carlin got it right

pjfan021

carlin was anything but a complainer. he seemed like a normal guy who was seeing his country turn into mini malls, religious hipocrasy, and faulty and moronic govt. practices and his stand up was nothing close to "whining or complaining." He did do pretty well for himself, made good money and a great career, but just because he was well off doesn't mean he can't have an opinion (and one that seems to resonate well with a lot of people.) First and foremost, he was a comedian and never proclaimed to be the answer to the worlds problems. If he made you laugh then you shouldn't have any qualms about him.

Drowned Out

Godfather. wrote:

no not really, I'm just fed up with so many people complaining or taking jabs at our country and it's history
sometime we don't know how good we have it here in America,in a short few hundred years this country has made great progress and maybe more than countries that have been around for thousands of years...ya think maybe ?
I also think people lose their focus, they use small parts of history to belittle this country or to use it falsely or only half knowingly to back a statement when history is a little more detailed and even more to it than they know.
We should all be proud of our country and the advancements we as a people have made here and learn from the mistakes and the good things the people before us went through and achieved.
as long as we have the freedom to speak our own minds there will always be something to make better with each of our own ideas, just remember why we have that freedom and how we achieved it it wasn't just given to us ..this country and it's thinkers and the men and women that fought for it earned it for us.

Godfather.

I don't want to go on an anti-american rant here (at least it's not still July 4, ugh), but I have to reply to this...
America advanced much faster than most nations by stealing land and resources, and slaughtering the millions of indigenous people who opposed....then, in the name of the progress you laud, kidnapped and enslaved millions more. Or are those just "small parts of history"? Almost always, wealth is built on the backs of the poor. Nothing builds an empire like slavery, theft, and superior firepower.
How, pray tell, do YOU think your country managed to surpass other nations to become a superpower so quickly? Superior intellect of the euro founders? Your great constitution? Let me guess....the founders just needed to escape the tyranny back home, live under a capitalist system, and the rest is simply manifest destiny?

Godfather.

I rest my case.

Godfather.

Drowned Out

Godfather. wrote:

I rest my case.

Godfather.

Sorry, you actually answered my question in your first post. Thinkers, and brave men and women who fought for and EARNED a country are what facilitated your meteoric rise to power...sure. Whatever you say. You say fought/earned, I say murdered/stole...same dif. I also apologize for 'losing focus' on what is right and good in the world - america.

he still stands

Drowned Out wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

I rest my case.

Godfather.

Sorry, you actually answered my question in your first post. Thinkers, and brave men and women who fought for and EARNED a country are what facilitated your meteoric rise to power...sure. Whatever you say. You say fought/earned, I say murdered/stole...same dif. I also apologize for 'losing focus' on what is right and good in the world - america.

I usually find myself in the dissenter's camp and I agree that plenty of atrocities forged this nation, but I don't think one can say that it was founded completed on murder and pillaging - similarly it wasn't created totally by honest hard-working men with righteous ideals. There was plenty of genocide (beginning at the earliest possible moment when Columbus killed native americans and took back slaves to Spain when he couldn't find gold in the Bahamas), slavery, theft of land and other possessions, and other horrible events - but there were also moments in the country's history that are marked by bravery and good will. To say it was all one or the other, like all generalizations, is not true in some sense.

But I always go back to the dissenter's camp and think that since the "founding fathers" held slaves (and ironically fought for "freedom") that everything they had to say can be ignored. Its kind of like the Unabomber, he had some pretty good points but we don't listen to him because he killed people. Maybe that's how we should view the founding fathers and all others who held slaves, killed indigenous people, and stole land. I think the people who did the things the "right way" didn't make the history books because they led simple lives away from the evils of the growing tendency of men to desire ruling other men.

haffajappa

Its so true about the national anthem!

Drowned Out

he still stands wrote:

Drowned Out wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

I rest my case.

Godfather.

Sorry, you actually answered my question in your first post. Thinkers, and brave men and women who fought for and EARNED a country are what facilitated your meteoric rise to power...sure. Whatever you say. You say fought/earned, I say murdered/stole...same dif. I also apologize for 'losing focus' on what is right and good in the world - america.

I usually find myself in the dissenter's camp and I agree that plenty of atrocities forged this nation, but I don't think one can say that it was founded completed on murder and pillaging - similarly it wasn't created totally by honest hard-working men with righteous ideals. There was plenty of genocide (beginning at the earliest possible moment when Columbus killed native americans and took back slaves to Spain when he couldn't find gold in the Bahamas), slavery, theft of land and other possessions, and other horrible events - but there were also moments in the country's history that are marked by bravery and good will. To say it was all one or the other, like all generalizations, is not true in some sense.

But I always go back to the dissenter's camp and think that since the "founding fathers" held slaves (and ironically fought for "freedom") that everything they had to say can be ignored. Its kind of like the Unabomber, he had some pretty good points but we don't listen to him because he killed people. Maybe that's how we should view the founding fathers and all others who held slaves, killed indigenous people, and stole land. I think the people who did the things the "right way" didn't make the history books because they led simple lives away from the evils of the growing tendency of men to desire ruling other men.

Technically, you CAN say that the US is founded on pillaging and murder, because the rightful owners of the land were slaughtered to the point that they had little say in the formation of the nation. Yes, I'm sure there were good people amongst the settlers, and a LOT of goodwill (tho often tragically misguided), but that doesn't change the fact that the land was not theirs to build a nation on. But that's semantics, I know what you're saying about generalizations, good intentions, and what was deemed worthy of historical record.

The inference that the US's great 'progress' is/was due to great thinkers and people who fought for and earned the country, with only "small parts" as blots on it's history, combined with the 'stop complaining', with-us-or-against-us attitude, is what triggered my rant(s)...millions of lives are not small parts, nor is a century of free labour, nor a continent worth of natural resources, nor are any of the other atrocities carried out in the name of the american version of progress. He thinks people talk (whine) too much about the dark parts of US history, I think the exact opposite. Those parts are usually ignored, or told only from the state perspective.

ed243421

well said
drowned out

he still stands

All I'm saying is that the country was founded exlusively by murdering and pillaging. I don't think that is even controversial; to say that not ALL people were murderers and pillagers. :?

Drowned Out

he still stands wrote:

All I'm saying is that the country was founded exlusively by murdering and pillaging. I don't think that is even controversial; to say that not ALL people were murderers and pillagers. :?

Of course not, I agreed with that and said so in my last post (tried to anyway ). The first paragraph was adding that regardless of the intentions or bravado of the founders, the nation itself was founded on stolen land.
The second justifyied and further explained how godfather's post provoked me to post so negatively about US history. I don't really take exception to anything in your post and didn't mean to infer that i did.

Godfather.

.......

Godfather.