Rick Santorum Let Go by CNN

[Sun_Worshiper]

I'm here to alert you to rampant conservative cancel culture, which you seem to constantly overlook, not to tell CNN how to staff their crappy news shows.

They had to have picked Santorum figuring they could make mincemeat out of him, didn't they?
Santorum was their straw man pick.

ETA: White guilt is a big part the currency of the democratic party. Their stock has been rising.

What does this have to do with my post?

Mahagonny, why don't you make a thread about right wing cancel culture that led to firing of AP staffer and tenure denial at UNC? How can we possibly take you seriously if you selectively ignore canceling from one side? It seems like you don't actually care about cancel culture, but are instead just looking for excuses to make threads airing out your white grievance and complaing about how mean liberals are.

[mahagonny]

I'm here to alert you to rampant conservative cancel culture, which you seem to constantly overlook, not to tell CNN how to staff their crappy news shows.

They had to have picked Santorum figuring they could make mincemeat out of him, didn't they?
Santorum was their straw man pick.

ETA: White guilt is a big part the currency of the democratic party. Their stock has been rising.

What does this have to do with my post?

Mahagonny, why don't you make a thread about right wing cancel culture that led to firing of AP staffer and tenure denial at UNC? How can we possibly take you seriously if you selectively ignore canceling from one side? It seems like you don't actually care about cancel culture, but are instead just looking for excuses to make threads airing out your white grievance and complaing about how mean liberals are.

Well, you pretend to care about the imbalance of liberal to conservatives scholars with tenure, then cry foul when one more radical left writer didn't get tenure. Even though she's still go a job that most people employed in college teaching would consider fantastic, and will probably get tenure in five years. Why don't you start a thread, if you think something is missing?

Also, I should point out that the Christian death cult is predicated on human sacrifice. To the point that you drink actual human blood and eat actual human flesh on Sundays (although I'll grant you that Protestantism did away with that particular element). And I suppose I should add that, actually, a society built around human slavery has hardly done away with human sacrifice.

No, you shouldn't. Because (bolded) it would not be evidence that the United States of America is or was into human sacrifice, even if certain members of it eventually were Catholics who agree to pretend they are having Christ's blood and flesh during communion. And no culture has done more to eradicate slavery and racism than ours, either.

[Parasaurolophus]

Ritualistic cannibalism is not human sacrifice. Sending your son to be tortured to death so people can have good things is.

The rest is just risible, so I'll get to it if I ever stop laughing at it

[Sun_Worshiper]

I'm here to alert you to rampant conservative cancel culture, which you seem to constantly overlook, not to tell CNN how to staff their crappy news shows.

They had to have picked Santorum figuring they could make mincemeat out of him, didn't they?
Santorum was their straw man pick.

ETA: White guilt is a big part the currency of the democratic party. Their stock has been rising.

What does this have to do with my post?

Mahagonny, why don't you make a thread about right wing cancel culture that led to firing of AP staffer and tenure denial at UNC? How can we possibly take you seriously if you selectively ignore canceling from one side? It seems like you don't actually care about cancel culture, but are instead just looking for excuses to make threads airing out your white grievance and complaing about how mean liberals are.

Well, you pretend to care about the imbalance of liberal to conservatives scholars with tenure, then cry foul when one more radical left writer didn't get tenure. Even though she's still go a job that most people employed in college teaching would consider fantastic, and will probably get tenure in five years. Why don't you start a thread, if you think something is missing?

Wrong again, Mahagonny. Read my posts and you'll see that I never cried foul about a "radical left" writer not getting tenure. I simply pointed out your blatant hypocrisy: You constantly whine and complain about cancel culture from the left and about how unfair the tenure system is for conservatives, but yet you completely ignore the right wing efforts to do the very things that you claim to be so upset about. Your lack of consistency on this and other issues, as well as your replies to my posts in this thread, make it very clear that you don't actually care about cancel culture or free speech at all. You're just another partisan who pretends to have principles.

[mahagonny]

Ritualistic cannibalism is not human sacrifice. Sending your son to be tortured to death so people can have good things is.

The rest is just risible, so I'll get to it if I ever stop laughing at it

Eagerly awaiting your next perspicacious indictment of the white menace.

You constantly whine and complain about cancel culture from the left and about how unfair the tenure system is for conservatives, but yet you completely ignore the right wing efforts to do the very things that you claim to be so upset about.

Looks like you concede that one.

[smallcleanrat]

RE: Santorum's claim that people are upset because he spoke "the truth"

1) As alluded to earlier in the thread, saying ("candidly") there isn't much of native culture in modern America after claiming "there was nothing here" does give a strong impression that his message was that Native American culture didn't have much to offer. Then he tries to claim it wasn't "disparaging towards Native Americans" because he was talking specifically about the founding of the country (by which I think he means the government/constitution?). Even though the early quote talks about "American culture" not government.

2) Genuine question for people who know the history better than I do: how representative is a desire for "religious liberty" as a primary motivator for European colonization of North America?

3) Claiming the US was founded on "Judeo-Christian values" like the 10 Commandments? eh...

[Sun_Worshiper]

Ritualistic cannibalism is not human sacrifice. Sending your son to be tortured to death so people can have good things is.

The rest is just risible, so I'll get to it if I ever stop laughing at it

Eagerly awaiting your next perspicacious indictment of the white menace.

You constantly whine and complain about cancel culture from the left and about how unfair the tenure system is for conservatives, but yet you completely ignore the right wing efforts to do the very things that you claim to be so upset about.

Looks like you concede that one.

By refusing to engage with my point or acknowledge conservative cancel culture, while simultaneously crying and complaining about cancel culture from the left, you are the one conceding. You don't actually care about free speech or cancel culture and are therefore just a partisan with no principles. Thanks for making that abundantly clear to anyone who bothers to read your hollow troll posts.

[mamselle]

RE: Santorum's claim that people are upset because he spoke "the truth"

1) As alluded to earlier in the thread, saying ("candidly") there isn't much of native culture in modern America after claiming "there was nothing here" does give a strong impression that his message was that Native American culture didn't have much to offer. Then he tries to claim it wasn't "disparaging towards Native Americans" because he was talking specifically about the founding of the country (by which I think he means the government/constitution?). Even though the early quote talks about "American culture" not government.

2) Genuine question for people who know the history better than I do: how representative is a desire for "religious liberty" as a primary motivator for European colonization of North America?

3) Claiming the US was founded on "Judeo-Christian values" like the 10 Commandments? eh...

The issue about religious liberty is complex, depending on which part of the continent one is talking about and who settled it.

1. Late 15th-E 16th through the 17th/18th c.) : In the SW, spreading northwards first, from Mexico into what are now AZ, NM, and TX--and later, in CA--the Spanish and Portuguese who annihilated the highly civilized cultures in Central and South America (the Portuguese primarily in Brazil, the Spanish nearly everywhere else)--were not motivated by religious persecution at home (the Jewish might have wished they could have, but they weren't the ones sailing over here). So they were not seeking religious liberty at all, and in fact justified their travels, their looting of the silver ritual goods (which they promptly melted down for their own use, so that we have very little left of what appears to have been a highly developed body of artisanal work); fortunately they were less interested in ceramic work of which there are many more examples.

     See, for example: https://www.mfa.org/gallery/the-ancient-americas

The Spanish came to practice the same forms of Roman Catholicism they had observed at home, and within a few years also began bringing missionaries with them, ostensibly "to convert the heathen," but more often to preach subservience to them so that they would acquiesce in their own enslavement in working the same silver mines they had originally worked for their own people. 

"Religious liberty" was not among the original goals of that colony; the books "1491" and "1493" discuss some issues for the native inhabitants.   

2. L16th/E17th to 18th c.: In the North: The French settled the areas now known as French Canada (roughly); they, like the Spanish, were primarily either Roman Catholic or--like the trappers--were what we'd call "Nones," disinterested in much beyond their work and surviving the difficult climate while running their traps and the trading outposts they established with the Huron, Algonquian, and other nations.

As the French became more established, they, too, sent priests to form settlements among the First Peoples they found; some were kindly, helpful, and pastoral; others were not. They, also, were at times implicated in mediating acceptance by the native inhabitants they had worked with of oppressive, unjust, and economically disadvantageous arrangements regarding the use of the land, its produce, their labor, and its cost.

Unlike Spain, France did have a problem with religious dissidents, but they were not allowed to leave. Huguenots (French Protestants) were in fact very specifically barred from emigrating to New France, and could be sent back: the governors, who were sworn to uphold the established French Catholic state, did not want trouble. A small colony tried to settle near what is now St. Augustine in Florida, but it did not prosper; after the English arrived in what is now New England (and to some degree, along the southern shores), industrious French Huguenots did settle there and prospered--one descendant, the son of Appolonius Rivoire, is rather well-known, now, in fact.

Oh, and a tiny group that later settled in Acadia (now northern ME, in part), gave rise to stories about those who were forced to leave the land after one of the French/English wars and go to New Orleans. One of those may have been a maiden sweetheart who spent a long time chasing after her lover (did he want to be found?) and was celebrated in 19th c. verse.

But "religious liberty" was not among the original goals of that colony, and the First Peoples were not well-treated, overall.       
   
3. 17th c. New Amsterdam/New York In 1609, Hudson's claim of the area around Manhattan island made it possible for the Dutch to settle fairly far up the river he named for himself. However, by then Protestant (and having fought off earlier Spanish Catholic efforts to take over Holland), the Dutch were more economically focused (as Barbara Tuchman's excellent book, 'The First Salute" establishes) and weren't too interested in proselytization themselves: Holland was a very open place, religiously.

Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor before the colony was ceded to the English was less malleable; he was anti-everything except the Reformed (Calvinist) church in which he'd been raised, but when New Holland became New York, after a series of wars, those issues were mooted. The range of disagreements among German, Swedish, and other smaller groups who'd settled in the area largely were resolved by each group keeping to itself.

4. Three waves of English colonization resulted in two different sets of issues.

a. 1609 (L1500s if Roanoke is considered)The first colonies in areas now part of NC and VA were set up as Anglican. England's established church ever since the Oath of Supremacy in the early 1500s was transplanted very intentionally, with about 30 churches still extant (see Dell Upton's "Holy Things and Profane," on his painstaking analysis of their buildings and appointments). Williamsburg (hence, the College of Wm and Mary) was established after the capital was moved back inland from the James River (which flooded so badly that its original footings were only recently re-discovered) and the planters were mostly well-to-do Anglican Tories who depended on being on good terms with the royal customs agents to be able to send their crops back at a good price. (The then-identified sense of classism among these groups may have made the use of slaves less problematic for them from the outset, although there was also opposition from some quarters).

Further back from the tidewater, as Upton shows, Presbyterian and other dissenting churches grew up, and much later, it was so difficult to get Anglican priests to come to the colonies (see Nancy Rhodes on this) that a system of readers, some of them lay and others ordained in any confession at all would administer Morning and Evening Prayer, but not the communion, for long periods of time.

Dissension in the colony, when it occurred later, was less along religious and more along class and political grounds; George Washington and Patrick Henry were both Anglicans, for example.

So, no "religious liberty" was not among the original goals of that colony. Making money was. 

And not only were the native inhabitants there badly treated, with their land overtaken and their labor stolen, but they were shipped off to work on other plantations in the Caribbean, often in exchange for blacks who had been sent there and already been "seasoned," as it was said, to their treatment as slaves.

The more recently-arrived native Americans could not leave, so their original opposition to being enslaved was the more easily broken down. For a long time, less was known of their governance structures because their cultures were so thoroughly broken down (they mostly moved inland in successive waves until the forced deportation to Oklahoma, the "Trail of Tears," in the 19th c.)     

b. In the New England colonies, two separate groups of arrivants had different intentions; others soon joined them. These are the individuals whose motivation in coming to North America is often mis-categorized as "a search for religious freedom," but few of them would have understood it in those terms. Each group in fact sought to establish (literally, in their terms: every government had an "established" church it was partnered with) the religious (politial) as well as the civil (political) structures they believed to be correct and, in most cases, would have argued were divinely mandated.

Until Locke's essays and the 1690/92 Acts of Toleration, the idea of rubbing along with each other was not anywhere entertained as an ideal.

  1) In 1620, the Separatists who arrived in Plymouth (having aimed for Jamestown) were Dissenters who had definitely left Old England to set up a religious as well as civil governance that would allow them to do away with surplices, various theological tenets, and the idea that a human person could be the head of a divinely-ordered religious congregation. They (and other Dissenters, including the Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians who followed them) also did not want to use the word "church" for the building in which they met, calling it a "meeting house," instead. The "church" was the group of believing members who had been gathered together by their common agreement to a covenant of grace, worded in a form that would be read as a part of the short rite in which the joined together as a congregation.

Their leadership was fashioned, not after the Catholic/Anglican form of ordained bishops, priests, and deacons, with lower orders beneath them, but after Calvin's "four-fold ministry" of preacher, teacher, ruling elder(s) and deacon(s).

All of those differed radically from either the Catholic church, that had been part of English culture until the previous century, or the Anglican church that retained many Roman rituals, belief structures, and practices except that of being headed by a Pope (the crowned head of the country being, after Henry, in charge of the Church of England). The 1620 Plymouth settlers (usually called "the Pilgrims") were in fact Separatists who had first tried to separate completely from the Anglican church by going to Holland. Finding themselves and their children too much absorbed into Dutch life and customs (including its more lax attitude towards any religion at all) they separated yet again and came to New England--not in search of "freedom" of religion, but to establish what they saw to be the more completely Reformed church that could have been set up.

In other words, for them, Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth I had let a chance for a more fully reformed church slip through their fingers; the following century's events were no more reassuring. 

Their leaders did try, to a certain extent, to work fairly with the few Natives they found there, but no records I know of show any land exchange rituals, which did happen to the north, later. They and certain members of their own group (and other, smaller groups of English settlers who landed nearby and created more difficulties), then fell afoul of regional suspicions among the tribes themselves, resulting in local wars in the 1630s that decimated an already tiny Native population, and set up the polarities that fueled wars and border town attacks in the 1670s and afterwards.

All the evidence shows that they had a strong system of governance until it was disrupted, but that conflicts among warring factions also weakened their organizational strength; a visitation by European or English ships at some point had also brought smallpox to the area, wiping out much of the coastal population and making the survivors wary of being captured as Squanto was; his escape via England and Spain brought him back to his homeland only to find it nearly empty of his own people.   

   2. Like the Separatists, the 1630s groups of non-separating Dissenters that followed (they were at first called Puritans in both Old and New England, but by 1651, having joined with the Separatists, the word Congregationalist is more apt for their New England contingent) also sought to establish the forms of religious and civil society that they saw fit. Called the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they actually brought their charter with them, and bought out all who did not agree to specific religious tenets, promoting a kind of homogeneity that might have served the Old Colony (Plymouth) better. 

Landing first in Salem, where a fishery under Roger Conant (another None, I'd say) already was settled, then traveling down the coast to found first, Charlestown, then Boston, Dorchester, Cambridge, etc., they also at first had reasonable relationships with the Natives until the problems with Plymouth, to the south, arose in the 1630s (which Gov. Winthrop probably exacerbated). They also learned Native languages, printed tracts and Scriptures in them (thus preserving Wampanoag and Algonkian) and established schools that prepared at least a few for Harvard, although they were housed separately, and only a few actually attended or graduated.

More is known of Native Americans in the New England area; their governance included women as well as men being empowered to rule over, or speak for, a local population, and their ability to farm, make sturdy shelters, and compete among themselves for approbation of their physical abilities were noted in first-contact reports like Wood's, as well as from fairly consistent observations by other early arrivants. The system of trade included quahog beads that bypassed the need for in-kind barter and interaction with other populations was by all reports very sophisticated.

Again, the (primarily) Puritan English colonists--so named because they wanted originally to stay within the Anglican church and purify it from within--did not seek "religious freedom," but wanted to set up a model for Old England to emulate. In a way they sought to "missionize in reverse," (perhaps a motivation for other missionaries, whether they know it or not). So they were in no way hypocritical when they banned Roger Williams (usually hailed as founder of the Baptist church in N. Am., although Baptists existed in Old England before him) or exiled the Quakers who arrived, also from Old England (although jailing, and later, hanging them was seen as having gone too far).

The New England settlements at first brought their own indentured servants, but within 10 years, some enslaved individuals did live in the area as attested to by the promulgation of laws for their control. They also did not at first bring in Blacks directly from Africa, but in trade for the Natives captured in the wars of the 1630s and 70s. However, enslaved black members of the population appear on Cambridge MA census rolls by the early 1700s and slave traders landed in Newport, RI, as well as at the Roxbury docks, just below Boston, where the poet Philis Wheatley was purchased, age 8, in the 1760s. 

By the 1680s, strong incursions of Anglicanism following the Restoration had begun to bring Dissenters together, and by the 1730s ministers of various confessions were attending each others' ordinations, rather than preaching against them, and sharing church spaces when repairs or fires forced a congregation out of its worship space.

Anglican governmental appointees under the Royal Provincial Governor may have also been responsible for the increased trade in enslaved Blacks, decried in Old England by groups like the Clapham sect, and in New England by very early abolitionists like Samuel Sewall, who in the early 1700s published the first anti-slavery tract, "The Selling of Joseph."

So, short answer:

1) No, none of the European and English arrivants came to the Americas in search of religious freedom; the concept of cuius regio, eius religio obtained and the idea of "religious freedom" was not one they would have understood or thought highly of.

2) Interactions with Natives found here, and with enslaved Blacks brought here, were often couched in missionizing and educational terms, but were nearly always economically motivated and without as much consideration or concern for the human beings involved as anyone might have wished.

3) Each Native society had been living in the region in which they were found for very long periods of time and had highly complex, well-developed foodways, ritual codes, governmental systems, and languages. In many cases, European arrivants learned from and benefitted greatly by these.

4) Some colonizing groups were more motivated by religious concepts, but calling those "Judeo-Christian" in and of themselves misrepresents them. Others were motivated almost entirely by economic interests, with religious motivations coming far behind, or used as a cloak for graft and greed.

Sorry for the long post...but you asked....

;--}

M.     

[mahagonny]

Sorry for the long post...but you asked....

No problem; do the people who want us to 'confront whiteness' know that white people can be different from each other? And do they know that white people of today are not the same people as their white ancestors of the 17th century?
Normally guilt by association is not considered good critical thinking.

[nebo113]

Thanks, Mamselle.  Scanned quickly and am printing to read slowly and carefully. 

[smallcleanrat]

Sorry for the long post...but you asked....

No problem; do the people who want us to 'confront whiteness' know that white people can be different from each other? And do they know that white people of today are not the same people as their white ancestors of the 17th century?
Normally guilt by association is not considered good critical thinking.

Is "guilt by association" applicable to this particular story?

Seems as though there's room for criticisms of Santorum's own statements, much as he claims that all he did was speak "the truth."

[mahagonny]

Sorry for the long post...but you asked....

No problem; do the people who want us to 'confront whiteness' know that white people can be different from each other? And do they know that white people of today are not the same people as their white ancestors of the 17th century?
Normally guilt by association is not considered good critical thinking.

Is "guilt by association" applicable to this particular story?

Seems as though there's room for criticisms of Santorum's own statements, much as he claims that all he did was speak "the truth."

I never intended to defend Sanitarium 100% here. But he annoys me less than the group who would have been the fringe characters of several years ago (now  mainstreamed by a collusion from Hollywood, pro-sports, Woke-a Cola, academia and the liberal media) like Don Lemon and Nikole Hannah-Jones do.

The question of guilt by association does apply if one believes, as I do, that the USA is in a culture war. Thus, the big picture: all of these conversations are opportunities for the left wing media to stoke white guilt; whereas, responses from right wingers are opportunities for the 'microaggression' of 'The United States of America is a great nation and has no need to apologize for itself.' The idea from the left is that white America needs to do something to bring equal outcomes to all races, no, correction, black America, despite the obvious problem that people demanding this result have all the wrong ideas about how that might happen. Because once upon a time blacks had a crappy deal here and no realistic way to move up. Yet Asian Americans can outperform the rest of us with no penalty, because they are not classified as white, which is now a synonym for 'guilty.' And their success distracts from the supreme liberal narrative of white oppression so it must be ignored. I consider the whole thing quite pathetic, stupid and perverse.

Thank you for asking a serious question.

[Parasaurolophus]

You lost the culture war what, thirty years ago? What you're in now are the death throes of a democracy that's barely fifty years old.


Also, I'm sad nobody got my Santorum jokes at the beginning. I'll try harder next time.

[mahagonny]

Also, I'm sad nobody got my Santorum jokes at the beginning. I'll try harder next time.

Or had enough class not to encourage you.

ETA: Not everyone is at war. Far from it. If most were rioting things would look way different. The race war and the kill capitalism wars are the crowning achievement or the far left media, old school race hustlers like Sharpton, grandstanding gated-community residents like LeBron James, et al. You won't see any stories in the news like 'Mr. Louis Johnson, a POC residing in Portland, did not demonstrate yesterday but instead went to his job as bank manager, had lunch with associates, then went home to his family. Here is his picture.'

[mamselle]

You lost the culture war what, thirty years ago? What you're in now are the death throes of a democracy that's barely fifty years old.


Also, I'm sad nobody got my Santorum jokes at the beginning. I'll try harder next time.

I got them.

M.