Smart Article...:blankspace:

Yep. And, most importantly, American values. In theory, that’s the whole reason one would want to come here, or to any given country, in the first place.

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I would strongly agree with you. I left this part out to try and keep down the distraction. That is the essence for wanting to be here.

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Is there a more loaded concept? Your values or mine (I’m assuming that you’re an American)?

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The values being spoken of here are enshrined in the documents that founded this country.

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Include concepts that are no longer considered American Values™.

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The question is by whom…

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Americans, duh. :blankspace:

The values that founded this country disenfranchised women and accepted slavery. I doubt you’ll find many people immigrating here because of those American Values™.

I’ll go ahead and apologize now for your selective memory on these things…

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Sounds like we agree that a nation’s values can change over time, and that we’re not attracting people based solely on the founding ideals of the country.

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We are agreeing, we are however attracting people on the basis of freedom. In many many facets…

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To be clear disenfranchising women (or etc., I don’t know all the letters…sorry) and slavery = BAD!

That said, I don’t know if these two items could be considered values, or just the way things were at the time. Contemporaneous writings at the time of the writing indicate that the inclusion of the 3/5 thing was abhorrent to many but a compromise that allowed colonies whose economy depended on slavery to convince their citizens to get on board.


Not directed @jswilson64 (I get you well enough from your postings to know you don’t need to be told this), but when people, especially young ones needing to be deprogrammed from 4 years of college, start going on about “America was founded on slavery!”, I ask them “quick, name all the countries in the history of the world that went to war with themselves to abolish slavery? Quick!!”

The saveable ones come up with the right answer…just one. The truly lost, sadly, can’t even come up with that one.

There’s a reason why the phrase in the Preamble (do you and you kids have it memorized?) is “more perfect union”, as in always trying to be better (although maybe not always doing too great a job of it on sme days).

That’s an American value.

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Actually there were a lot of men that were disenfranchised too. The rules were not to keep women from voting, They were written to allow people that had a vested interest in the country to be the ones that elected the representatives.

As far as slaves go. That genie was long out of the bottle and there was no way to solve it without the government taking what was considered property without compensation. Many of the founding fathers wanted to do away with slavery, even some of the slave owners, but there was no way to compensate the owners.

Russell Ward

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It’s not all that loaded, really. I’d bet that if you got 100 (or 1000…whatever) truly randomly selected Americans from a time when immigration policy and border security weren’t hot button, wedge issues, and a time when things like Civics, citizenship, and the Constitution were still taught in every grade and high school, that it would be fairly easy to figure out and agree what these foundational values are.

Things like freedom of speech, religion. The rule of law. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Capitalism works. Federalism and limited government is better than Statism. If you have a few extra dollars in your pocket, it’s more likely that you know better how to spend them in your and your family’s own best interests than anyone else. You mind your business and I’ll mind mine, unless we agree otherwise. You break it you bought it. Charity begins at home (not at the tax collector’s). Mom, Baseball, Apple Pie. Etc.

Sure, there’d be some disagreement, but by and large I don’t think it would be too hard. Other than that my suggestion would require time travel. But other than that.

In fact I think that you and I could do this, and in fairly short order, as well. New Committee?

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This is one of the things everyone who complains about the ills of America seem to forget.
In many nations there is still exists things that no longer exist in the US.
How many that repeat what they’ve been told, taught, misled to believe have bothered to take more than a cursory look at the issue/s, one has to wonder.

While perhaps inflammatory to some.
The middle east is known in other parts of the world as being bad (by western standards) in their treatment of women and no local will bat an eyelash or question differently as that is the culture; unless perhaps they’ve experienced how much different it is in the US or a similar westernized nation.
I knew people who worked in the middle east for extended periods, both male & female and the stories they tell jive quite a bit to the what would be considered anti muslim rhetoric in the US.
Men had to grow facial hair in some of the countries they worked in or they’d be raped (their words not mine) was the common story.
Dubai(which I’m told is an open city) was the preferred place to work in by the women.
They only tell the stories when they are no longer there.

In China, when a developer wanted a piece of occupied land they would speak with the government officials and when they came to an agreement, the present occupants would be relocated elsewhere in short order.
I saw this some years back where in such spaces enclosed communities were built upward 20-30 stories, 4-6 units to a floor with each community having at least 10 of these structures(the ones I saw had 15-20+ buildings). They had their own clubhouse with indoor climate controlled pool, tennis, volleyball, basketball, croquet, children’s playground, convenience store private road network, underground parking garages in the more affluent communities. The units cost upward of $500,000 at the time and were around 1500+ sq ft for the larger ones.

The other golden rule still rules.

P.S. Welcome back! :slight_smile:

If only they were written in English!!!

All kidding aside there’s clearly lots of room for interpretation there.

How long ago was that? 30, 40, 50 years?
Things change quickly.

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I’m really interested to know what time you’re talking about?

I’m ALL IN for a time travel committee!

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Not sure if you’re angling for a love it or leave it statement here or not. I’ll assume not.

Indeed America has it better than large swaths of the world. But we still have problems that we should seek to correct.

And while one can certainly find useful idiots complaining bitterly and ignorantly about the US without nuance or even a sane basis for comparison to demolish like such ready-made straw men, I’ve surely not encountered them in such numbers as to believe they’re representative of those criticizing our country’s ills.

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:+1: Yup, complacency isn’t good at all and constantly improving for the better is the preferred direction.

If only more people felt like you do on this.
Media has become less of an event reporter and seemingly more of a thought and event influencer.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of people echo popular now sentiments without looking more into the story/events/ideas behind it.
One that stands out was the US presidential elections wherein many saying that POTUS did not win the popular vote therefore etc.
Odd for a citizen to exclaim, who if having voted before, should have at least at one time or another looked up how the process is set up.
Interesting is that no media personality seemed to have called them out that that is not how it works, and instead chose to keep repeating the statement.
Unless, they weren’t citizens, ignorant of the process, or out to stir things up.

lol…that’s funny! Ye Olde English interpreter for hire!

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