briar patch

[Valerie]

This is what I'm talking about. It must feel really good to condemn people like me.

I am not the one doing the condemning.

On a personal level, no, it doesn't feel good at all. It doesn't feel good at all to know that some people are so deceived they believe they are doing the "right" thing, but instead are teaching contrary to the scriptures, and thus will incur a stricter judgment. For someone who wants to see everyone celebrating in Jesus' restored kingdom, the thought that some people will be ones who say "Lord, Lord" is not something that feels good at all, but instead makes someone like me feel quite sad instead.

I try not to think about it too often. I hope that speaking prophetically may call one or two to repentance, because Jesus cared very much about the 1 lost sheep.

Very well put Josh. I feel the same way. It hurts to see all this. It hurts to know people will go to hell, and we have to be careful we don't help them get there by hiding truth or under the guide of Jesus love, condone it.

I don't appreciate the accusations that Christians "enjoy" condemning- perhaps some do, who can know the heart of ever man?

In my own life I appreciate mist those who are willing to help me see. Plus the bondage of wickedness & sin may have its pleasure for a season, but nothing compared to being set free and in relationship with Jesus Christ.

[temporal1]

Valerie,
We see one of the techniques of the radical progressive-liberal extreme left where any concern about the outrageous things they do gets recast as "outrage for the sake of outrage" or "feeding the outrage machine".

You will notice that the liberal-progressive never actually takes any responsibility for what they are doing, nor does the "Christian" liberal ever acknowledge that the things they promote are wrong, whether it be crossdressing, homosexuality, subjecting children to drag shows, "pride", promoting abortion, or all manner of other mortal sins.

This is what I'm talking about. It must feel really good to condemn people like me.

I think you sound xenophobic when you make these kinds of arguments.

Yes, I'm aware, Szd; so far in the last few days, you've called people who disagree with your politics racist, sexist, and now xenophobic. I think you should perhaps hang up the name-calling for a bit and consider ways to be less divisive.

Does it feel really good?

i try to understand, i admit i fail to understand, puzzling inconsistencies like these.
i try to accept what cannot be understood.

[Szdfan]

I think you sound xenophobic when you make these kinds of arguments.

Yes, I'm aware, Szd; so far in the last few days, you've called people who disagree with your politics racist, sexist, and now xenophobic. I think you should perhaps hang up the name-calling for a bit and consider ways to be less divisive.

Does it feel really good?

i try to understand, i admit i fail to understand, puzzling inconsistencies like these.
i try to accept what cannot be understood.

Try understand this. When people say that people who are born in Ameria aren't "actual Americans" and says things like "America is not a nation of Tamils or Sikhs," they are using language that is objectively racist and xenophobic. I'm ok being divisive about that.

[RZehr]

Yes, I'm aware, Szd; so far in the last few days, you've called people who disagree with your politics racist, sexist, and now xenophobic. I think you should perhaps hang up the name-calling for a bit and consider ways to be less divisive.

Does it feel really good?

i try to understand, i admit i fail to understand, puzzling inconsistencies like these.
i try to accept what cannot be understood.

Try understand this. When people say that people who are born in Ameria aren't "actual Americans" and says things like "America is not a nation of Tamils or Sikhs," they are using language that is objectively racist and xenophobic. I'm ok being divisive about that.

Would you insist on calling one of these folks American, if they self identified as non-American? If they found it offensive? Even if they were born in American?

[Josh]

Yes, I'm aware, Szd; so far in the last few days, you've called people who disagree with your politics racist, sexist, and now xenophobic. I think you should perhaps hang up the name-calling for a bit and consider ways to be less divisive.

Does it feel really good?

i try to understand, i admit i fail to understand, puzzling inconsistencies like these.
i try to accept what cannot be understood.

Try understand this. When people say that people who are born in Ameria aren't "actual Americans" and says things like "America is not a nation of Tamils or Sikhs," they are using language that is objectively racist and xenophobic. I'm ok being divisive about that.

Would you be OK with this language, Szdfan?

"Tamil Nadu is not a nation of Americans."

"Punjab is not a nation of Americans."

"India is not a nation of Americans."

Would you consider Vivian Leigh to be "Indian"? Would you consider her to be Bengali?

[Szdfan]

Does it feel really good?

i try to understand, i admit i fail to understand, puzzling inconsistencies like these.
i try to accept what cannot be understood.

Try understand this. When people say that people who are born in Ameria aren't "actual Americans" and says things like "America is not a nation of Tamils or Sikhs," they are using language that is objectively racist and xenophobic. I'm ok being divisive about that.

Would you insist on calling one of these folks American, if they self identified as non-American? If they found it offensive? Even if they were born in American?

I don't understand why it's so important that I insist on who people are. How people identify themselves seems more relevant. So I'm not sure I'd have to insist on anything. I'd mostly ask questions.

My experiences with an American who might not want to be an American involve my Dad, who was born in Ohio, grew up in Florida and has spent most of his adult life in Europe. He married a Russian after my parent's divorce, he lives in Russia and a couple of years ago, became a Russian citizen. He has retained his American citizenship, so he is a dual citizen.

So is my Dad an American? His background is. He's still an American citizen. However, he has chosen to live as a foreigner. Legally, he's also Russian.

I went and looked at my Dad's bio on his blog. This is how he identifies himself --

https://www.wyoder.de/

As some can tell from my last name: I am of Amish and Mennonite background, born in Ohio/USA. I first came to Germany and Europe in 1971 and never really left. My Russian spouse, Galina, and I are now living in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, 30 km south of that city. But we have a German address, too. I'm a citizen of the USA and since 11-2021, also of Russia.

So what is my Dad? Does it matter?

Perhaps Dad is an American Russian (instead of a Russian American). But I don't know and I don't think I care.

To me it's interesting that he refers to the legal status of citizenship in his bio, rather than identity. "I'm a citizen of the USA and...also of Russia." In one of his blog posts, he referred to the US as "the country of my birth." I think there is ambiguity in how my Dad understands himself and I'm okay with that. I don't see it as my place to force him into a particular box -- to insist that he defines himself according to how I think he should define himself. My Dad's Amish origins, his US childhood and the fifty-something years in Europe have shaped who he is.

[Josh]

Szdfan,

A reality exists outside of what "how people identify themselves as". The most obvious example is that someone is either born a man or a woman, and it doesn't matter if they "identify" as something else - they can't change what they were born as, and what their body obviously is.

Likewise, your dad is certainly someone interested in trying to be more Russian, but he will never be a "Russian" in the same sense as someone who was born there and grew up there, let alone someone who comes from generations of ancestors who were from Russia (although most Russians who are such in Kaliningrad migrated from other parts of Russia to land that used to be German/Polish/Prussian).

Let me give you a more absurd example.

If I told you I'm Native American, would you believe me? If I said I "identify" as a Wyandot or Tuscora, would you believe me? Would it make sense at all? (I live where Wyandots and Tuscoras used to. But they were displaced and little exists of them here anymore except geographic names.)

Where someone was born, where they were raised, and where their parents were raised are real, immutable things that do matter and make up a part of identity. I guess the core issue is whether you think identity has any parts of it that are immutable, or if you think identity is entirely "by proposition". That is, someone can "identify" as anything they want, which really reduces identity to something much more akin to a consumer preference - that is to say, being an American or a Russian is no different than being a McDonald's or a Burger King consumer today, and one which very well might switch tomorrow and next week.

[Szdfan]

Would you be OK with this language, Szdfan?

"Tamil Nadu is not a nation of Americans."

"Punjab is not a nation of Americans."

"India is not a nation of Americans."

I think one definition of "American" is citizenship. Haley, Ramaswamy and Harris are Americans because they are American citizens. They were born here and hold American passports. That's an objective definition. They meet the legal and constitutional requirements for the Presidency.

However, you insist that an "actual American" is something else without ever defining what that is. You define it based on what it's not. I think your definition of "not actual Americans" is whatever you think appears foreign or other and therefore Haley, Ramaswamy and Harris are shady and suspicious foreigners even though they are American citizens born in America. Obama got the same treatment -- he was "foreign" because of his Kenyan father. However, Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was also an immigrant from Scotland, and I don't think I've heard any complaints about his foreignness.

Therefore, I do think your arguments that the children of immigrants aren't "actual Americans" mirrors some of the racist and xenophobic language historically used against recent immigrants like Jews, Catholics and Chinese. Your argument that Harris's loyalty to America is suspicious or inadequate because of her heritage, mirrors the argument that JFK's loyalty was suspicious because as a Catholic, he was beholden to the Pope. There was a time when Catholics weren't considered "actual Americans" either. It's the same xenophobic nonsense.

Would you consider Vivian Leigh to be "Indian"? Would you consider her to be Bengali?

Fun fact: Vivian Leigh also had Parsi-Indian (her maternal grandfather) ancestry along with her English and Irish heritage (More fun facts: Parsi-Indians are descendants of Persians who migrated from Iran to the Gujarat region of India between the 8th and 10th centuries). She is generally considered Anglo-Indian, which is a recognized ethnic group of Indians with mixed European and Indian heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian_people

Anglo-Indian people are a distinct minority community of mixed-race Eurasian ancestry with British paternal and Indian maternal heritage, whose first language is ordinarily English. Prior to 1911, various designations like "Eurasian" or "Indo-Briton" were used to describe this community.

The All India Anglo-Indian Association, founded in 1926, has long represented the interests of this ethnic group; it holds that Anglo-Indians are unique in that they are Christians, speak English as their mother tongue, and have a historical link to both the British Isles and the Indian sub-continent. Anglo-Indians tend to identify as people of India (or Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh), rather than of a specific region such as the Punjab or Bengal.

So I think Vivian Leigh is Anglo-Indian. People don't fit into the little boxes you're trying to stuff them into.

[Josh]

Would you be OK with this language, Szdfan?

"Tamil Nadu is not a nation of Americans."

"Punjab is not a nation of Americans."

"India is not a nation of Americans."

I think one definition of "American" is citizenship.

Can you focus on the questions?

Is Tamil Nadu a nation of Americans, or not?

It seems that in your mind, being American is either defined by the government saying you are (which is a very odd definition; for a long time, Native Americans weren't "citizens"; would you then say, well, they aren't Americans anymore because the government says they aren't?), or else is just defined by a strong desire to claim you are.

It essentially reduces "American" to a meaningless term. One might as well replace "American" with "Star Wars fan", an opt-in proposition.

The actual fact is that some people are born Americans into an American family, and some aren't. There is nothing wrong with being the latter. Some people are born into a Tamil family, and some aren't. But it is very silly to pretend that Tamils are Americans and that Americans are Tamils. It is particularly interesting that the arrow only seems to point in one direction - we have to endure the fantasy that the first minister of Scotland was "Scottish" when he was clearly Pakistani; that the Prime Minister was "English" when he was actually Punjab; that the First Minister of Wales is "Welsh" when he is actually Zambian; that the second minister of Ireland was "Irish" when he was actually mixed Indian and Irish.

Do you think the terms "Welsh", "Scottish", "Irish", "English", or "American" have any meaning other than some government citizenship document? I think that terms like "Irish" or "Scottish" actually do refer to an actual people group. And an actual people group is not just one composed of a cornucopia of immigrants from other people groups from all over the world.

[ohio jones]

The actual fact is that some people are born Americans into an American family, and some aren't. There is nothing wrong with being the latter. Some people are born into a Tamil family, and some aren't. But it is very silly to pretend that Tamils are Americans and that Americans are Tamils. It is particularly interesting that the arrow only seems to point in one direction - we have to endure the fantasy that the first minister of Scotland was "Scottish" when he was clearly Pakistani; that the Prime Minister was "English" when he was actually Punjab; that the First Minister of Wales is "Welsh" when he is actually Zambian; that the second minister of Ireland was "Irish" when he was actually mixed Indian and Irish.

Do you think the terms "Welsh", "Scottish", "Irish", "English", or "American" have any meaning other than some government citizenship document? I think that terms like "Irish" or "Scottish" actually do refer to an actual people group. And an actual people group is not just one composed of a cornucopia of immigrants from other people groups from all over the world.

I was born in America as a descendant of immigrants who arrived from 150 to 300 years ago. No Native American ancestors that I'm aware of, although my great-great-grandfather bought land that was designated as an Indian reserve, and my parents still live on part of that. Am I part of my ancestors' Swiss, German, French, and English people groups, or have those melted into an American people group, and how long ago did that happen? Is it okay if I call myself an American when I'm in one of the countries my ancestors came from?