> [Platt] > No -- a homage to individual rights -- of life, liberty and the > pursuit of happiness -- not provided by culture, but endowed by the > Creator. > > [Arlo] > "There is no "self-evidence" in European history that all men are > created equal. There's no nation in Europe that doesn't trace its > history to a time when it was "self-evident" that all men are created > unequal. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given credit for > this doctrine, certainly didn't get it from the history of Europe or > Asia or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World upon > Europe and from contemplation of one particular kind of individual > who lived in the New World, the person he called the "Noble Savage."
What's your point? That the self-evident truths in the Declaration were held first by American Indians? > Multiculturalism. > > "The Indians were the originators of the American style of life. The > American personality is a mixture of European and Indian values." (LILA) > Multiculturalism. > > As for "not provided by culture", your merely repeating the same > mistake Pirsig warns against. "...in the historic process of freeing > itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to > invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own > benefit. Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the > objective world, never from the social world. The world of objects > imposes itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever." > (LILA) > > "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They > originate out of society" (LILA) > > "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived." > (LILA) None of the above has anything to do with multiculturalism -- the doctrine that no culture is better than any other, past or present, especially American culture. > These rights are most certainly culturally-derived, in this case from > the culture of the American Indian. > > Not "endowed by the Creator" but emergent from culture. Not from God, from > us. Yes, precisely the view of a collectivist. Thanks for confirming your position. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
