Hot take: what people call “American culture” is less an extension of Europe and more a rebellion against it. If Europe built cathedrals to preserve the past, America built skyscrapers to outrun it.
The Europeans who sailed here 250 years ago gave rise to a culture of Faustian impulses, while Europe barely escapes stagnation and suffers intensely from the migrant crisis.
The faustian spirit which made Rome & America is eternal, reborn again and again, whereas the preservationist soul of Europe will soon shrivel up and be forever consumed by its neighbors or its own people.
@KaiserLoengramm The Constitution needs to be rewritten with modern terminology. It is the oldest constitution in the world, and no doubt, a flawed one.
The founding fathers INTENDED for this document to be rewritten as history progressed, and the needs of America shifted.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, once got shot in the chest on his way to give a speech and then gave the entire 90-minute speech anyway, with the bullet still inside him. In 1912 a man shot him point blank right before he was set to speak in Milwaukee. The bullet was slowed by his steel glasses case and a folded 50-page speech in his coat, and it lodged in his chest. Roosevelt figured that since he wasn't coughing blood, the wound wasn't fatal, so he refused to go to the hospital, walked on stage, opened his bloodstained shirt to show the crowd, and told them, "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Then he talked for an hour and a half. Doctors later decided it was safer to just leave the bullet in his body, and he carried it for the rest of his life.
That was completely on brand, because Teddy was the most physically insane President in history. In his free time in the White House he boxed. He sparred so hard that a punch permanently blinded him in his left eye, an injury he kept secret for years. When boxing got too dangerous he switched to jiu-jitsu and judo, training multiple times a week with a Japanese master. He also loved to go swimming in the freezing Potomac River in the dead of winter, sometimes dragging foreign diplomats along and making them strip down and swim across the icy water with him.
His White House was also basically a zoo. His kids and their pets ran wild through the mansion, including a badger named Josiah that would nip at ankles, a small bear, snakes, a one-legged rooster, guinea pigs, and a pony that they once snuck into an elevator to bring upstairs to a sick child's bedroom.
And somehow, in the middle of all this, he was one of the most well-read men to ever hold the office. Roosevelt devoured about a book a day, sometimes multiple, even while running the country, and wrote around 35 books of his own.
So the real Theodore Roosevelt: took a bullet to the chest and finished his speech, went blind in one eye from boxing in the White House, swam icy rivers for fun, kept a badger and a bear as pets, and still read a book a day.
That's a President.
@TraderStrider From the ashes of the old, we’ll need to build anew. There was once a time when young men were the spearheads for civilization.
All the nation requires is someone capable to raise up a banner for the rest to follow behind.
Allow EVERYONE to vote and you end up with a state that is subject to the passions of too many different people.
Progressivism runs rampant and destroys the nation’s identity by attempting to change it too rapidly.
🚨 BREAKING:
U.S. content creator Myron Gaines to an Israeli girl:
"How do you expect us to believe 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust without recording technology?
Yet you deny the massacres in Gaza that the world watched live."
Castles in the USA may not have as long a history as the beautiful castles of Europe, but they are outstanding, each in their own right
>Bishop's Palace in Texas
> Boldt Castle in New York
>Scotty's Castle in California
>Singer Castle on Dark Island in New York
The Ancients imposed the following 15 safeguards on democratic power – the precise restraints they knew were necessary to prevent the multitude from destroying the state.
We abandoned every single one of them.
1. Citizenship after Three Generations
2. Exclusion of Citizens with Criminal Convictions
3. Prohibition of Dual Citizenship
4. Property Qualifications for Voting and Office
5. Political Rights tied to Military Service
6. Exclusion of Resident Foreigners and Immigrants
7. Age Restrictions for Political Participation
8. Loss of Rights for Immorality and Impiety
9. Moral Character Examinations for Office
10. Educational Requirements for Office
11. Exclusion of Citizens Indebted to the State
12. Disenfranchisement of Citizens Associated with Tyranny or Sedition
13. Loss of Rights for Extended Absence from the City
14. Exclusion of Citizens Dependent on Public Welfare
15. Household Representation in Voting
Victorious Youth
When the youth of the world grow restless and distrustful of the systems their forefathers built, it is not the twilight of order but the first light of a greater dawn.
Only in the fire of their questioning are the old forms broken open, purified, and reborn.
@nomadgeist@oftheknifex Well you don't make cakes without cracking eggs... and quite a lot of eggs have to be cracked.
Boomers ate all of it, so we're forced to make another from scratch.
Pennsylvania Station, NYC.
America’s architecture has a visible greco-roman inspiration, a signifier of our connection to the western world. The U.S. is a western nation, and that’s non-negotiable.