I'll always tell you. the "most tolerant" are always not.

  • 2007 AAR League

    way of living……malls, strip malls, movie theaters, movies, tv shows, all in our style.  fast food, fast cars, big cars, baseball, jazz, the hamburger (maybe german), nuclear power, the 50 cal, our way of economics (they are all coming back to the laissez faire), celebrities, i’ll think of some more.

    and as you mentioned. the biggest thing for the world.  the internet.

    mexican.jpg


  • @ncscswitch:

    @frimmel:

    The Quebec companies can’t voluntarily receive the Material Safety Data Sheets?

    They can, but our fax-on-demand service is not sold in Quebec.

    Ahhhh. Now I understand.

  • 2007 AAR League

    @balungaloaf:

    way of living……malls, strip malls, movie theaters, movies, tv shows, all in our style.  fast food, fast cars, big cars, baseball, jazz, the hamburger (maybe german), nuclear power, the 50 cal, our way of economics (they are all coming back to the laissez faire), celebrities, i’ll think of some more.

    and as you mentioned. the biggest thing for the world.  the internet.

    I’ll give you malls, motion picture, fast food and cars(as art forms, big or small). Movies and TV as well as strip malls and malls are too related to be separate.

    But, I’d say baseball was inspired by cricket. Jazz from African music. Hamburgers are technically a sandwich. Nuclear power was brought about through the efforts of a collection of international scientists. Our economic system was inspired by Adam Smith’s(he’s Scottish) model for the free market. Fast cars, I’d say Europe gets credit for that. The .50 cal MG is a “gun” which Europe and China both have claims on. And the first true “celebrities” were probably the Roman gladiators, but if you’re talking about actors then it goes the the Greeks.

    We can also take credit for the practical use of electricity(Edison and Tesla) even though Tesla was Serbian, he was an American when he did his best work. We also have telephone and telegraph. As impressive as our list is, I still think it’s kind of short all things considered.


  • submarines, plains, modern ships of iron, slinky, duckt tape, post it’s.
    our list may be short, but when compaired to other nations it’s a nice list considering how short the nation has been around.


  • Well, we reintroduced democratic government to the world, and many countries soon followed that path of government. This is certainly the United States greatest contribution to the world. In fact, I would argue that it is the greatest contribution to the world by any single nation.

    Plains, trains, and hamburgers can’t really compare.


  • i don’t know, it’s hard to compeat with the hamburger  :-)


  • @balungaloaf:

    jermo its fascist to demand that someone do something the way you want it, even though they were doing it another way in their own country first.

    again, if they want to read the sign, they can learn to.  easy as that.  everyone else has at some time.  its not hard.

    That’s the thing…they’ve been speaking French as a majority in Quebec for quite some time.  English has been a minority, but both were preceded by American Indian languages.

    @U-505:

    Ok, so I was on my way to Wal-mart and McDonalds as I was thinking about what exactly our culture is and the irony was definitely not lost on me.

    I think you could have stopped there…it says it all. Or was that meant to be a joke?  :lol:

    We are the everyculture. The Wal-mart of cultures. Anything you want, anywhere, and as fast as you want it. When an immigrant comes here his culture is already here but it isn’t his anymore, it’s everybody’s. We’ve absorbed every culture on the planet and can spit it back at you in no particular order in any combination that you would like. It’s where a white man can be a Muslim, speak Spanish, listen to Rap music, eat German food, create ancient Egyptian art, and drive a Japanese car. Just about everything we create is rooted in other cultures, but nothing in particular everywhere. Our Capitol has Greek columns and a Roman dome. The University of Memphis’ stadium is a pyramid made of concrete, steel, and glass. We bury our dead in mausoleums inspired by the Persian Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Turkey. Rock and Roll was spawned from R&B which was spawned from African music brought here by the slaves. Our cities, counties, and states are named after people, places, and things from all over the world. Our most common thread is probably our language, because it’s taught in our schools, but even that isn’t ours.

    I agree on this, but doesn’t that mean being omnicultural, we are really cultureless?

    Off the top of my head, the only things I can think of that can be specifically attributed to us outside of other cultural influences are basketball, the internet, and skyscrapers. That’s about it.

    How about Hollywood?  Pop stars (not that other nations don’t have their own…)?  Coca-cola?

    @balungaloaf:

    way of living……malls, strip malls, movie theaters, movies, tv shows, all in our style.  fast food, fast cars, big cars, baseball, jazz, the hamburger (maybe german), nuclear power, the 50 cal, our way of economics (they are all coming back to the laissez faire), celebrities, i’ll think of some more.

    and as you mentioned. the biggest thing for the world.  the internet.

    Ok, these are things.  But do they make a culture?  Does everyone play baseball, jazz, drive big & fast cars, are celebrities, etc. etc.?

    @Pervavita:

    submarines, plains, modern ships of iron, slinky, duckt tape, post it’s.
    our list may be short, but when compaired to other nations it’s a nice list considering how short the nation has been around.

    Again, more stuff.  Take away all that, and we don’t have a “culture.”

    @M36:

    Well, we reintroduced democratic government to the world, and many countries soon followed that path of government. This is certainly the United States greatest contribution to the world. In fact, I would argue that it is the greatest contribution to the world by any single nation.

    Plains, trains, and hamburgers can’t really compare.

    Can we really declare that, though?  Our contributions involve with freedom more than democracy, and both were borrowed as ideas.  Did we really spread democracy around the world?  I couldn’t say so.  More likely tried to force upon, but the means negated the ends.  We also did our share of nation sabotage.  Then there’s the debate as to whether that’s even part of our culture.  Politics, maybe.  But damn, I wouldn’t want it to be only that.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Yes, we can claim it, because while the ideas floated in the ether for millenia and eons even, America proved it could be done successfully.


  • it’s still a test, we won’t know if it didn’t worked untell it fails  :wink:


  • @Cmdr:

    Yes, we can claim it, because while the ideas floated in the ether for millenia and eons even, America proved it could be done successfully.

    No it didn’t.  There were plenty of democracies before the US.

  • 2007 AAR League

    besides greece and rome prior caesar?

  • 2007 AAR League

    @Cmdr:

    Yes, we can claim it, because while the ideas floated in the ether for millenia and eons even, America proved it could be done successfully.

    I agree with pervavita and jermo, here. At best, we can claim that we’ve taken democracy further than any other nation.

    We still have civil rights lawyers, the EPA, OSHA, the AFL/CIO, etc. And it’s not because a democracy needs those kinds of people and organizations it’s because if we didn’t have them there would be people who would take advantage of their absence. In a true democracy, those organizations wouldn’t exist because the things they fight for or fight to protect wouldn’t be issues to be dealt with. We would have already worked them out. As much as we would like to say that we follow the “all (wo)men are created equal” rule there are still people out there who are considered or feel that they are more equal than others and those are the people who generally corrupt the democratic concept.

  • 2007 AAR League

    not many. i count two.  and then it took a thousand+ years and america to bring it back.

    and both democracies spawned civilizations which had a great impact for the world and knowledge and spreading of ideas.  same with america.


  • Rome was a Republic not a Democracy. there are fundamental diffrences between the two. Republic has a senate that makes the judgments. Democracy dosn’t but instead the people vote on all the laws.
    the US is a hybrid of both.

  • 2007 AAR League

    @Jermofoot:

    @U-505:

    Ok, so I was on my way to Wal-mart and McDonalds as I was thinking about what exactly our culture is and the irony was definitely not lost on me.

    I think you could have stopped there…it says it all. Or was that meant to be a joke?  :lol:

    It was both a joke and a reflection of the state of our culture. Unfortunately or not.  :-D

    @Jermofoot:

    How about Hollywood?  Pop stars (not that other nations don’t have their own…)?  Coca-cola?

    The obsession with “celebrity” is definitely a part of our culture. But, that all goes back to my post about the gladiators and Greek actors. It’s a portion of other cultures that we adopted. Although, we did take it to a higher degree.

    @Jermofoot:

    but doesn’t that mean being omnicultural, we are really cultureless?

    Ok, these are things.  But do they make a culture?  Does everyone play baseball, jazz, drive big & fast cars, are celebrities, etc. etc.?

    Again, more stuff.  Take away all that, and we don’t have a “culture.”

    You’re right. I’m kind of guilty for taking us in that direction. It’s not what we invented, it’s how we use them that defines parts of our culture. But I do think that we have a culture.

    Take the internet. That we invented it isn’t important. It’s the fact that we are almost completely dependent on it now that reflects our culture. We communcate, make connections, entertain ourselves(porn anybody?), transact business, and educate ourselves with it. Think about how much time each day that you spend on the internet. If it went down suddenly we’d be lost. Yeah, we would eventually cope but it would devastate us initially in all kinds of ways. Socially, economically, as entertainment.

    I think our culture is mostly defined by “Git er done”. And “I want it and I want it now”. And “why do we do this? Because we can. The means and the consequences be damned”. And violence. We are a violent culture despite our “supposed” status as the worlds leading democracy and advocate for peace and freedom.


  • The United States is NOT a democracy (thank the Gods!)

    But we are no longer what we were supposed to be either (a Democratic Federated Republic).

    The fact that we have moved closer to Democracy (expansion of the vote, popular election of Senators, Presidential Electors bound by law to honor popular vote result, etc.) is what has allowed us to proceed so quickly down the road of the demise of Democracy.

    No democracy may survive for long after the people discover that they can taken what they want away from others by using the force of government to make the theft legal.


  • @balungaloaf:

    not many. i count two.  and then it took a thousand+ years and america to bring it back.

    and both democracies spawned civilizations which had a great impact for the world and knowledge and spreading of ideas.  same with america.

    yeah, and then they fell… are we going to fall? It’s hard to determine whether or not a nation with such an amazing amount of power will fall. Yet, history has proven every nation has… Roman… Ottoman… French… German… they all went down.

    Don’t worry, I have my fingers crossed for us.

    Ooops off topic.

    Oookay,…

Suggested Topics

  • 1
  • 30
  • 1
  • 2
  • 37
  • 102
  • 4
  • 7
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

40

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts