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>American Values ... normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of American

by joshka 5y ago

>American Values ... normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? > 3. Low Tax The counties involved have median household incomes of 30-35K, making their tax burden $600-1100 total, a far cry from the average quoted, which is skewed right strongly by outliers (1%), which tend to be outside of the counties in this idea. > 5. Thriving Economy ... low unemployment Economy is a second order effect. How does having a low unemployment affect the number of jobs in the actual areas? Cause and effect are reversed in this claim. > 6. Representation: ... But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho I think the word is "governing", this is a little confused about the difference.

fyijbxmuyidudm 5y ago
> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? The majority of the world has never shared American values. American values have always been divorced from popularity. American values does not mean something that corresponds to the values held by people that live in America, necessarily, either. And perhaps quite simply, the political majority in Portland does not, in any capacity, share a moral system with the people of rural Oregon. Furthermore, Portlander's would not identify their value system as American, nor would they associate something called "American" with something good. The people of rural Oregon would.
troutwine 5y ago
> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? There's a very present "last bastion" framing in most of the right-wing media I track. It'll depend on exactly what the foundational beliefs of the community are that drive this framing -- John Birch society derivative folks arrive here via a different path than white supremacist survivalists and them a different path than evangelical fundamentalist Christians -- but it's common enough. It goes hand in hand with the notion that the US has fallen from the ideal set forth by the Founders and that only your in-group really gets it and has a hope of restoring it. Alex Jones is a good, mainstream-ish example. Dude's a Bircher and has spent decades coaching his audience to believe that Globalists are in league with Satan and intend to destroy humanity, if only they could get the US out of the way. Satan/The Globalists are _this_ close to succeeding. Once they do, Real American Values will disappear from the world, ushering in the post-human era. Jones preaches survivalism (sorta, feeding your neighbors to your daughters will give your daughters prion disease) to his audience and I hope you see how the two strains of thought would fester into a framing like you've called out.
- joshka 5y ago
  Thanks - as a non-American living there, this is pretty helpful to further my understanding. I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.
  - troutwine 5y ago
    > I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared. I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you asking about examples of people that have been de-radicalized?
    - joshka 5y ago
      To be clearer - given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society? I'm looking to understand perspectives opposite to my own here (as an atheist, non-American, liberal leaning person).
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        One common example is that religious cultures have a family culture that can propagates through time by having replacement levels of offspring. So far, to date, every secular and atheistic culture tends towards inverting the demographic pyramid by having about half the required number of offspring to stabilize their culture/viewpoint through time. This view assumes that there is any meaning to life, of course.
        joshka 5y ago
        And the counter example on that is that disproportionate taking of POC adult males from the community has a destabilization effect on that community / family.
      - troutwine 5y ago
madengr 5y ago
"What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?" The US Bill of Rights.
- iammisc 5y ago
  You're being downvoted, but you're correct. Values espoused by the founding documents of the current United States government are also properly called American, even if the majority of americans disagree. There's two possible meanings here that is causing people confusion.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    One might argue that technically (akshually?) the Bill of Rights goes against the founding documents of USA, amending them a few years later with values that were not in the original constitution to satisfy anti-federalists criticising the initial design (and its values).
  - hackyhacky 5y ago
    So you're saying that slavery is an American value? It is, after all, in the Constitution, although its popularity has waned of late.
samatman 5y ago
> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say that values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria. Note that the value that people who come to America and join the national experiment become American is one of those values! That's unusual, and needs to be pointed out: values aren't more American because they're held by old American stock, causality flows in the other direction. Not everything is a pure popularity contest. 51% of people supporting strict gun control (for the sake of argument) doesn't make that position more American, it just means more Americans happen to hold to it. That the Constitution makes altering its own text a matter of supermajority, both in passing and ratification, supports the idea that what it is to be American is not intended to simply shift in the winds on the strength of a bare majority. That all said, the bottom line is that these five counties feel that their values are better represented by the state government of Idaho than by that of Oregon. Federalism is one of those old American values I was droning on about earlier; I don't see why they shouldn't get the chance to secede from a state which isn't serving their needs, and join one which they think would.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jameshart 5y ago
  > values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria So, in an Oregon context, this would mean the values of the Chinook peoples?
  - vkou 5y ago
    Don't be silly, we're not talking about those values.
  - 5y ago
iammisc 5y ago
> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? There are two conflicting meanings of the word 'American' that is causing your confusion. American can refer to an individual who is American. It can also refer to things associated with the government currently controlling the land known as the United States of America. The land of the USA has -- in its time -- been held by several government. Firstly there is the current one. Then there is the previous one, the confederated states of America. Some parts of the USA have at times been held by smaller governments, for example, the Southern confederacy (not to be confused with the USA under the articles of confederation). Anyway, there are American values -- i.e., those held by individuals in America -- and then there are American values -- i.e., those in line with the constitution of the United States of America. The Oregonians clearly are using the second meaning. They believe that the State of Oregon has failed to uphold values inherent to the Constitution of the United States of America. For example, if tomorrow, 98% of Oregonians decided Monarchy were the best form of government, in this usage, we can unequivocally say that that is not American, because monarchy is fundamentally at odds with the constitution. Thus, even if -- in my hypothetical -- monarchy were an American value in the individual sense, it would not be in the second usage. As another unrelated example illustrating the difference in the usages, the majority of American Catholics believe contraceptives are okay. If you ask 'what is the opinion of the church on contraception', there are two correct answers. One can say 'Catholics believe contraception is okay' because most Catholics (in this country at least) agree. One can equally say 'Catholics believe contraception is not okay' because the institution of the Catholic church in this country has -- through official channels -- said it's not.

by joshka 5y ago

fyijbxmuyidudm 5y ago

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? The majority of the world has never shared American values. American values have always been divorced from popularity. American values does not mean something that corresponds to the values held by people that live in America, necessarily, either. And perhaps quite simply, the political majority in Portland does not, in any capacity, share a moral system with the people of rural Oregon. Furthermore, Portlander's would not identify their value system as American, nor would they associate something called "American" with something good. The people of rural Oregon would.

troutwine 5y ago

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? There's a very present "last bastion" framing in most of the right-wing media I track. It'll depend on exactly what the foundational beliefs of the community are that drive this framing -- John Birch society derivative folks arrive here via a different path than white supremacist survivalists and them a different path than evangelical fundamentalist Christians -- but it's common enough. It goes hand in hand with the notion that the US has fallen from the ideal set forth by the Founders and that only your in-group really gets it and has a hope of restoring it. Alex Jones is a good, mainstream-ish example. Dude's a Bircher and has spent decades coaching his audience to believe that Globalists are in league with Satan and intend to destroy humanity, if only they could get the US out of the way. Satan/The Globalists are _this_ close to succeeding. Once they do, Real American Values will disappear from the world, ushering in the post-human era. Jones preaches survivalism (sorta, feeding your neighbors to your daughters will give your daughters prion disease) to his audience and I hope you see how the two strains of thought would fester into a framing like you've called out.

joshka 5y ago
Thanks - as a non-American living there, this is pretty helpful to further my understanding. I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.
- troutwine 5y ago
  > I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared. I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you asking about examples of people that have been de-radicalized?
  - joshka 5y ago
    To be clearer - given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society? I'm looking to understand perspectives opposite to my own here (as an atheist, non-American, liberal leaning person).
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      One common example is that religious cultures have a family culture that can propagates through time by having replacement levels of offspring. So far, to date, every secular and atheistic culture tends towards inverting the demographic pyramid by having about half the required number of offspring to stabilize their culture/viewpoint through time. This view assumes that there is any meaning to life, of course.
      - joshka 5y ago
        And the counter example on that is that disproportionate taking of POC adult males from the community has a destabilization effect on that community / family.
    - troutwine 5y ago

madengr 5y ago

"What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?" The US Bill of Rights.

iammisc 5y ago
You're being downvoted, but you're correct. Values espoused by the founding documents of the current United States government are also properly called American, even if the majority of americans disagree. There's two possible meanings here that is causing people confusion.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  One might argue that technically (akshually?) the Bill of Rights goes against the founding documents of USA, amending them a few years later with values that were not in the original constitution to satisfy anti-federalists criticising the initial design (and its values).
- hackyhacky 5y ago
  So you're saying that slavery is an American value? It is, after all, in the Constitution, although its popularity has waned of late.

samatman 5y ago

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say that values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria. Note that the value that people who come to America and join the national experiment become American is one of those values! That's unusual, and needs to be pointed out: values aren't more American because they're held by old American stock, causality flows in the other direction. Not everything is a pure popularity contest. 51% of people supporting strict gun control (for the sake of argument) doesn't make that position more American, it just means more Americans happen to hold to it. That the Constitution makes altering its own text a matter of supermajority, both in passing and ratification, supports the idea that what it is to be American is not intended to simply shift in the winds on the strength of a bare majority. That all said, the bottom line is that these five counties feel that their values are better represented by the state government of Idaho than by that of Oregon. Federalism is one of those old American values I was droning on about earlier; I don't see why they shouldn't get the chance to secede from a state which isn't serving their needs, and join one which they think would.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jameshart 5y ago
> values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria So, in an Oregon context, this would mean the values of the Chinook peoples?
- vkou 5y ago
  Don't be silly, we're not talking about those values.
- 5y ago

iammisc 5y ago

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? There are two conflicting meanings of the word 'American' that is causing your confusion. American can refer to an individual who is American. It can also refer to things associated with the government currently controlling the land known as the United States of America. The land of the USA has -- in its time -- been held by several government. Firstly there is the current one. Then there is the previous one, the confederated states of America. Some parts of the USA have at times been held by smaller governments, for example, the Southern confederacy (not to be confused with the USA under the articles of confederation). Anyway, there are American values -- i.e., those held by individuals in America -- and then there are American values -- i.e., those in line with the constitution of the United States of America. The Oregonians clearly are using the second meaning. They believe that the State of Oregon has failed to uphold values inherent to the Constitution of the United States of America. For example, if tomorrow, 98% of Oregonians decided Monarchy were the best form of government, in this usage, we can unequivocally say that that is not American, because monarchy is fundamentally at odds with the constitution. Thus, even if -- in my hypothetical -- monarchy were an American value in the individual sense, it would not be in the second usage. As another unrelated example illustrating the difference in the usages, the majority of American Catholics believe contraceptives are okay. If you ask 'what is the opinion of the church on contraception', there are two correct answers. One can say 'Catholics believe contraception is okay' because most Catholics (in this country at least) agree. One can equally say 'Catholics believe contraception is not okay' because the institution of the Catholic church in this country has -- through official channels -- said it's not.