A Sick Giant

Very well written piece, lots of supporting data. However- it bears pointing out the focusing on norms and compromise and mutual understanding is a squarely liberal stance. Remember the John Stewart “Rally to Restore Sanity” which basically made the same points as the article. And unfortunately, Obama discovered that the political right was decidedly unwilling to reciprocate any sort of offers to compromise. So it seems that unless both sides are ready to back down, we are stuck where we are.

> I'd call [slavery] a pretty important backbone, even if it was localized to mainly the south.

The localization of the issue to the South is incredibly important to consider, though. They actually seceded and became a different country for around four years because they felt slavery was that important to their economy. And, as another poster mentioned, the South (primarily agrarian) was much poorer than the North (manufacturing and agrarian) and had staggering levels of inequality compared to the North.

You say it's a "dark legacy," but what do you want to do about it? Crap all over the country for something which was last actively practiced 150 years ago? My ancestors were still poor farmers in Hungary at that point; they didn't have anything to do with slavery in the US. Slavery is awful and unjust, but don't expect me to hate others today for the injustices of the past.

> My point is that the last lynching was in 1981. That's utterly ridiculous. It only trailed off in the 1950's.

Racism is learned and taught. During the Reconstruction, the South reinvented their economy and culture, since slavery was dead and the white Southerners had to live near the newly-freed black Southerners. Unfortunately, that reinvention of culture included the significant perpetuation of racism.

It takes a long time to erase all that. Unless they're willing to sit and reason, there's nothing you can do. We can, however, raise our kids right so, with time, the racists will die off.

> Only on screen mind you, I don't expect many of them would want that imagery taught in churches!

Have you ever been to a majority-white Christian church in America? What about a majority-black Christian church in America? They all sing, pray, and listen. There's no discussion of Jesus' skin color, because that's not why they go to church. They go because they want salvation.

> riling people up about abortion then using that as a device to get people to vote your party into power

> you and your tax-excempt gravy train

> good, clean family-friendly past (lynchings or not)

Ok, it's clear you're hateful toward Christians. But are you really hateful toward all of them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_in...

Yes, it's possible for a liberal Lutheran to exist. Do you still hate them? Would they hate you?

You lump white Christians together as some massive homogeneous blob, but you just can't do that because it's not fair. Also, do you think all sermons are just political rants? I can tell you they absolutely aren't. In fact, many people will go to church to get away from politics.

Ballot initiatives.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2018/11/15/1...

> I think those demographics, culture, and politics are largely the ones that were traditionally present under Judeo-christian hegemony.

And this is where we disagree. It is useful for branding purposes to put forward the notion that what you believe has always been the belief, but that by itself doesn't provide inherent justification for that belief. As the article[1] I posted elucidates, the construct of "Judeo-Christian" is a relatively recent political tool. This tool has been used to erase Judaism's unique cultural impact (which directly contradicts the presumption put forward by the thread starter[2]) and the abrahamic roots of Islam in order to exclude and justify violence.

For the purposes of defining what America is, the topic that began the thread, we must recognize the difference between handwavey rhetoric and what is grounded in the historical record. There's also much to be said about how relevant what America was should be to what America can be, which is why I tried to expand the scope by elucidating that what America is also includes how America has changed since its foundation from a marginal, slaveholding, collection of thirteen disparate colonies into a world power.

1. https://newrepublic.com/article/155735/rights-judeo-christia...

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12309928

I think representing the median voter is the best way to avoid conflict.

Imagine you have a shared workspace and people vote on the temperature to set the thermostat. Do you think he best way to avoid conflict is to have a system that encourages people to cluster into warm nature and cool nature people, one or the other get their way? Or is it best to simply settle on the median, which tends to be right in the middle and no one is miserable.