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Chris
04-12-2012, 08:38 PM
When and why'd we lose it?

Charles Murray in the following video, around 2:20, takes it back to the 60s when we lost our sense of a common civic culture that we inherited from the founders, the 60s when last he heard us use the phrase the American way of life.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6q3zy4NRzz4

Jonathan Haidt, Born This Way? (http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/10/born-this-way), pins it on the political class, the parties and the media:
...the political class, the political parties, and the media have completely changed their game since the 1980s. Politics used to be hardball: very competitive, but at the end of the day, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill could meet for a drink and a private conversation. Congressmen and senators had the sense that they all belonged to a grand institution. They had enough in common, and enough friends across the aisle, that they could work together on solving the nation’s biggest challenges, from facing down the Soviets to dismantling Jim Crow.

Not any more. Now it’s cage-match wrestling, and there is a lot more blood. As long-serving former congressman Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) put it in September, “This is not a collegial body any more. It is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred.”

Mister D
04-12-2012, 08:42 PM
Was thinking about picking up his latest book the themes of which I assume he is discussing here.

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/0307453421

Chris
04-12-2012, 08:55 PM
Yes, he is discussing the book. In this interview (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/books/charles-murrays-coming-apart-the-state-of-white-america.html?pagewanted=all) he says:
But “Coming Apart,” which depicts members of white elites as hypocrites living in a bubble and the white working class as succumbing to moral decay, is hardly a flattering portrait of white people, let alone, Mr. Murray insists, a partisan barnburner.

“It’s not a brief for the right,” Mr. Murray said in a recent interview at the American Enterprise Institute here, where he has been a scholar since 1990. “The problem I describe isn’t a conservative-versus-liberal problem. It’s a cultural problem the whole country has.”

Mister D
04-12-2012, 09:05 PM
Yes, he is discussing the book. In this interview (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/books/charles-murrays-coming-apart-the-state-of-white-america.html?pagewanted=all) he says:

Looks interesting. I wonder if I should consider it a postmortem report but I guess I'll find out how optimistic he is. I'll probably grab this off Amazon soon. I'm glad you posted this. I forgot about it.

wingrider
04-13-2012, 12:08 AM
Looks interesting. I wonder if I should consider it a postmortem report but I guess I'll find out how optimistic he is. I'll probably grab this off Amazon soon. I'm glad you posted this. I forgot about it.
ditto

MMC
04-13-2012, 05:39 AM
I will have to watch this in parts Chris.

...the political class, the political parties, and the media have completely changed their game since the 1980s. Politics used to be hardball: very competitive, but at the end of the day, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill could meet for a drink and a private conversation. Congressmen and senators had the sense that they all belonged to a grand institution. They had enough in common, and enough friends across the aisle, that they could work together on solving the nation’s biggest challenges, from facing down the Soviets to dismantling Jim Crow.

Not any more. Now it’s cage-match wrestling, and there is a lot more blood. As long-serving former congressman Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) put it in September, “This is not a collegial body any more. It is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred.” .....snip~

Who would people say are the breeders of that hate? Why do you think this is.....with more women being in Congress? How did this come to be with more women entering Congress?

These people are consistently showing a disregard for what the Nation did not tolerate before. Breaking House and Senate rules. Sure doesn't seem like any of them Walk around Talking about the American Way anymore.

MMC
04-13-2012, 05:56 AM
How would they say that the politicans were showing this civil culture back then as opposed to now?

Chris
04-13-2012, 06:35 AM
I think while political battles have always been fought, they weren't so personal that they couldn't be, what'd he say, collegial afterwards.

One thing that's changed is these days politicians campaign 24/7/365. Back a few decades, once you were in office you did what you were elected for.

Mainecoons
04-13-2012, 06:37 AM
Progressives have striven mightily to define and divided us by gender, income, color, sexual orientation. They have succeeded. The U.S. is a fatally divided country. Best thing that could happen now is to divide it up physically and give the various groups options as to what country they live in. Only problem is that in short order the conservative country would have to spend big money on border control to keep the starving liberals from Leftwingnutia from invading and stealing everything again.

:grin:

MMC
04-13-2012, 06:56 AM
Yeah but with 41% of the Electorate being conservative and only 21% being Progressives and liberals. Doesnt leave them in good standings with their dividing by class and all else. Especillay if they push the country to violence. Moreover if more states begin turning over to more Conservative forms of governing, and the left loses more ground with states going and sticking with state law over that of the Fed. Then they are toast.

Then within the next decade we could see 2/3rds of the States turn to the right. With all dropping Keynesian Economics and the Socialistic Agenda.

Mainecoons
04-13-2012, 06:59 AM
Problem is, their 21 percent is running the media, the schools, the courts and the government. Remember that the real communists in Russia never were anything near to a real majority of the country but they ran things for nearly a hundred years.

MMC
04-13-2012, 07:49 AM
Yes but as you seen with ODonnell.....the Dems and Libs will always be divided. As well as infiltrated by Socialists. Blue dogs are walking away from Obama. Which is why not one of them voted on Obama's Alleged budget plan.

Peter1469
04-13-2012, 04:11 PM
Progressives have striven mightily to define and divided us by gender, income, color, sexual orientation. They have succeeded. The U.S. is a fatally divided country. Best thing that could happen now is to divide it up physically and give the various groups options as to what country they live in. Only problem is that in short order the conservative country would have to spend big money on border control to keep the starving liberals from Leftwingnutia from invading and stealing everything again.

:grin:

Is America even a nation any longer? A nation is a group of people with a shared culture. America today is divided into different groups to include traditionalists, liberal secular humanists, feminists, and even LGBTs.

wingrider
04-13-2012, 04:57 PM
I think we have gone past the point of no return.. this country is toast, all that remains is the funeral.

it is a cycle.

slavery, freedom, complacency , apathy, and back to slavery.. we are now as a country in apathy, you know what is next.. just how many of our rights under the Bill of Rights have been tromped on, look at the power that the NSA has over the american people,, we are herded like sheep, every thing we do, buy , write, etc is now in the domain of the NSA. fully sanctioned and approved by the federal government,,

Chris
04-13-2012, 06:23 PM
Is America even a nation any longer? A nation is a group of people with a shared culture. America today is divided into different groups to include traditionalists, liberal secular humanists, feminists, and even LGBTs.

That I think is Murray's message, the American way of life is lost.

Peter1469
04-13-2012, 06:29 PM
That I think is Murray's message, the American way of life is lost.

I would like to see the Murry article on the topic.

Chris
04-13-2012, 06:49 PM
I posted a link to an interview on first page of thread. There's others around.

I got video from Uncommon Ground, so NRO: I see now there's a whole series: http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/ of 5 videos, but not much text.

Here's an article he wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html

Think he was on Colbert report too.

Mainecoons
04-13-2012, 08:03 PM
Is America even a nation any longer? A nation is a group of people with a shared culture. America today is divided into different groups to include traditionalists, liberal secular humanists, feminists, and even LGBTs.

No, I don't really think it is, hence my post was only somewhat tongue in cheek.

Mister D
04-13-2012, 08:12 PM
Is America even a nation any longer? A nation is a group of people with a shared culture. America today is divided into different groups to include traditionalists, liberal secular humanists, feminists, and even LGBTs.

Is this a surprising outcome for a culture steeped in individualism?

Mainecoons
04-13-2012, 08:52 PM
It's not the individualism that is killing the country, it is the groupism.

Peter1469
04-13-2012, 10:06 PM
Is this a surprising outcome for a culture steeped in individualism?

Coons is right. That was our national character. It is the collectivists that screwed it up.

MMC
04-13-2012, 11:23 PM
It's not the individualism that is killing the country, it is the groupism.

Plus those groupings even being divided and creating more of a division. Which party is more about division and concerned with titles?

Chris
04-14-2012, 06:09 AM
Ironic isn't it, the individualists seek a common way of life while the collectivists are divisive.

Charles Murray doesn't take a political stance though.

Chris
04-14-2012, 06:17 AM
In the WSJ article he offers the following apolitical solution:
The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations. Public policy has certainly affected the culture, unfortunately, but unintended consequences have been as grimly inevitable for conservative social engineering as for liberal social engineering.

The "something" that I have in mind has to be defined in terms of individual American families acting in their own interests and the interests of their children. Doing that in Fishtown requires support from outside. There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism." Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.