or Brazil to give people social ideas that they are willing to sacrifice well-being for.  I’m not sure where this current concept of “multiculturalism” is supposed to direct us all towards, but I don’t think this will work like anti-abortion politics.  I *think* the aim is mostly about defined benefits plans, with the use of “multiculturalism” as a means similar to the blockbuster tactics—they want to connect the idea of a browner government, which is not loyal or responsible, to pensions and disability and other government transfer devices and make the common people forget about their personal sunk investment, like SS payments in the past.

I think that truly evil people are rare. One obvious example of such a person is Karl Rove. Breitbart is also in that category, or else he is simply so filled with bitterness that he is indistinguishable from a veritable devil.

“Godwinned in 1. 
But since these people worship racial purity and facsit ideals, I suppose it’s best to get it out of the way.”

I think in the Age of the Teabagger, Godwin’s Law is de facto suspended.  There is no need wait for “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” — it’s obvious to most of us that the validity of the comparison is too important to avoid making it right out of the box.

Wingnuttia has worked long and hard to earn their fascist bona fides, the least we can do is properly reward them for their efforts…

Where multiculturalism exists as a lived, everyday reality it seems to work just fine.

Where it fails is when all-white flight school districts and neighborhoods (and cities and towns in the Northeast) decide to approach it as an abstract learning exercise rather than have a larger entity, such as the state, bust apart school districts and reformulate boundaries to break up segregated enclaves.

The constant attacks on multiculturalism as the “death of western civilization” very strongly imply that a society that an essential feature of Western civilization is the extermination of other cultures.  I mean, multiculturalism has never intended to remove Shakespeare from the curriculum, so their arguments only make sense if you actually believe that the cultural contributions of 6.5 of the world’s 7 billion people are worthless.

Funny how the wingnuts tend to be the ones who oppose the standardized curriculums that would prevent Shakespeare from being removed from the classroom, or try to hijack them.

They don’t fear multicultural kids reading great stuff - they fear their own kids having to learn about other cultures and dating mudbloods.

Breitbart is one of those people who is so used to arguing on the internet to other people who agree with him, and filtering out people he doesn’t agree with, that he has no concept of where his errors and fallacies lie.

I never tire of Michael Eric Dyson handing him his ass on Real Time about “code words”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FO9Eg0Gfr0

What’s telling about this issue is that Breitbart can’t pretend that these are a bunch of lazy, unemployed welfare leeches, like wingnuts do when they’re talking about urban minorities. They’re farmers. Clearly they’re employed and hardworking. So are most of the urban minorities, of course, but when the group in question is defined by their job (farming, no less), the racism isn’t even slightly hidden.

I mean you can bitch about illegal immigrants and gangsters and shit, and pretend it’s not the race issue that has you pissing your pants. But farmers?

Would Fruitlands have survived if it had been more diverse?

Godwinned in 1.

Technically the debate didn’t devolve down to discussing nazis since this is an argument focusing on white supremacy.  Ironically I would have to say Mexicans represent the United States more than Spain or any of the South American countries with Chile & Brazil distant 2nd and 3rd beyond that.  Outside of some stretches of the Middle-East and largely uninhabited parts of Africa Western Civilization has won.  China is Communist-Oligarchy, Japan is a democracy, most of the Pacific Rim works on some varied form of democracy, the whole world looks like Britain, France, the Netherlands, or the US depending on who overthrew their original government and replaced it with their own form. 

I agree that Cameron and Merkel’s statements are much more frightening.  Europe is getting a dose of migration and it’s upsetting the apple cart.  Germany now has a sizable muslim population for their low-skilled labor positions.  In the next 25 years England will be less than 50% caucasian (according to some ethnographers).  The United States is looking at the same fate and frankly I welcome it at this point.  White people have made a mockery of society for a long time and I hope being knocked down a few pegs will bring race down with it.  Course this is why the white supremacist right is attempting to disenfranchise now, so we can replay Jim Crow instead of with just blacks we’ll add in all non-white minorities.

Honestly, we shouldn’t have to reach for Godwin in this instance when the KKK will do just fine. Let’s not hang the hat of all racist purging that ever was and ever will be on Germany when we have plenty of fine examples of organized and sanctioned means of racial oppression right here in the US. We have a rich history of putting down people with darker skin which started well before the 1930s and continued well after the 1940s. Don’t sell America short with an unnecessary import. We don’t have to lean on the Germans in this department.

Ah, but the cynic in me notes that racism, religious bigotry and hatred, and sexism are all parts of Western Civilization!  One only has to look at the history of Europe…

The more notable irony would be that the Founding Fathers, whom they profess to almost worship, came here to make a break from that history.

“Latin America is Western civilization”

No, it’s not. And it’s inaccurate (and even insulting) to claim that the indigenous peoples of Latin America are just a bunch of Spaniards plunked down in a new continent.  Mexicans for the most part are descended from the pre-Columbian population of this continent - something most white supremacists cannot claim. It is beyond ironic that we call the native Americans “immigrants”.  It is also a sad commentary on general ignorance about “Latin” America, even among American leftists, that we assume all Mexicans, Peruvians, Guatemalans, etc. are native Spanish speakers. To this day millions of South Americans still speak Nahuatl, Mayan, Quechua and many other languages as their mother tongues.  The very terms “Hispanic” and “Latin” are pretty silly - after all, we don’t call black South Africans “Anglo-Dutch Africans”.

I guessed the quotes’ origins right away. One out of two, big deal, but still, the repeated use of “Christian” in the first quote gave it away. Today’s racist blowhards usually tack “Judeo” onto “Christian.” Gotta give Israel its props, at least until it performs its function of serving as a rallying platform for the Christian righteous (or something) and the Jews there are dispatched to the eternal lake of fire.

The Klan is a completely valid comparison, because one of the big tropes of White Supremacists is “race mixing.” They have this myth that white people are a “pure race” and the Others are impure, and the biggest threat to Whites is having their whiteness sullied by the mud people. (They usually mean this literally, as in miscegenation. The big scary negroes are coming for your white daughters!)

So the YWC and their ilk are really just taking it to another level of abstraction, applying purity to “culture” instead of genetics.
Comment #22: Cris on 02/14 at 02:43 PM

And it’s okay when white men get Black women pregnant, because they are “improving” the Black race (e.g. slaveholders), while white women are defiling the white race if they have children with Black men. 

Why?  Because it’s the sperm that rules.

among American leftists, that we assume all Mexicans, Peruvians, Guatemalans, etc. are native Spanish speakers.

The internets tell me that Brazilians speak Portuguese. 

“Latin America is Western civilization”

No, it’s not. And it’s inaccurate (and even insulting) to claim that the indigenous peoples of Latin America are just a bunch of Spaniards plunked down in a new continent.

Their government is, or is some form of, “Western Civilization.”  It’s that whole “Representative Government.”  Except where it’s totalitarian, or somewhere in between.

You’re right to say that the individual peoples of the countries south of the US border are from different cultures and ethnic lines, but they are all “civilizations’ and they are all in “the west.”

Well, I’ve seen white supremacist tracts that basically throw out Spain and Portugal from the White Nations Club because of (a) the whole Al-Andalus thing, (b) intermixing of the local population with African slaves (much more so in Portugal).  “L’Afrique commence aux Pyrennées,” as the saying goes.

A Mathematical Measure of Opression Resulting from Intersectional Marginalization.

Given an n-space of ORFIM vectors vi , where i=1,2,….n, then the volume of the n dimensional parallelpiped spanned by the vi vectors is a measure of the magnitude of the oppression that a specific individual is exposed to.
Since a “negative” volume is entirely possible, a definition is called for. A positive volume is a measure of the magnitude of oppression. A negative volume is a measure of the magnitude of privilege. Zero length vectors are permitted if the particular attribute of oppression is not applicable.
An example of such a vector is economic. We normalize to the range of real numbers [-1, 1] to describe from utter poverty to extreme wealth. race, Gender, class, education, ableness, and other marginalization vectors can be assigned appropriate real or complex ranges as required.
Once an individual’s Opression Volume (OV) is calculated, then valid comparisons can be made, and Government can tailor economic compensation in direct proportion to OV.

Oldfeminist @16, that video is a thing of beauty. With Breitbart and his ilk, once you shut down their ability to interrupt their opponent, you take away all their power and it becomes clear to all just how impoverished and inarticulate their reasoning is. Breitbart just didn’t have anything to say.

I guessed the quotes right away, too. “Christian” minus “Judeo” is a dead giveaway. But, language aside, there’s not much difference in the missions of these two groups. I wish a major news network would broadcast all of CPAC live - the optimistic part of me thinks that seeing exactly what goes on there, with the unmitigated racism and every other “ism” you could possibly think of, would turn the populace off voting for these people forever. Of course, realistically, this wouldn’t happen. Since the dems are too scared to strongly and consistently call out CPAC and other repugs on their hatred, giving them a platform without challenging them would only result in more teabagger types flocking to their cause.

On the “western civilization” issue, I think that the label is (purposefully) poorly defined by those who use it and is meaningless outside of its usage as a racist code word. I think it’s way more important to drive that point home than to argue that Latin America (or any other country, continent, group of people, whathaveyou) is part of “western civilization.” It’s still insisting that everything goes through Europe (e.g. the tentative connections between Spain and Latin America). And what does it mean, then, for countries and people that don’t have any links to Europe at all? Using that language, even with good intentions, is still ethnocentric and can’t be done without devaluing/erasing of other cultures or inadvertently endorsing colonization.

jc, you’re missing the point.  The point is that the United States and Mexico aren’t different in this regard.  We’re both independent former colonies of Europe.  “Western civilization” is being used to say “white”, full stop.

No, it’s not. And it’s inaccurate (and even insulting) to claim that the indigenous peoples of Latin America are just a bunch of Spaniards plunked down in a new continent.  Mexicans for the most part are descended from the pre-Columbian population of this continent - something most white supremacists cannot claim. It is beyond ironic that we call the native Americans “immigrants”.

Not withstanding the fact I’m not an expert on Mexico and don’t proclaim to be I can tell you that what you stated is absolutely false.  Most of Mexico’s population is Mestizo, which is effectively a mix between Spanish and native people.  In fact it’s the defining characteristic of Mexico and South America is that the colonizers were mostly men and simply married into the population thus creating a strong streak of Spanish/Portuguese-influenced people.  Which is the opposite of the US/Canadian model of settlement and thus boils down to race.  “Western Civilization” is really just a code word for white in this argument.

To speak again though, Mexico has a government that is effectively identical to the US, in fact it’s modeled on the US.  The Mexican President has far more power but comparatively their system is designed to match the US.  If indigenous culture was truly dominant (not just customs) there would be chieftains at the UN managing the affairs of their proto-nation.  Instead they are organized with democracies (largely) and use currency that is traded in the world market.  That is what makes them definitively western civilization.

On the “western civilization” issue, I think that the label is (purposefully) poorly defined by those who use it and is meaningless outside of its usage as a racist code word.

Definitely concur about the “purposefully poorly defined” point. I agree that it’s about “white” people vs. everyone else, but also the right kind of white people. They certainly pare down the pool of people who counts as “western civilization” as needed, at least; somehow I don’t get the impression all their innocent celebrating and “loving” applies seamlessly to the gayer, Jew-ier, “leftist” (etc) bits of the “western” population? Or the ones with no particular interest in pumping out more white babies for whatever reason? Being white is the bare minimum, but if you don’t toe the line on a lot of other factors you’ll be asked to turn in your white card I think.

And, on the flip side, I’m sure they are willing to generously lump stuff like the existence of wheels and gunpowder and “zero” into “western civilization” right? Unless they’re gonna put their money where their mouths are and stop eating chocolate, doing algebra, toting guns around…

The actual lineage of people is a question that veers towards taking this into a racist zone.  The cover story argument for YWC’s existence is that there’s a culture called “Western civilization”, and that it’s identifiable by having the linguistic, religious, and vaguely cultural markers of Europe.  And that it does so in a way that the former colony the USA can be considered “European” in a meaningful way that Mexico (or Brazil or Costa Rica) cannot.  I disagree.  My main lumping was all former European colonies, which I argue retain some of the flavor of the colonizing powers (language, religion, some culture) and some that are native to them.  You could mount an argument that says that Mexico is less like Spain in some ways and more like it in other ways than the U.S. is to England.  For instance, is their food culture more or less related to Spain’s than ours is to England?  Etc. 

The point of this was to show that “Western civilization”, especially when applied to the New World, is a meaningless concept, concocted so that people can say “white” without saying it.

Plus, the New World is all to the, ahem, west of Europe.

“Hispanic” as a catch-all term is problematic in general. You can’t even say it means “non-white” because the Southern Cone countries are either as white or whiter than the US and Canada.

Not to mention the very name “hispanic” kinda leaves out the biggest single country in Latin America! I wish the Census would come up with a more accurate term.

Turns UP the ugliness?  Is that even possible?

I thought it was already set on “twelve”.

I don’t think we should bash CPAC for organizations that gathered there fore being racist.  Personally, I doubt that having them there changes anyone for or against racism.  In fact, we should thank CPAC for bringing these guys to public attention, so we may mock and point out their lack of liberalism.

...What country south of the US doesn’t speak a hispanic language?  Countries to the east of the Andes speak Portuguese and countries to the west speak Spanish.

I wonder if these “White KKKids” would be so self-assured of their Western Civilized-ness as to be willing to submit to anonymous DNA testing to see where their maternal lines go.  I wonder what percentage would head to Africa, like mine does?  It would be interesting to see how much the hidden ancestors in the census closets are driving this purity crusade.

I was raised with a white cultural identity in a very white state - only, I never really looked like most of the other kids in facial structure and body shape and have come to find out that it is probably because I’m really not “purely” European.  When I was in New Orleans, a casual discussion about how shades of race matter led one local academic to say to me: “you were probably raised in white culture in the north, but down here I look at you and see high yellow”. One of my children looks rather celtic and white, the other blends right in with the Brazillian and Hispanic and Bi/Multiracial kids he hangs out with (and has learned all the lovely slurs that get flung at him, too).

Seems that my maternal ancestors “passed” by moving to Oregon from Tennesee at the advent of Jim Crow (we have located cousins who identify as black), and other family branches were mixed with Native American and, possibly, black as well.  Bleaching through frontiers and mobility, if you are just white enough and learn to straighten your hair.

Crissa, please check on your assumptions and try again.

Brazillians do not consider themselves to be “Hispanic”.

Crissa, AFAIK Brazilians don’t consider themselves hispanic. Hispanic refers to Spain.

Comment #36: Ben D.  on 02/14 at 04:42 PM

“Hispanic” as a catch-all term is problematic in general. You can’t even say it means “non-white” because the Southern Cone countries are either as white or whiter than the US and Canada.

No, it’s not really problematic.  It’s a term for members and descendants of Spanish-speaking nations or cultures.  You’re getting confused because you’re trying to see it as an USA-style fake race term.

@29: I guarentee you that the residual vector would blow this fucker up in no time.

If you could ever find enough data to actually run it.  Measures of deprivation that actually capture - and not proxy for - the factors that influence health, etc. are very hard to construct and vary intensely with geography.

This scheme doesn’t seem to account for interactions or adjust for heavy correlations between variables.

...What country south of the US doesn’t speak a hispanic language?

French Guyana and Suriname. English is the official language of Belize, though Spanish is the mother tongue of the plurality of the population.

  You’re getting confused because you’re trying to see it as an USA-style fake race term.

Sure, but that’s how most people in this country use it.

My ‘assumption’ isn’t one.  I didn’t ‘assume’ Brazilians did anything but speak Portuguese.  They’re both latin languages of Hispania - which is also a latin word - which refers to Portugal (far Hispania) and Spain (near Hispania).

Now, they might not consider themselves such, but that’s much like German people coming to the US and considering themselves Deutsch, which is already taking by the Dutch, from the Netherlands.

Of course, I knew Brazil was the country you mentioned - but it’s also not the only country that speaks Portuguese.  There’s another country which is also the third most populous, and considers itself not Hispanic for a completely different reason.

Tyro, don’t forget Haiti.

Also, Paraguay and Uruguay and Argentina are EAST of the Andes and speak Spanish in government affairs.

Nice theory, Crissa.  Avoiding cultural imperialsm means that we describe people as they choose to be described.  Brasillians, Portugese, and Azoreans are NOT Hispanic.

On the “western civilization” issue, I think that the label is (purposefully) poorly defined by those who use it and is meaningless outside of its usage as a racist code word. I think it’s way more important to drive that point home than to argue that Latin America (or any other country, continent, group of people, whathaveyou) is part of “western civilization.” It’s still insisting that everything goes through Europe (e.g. the tentative connections between Spain and Latin America). And what does it mean, then, for countries and people that don’t have any links to Europe at all? Using that language, even with good intentions, is still ethnocentric and can’t be done without devaluing/erasing of other cultures or inadvertently endorsing colonization.
Comment #30: elena on 02/14 at 04:11 PM

Actually I think it’s extremely well defined if you look at what was taught as “Western Civilization” in American public schools in the 50s and 60s.

The USA has a lower percentage of native American blood in its makeup than Mexicans do, though that is changing.  The Spanish conquistadors didn’t bring a lot of women, so their kids would usually not be all-Spanish; Pilgrims kept more (but not wholly) to themselves, bringing women with them, so their kids were more likely to have European looks and genes. 

“Hispanic” is not just blood but name (back to sperm! again! because the person donating the sperm gets to keep his name)—there is or was a category “Hispanic-surnamed” because of this.

I wonder if these “White KKKids” would be so self-assured of their Western Civilized-ness as to be willing to submit to anonymous DNA testing to see where their maternal lines go.  I wonder what percentage would head to Africa, like mine does?

And a huge percentage of Y chromosomes came from the line of Genghis Khan. 

That really doesn’t mean much genetically, though.  We have genes from all over.  “Maternal line” means that the mother of your mother of her mother of her mother and so on ad infinitum, one of some hugenum of ancestors, came from place X, because that mitochondrial DNA points to that place.  Not much else.  That particular piece of information is interesting in populations, but not for individuals.  It’s emphasizing the importance of that one female ancestor over many others for no strong reason.  Yes, mDNA has value, but so does all the rest of your genetic load.

More importantly, we *all* come from Africa, every blooming one of us.  And while our external appearance may point more strongly to one place than another, our differences pale in comparison to our similarities, even across sex and gender lines.

Actually, I came back to ask if anyone knows if this trailer is fake.  It sounds totally ridiculous.

Thanks Tyro, I forgot the French-speaking ones, or Belize, although Spanish is the language by default.  That would also include a few islands, I guess, too…

Oldfeminist, I realize that ... it would be fun to point out that goodly number of white Southerners, as a population, are walking around with mitochondrial DNA from African foremothers.

Cognitive dissonance can be fun!

I wonder if these “White KKKids” would be so self-assured of their Western Civilized-ness as to be willing to submit to anonymous DNA testing to see where their maternal lines go.  I wonder what percentage would head to Africa, like mine does?  It would be interesting to see how much the hidden ancestors in the census closets are driving this purity crusade.

Come to think of it, I wonder how much of their “Western heritage” arises from Ireland, generally regarded as a bunch of benighted barbarians not fit to lick European boot - until, you know, black slavery became a major social force.

Atlas Shrugged is going galt on the movie screen at a theater near you. 

In other news, Shirly Sherrod is suing Bratbart for libel.

Come to think of it, I wonder how much of their “Western heritage” arises from Ireland, generally regarded as a bunch of benighted barbarians not fit to lick European boot

At one time, my own ancestors (Pennsylvania Dutch) were seen as a scary foreign menace, before the country even existed.

Roman Catholics were once a despised religious minority, now they’re the largest single religion in the US and sit on the Supreme Court.

Immigration scares repeat themselves every few decades, just with a new group.

@32

“If indigenous culture was truly dominant (not just customs) there would be chieftains at the UN managing the affairs of their proto-nation.  Instead they are organized with democracies (largely) and use currency that is traded in the world market.”

Uh, that’s kind of really racist dude.  Indigenous people are incapable of democracy and nationhood?

Countries to the east of the Andes speak Portuguese and countries to the west speak Spanish.

Let me assure you that when I was in Argentina and Paraguay, they spoke Spanish.  Both are (predominantly) east of the Andes.  The line you are thinking of was set by the Treaty of Tordesillas at 46degrees 37 minutes West, a bit further west than suggested by Pope Alexander VI in 1493.  Lands east of that meridian were for Portuguese colonization (including Brazil, Africa, Goa, etc) and lands west for Spain (the bulk of the new world.)

As others have noted, parts of the Spanish new world were colonized by other countries, leading to other languages being spoken.

Plus, the New World is all to the, ahem, west of Europe.

It depends on how you define it.

If you include Greenland as part of the New World, then the easternmost part of Greenland (Nordost Rundigen) is east of Iceland and the Azores, both of which are European Islands.

If you don’t include the islands, this is true.  The easternmost part of Brazil is 34W and the westernmost part of Portugal is 9W.

Politically, one needs a map centered roughly on Japan, as that’s the only way to put the US on the far right, and Europe on the far left.

Comment #58: James on 02/14 at 05:42 PM

Politically, one needs a map centered roughly on Japan, as that’s the only way to put the US on the far right, and Europe on the far left.

I’m now having to resist the urge to rant about those USA-drawn world maps that put the American landmass right smack in the middle, cutting Eurasia in half just to have the USA close to the center of the world…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM

Armin Schimmerman!!  That dude is involved in Ayn Rand derivatives everywhere!  (OK, two places: the above and Bioshock.)

I don’t know how that trailer could be fake: ‘wayyyyyy too many speaking parts.  I’ll be interested in how it comes out.  The lighting looks nice.

Did you notice it opens on April 15th??  ::nudge nudge::  Genius, really.

What interests me about Breitbart’s little speech there is the terror that infuses it - even a cursory read reeks of fear and panic. I suspect the racist and xenophobic elements of American (and British…all ‘Western’ countries really) know what the white race is guilty of. But in the absolutist worldview that racism produces, there is no concept of compromise or mutual gain, only paranoia, vengeance and destruction. As such, people like Breitbart assume that any gains made by a minority is a loss for the white majority, and that the endgame can only be the annihilation of one side or the other. And I wonder if he secretly believes that, if any side deserves to lose, it’s his. So I can’t help but wonder if this collective panic attack has a basis in guilt.

The ability to see shades of grey would solve a lot of problems. So goddamn stupid.

I’m now having to resist the urge to rant about those USA-drawn world maps that put the American landmass right smack in the middle, cutting Eurasia in half just to have the USA close to the center of the world…

Here’s a map for you, then!

http://upside-down-maps.com/images/upside-down-world-map-full.jpg

“Let me assure you that when I was in Argentina and Paraguay, they spoke Spanish.  Both are (predominantly) east of the Andes.”

Actually in Paraguay most people speak Guarani, and you can easily find villages with very few Spanish speakers.  Again, Latin America is a lot more complex than “Spanish vs. Portuguese.” It’s a very cool part of the world that most Americans study only superficially.  How many people here are aware that Aztec vs. Mayan ethnic strife is still arguably alive and well to this day in Mexico? In Yucatan, for example, most of the well paying jobs are held by “immigrants” from central Mexico - Mayans are still second class citizens in their own lands.

@44: this can be a problem if the Gram determinant is non-zero. But it does not make sense to substitute
an n-sphere for an n-Parallelepiped when complex data sets form the sub matrices.

Here’s a map for you, then!

http://upside-down-maps.com/images/upside-down-world-map-full.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM

I’m now having to resist the urge to rant about those USA-drawn world maps that put the American landmass right smack in the middle, cutting Eurasia in half just to have the USA close to the center of the world…

There’s this enlightening little map I saw with the world centered on Moscow, with the hostile Cold War countries coloured blue and China and other potential enemies coloured light blue that went a long way to explaining to me exactly why the USSR seemed so “paranoid”.  they were literally surrounded by unfriendlies at all angles.

@66 is that an Austral projection?  A guy drew that as a boy for a class project in Australia, and got in trouble for it.  He fortunately never let the idea die.

“If indigenous culture was truly dominant (not just customs) there would be chieftains at the UN managing the affairs of their proto-nation.  Instead they are organized with democracies (largely) and use currency that is traded in the world market.”

Uh, that’s kind of really racist dude.  Indigenous people are incapable of democracy and nationhood?

I was pointing out to the indigenous defender that the predominant government of these people were dictatorships centered around a royalty.  I could have easily called them kings but their traditional name would be Chieftain poorly translated by me.  Could just call them leader or anything they preferred, they were definitively royal and had no semblance of democracy on a mass scale.  Few indigenous groups practiced any form of democracy though their social structures were much more equal on a cultural level in North America.  Being racist would be insinuating they were inferior when I wasn’t.  I was saying that culturally they have ties to the indigenous people but their governments are based on the United States model largely.

Analytical analysis can seem cruel, but there was no intent to cause defamation to their characters.

“We’ll I have to point out that Spain is not only European, but it’s more European than England, which gave us our language, being on the actual continent and all. “

I’m pretty sure that the native Central and South American women who were raped by the conquistadors wouldn’t appreciate being called Spanish. I also think it’s wrong to call them Spanish simply by default because Spain invaded their country, raped the women and destroyed their culture. I mean, we don’t call Irish people Nordic do we? Do we call Spanish people African/Middle Eastern? I think we should allow for these Central and South American cultures to gain some cultural autonomy from their former invaders. Hopefully when their socioeconomic conditions improve they will be able to do so in a more dramatic fashion.

“Sure, former colonies all have unique cultures from the European nations that originally colonized them, but that’s equally true of the United States as anywhere else.”

Is Spain then a part of Africa and peoples of the Middle East since those countries had an early influence upon them? Technically if we took that perspective then we would have no west, no east, no north, no south ect because everyone has had some influence via invasion on others. I always took it to mean that the West was like a way of saying ‘of similar socioeconomic/cultural backgrounds.’ Not necessarily ethnic-wise but both in economic sense and cultural (were not theocrats, we believe in human rights, ect). I also thought it was because, aside from Europe, all the other western countries are seen as detached from any native culture (aside from the Indigenous people). The people who majoritively make up Canada, Australia, New Zealand and North America are immigrants from somewhere else. It’s simply a way of marking where our founding origins came from (Europe), while South/Central America are native peoples so they simply aren’t seen as ethnically/culturally detached. They’re a native culture and not one of detached heritage.

And seriously I know that asshats like Breitbart are racist assholes but it doesn’t make wanting a border wrong. I’m a liberal and I’m sick of this issue taking up so much of our time. I don’t like having destitute and impoverished people paying $3,000 to come over to the U.S. via a sweltering desert, risk their lives (and according to Amnesty International 6 out of 10 women are raped), to work shitty jobs. I also don’t like the gangs, mafias, drug/sex trafficking and sweatshop labor (+ the other problems associated with not being documented that happen to people in America where high illegal populations exist) that also come through.I talked with some illegal immigrants where I volunteered for a week at El Centro in Denver Co. Alot of them don’t want to be here. Some of them talked about being abused by their employers. And what are we supposed to do; keep South/Central America in destitute status so they’ll always do our shitty jobs? I think what also gets overlooked is what American corporations do over there that induces these situations. I think we should do something in these countries so that they don’t have to come here. Central/South America need to listen to their destitute and desperate populations and quit scapegoating them using the broken border as a pressure valve. If we make them legal and don’t have a border we’ll be here again 20 years later (like 20 years before). It just keeps repeating itself and we need solutions that don’t involve an Upton Sinclair-like “Jungle” familiarity.

#21 James,
“Ah, but the cynic in me notes that racism, religious bigotry and hatred, and sexism area all parts of Western Civilization! One only has to look at the history of Europe…”

Actually one only has to look at the history of the world and majority of cultures in both the present and in the past. Luckily Europe is not anywhere as bad as most of them and has luckily changed since then. Europe is quite progressive in comparison to much of the world as well as many areas in comparison to the U.S.  I can see them acting like a tug-boat against some of our Christian zealots here.

#24 jcnighs,

“It is beyond ironic that we call the native Americans “immigrants”

Technically Central/South Americans aren’t native North Americans,  so it’s not all that weird. It would be weird if one was calling native North Americans “immigrants.” If a Native North American (say an Cherokee Indian) wanted to immigrate to Mexico they would still be seen there as an immigrant.

#55 Ben D.,

“Roman catholic’s were once a despised religious minority, and now they’re the largest single religion in the U.S. and sit on the supreme court”

......and that’s a good thing?

“Technically Central/South Americans aren’t native North Americans”

The very idea of “North America” is a concept introduced by Europeans.  The distinction between “North American Indians” and “Central American Indians” has nothing to do with native American culture.  There is evidence that the pre-1491 city states that thrived in the Mississippi river valleys had plenty of contact with the city states in the Mexican plateau.

shah8 @ 10:
see http://www.integrationindex.eu/integrationindex/2391.html
Proposed legislation from the Green party was blocked, success mostly credited to church groups.  I haven’t paid much attention for the last few years though, so my stuff is all out of date (and pretty negative as to their official policies as well as some things I saw - particularly re Asian and Turkish residents).

Technically Central/South Americans aren’t native North Americans, so it’s not all that weird. It would be weird if one was calling native North Americans “immigrants.” If a Native North American (say an Cherokee Indian) wanted to immigrate to Mexico they would still be seen there as an immigrant.
Comment #72: BeanS on 02/15 at 01:49 AM

The very idea of “North America” is a concept introduced by Europeans.  The distinction between “North American Indians” and “Central American Indians” has nothing to do with native American culture.  There is evidence that the pre-1491 city states that thrived in the Mississippi river valleys had plenty of contact with the city states in the Mexican plateau.
Comment #74: jcnighs on 02/15 at 11:17 AM

I think y’all have your geography confused.

Mexico is in North America.

oldfeminist,
Oh so then central america is that little bridge between that, like, fat but tiny part. I looked it up. That’s something I didnt know. I thought that Mexico was central america then after the little bridge it was south america. Did not know Mexico was part of N America. Duly edumacated.

@69

“I was pointing out to the indigenous defender that the predominant government of these people were dictatorships centered around a royalty.  I could have easily called them kings but their traditional name would be Chieftain poorly translated by me.  Could just call them leader or anything they preferred, they were definitively royal and had no semblance of democracy on a mass scale.  Few indigenous groups practiced any form of democracy though their social structures were much more equal on a cultural level in North America.  Being racist would be insinuating they were inferior when I wasn’t.  I was saying that culturally they have ties to the indigenous people but their governments are based on the United States model largely.”

Oh that’s right.  I forgot about Spain’s vibrant democracy in the 16th century.

You basically said in the post I quoted that if the Spanish and Portuguese hadn’t slaughtered them on a massive scale and then stamped out their cultures, the peoples of South America would be stuck in “proto-nations” ruled by “chiefs”.  You understand why that’s deeply offensive, right?