From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: The Last of the Mohicans (Was: Jack S Defends MLKing Slur (Was: ARF DEFENDS HIS HONOR))
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:17:28 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Distribution: usa
Organization: LNK Corporation, Riverdale, MD


	It's been awhile since I counterposted ARF, but I can't seem to
stay out of the Kulturkampf -

In article <BvoJBz.J53@ddsw1.mcs.com> arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) writes:
>In article <1992Oct2.171314.26925@panther.mot.com> ronf@panther3.panther.mot.com (Ron Feigen) writes:

>
>You have lumped a whole bunch of different groups and defined parameters
>that somehow include David Duke.  Remember, he was accused of doing evil
>things?
>
>Most of what I have heard in the recent past from these people is that 
>they want their own enclave free of others.  That is far different from
>driving them out of the country.  BTW, how do you feel about the nice Jews
>in Israel driving the nasty Arabs out of their country?  And the Billions
>we American taxpayers shell out to help them?
>js

	Let's talk white supremacy a little bit here. When this country
started out, not everyone was white, and the only purely European enclaves
in America extended about two miles from the tidewater. This country has
not been *ethnically pure* since that time, and never will be ethnically
pure, either whole or in part (though we know you all in Chicago have been
resisting the melting pot for over a century now :). From Day One, there 
were Europeans colonists, Indians (I refuse to use the PC "Native American"
derivative form), and Africans (I can't keep track of the PC term here),
all together, forming a NEW society, beyond ken of Europe, or anything else 
the world had seen. 

	Guess what happened REAL EARLY in the process ? These groups STARTED
ADOPTING EACH OTHER'S HABITS !! Indians developed a taste for whiskey and 
firearms, Europeans learned how to track game "Injun style" and how to make
war as ruthlessly and coldbloodedly as the Algonquins and Iroqouis, and slowly
adapted some of the Africans' customs (the areas of music and folklore are
outstanding here). The  Africans learned to pray to the Christian God and 
use the implements of European manufacture and farming. IN NO CASE did any 
of these groups 100% abandon their cultures, instead, they fused their 
exiting cultures with elements of the new cultures they were dealing with...and
created new cultures in the process.

	Which brings us to "The Last of the Mohicans," a great movie which
has arrived at just the right time to remind us of what we in America have
been doing on a cultural level for the past 300+ years. James Fenimore
Cooper, writing the book in the decades just after the American Revolution,
dramatized the rawness and newness of the American culture, and gives us
a feel for the complex relationships between Europeans and (okay, in context
now, hold my nose) Native Americans. This is our legacy, and I strongly
encourage the viewing audience to go see "The Last of the Mohicans" to once
again discover why Jack Schmidling is wrong, dead wrong.

	Gang, I'm a WASP, and at bottom a bloody, lobster back Tory brand of 
WASP...I grew up in WASP World and I love WASP World. When Major Heyward 
gets up in the movie and says, "That's the policy, isn't it, to make all 
the world England," I know exactly what that guy is saying and what he means.
But as the movie so eloquently depicts, Heyward is not fit to live on
the frontier, where his Tory virtues don't count, in a country that
belongs to that intrepid multicultural frontiersman, Nathaniel Bumpo, who 
outlives Heyward, and (as in all the movies) gets the girl in the end. 
Such is life in America.

Love it or leave it.



	Bill R.

	"My opinions do not represent those of my employer or any 
government agency."
-- 
Bill R.