@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.