Pew: White Christians no longer a majority

Darth Hussein Omar said:
Obsession with race and skin color is liberal trait and I'm no liberal.

I can't tell if you keep up with current events or not, but Europe is having second thoughts about allowing mass numbers of non-Europeans in because they often don't assimilate. Just recently Canada [that bastion of xenophobia] declared a moratorium on admitting Syrian refugees/immigrants/terrorists.
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No, I do not keep up with current events - rather intentionally. It is for entertainment purposes. I like to freeze the world in 1953, when Negroes still had their own separate-but-equal water fountains and being a high-school graduate who attended the 'ol 1st Baptist Church was a golden ticket to a life of middle class bliss, where no brown person could swing a hammer or sell tires as efficiently as you could.

What I do keep up with, however, is math. And when you dump the demographic and political math of 2015 on the world of 1953, it is really damned fine entertainment. Kind of like a political version of jackass, I can laugh at how the rubes in flyover country get legitimately angry and lose their collective shit over the changing demographics in America - and how their place in middle-America really doesn't really matter much anymore. Few things evoke such a feeling of detached humor, mirth and perhaps even schadenfreude as seeing America slowly lose the more intrusive elements of religiosity and racism in politics and policy, and the pathetic (but so damned sincere) attempts of people in flyover country to do something about it (many years from now, we will view the Trump candidacy with the same detached wonder as we now view the fact that a Pontiac Firebird was once a status symbol for millions of Americans).

I laugh at the economic plight of the under-educated Midwesterner and Southerner, who is suddenly measured by his actual output into the capitalistic system he reflexively defends but does not understand beyond AM radio banter. I laugh all the same at the people who invoke and pray to Christ (or whatever unholy spliced version of a Christ-Washington-Jefferson-Reagan-George Wallace-Billy Graham civic deity they worship) to win elections, defeat "Obamacare", or maybe just help Nicky Saban pull this next game off - only to get crushed by someone like Obama, who openly mocked your whole "guns and religion" thing with flourish. I haven't listened to Lee Greenwood on acid yet, but it is high on my list.

I pay the same taxes (perhaps quite a bit more) than you do, but I do place a premium on living somewhere nice and not subsidizing subprime evangelical trash with my business decisions or investment capital. Aside from that, its all entertainment to me. Trust me, your God isn't too concerned about Syrian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, or college football. And your "founders" are no more relevant today than Justinian or Hammurabi, so ditch the Mt. Rushmore gag.
 
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Frank Booth said:
No, I do not keep up with current events - rather intentionally. It is for entertainment purposes. I like to freeze the world in 1953, when Negroes still had their own separate-but-equal water fountains and being a high-school graduate who attended the 'ol 1st Baptist Church was a golden ticket to a life of middle class bliss, where no brown person could swing a hammer or sell tires as efficiently as you could.

What I do keep up with, however, is math. And when you dump the demographic and political math of 2015 on the world of 1953, it is really damned fine entertainment. Kind of like a political version of jackass, I can laugh at how the rubes in flyover country get legitimately angry and lose their collective shit over the changing demographics in America - and how their place in middle-America really doesn't really matter much anymore. Few things evoke such a feeling of detached humor, mirth and perhaps even schadenfreude as seeing America slowly lose the more intrusive elements of religiosity and racism in politics and policy, and the pathetic (but so damned sincere) attempts of people in flyover country to do something about it (many years from now, we will view the Trump candidacy with the same detached wonder as we now view the fact that a Pontiac Firebird was once a status symbol for millions of Americans).

I laugh at the economic plight of the under-educated Midwesterner and Southerner, who is suddenly measured by his actual output into the capitalistic system he reflexively defends but does not understand beyond AM radio banter. I laugh all the same at the people who invoke and pray to Christ (or whatever unholy spliced version of a Christ-Washington-Jefferson-Reagan-George Wallace-Billy Graham civic deity they worship) to win elections, defeat "Obamacare", or maybe just help Nicky Saban pull this next game off - only to get crushed by someone like Obama, who openly mocked your whole "guns and religion" thing with flourish. I haven't listened to Lee Greenwood on acid yet, but it is high on my list.

I pay the same taxes (perhaps quite a bit more) than you do, but I do place a premium on living somewhere nice and not subsidizing subprime evangelical trash with my business decisions or investment capital. Aside from that, its all entertainment to me. Trust me, your God isn't too concerned about Syrian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, or college football. And your "founders" are no more relevant today than Justinian or Hammurabi, so ditch the Mt. Rushmore gag.
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The founders themselves aren't relevant but their philosophy of rights is. Or well, it used to be relevant anyway.

That being, that rights are ultimately granted by the Creator and are protected under the Constitution. The founders held that rights were 'certain and unalienable'. That they were old white guys and some of them held slaves in no way mitigates their assertions or the wisdom therein.

The secular progression conception of rights being ultimately bestowed by man is bankrupt, by comparison. That was my only point.

The rest of your post is devoted to how you despise middle and lower class white people. I presume you're a white person but I won't bother with addressing the self-loathing part except to say it probably warrants a diagnosis of some sort.

But our cultural has become very materialistic-oriented; such that, being lower class is a sign of failure [or if you're non-white] or economic injustice caused by 'white priviledge'. Some of the happiest people I know are lower class. Some of the unhappiest people I know live in big houses.

Regarding the rah-rah bit for changing demographics: as I pointed out to someone else, if and when the left's multicultural Utopia comes to fruition in this country, they aren't going to like it. Europe is farther down the multicultural pike than we are and they are starting to not like it.

As matter of fact, if you are planning on traveling to Europe I'd go soon, because in ten years you probably won't want to.
 
Darth Hussein Omar said:
The founders themselves aren't relevant but their philosophy of rights is. Or well, it used to be relevant anyway.

That being, that rights are ultimately granted by the Creator and are protected under the Constitution. The founders held that rights were 'certain and unalienable'. That they were old white guys and some of them held slaves in no way mitigates their assertions or the wisdom therein.

The secular progression conception of rights being ultimately bestowed by man is bankrupt, by comparison. That was my only point.
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My friend, you strike me as a guy who perhaps takes Glenn Beck a bit too seriously - too much contrived talk about "secular progression", "rights", and more curiously, rights that "come from a creator". A political scientist or a learned observer (one who actually went to college and took a professional job, not the detritus saving our country on AM radio waves) might refer to this as belief in an American "civil religion". It has different flavors, but in America, it generally coalesces around some silly belief that an invisible man who lives in the sky actively gave your country greatness, and the only way to preserve this greatness is to maintain some uncertain blend of faithfulness to a make-believe God, a piece of parchment from the late 18th century, and literalist fidelity to the world view and times of a a small set of people who lived in an era before modern concrete, indoor plumbing and compulsory education (to say nothing of electricity, combustion, flight, modern communication, et. al).

Darth Hussein Omar said:
The rest of your post is devoted to how you despise middle and lower class white people. I presume you're a white person but I won't bother with addressing the self-loathing part except to say it probably warrants a diagnosis of some sort.

But our cultural has become very materialistic-oriented; such that, being lower class is a sign of failure [or if you're non-white] or economic injustice caused by 'white priviledge'. Some of the happiest people I know are lower class. Some of the unhappiest people I know live in big houses.
Click to expand...

We are all communicating behind anonymous proxies, Bubba. I could more easily deduce that you make less than $125K a year, did not go to a particularly good college (if you completed at all), have never lived well in a major Global city (in the US or abroad) and are very self-serving in the things you read (probably lots of NEWSMAX, Western Journalism, Buchanan, Schlafly, an occasional reach with something from The Heritage Foundation, and a healthy diet of right-wing memes). While I don't care about you, I do actually care about the distinction.

What has you and your ilk so worried is a tangentially Marxist development - namely, white Middle-class America is increasingly finding itself alienated from the Capitalist system it loves. Marxism might be a silly philosophy, but Marx's understanding and critique of people in a free market is hauntingly prescient, and far better than anything you will hear from "the Best of Sean Hannity" today. In essence, all that mom-America-apple pie bullshit is being rapidly diminished - you are only worth your economic output, not whatever "rights your creator gave you". Don't like it, tough shit - complain to your God. If you live in a place that allows a relatively unregulated flow of capital, then you must also live in a place that segregates along lines of economic productivity. And the fact of the matter is that brown people can come into my country, work harder for cheaper, and increase my profits (in my business or my shareholdings). Their surplus labor contribution matters a lot more to a capitalist system than the warm feeling you get by going to Old Country Buffet after church, and will influence it accordingly. Personally, I actually do care more about money than entertainment. Marx has a whole chapter or 12 on it - great shitter reading.

I know it is a tough pill to swallow, but that's modern 'Merica. If you voted Democratic with more vigor, you would at least be rewarded with more protectionist trade policies and greater subsidies for pain-killers, which seems to be all the rage in the trailer parks these days.

As far as the correlation between happiness and residential square footage, you've definitely check-mated me on that one. I really have no clue, although I would imagine there is some covariance with the given Sprint Cup standings at a given point in time.

Darth Hussein Omar said:
Regarding the rah-rah bit for changing demographics: as I pointed out to someone else, if and when the left's multicultural Utopia comes to fruition in this country, they aren't going to like it. Europe is farther down the multicultural pike than we are and they are starting to not like it.

As matter of fact, if you are planning on traveling to Europe I'd go soon, because in ten years you probably won't want to.
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Oddly enough, I've lived in Europe for more than 10 years of my life, and lived in London before my current primary residence. I still go to Europe several times a year, both work and pleasure. While I still haven't made it out to Moldova, a common thread of Europe is their distance from Christianity - hard to conceive of a God that would allow WWII to happen and yet still bless your field goal kicker on Saturdays. Certainly, lumping together a strand of Christianity with a national identity and a political agenda is largely seen as disgusting (but so is most American cuisine). As far as Europe having some existential crisis, I can assure you, they care about that quite a bit less than you or Mr. Limbaugh does, and do not look to the irrelevancies of 18th Century religion for answers.

You would probably do well in Europe - you work less, you suffer less, and your job is more secure from being poached by a harder working immigrant (thank you, Socialism). It is one of the reasons they don't care as much about brown people over there (a secondary reason being they are far, far "whiter" than the US to begin with). As long as that train keeps rolling, they are happy.
 
Frank Booth said:
My friend, you strike me as a guy who perhaps takes Glenn Beck a bit too seriously - too much contrived talk about "secular progression", "rights", and more curiously, rights that "come from a creator". A political scientist or a learned observer (one who actually went to college and took a professional job, not the detritus saving our country on AM radio waves) might refer to this as belief in an American "civil religion". It has different flavors, but in America, it generally coalesces around some silly belief that an invisible man who lives in the sky actively gave your country greatness, and the only way to preserve this greatness is to maintain some uncertain blend of faithfulness to a make-believe God, a piece of parchment from the late 18th century, and literalist fidelity to the world view and times of a a small set of people who lived in an era before modern concrete, indoor plumbing and compulsory education (to say nothing of electricity, combustion, flight, modern communication, et. al).
Click to expand...

Well, the point is the founders conception of rights was founded in the Creator; so much so, they considered it an axiomatic truth. Did someone dispense with the self evident truth while I wasn't watching? One of the attributes of progressive-ism ideas are deemed bad simply because they are dated. And if they originated with white Christians, they are deemed really bad ideas.

Maybe you can provide an actual argument.

Frank Booth said:
We are all communicating behind anonymous proxies, Bubba. I could more easily deduce that you make less than $125K a year, did not go to a particularly good college (if you completed at all), have never lived well in a major Global city (in the US or abroad) and are very self-serving in the things you read (probably lots of NEWSMAX, Western Journalism, Buchanan, Schlafly, an occasional reach with something from The Heritage Foundation, and a healthy diet of right-wing memes). While I don't care about you, I do actually care about the distinction.
Click to expand...

I think for myself, but thanks for the analysis.

Frank Booth said:
What has you and your ilk so worried is a tangentially Marxist development - namely, white Middle-class America is increasingly finding itself alienated from the Capitalist system it loves. Marxism might be a silly philosophy, but Marx's understanding and critique of people in a free market is hauntingly prescient, and far better than anything you will hear from "the Best of Sean Hannity" today. In essence, all that mom-America-apple pie bullshit is being rapidly diminished - you are only worth your economic output, not whatever "rights your creator gave you". Don't like it, tough shit - complain to your God. If you live in a place that allows a relatively unregulated flow of capital, then you must also live in a place that segregates along lines of economic productivity. And the fact of the matter is that brown people can come into my country, work harder for cheaper, and increase my profits (in my business or my shareholdings). Their surplus labor contribution matters a lot more to a capitalist system than the warm feeling you get by going to Old Country Buffet after church, and will influence it accordingly. Personally, I actually do care more about money than entertainment. Marx has a whole chapter or 12 on it - great shitter reading.

I know it is a tough pill to swallow, but that's modern 'Merica. If you voted Democratic with more vigor, you would at least be rewarded with more protectionist trade policies and greater subsidies for pain-killers, which seems to be all the rage in the trailer parks these days.
Click to expand...

What you are moaning about is a perversion of capitalism. And if you think voting for Hillary [you said vote Democrat] will change anything, you're delusional. Then again, you talk like a 1%-er so maybe you like the status quo. All those red staters you look down your nose at know the system is broken; which is why the establishment republicans are struggling on the Republican side.

Frank Booth said:
As far as the correlation between happiness and residential square footage, you've definitely check-mated me on that one. I really have no clue, although I would imagine there is some covariance with the given Sprint Cup standings at a given point in time.

Oddly enough, I've lived in Europe for more than 10 years of my life, and lived in London before my current primary residence. I still go to Europe several times a year, both work and pleasure. While I still haven't made it out to Moldova, a common thread of Europe is their distance from Christianity - hard to conceive of a God that would allow WWII to happen and yet still bless your field goal kicker on Saturdays. Certainly, lumping together a strand of Christianity with a national identity and a political agenda is largely seen as disgusting (but so is most American cuisine). As far as Europe having some existential crisis, I can assure you, they care about that quite a bit less than you or Mr. Limbaugh does, and do not look to the irrelevancies of 18th Century religion for answers.
Click to expand...

I don't listen to Limbaugh. Maybe you haven't been to Europe lately, but anti-semitism is on the rise and it's not because of the leftist scapegoat Christianity, because Europe is decidedly post-Christian. And centuries after Charles Martel defeated the Muslim hordes, Europe is inviting tens of thousands of Muslims within their borders.

The problem isn't their skin color; rather it's that they don't share in our western values. The implied premise behind multiculturalism is that all culturals were created equal. Obama, being an apparent disciple to this bankrupt idea, recently asserted that our values of freedom were 'universal'.

Really? Hell, even Putin knows better than that.

Frank Booth said:
You would probably do well in Europe - you work less, you suffer less, and your job is more secure from being poached by a harder working immigrant (thank you, Socialism). It is one of the reasons they don't care as much about brown people over there (a secondary reason being they are far, far "whiter" than the US to begin with). As long as that train keeps rolling, they are happy.
Click to expand...

I would do well in Europe because of my skill set. I might work less but I'd pay more taxes and I doubt if I could even find an F 250 or Mustang GT to drive. Or maybe I could, but I probably could afford the taxes on either of them or the gas to drive them.

I think I'll stay here in good old 'Merica.
 
I have never understood what Americans mean by either 'white' or 'Christian'. I have never seen a 'white' person who wasn't dead, and everyone knows that slaveowners were far from racist when it came to rape, while vast numbers inevitably 'passed' over the years, so that both alleged 'races' are pretty well mixed. As for Christianity, how many Americans act according to the Sermon on the Mount, or have even read it?
 
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