And More American Contributions to Civilisation
All-you-can-eat restaurants
The Three Stooges
The new Three Stooges: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Douglas Feith
Donald Trump
Talentless best-selling authors
Talentless movie and music stars
Great constitutional scholars like Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, and Warren Burger
Reverse discrimination
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anarcho/Tyranny (though forms of this doubtless appeared earlier in history)
The “Great Society”
Wise and temperate public commentators like Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and especially Bill O’Reilly.
Musak
Spreading democracy with guided missiles
The Woodstock Generation
Sterling unbiased news sources like CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and FOX
"Diversity is strength"
Entries(RSS)
The Prosperity Gospel
Self-help gurus and motivational speakers
Chewing gum
Pet cemeteries
Abstract Expressionism
Excommunication for gaining weight; absolution for adultery and bastardy
(Irascibility in lieu of therapy--thanks, Dr. Wilson, you saved me a bundle)
Lite Beer
C'mon professor ...at least Eleanor Roosevelt refused Secret Service protection.
Let me second Lite Beer. The whole concept of Lite Beer is an abomination.
I agree that a great number of the American inventions listed in this post and the last one are quite stupid. I'd like to add a few myself:
The Ku Klux Klan.
The Know-Nothings.
Sen. Theodore G. Bilbo (D-MS).
The expression "peculiar institution."
State legislation specifically designed to prohibit whites from intermarrying with non-whites.
Snake-handling and poison-drinking cults passed off as Christian churches.
I'll take the old Three Stooges over the new. At least the old were fairly entertaining.
Please add that embarrassing snake oil salesman Glen Beck to the list of "wise" commentators. Makes one almost wish there were no First Amendment.
In an all-you-can eat restaurants, one does not dine; one masticates.
The problem with "constitutional scholars" is that they busy themselves with "constitutional law" which has come to have no objective correlative with the Constitution itself.
#5. Actually, Tobias, Calhoun coined the term to refer to an institution that was peculiar to one region of the country, not as something peculiar, which it was not. Like so much else, the meaning was perverted by bad South-hating, irresponsible people. A Bilbo is what you tend to get in a country that it invaded and devastated, and the people are exploited and impoverished.
"War on...(Poverty, terror, people etc)"
Oprah
Judge shows
Anderson Cooper
I've forgotten who quipped that "a decent man is one who apologizes for having been born in the twentieth century." One may go a few steps further back and remark that the last six or seven centuries have been a huge mistake! (I confess that the medieval synthesis sets my heart aflutter!) The same guy may have been the author whom I like to quote frequently: "nothing should be done for the first time."
"Actually, Tobias, Calhoun coined the term to refer to an institution that was peculiar to one region of the country, not as something peculiar, which it was not."
Dr. Wilson, you seem to be inferring that I did not understand the origin of the term. I did not mean to give this impression. I object to the term's use as a euphemism.
"A Bilbo is what you tend to get in a country that it invaded and devastated, and the people are exploited and impoverished."
By the same reasoning, a Thurgood Marshall is what you tend to get when people are denied common courtesy (like being called "Mr.," or the right to drink from a common water fountain) on the basis of their skin color/ancestry/race. Their turn to liberalism makes sense, given their exclusion from the socio-economic, cultural, and political systems in which they grew up. I'd be happy just to say that both Thurgood Marshall and Senator Bilbo were responsible for the way they reacted to the circumstances in which they found themselves and they reacted poorly, with bad results. Either way, they both are examples of America's negative contributions to human history.
I forgot to thank you, Dr. Wilson, for responding to my comments. From reading this blog, I know that you are a scholar and a gentleman.
Additionally, allow me to add that I am aware of the following:
1.) Anti-miscegenation laws were on the books in numerous states outside the South. So anti-miscegenation laws really are "American," not a "peculiar institution" (hah!) of the South.
2.) I am not claiming that Americans invented endogamy. I am saying that Americans invented *state legislation criminalizing marriage and sexual relations between whites and non-whites.*
3.) The Ku Klux Klan (at least in its 20th century embodiment) was common outside the South. I have read that Indiana was full of Klansmen in the 1920s.
Dr. Wilson I can recommend Porky D's BBQ off Two Notch Road in Lexington. It is rather good even if it is a buffet. Though it is my custom to limit myself to one trip. Therefore buffets are no bargain.
Word of Faith Megachurches, Pulpit Pimps like Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, 'Bishop' TD Jakes, Demonbusters, Prayer Warriors, and thousands of cheated and plundered followers of all these false prophets who will defend them against any criticism.
Dr Wilson, I'd differ with you on Muzak. The early stuff throught the 1980s was performed by the Brno Radio Orchestra in what was then Czechoslovakia. For 20 years after that it was synthesizers. The new stuff is little more than Top 40 playlists on satellite radio.
B. H. Obama and his sycophant Obamogroupies. Nothing similar since the passing of the Light of the Age, Uncle Joe in 1953. We now have our own version of "cult of personality." Priceless. I have decided to get ahead of the curb, so to speak, and name my three youts Barack, Hussein and god.
Etienne, Dr. Wilson was right about Muzak, as a product -- it was invented by an American (George O. Squier) in 1934. Muzak as an idea however, could be attributed to Erik Satie 100 years ago. He wanted to compose music that "mingled with the sound of the forks and knives." Like some of the other things on Dr. Wilson's lists, the idea already existed in non-commercial form, but America made a product of it. (And a bit of trivia here : the Muzak company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this year).
From Mr Ezzo: 'but America made a product of it'.
That leads me to wonder. Is that itselft not one of the biggest contributions of America to world covilisation? I'm am speaking of the practice of taking something - anything at all - that is genuine, and then making a product of it. For heaven's sake, they even did that with so-called 'folk' music back in the 60's! That 'folk' music is anything but real folk music.
Now we are back to my post in an earlier thread on this subject, in which I mentioned another American contribution to civilisation but failed to properly define it: the preference for the appearance of something over the reality of it as a basic, fundamental, defining aspect of culture and society, and a fundamental attitude and way of life.
Robert L. Dabney first mentioned this tendency in his 'Creed of the Old South', but in those days it hadn't yet become so fundamental as it is now, and wasn't nearly so all-pervasive. Today it is so pervasive that it defines practically every aspect of American life, so much so that people tend to get lost in it, and they become unaware that there can be anything better (more real) because they dont know the difference or that there even is a difference, and so they become so immersed in appearances devoid of the reality which they represent, that they are like fish not knowing they are in water.
yankees
The Designated Hitter
Astro Turf
Domed Stadiums
Dousing the winning football coach with Gatorade (think what Vince Lombardi would have done if his players did that to him)
Football coaches calling the Quarterback's plays
Michael Eisner's Disney
Spikes for the nose, ears, lips and eye brows
Tramp Stamps
Developers
Ezra Taft Benson Agricultural policies
Female soldiers
The military-industrial complex
Neo-conservatism
Wall Street "Masters of the Universe"
The Three Stooges
The new Three Stooges: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Douglas Feith
The original Stooges presaged the many trios of political stooges that have followed, the above trio being only among the more recent.
One of the more pathetic and feckless members might be Robert Gibbs––indeed he is to Obama as Shimp was to Moe. I think Obama placed him and keeps him as White house press secretary to embarrass the south daily. Obama surely knows how bad Gibbs makes his administration look, but the opportunity to humiliate the south by putting this bumbling stooge before the White house press corp every day is probably seen as a worthy quid pro quo. the Oman stoops to conquer.
Personally, I liked the Stooges. Unlike the politico stooges then and now, they were upfront, unpretentious and genuine and that was their strength and source of their enduring popularity.
In contrast, the politician's phoniness, hypocrisy, malevolence and spinelessness will make the many trios of recent memory epithets in the mouths of those future Americans who will undoubtedly suffer as a consequence of their corrupt incompetence.
Stranger: "Excuse me, gentlemen."
Stooges: "What? Did some one just get here?"
Spreading democracy with guided missiles
Now there are clearly a few possible problems with this policy, but don't you think it's preferable to holding an election to decide whether or not to have a democracy?
"Talentless best-selling authors"
Can we say, "James Patterson?"
Ick.
The Designated Hitter
Be not deceived. The institution of the designated hitter was not to make the game more exciting by creating more offense. It did not and records show it. It, in fact, did just the opposite.
It was an egalitarian attempt to allow those who can no longer play the WHOLE game to continue pretending they belong in a baseball uniform.
Experience shows it does the opposite to all the claims made by those who wanted it; takes away tactics, enables the manager to switch pitchers, willy nilly, without consideration of consequences in the batting order and makes the games slower and manifestly longer, due to the endless string of relievers both managers call.
It is a bad idea marring a perfect game and should be eliminated no later than yesterday.
Plus, the designated hitter abrogates the possibility of true justice: making the pitcher who beaned a guy the last inning (a la Mike Piazza) have to step up and take his hacks and risk being the DIRECT recipient of retaliation (are you listening Roger Rocket?).
All this nonsense, all this non-baseball baseball diluting the game reminds me of a passage from Ron Luciano's book "The Umpire Strikes Back," which I will try to paraphrase as follows:
"When I started in the major league as an umpire the game was played by nine tough competitor, on green grass and under God's blue heaven. When I retired it was played by ten men, under a dome, on plastic and I spent half my time trying to dodge a guy dressed in a chicken suit who was trying to kiss me."
Speaking for those of us who love the game and its' perfections I have this response : "Hey chicken suit guy: Go back to the NFL where you came from!"
Talentless movie and music stars
Can you say Nicholas Cage–––who might make it into a high school play as the second string curtain operator?
Fantasy football.
America did not invent hack writers & lousy movie/music stars.
Alfred Kinsey, and all the bitter fruit raised from that manure, sodomite weddings, bestiality, tolerance of evil, etc.
@20 Derek
America did not invent spikes for the nose etc. I used to see that laughable fashion in National Geographic. Perhaps you meant to say the poison fruits of multiculturism?
@19 Bryan
Yankees is too broad a term, I have met many terrific Northerners, but if you mean puritans who turned into libertines and then drifeted into Virginia to spread their doctrine of how "things are done in Mass.", then I agree with you wholeheartedly.
@17 Michael
That is good news about the chapter 11 of Muzak. It was all about people control in order to increase office productivity. Now that crummy pop sounds permeate the workplace it might explain why workers go postal.
The helmet rule in professional hockey. It robs players of their identities. For all we know, it was some figure skater, not Sid Crosby, who just scored that goal.
"America did not invent hack writers & lousy movie/music stars."
Perhaps not, but it sure is awfully good at producing them.
My six-year-old could come up with a more intricate and interesting plot line than Patterson. It might not be cogent, but it would somehow be more satisfying, I think.
If not for Reconstruction, there possibly may have been neither Bilbo nor Marshall.
Oops, forgot my list of great American contributions to world civilization:
Keith Olberman
Rachel Maddow (who????)
Newt Gingrich (isn't a newt a kind of lizard?)
The ACLU
The "History" Channel
Chain stores of all kinds
Ban on cigarette ads (along with beer ads they were the best)
NOW
"Mega-churches"
And the beat goes on.....
Tobias, I find it very strange that you are so concerned about the long past evils of Theodore Bilbo, the expression "peculiar institution," and anti-miscegination laws. Certainly there are more pressing threats and problems to worry about.
One more thing about Theodore Bilbo. While a student at Indiana State University in the dark ages (late sixties, early seventies) I found a book about Bilbo in the library entitled simply, "The Man, Bilbo." While there certainly is much to dislike about Bilbo, I find that most references to his "horribleness" was his stand on race. To be fair one must keep in mind that men who believed as he did sincerely believed that segregation of the races was essential to maintain civilization. One can agree or disagree with that, but it wasn't a position that was held only by southern politicians. Bilbo also, however, was a fighter against the large corporations who had purchase the federal government and were running roughshod over everyone and everything and was a strong supporter of the family farmer and other rural and small town Americans. Again, if it had not been for Reconstruction, imposed on the South by the bastard offspring (Republicans) of a whore (Whigs) the strained relationship that developed between whites and blacks in the South might not have happened and "race baiting" might not have been the way to get elected. After all is said and done, how much worse was Bilbo than what we have now? Surely I would take a Bilbo over a Barney Frank.
Much of what Bilbo believed in his fear of the amalgamation of the races was also believed by one A. Lincoln, candidate for the Illinois Senate seat in 1858. And whether one fears an amalgamation of the races today or not, it is certainly happening at an increasing rate, especially at the lower levels of society in America 2009. So the fears of Lincoln and Bilbo have been proved correct even if we would call them politically incorrect today.
It is highly probable that we will never have miscegentation laws again so arguing about them is a waste of time. Perhaps more appropriate would be to accept that Daniel Patrick Moynihan has been proven correct in his fears that the lower levels of society would "define deviancy down" in their practice of mass illegitmacy and single-parent families. How do we reduce the level of illegitmacy in the black, Hispanic and white communities that have embraced it? Can we reduce illegitmacy or are we going to have to accept that large swathes of the country will be permanently degraded?
Mr. Flinn,
"Bilbo also, however, was a fighter against the large corporations who had purchase the federal government and were running roughshod over everyone and everything and was a strong supporter of the family farmer and other rural and small town Americans. Again, if it had not been for Reconstruction, imposed on the South by the bastard offspring (Republicans) of a whore (Whigs) the strained relationship that developed between whites and blacks in the South might not have happened and “race baiting” might not have been the way to get elected. After all is said and done, how much worse was Bilbo than what we have now?
Mr. Flinn,
One of the questions that came to mind as I read about Sen. Bilbo, Governor Bilbo and/or Mr.Bilbo is that he kept getting elected and re-elected. It was also apparent to me that there was probabaly more to the man than his misplaced confidence in particular races. I don't know enough about Bilbo to defend or condemn him except for the obvious prejudices, but there is something sinnister in the puritanical tendency to find only fault and evil in certain manifestations of the past that we do not understand.
There are two kinds of tyrants in the world that we live in and one is the moral tyrant and the other is his antithesis, the open minded idealogue. The one wraps his mind too tightly around one isolated truth to the exclusion of truths natural splendor, while the other has his mind so open that his intelligence is never capable of "grasping" anything -- never capable of "embracing" the objects of his love, or understanding them in the deeper sense that such wonder would inspire. I am happy to see Mr. Flinn stand up to the one, without embracing the other. "More great for this, for he hath much to love."
Dr. Wilson: This is off the above subject matter, but I recommend to you an essay written by Gary Potter entitled, "Catholicism and the Old South." You can "google" it and find it online. You might find it interesting if you haven't already read it. He touches upon a number of matters that you have often discussed.
Re: Clyde Wilson, @35
The topic of the thread is "(stupid) American contributions to civilization." I am perfectly willing to admit that most everything that has been listed by you and other posters here are stupid. However, is it not fair to note that Americans have been doing stupid things in all parts of the country, we have done them for a very long time now, and we have actually moved past (thank God!) some formerly prevalent varieties of stupidity? The Ku Klux Klan, the Know-Nothings, anti-miscegenation laws, were all stupid American contributions to world history, yet no one here except me (apparently) thought to mention them. I am "so concerned" precisely because I'm being asked why I'm "so concerned." I see no reason why, in the study of American stupidity, we should be so myopic as to focus solely on our own day. Plus, the stupidities I mentioned are relevant today. Much of modern liberal stupidity is at the very least rationalized as an attempt to avoid the quite real and deplorable stupidities of the past (like cross-burnings). To ignore the ugliness of much of this past is to concede the argument and lose credibility. If Bilbo can be explained in terms of Reconstruction (and hence the Yankees), the black civil rights movement can be explained in terms of Bilbo, the KKK, & white bigotry. Or, we can treat people as responsible for their own reactions to the situations in which they find themselves, while acknowledging that others are responbsible for the occasion of sin provided them.
@33 Tom Flinn
Well, if not for certain constitutional amendments passed (through whatever means) during Reconstruction, Thurgood Marshall's status as an American citizen might have been in doubt, per the Dred Scott decision. To that extent (and possibly more), I agree with you.
Re: Tom Flynn, @36
Both Bilbo and Frank can both be included in the list of American contributions to cilization. Bilbo makes the cut on his own merits. I wasn't trying to judge who was worse than whom, just to say, "Here's a variety of American stupidity that hasn't been mentioned yet: the white race-baiting politician." And that isn't the sole problem with Bilbo -- you might want to read up on the number he did to the universities in his state. It's not about making white race-baiting & mythologies of white supremacy the be-all and end-all of morality. It's about acknowledging that they are just another form of stupidity, along with all the rest. I don't think that what I wrote above should be controversial.
Robert, @38
Many of the people who have been criticized in these discussions have been re-elected numerous times. Of (almost?) all of them it can be said that there must be more to them than the faults we're excoriating.
Tobias, the world is imperfect. Only Leftists- Marxists, socialists and neo-conservatives, for instance- think it can be perfected. I suggest you read more of Russell Kirk, James Burnham, John Lukacs and several others to get a better idea of what conservatism is. Browbeating about the imperfect past of one's ancestors and people is a Leftist phenomenom as is the actual hatred of one's people and ancestors. Maybe we show blow up or rename the Washington and Jefferson Memorials and burn down Monticello and Mount Vernon because the Father of Our Nation and the writer of the Declaration of independence were vile slaveowners.
Re: Derek Leaberry, @42
Yes, the world is imperfect. Is not the topic of this thread America's imperfect contributions to civilization? Other American imperfections include: Earl Warren's crazy constitutional theories, Eleanor Roosevelt (i.e. her liberalism), Musak, the designated hitter, the Prosperity Gospel, neoconservatism, the new Three Stooges (Bush, Rumsfeld, Feith), James Patterson, etc. We have been speaking of America's imperfections, so I listed some that had not previously mentioned and very well might not have been mentioned had I not done so. What is controversial about this? How did I imply that the world could be perfected? I didn't even say that the "cure" for some of the problems I mentioned was better than the disease. I just said, "Here are some more of America's regrettable mistakes."
Are the other posters here "browbeating" about America's past and present? Some of my ancestors were slave-owners, some fought in the Union Army, and apparently one helped out on the Underground Railroad. So, depending on whom you ask, there were imperfections all around. I wouldn't blow up the Washington and Jefferson Memorials. I am from Illinois, "the Land of Lincoln," and I wouldn't want to blow up the Lincoln Memorial. But just because my ancestors were Union men, I'm not going to accuse those who in this thread have attacked the Lincoln cult of "browbeating about the imperfect past" of *my* ancestors and people, or accuse them of being leftists. Please take my entry above as one entry in a list of imperfections -- just one entry, by no means the most significant, but at the same time an entry that really shouldn't be controversial.
41, Tobias: I am perfectly aware of the damage Bilbo did to the universities in his state as well as his unseemly personal and political practices. He is not someone to emulate and I did not want to give the impression that I thought so. Just pointing out that on some issues he was on the right side and that the hatred most feel about him is based on his racial views which are no longer accepted. If he were alive today and were ranting against Catholics, right wingers, "gay bashers," etc. instead of blacks, I am not so sure most liberals would find him all that despicable, especially given the kind of political "leaders" we seem to admire today.
Mr. Leaberry at #42, you rightly point out the kinds of thinkers who bring Tobias's points into a discussion here. Besides which, white supremacy was not an American invention but a worldwide belief for centuries, and Know-Nothingism was the product of English Puritan culture in New England.
In re Bilbo, it is quite true, almost a universal pattern in American history, that those who have defended the common citizen from the deprdations of the wealthy have been white supremacists, from Jefferson to Wallace.
#46:
Dr. Wilson, it is also a fact that in many cases the most ardent segregationists actually did more to help black people than all the hand-wringing, breast-beating egalitarians sitting in their mansions in the Hamptons ever did. Perhaps that is because they actually lived with them and knew them as people, not abstractions.
"Tobias #41
"Many of the people who have been criticized in these discussions have been re-elected numerous times. Of (almost?) all of them it can be said that there must be more to them than the faults we’re excoriating."
Yes, and I appreciate the response. It is good to read your precise thinking and attempts at civility. Actually in the greater scheme of things, very few of the folks we love to excoriate around here are worth a nickel. As to there being more to them than what we might perceive, of course. I wonder if some of our ancestors could have been wrong and some of them right, yet still be loved and respected as our own? I certainy hope that my heirs will extend to me the same merciful consideration and southern hospitality that you have shown towards yours. Thanks again for your reply.
Preachers who lack congregations.
Think Rev. "Hymietown" Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, et al. At least Father Coughlan pastored a flock in suburban Detroit.