I don’t have time to respond to everything, but will to a few.

1. I guess “American as Apple Pie” means English.

2. I’m pretty sure that the Book of Mormon is the most published book written in America. Joseph Smith was a Western New York Yankee with a family history in New England. It is true that only about 2% of the U.S. population is Mormon (believe it or not Tonga, American Samoa and other U.S. related Pacific Islands havea Mormon population of 20% to 30%) — but it is a relatively fast growing population. It is very uniquely American in origin. It is more “intense” than say Anglicanism. In a sense 1,000 Mormons are more Mormon than 1,000 Anglicans — who are often just nominally Anglican. I think Joseph Smith, for better or worse ( I think for worse), has had roughly 100 times the influence of say Faulkner or Calhoun.

3. Baseball may have had origins in England. But as an organized sport, with rules, — you have to look to NJ and NY.

4. If you are correct about baseball and Apple Pie — then our culture is neither Northern nor Southern just English. But who did more to develop these two cultural components that are popularly considered American — the North or the South.

I’ll admit that the whole topic is a bit silly. In a nutshell — I don’t think the South between say 1550 and 1865 was particularly impactful on world or American culture when placed along side and in context with other modern and pre-modern “civilizations”. The South borrowed the Bible, some culinary arts, and some amusements from the British, who had in turn borrowed them from other cultures — and the South did not do any more than the North to develop these borrowings.

Hugh Barbour had a great article in a very recent issue of Chronicles, where he looked into the etymology of the words culture and cult. In my view culture has much to do with religion. In a sense it is very much top-down, from God to man.

American is still a fairly recent civilization and so it borrows much of its culture from the Old World.

The American civil religion significantly overlaps Christianity, and so American culture is based on the word of God and its Hebrew, near-Eastern and Hellenistic authors.

A fair amount of our movers and shakers from Washington to the Bushies have been either Anglicans or their Methodist offshoots, and so the Englishman Thomas Cranmer and his Book of Common Prayer have to make up a significant component of most of the culture of the significant English speaking nations.

At first one might say the Mormons are a peculiarly American born influential component of our culture. Certainly the writings of Joseph Smith have had a huge influence on millions of Americans. He claimed he translated the Book of Mormon, which may be the all-time American made best seller, from “reformed Egyptian Hieroglyphics”. But the Mormon rites have a distinctly Masonic flavored hocus-pocus to them.

Sports are a religion in a sense. Sorry to tell you Southern die-hards that basketball was a northern invention. Golf may be the religion sport of the over 35 set, and that seems to be a transplant from Scotland. Baseball likely has English origins but the mid-19th century explosion of the sport came from Hudson County, New Jersey and Brooklyn and Manhattan – not the South. For parents with children under the age of thirteen, watching soccer has become part of the American religion. Apparently soccer was a violent mob sport by the middle of the twelfth century in England.

By the 1950s my area of the country was overrun by African-Americans fleeing Southern culture and Italians fleeing Italian culture. So, arguably, whatever culture was In New Jersey before then, was more attractive than the best the South and the Old World could offer.

Apple pie started out in New England. I assume the hot dog had its early origins in Germany and pizza in Italy – and that is pretty much American food culture.

The automobile has a claim to being part of the American religion. I have to agree with Jane Jacobs who assigned it an even higher impact than TV or probably the internet. The horseless carriage is all about Detroit and nothing about the South. The Japanese and even Koreans are far better at mass-producing semi-humane versions of these mechanized brutes than the Old World ever was.

As far as American music goes, Springsteen and Sinatra, for better or worse, are Jersey guys and Dylan was from Minnesota.

Culture is generally about cities. City living followed hunter gathering but predated farming. The great cities of the Old World are and have been for a very long time, London and Paris. In America the great cities are for starters: New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. The only one of which that has a significant Southern aspect to it, being Washington. Mexico City, Tokyo and Osaka probably have more influence on America today than any Southern city.

Consumer goods are a part of our culture. Mao’s China became America’s workshop. Mao still has a colossal influence on China – which exerts an increasing influence on America.

Now getting back to religion. Probably the most read author in America today is the New Age Englishwoman, J.K. Rowling. Dan Brown, a Phillips Exeter New Englander, may be in second place with his American twist on Jesus and Da Vinci.

Oh, come now. It is certainly possible that the Dusky Races will someday be able to contribute something positive to the American Ideal at some point in the future, bless them.

Since I compose traditional music of the Western cultural variety, I am often asked that question: “Where are the Beethovens today?” – Or “Mozarts” or “Bachs,” depending on the questioner’s biases and tastes.

I alternate between two stock answers:

1) “A very pale one is sitting right in front of you.”

2) “They are writing code for video games.”

regarding elite theory, the cream can still be regarded as an elite even if it is still a part of the milk as I recall. However, I wasn’t thinking so much of elite theory as an idea akin to Pareto’s 80-20 rule (20% tend to own about 80% is the rule – akin to my thinking that: 20% tend to exert about 80% of the impact upon society.)

For clarity, I suspect what you object to is

relatively small groups within a population that share a common relationship to the instruments of power within a society and a common interest in how those instruments are used and which exclude the majority of the population from access to power.

Source: Dr. Francis. Because such thinking might lead to an elite becoming corrupt, that is acting in its best interests rather than in the best interests of its whole (community, nation, etc.) which was its original purpose.

However, I think it’s safe to admit the unequal influence an elite few have on the rest of society: they must be virtuous!

Anyway, it could just be that I’ve misunderstood elite theory.

This is why I have hope and why I continue to struggle against the seemingly overwhelming odds. This is why my many defeats in life have always, as the old hymn says, given way to victory.’ -robert m. peters

A tip of the hat to you.

The great I AM … that I AM …

if it’s more than the totality, the ebb and flow, the going back and forth out to the limits and boundaries of the universe, and as if by magic, like the seeming magic of mother Nature, recycling back again…everything even the universe is a two-way street. And if the I AM or transcendant started it…then he’s also the omega, out there after where the universe itself ends or borders and recylces back.

So how could there be room for the universe…and perhaps other universes if the I AM THAT AM is everywhere and fills all space?

God withdrew from Himself so that there would be room for that which is actually other [inevitably] than himself…actual others, containing the spark but dimensional and within the time-space continuum, until they are elsewhere more. People sense it, their spark or spiritual sensibility. That’s why in the worst case scenario where human beings are concerned everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die…humorously put. No one wants to carry the cross to wear the crown… Funny universe, ha-ha.

But too much adversity even under God can crush and not challenge, even the cross can crush. Of course anyone who ‘believes’ they cannot lose in our world here…may be ‘dead’ certain because a coward? We can’t judge, per se. We can only intuit. That’s between a person and his creator…and at least between a person and themself.

I tend to suspect no one thing is true it is all true…even the unknowable God. If we only have faith in that which we believe we can know, why do we need the word faith? I think faith exists because we Can NEVER know. But because of undeniable limb which stands in the world we stand, and perhaps because of the spark of the divine and eternal, God willing, we may stand therein as well.

I ‘think’ there’s a God because something like this universe and probably others don’t come out of nothing. And once it’s something it, as it is – don’t last forever either, so it wasn’t always.

Thus, what came before and what sits [or 'whatever'] out there, after. And perhaps Is wherever it wants to be as well?! I suspect that’s God.

The great I AM.

‘hello – out there, – and wherever, how are you?’

I usually don’t like to do that…I try not to draw God’s attention to myself…I’m a conservative – leave well enough alone.
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Whether or not the Church will be the bringer of the evangelium, the salt and the light, the informer in Christ’s name and for his sake of the societies in which she finds herself is the question of ultimate concern to me. There are, of course, times of spiritual, intellectual and even physical peril for the Church during which she must find refuge to gain strength to follow the Christ. Yet, the Church, following the Christ, is not on the defensive; she is on the offensive; for as Holy Writ says, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it (her).” This means that she is assaulting hell, not running from it.

The question, a mere second unto that one is, how will the society (culture?) into which I am born, live and have my being respond to the informing mission of the Church. If a given society is informed through the Church of the values of the Christ and if that society is transformed by the values of the Christ, then such will be reflected in the customs, traditions, mores and morals of that society and in the laws of whatever polity which that society creates. Such as society is what, in my opinion, some of us here on these fora have labeled Christendom. When, however, the society ceases to receive the informing power which the Church brings to it and (or) when the Church becomes so apostate that it no longer informs, then that society decays and dies. For any entity to transform, mutate or evolve, information must be added. When that entity ceases to receive information, it cannot change. When it looses information, it begins to decay and to die. It is moral entropy or the fall, if you will. When the “hand of God” – Old Testament or “the Corpus Chrisi” – New Testament is withdrawn or withdraws from a society, a culture, a people, the the life-giving information – in the most denotive sense of that word – becomes absent and the society decays. This is what St. Paul means in the first chapter of Romans. God honors our choice. When we worship the creature or the creation, i.e. when we say, “Not God,” then He gives us up; the decay – outlined in the list in Romans 1 – sets in. I suppose that the question would be whether or not the apparent absence of God’s hand in our society is His decision to give up this society to its rebellion or whether the Church, in failure, has given up on society and has started longing in error fraught notions to be delivered from doing her duty by entertaining such notions as the rapture – abandoning society and the world in their darkest hour.

I live in the hope that our thoughts, words and deeds, done in His name and within His will, regardless of how small or seemingly insignificant – fixing my wife a meal which she enjoys, for example – will be kept by Him and preserved for all eternity. I, in correlation therewith, also live with the understanding that grand deeds – such as saving the world for democracy – when allegedly done in His name but actually done in the name of the god of war – will be utterly cut off and consumed.

Thus, the old Latin phrase in the ablative absolute -Deo vindice – “God having already vindicated ” as on possible translation – leaves with us the understanding that the Great I Am has already, before the world began, vindicated, justified, redeemed and preserved that which was yet and will be yet to be done in His name.

This is why I have hope and why I continue to struggle against the seemingly overwhelming odds. This is why my many defeats in life have always, as the old hymn says, given way to victory.