Quote of the Day: America

“People say America is like 50 countries in a trench coat… eh… It is more like 200 countries bouncing on a trampoline. – Jack Wylder

This is excerpted from an essay available on Larry Correia’s webpage. (Click on the link and read the whole thing.  It is worth it.) In it, the author asserts the US is made up of a collage of intermixed but different cultures and identities. It is true and part of the genius of America. There are so many choices that everyone can find some place they fit in.

Certainly it was true with me and with my late wife Janet. We both grew up in Michigan, but never quite fit in. After college, we moved from Michigan to Texas. Suddenly it felt like we had come home. Being Texans fit us, and we never left. If we had stayed in Michigan, I suspect we would have lived on, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and never quite fitting in.

Part of the reason this collage works is because historically Americans have been tolerant of the other neighboring cultures. This is not to say there has not been friction,  sometimes bad enough to break out in violence.  Individual groups have varying levels of prejudice and intolerance, but it is generally contained.

Examples of generations-long sectarian violence such as those seen between the Irish Catholics and Protestants are diminishingly rare in America. Yes, one group will speak disparagingly of another. Yet it rarely went beyond words. At the bottom, folks were willing to mind their own business, as long as the other group reciprocated. If you could not mind your own business, you moved on to someplace else, where you could live your life as you wished.

This tolerance for other groups, the willingness to let them go their way and hold their own opinions seems to be fraying in the last few years. A meme that well illustrates this trend has one person saying to another “You’re entitled to your opinion,” and the other person insisting, “Yes, but my opinions have to come out of your mouth.”

This is the heart of cancel culture.  It is the belief that everyone has to think the same, be the same, and hold the same beliefs and goals.  It forces everyone to fit the same procrustean bed of thought. It is profoundly Un-American, striking at one of the country’s biggest strengths: diversity of opinion and the willingness to behave independently.