Nationalism and secularism

[kılıç_mehmet]

It would take me a lifetime to address all of the garbage you managed to cram into such a small post. This is understandable, because it's taken you a lifetime to build such a massive pile of trash. Let's try some cliffnotes-

The garbage is all on your part, as you close your eyes to the truth.

Your turkish "ethnic identity" is a snapshot in time. A social construct. None of you are "from" turkey. Not a single one.

You don't even know what you're talking about, who said that the Turkish identity is built upon geographical origin? You talk, without knowing what exactly you're talking about. Not that you actually read my posts-you simply go over them while not trying to understand just what I'm trying to explain to you.

Where does what lead to me? My love of bluegrass? Courtesy of German and Irish immigrants. Okra, black eyed peas, fried chicken, hotsauce and crawdads? Take a wild guess. Like I said, melting pot. It all "leads to me".

It all leads to nowhere. The only thing you understand of belonging into a culture is still what I said it was. Foodstuff. You don't really read your children the Niebelungenlied, do you? You don't puff with pride when you talk of the Holy Roman Empire, or Prussia and the Kaiser.
Neither do you sing the old rebel songs of Patrick Pearse or Connoly, do you? I think that you are the perfect showcase of how the melting pot works.
It destroys old identities, creates a new one, where none of the other identities really have much of a presence other than things like food and place names.

You may not think that american culture is a combination of all the cultures that have gone into it, but that's likely due to your being completely ignorant of american culture and it's origins, instead deriving your ideas of our culture from movies....

No, this is not about movies, really. As your idea of what constitutes a culture is again, only very, very simplistic.
Besides, I don't think that American culture is a combination of all the cultures that have gone into it, because none, as a matter of fact, have gone into it.
Tell me, friend. How are the native american community, culturally active and represented amongst the American public?
How much do you know about native american culture beneath what you are told at thanksgiving? You eat turkey, and celebrate the peace between the pioneers and the natives, while you obviously do not share their culture, nor take part in their cultural observances.
Or, let's say, how much cultural representation do the Chinese, who have worked on your railroads, have in American daily life, besides the fake, unhealthy chinese food they feed you?
Or let's move on to Europe, we know that the old name of New York was New Amsterdam. How is the Dutch culture represented in this city?

Come to terms with it. American culture is not a culture that is a representative of ALL the cultures that had a part in it's foundation, or emigrated there later on. As a matter of fact, I believe that only a single culture played a significant part in the culture that dominates you now: The British culture of the time when the USA gained it's independence. From then on, it advanced seperately. This is why you all speak English, friend. Even your holidays are remnants of these days only. Thanksgiving, for example. Christmas for example, is celebrated in America only because the pioneers were all Christians. Blacks, on the other hand, have seen it fit to invent their own holiday from thin air, due to the fact they lost touch with their roots completely, Kwanza.
How does it come, that you claim to be a rainbow of cultures, while only importing what appears to be the exact of what I said?
The american dream, friend. People emigrate to your country just for that. And for that, they leave their identities behind.

The cultural institution of slavery in contradiction to our founding documents expressing equality extending all the way into Jim Crow, would be one example of where an "American thing" doesn't instill me with pride. "Manifest Destiny" and the trail of tears being another "american thing" that doesn't instill me with pride. The history of coal in Appalachia, "The War on Drugs, the War on Terror". It's not like we have any shortage of bullshit this side of the pond.

All of these are rather recent events, really. I don't know how these are supposed to be a part of a culture or tradition. It's simply a part of a history, not something that defines you, or your culture.

. Your culture is grand in the same way that our culture is grand,

Your culture...Is non-existent, friend. It has no history beyond of what culture the founders of your country had. And even that one doesn't thrive in America at all.

The difference here, is that I am capable of acknowledging that not everything we have done or do is something to be proud of,

So am I, friend. I acknowledge that the Ottoman sultans were wrong in marrying foreigners, tainting their blood with the foreigners...
I acknowledge the wrongs of Rugila, who split the Hunnic lands amongst his sons..I acknowledge the wrongs of the Uyghurs and Oghuzes by revolting against the Göktürks, and therebye weakening our presence in our ancestral lands...I am not proud of these events. In fact, I take an example of them, to how we should not act in the future.

and especially not by virtue of some fairy tale about ethnicity and "noble blood"

It is you, who are telling fairy tales, friend. You simply cannot grasp the concepts that you mentioned above. Therefore you diss them. Although, I don't really expect you to acknowledge our people, nor the noble blood that runs through our veins.
It is enough if we acknowledge our own noble blood, and try to be worthy of it.
If we do as you say, and simply state that we're no different than the foreigner, what keeps us from accepting his rule? This way of thinking has brought countless nations under our rule, and has brough it out of our rule. They began in believing in themselves. It is time we begin to believe in ourselves, in the blood that runs through our veins, friend.

I can still be proud of those parts of our history that I feel were good examples of what it means to be american without pretending that the nasty shit didn't happen, or that simply because we have "american blood" we were somehow justified in doing these things.

I think it's especially hard for you to think these things over. The reason that good examples within American history exist is only due to the bad examples that you just counted. If you did not bring about total destruction upon the natives of the land, if you did not start out as a simple british colony that used slaves to grow sugarcane or whatever they asked you to do, how would you actually develop as a different country anyways?
I think that by that accord, you shouldn't be proud of the good examples aswell. But here, individualism is the only place where you can look for refuge. You'll tell yourself that your ancestors were probably not present in America while those things happened, which they might or might have not been, and that you are not responsible for their actions. If so, how can you ever be proud of their archivements, at all?

It may not be true of turkish culture, but it is true of you, individually, and that's all I was commenting upon, wasn't it?

We do not justify our actions by the merit of blood. We justify our actions by spilling blood, friend. Ours, or the enemy. If something that we claim is ours, it either has our own blood, or our enemies blood on it.
This is the price we pay for things we lay our eyes on.

Yes, americans don't have any history or blood "creating their past"..lol, idiotic. Doner are delicious btw, a worthy contribution.

Contribution...Does this mean that Döner is now a part of American culture?
This is the only contribution you're going to get from any culture. Food...
Mainly because you probably have no real, national dishes that go beyond the dishes of regional dishes, mostly attributed to various other ethnic groups, still not *exclusively american*.

I suppose you weren't aware that we have a political party of "tradition and family values"

I would rather have it that all parties advocate tradition and family values.
If one party is not keen on upholding them, the other party eventually will. If you don't like the fact that they are trying to preserve the traditional family values that are mostly standart around the world, maybe you should start preserving them aswell.

no worries, I guess you don't see that too often in movies

In old American movies, mayhap. But Dallas probably gave the world a very wrong, or a very accurate depiction of how things go in America.

I don't have an HD TV, I don't have a Wii, I am not rich or famous, and I don';t desire any of these things.

Come on. Don't lie. I think you're lying yourself if you tell me that you don't desire a luxurious lifestyle. You don't own these things, but how do you think of being happy without them?
And you criticize traditional family values, so I guess having a family won't make you happy either. And you do not hope for an afterlife, or do not have strong ideals, and morals, bound by these ideals either.
So what really keeps you alive, friend? Do you live merely for the sake of living? I think that there is something you desire from this life, but you won't tell me what, exactly.

I do own a home, I do own property, are you actually criticizing this

No, I'm not. I'm just rephrasing what I've learned from you so far. That America is a nation bent on personal happiness by wealth and belongings.

because you seem to be all about it as long as the blood pumping through someones veins is turkish..

I didn't understand this post quite well.

Seems to me that we're getting better about social welfare, not worse.

That's great, but it still doesn't change the way things are expected to work in your country. Just the fact that welfare is met with such hostility in your country shows me that it is even weird to think of America as a nation at all...How can someone deny his underprivilaged countrymen the right to health care? Obviously there is something that keeps him from feeling mercy towards that person.
You do seem to have mercy, but again, why? I guess this is where the humanist ideology I strongly oppose comes in handy. It instills a feeling of mercy where mercy wouldn't thrive at all.

I'm not sure why you think that the reasons my ancestors came here is lost on me, it's the entirety of what makes me "me".

I think it is nothing that makes you, friend. You're already culturally assimilated into whatever identity the amazing social engineering in America was able to force on you, and I think the same was true for your parents. They only knew that they had an ancestor who was German, and one who was an Irishman. Like yourself, we know who we are.
Unlike you, we cherish in who we are, while your ethnic identity was stripped from you the day when your ancestors had laid their first step on the American continent.

Family is as important to me and mine as it is to you and yours.

Well, at least we've found something that you consider to be important. My previous question has been answered than. You're a family man.

The only reason you assume otherwise is that you are an ethnocentric bigot that believes that I am somehow less this-or-that than yourself by virtue of ancestry. Go fuck yourself.

I believe otherwise due to the examples I've seen amongst your kind. And even then, I have no real knowledge on what degree family holds an importance for you.

I don't "despise the pure ones", I doubt that you are a "pure one", but this isn't my beef with you. My beef is that you're an ethnocentric bigot regardless of what story may lie in your blood.

Your doubts are not really my concern. I do not doubt your mixedness, as you already told me. But you doubt the purity of my blood. Be my guest. It's just the internet.
Besides, I already told you that I have every right to be an ethnocentrist, while the world itself is ethnocentric. Who am I to tell the world to change it's ways? Not that I would even if I could, as things would certainly take a turn for the worse, if the world wouldn't have been the way it is.
Your beef is not with me, your beef is with the world.
Your beef is, that you live in a country that is defiant of the natural way things work around the earth. The only thing that saves you from collapsing like the others of your kind throughout history, i.e. multiethnic empires, is that you are on an isolated continent, with a bunch of immigrants who feel no native connection to the land.

Where are you sourcing your info on this (rhetorical, your own ass)?

Why would I want those lands, where have I made any claim to them? WTF are you talking about?

Which info would you like me to source?
Besides, I'll refer you to your own post:

because you have a special set of rules for whatever your own ethnicity does or deems it's "rights".

And I said:

Yes, these are our rights by claims of history, blood and might.

It is crystal clear. I was issuing an open challenge to anyone whom would say that our rights are not simply deemed our rights by words, like you'd probably would want to believe.
I guess I've answered your questions.