Lots of things disappeared around Christianity -- the Dionysos cult and all the Roman/Greek worship, the druids, the Asa religion, Catharism, etc, etc.
The Christians stopped supporting that type of thing after they lost most of their worldly power.
Now it is just the rest of the murderous and intolerant religions and ideologies left...
Christians are still calling, regularly, for the blood of their enemies. Don't kid yourself that there aren't Christians who believe the society and its powers that they created shouldn't be used to perpetuate their religion. States all over the world have to deal with this extremism..
News to me, despite that I think Dawkins is soft on religion. :-)
Which Christians -- and where -- are calling for the blood of their enemy because of Christianity?
How many are killed? Google tells me it was eight people in total regarding abortion clinics in the US. Over decades.
(Edit: I can tell you that the main Swedish church refuses to criticise the people oppressing, murdering and expelling Christians from Gaza and Egypt. They criticize Israel literally thousands of times more. This seems to be more because they were pirated by left wing extremists than by nazi influence.)
Those are rounding errors if you compare with the 30 year war, the Huguenots or what Cromwell did on Ireland...
Or that the total non Muslim population is being forced out of the Middle East right now!
The Central African Republic was revenge for what a Muslim militia did -- "Those evil groups are taking revenge in the same way we did to them!" Seriously... that is the worst you have? :-)
From your own article: "... the former Muslim rebels, known as Seleka, who carried out deadly attacks on Christians after they grabbed power in March, prompting the birth of Christian militias called the anti-balaka, or “anti-machete” in the local Sango language. The armed vigilantes have used the power vacuum to step up assaults on Muslims."
And civil wars have always been incredibly horrible and dirty. The Balkans were also more ethnic than anything else -- and not exactly one sided either. :-(
According to Wikipedia, that Indian group had less than a thousand members. In total. That is a joke, compared to European history. (Or what goes on in Pakistan and Afghanistan today, for that matter. Check percentage Hindu of the population of Pakistan and Bangladesh over the last 50 years; it is not only the Middle East.)
I'm confused what point you think you are making? Religion = bad, yes I agree. Some magical quality of Christianity makes it better somehow? I disagree.
Sorry, being a day late -- the point I'm trying to make is that we pulled the claws and fangs out of our priests in the west. It was not a nice experience, but now it is done.
Globally, at least the Catholics are heavily influenced by the West, too.
We just need to guard against a recurrence of the bad old days and the Islamists.
My point, to put it another way, isn't that Christianity is nice -- my point is that those clowns are relatively harmless today, compared to history and the Islamists.
And you are incorrect. There are insane Christians who want more than ever to usher in the 'new era of Christ' by bringing their Armageddon down upon us all. Those people should not be part of the US Military-Industrial complex, nor should these extremists be allowed access to power.
There are crazies of all religions. But to go from that to your claims about US (I assume?) need really good references.
I'd say the Obama time contradicts your claims.
The intervention in Syria for example, was just symbolical -- despite systematic torture, bombing of civilians and repeated chemical attacks that resulted in hundreds of thousands dead.
The problem wasn't exactly too much spoiling for trouble...
As I noted above, 8 dead in total over decades from the abortion clinic violence. That is a slow Tuesday morning in the muslim world. :-) :-(
This has always been puzzling to me. Is it not just more-or-less a linguistic thing? In the Anglosphere, "America" refers to the US. Nothing about it is malicious or in contempt of Mexico or any other states in the Western Hemisphere, that's just how the terminology evolved.
What is a continent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent points out that different countries have different models. "France and its former colonies, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Latin America, and Greece" use a 6-continent model, where "America" is both North and South America.
> Tanto América del Norte como Norteamérica son designaciones correctas del subcontinente americano que engloba el conjunto de países situados al norte de México y al propio México.
> [Both 'America of the North' and 'North America' are correct designations of the American subcontinent which encompasses the union of the countries north of Mexico and Mexico itself.]
The second definition points out that in Spanish, "North America" is often used as a synonym for the US, with the lovely example:
> En América, solamente la República Argentina tiene organizados sus cultivos usando tecnología moderna, exceptuando Canadá y Norteamérica
> [In America, only the Argentine Republic has organized their crops using modern technology, except Canada and North America]
If you grew up learning that your country was part of America-the-continent, then I can easily see why it's irritating to have others say that it isn't.
I am wary about justifying something with "Just how the terminology evolved". Sometimes language evolves for malicious purposes, or to enforce certain cultural prejudices. Look at recent HN discussions on how "expat" is a high status word for "temporary guest worker from a rich country", or how "jaywalker" was invented to castigate pedestrians who don't give way to drivers.
> Nothing about it is malicious or in contempt of Mexico or any other states in the Western Hemisphere
It is malicious, but so ingrained into the psyche that the malice is forgotten by those into whom it was perpetuated. It is saying that the rest of the continent isn't American, somehow, that when you talk about American dreams and American ideals and the promise of freedom that America once meant to Europeans, you are definitely not extending those promises, dreams, and aspirations to the rest of America. Even the Lebanese diaspora that arrived in Mexico and Colombia (Salma Hayek, Shakira Mebarak, Carlos Slim, Demian Bíchir) were travellers aiming for America and her promises.
"America" is a very loaded term, even when used to refer to the United States. People use it differently. United States is more formal, America more aspirational. Well, the rest of America also has these aspirations. Like Morelos wrote, "That prohibit slavery forever, as the distinction of caste, being all equal and only vice and virtue distinguish an American from the other."
None of that changes the fact that, in English, "America" typically denotes the US and not the Western Hemisphere as a whole. You're splitting hairs over people using a word differently in English than they do in Spanish.
But you can't forget where the meaning comes from. I'm sure lots of people use "nigger", confederate flags, or "banana republic" without any malice too, but it doesn't mean that the people who hear it don't hear the malice.
It's not about English vs Spanish. It's not just a false cognate like "compromise" vs "compromiso" or "preservative" vs "preservativo". It's a term loaded with political meaning. It's about US vs America. Sure, the US is powerful and has managed to convince most of the world, even the parts that don't speak English, that the US is the only America worth talking about. On the other hand, Canada isn't entirely happy about not being America either:
You don't get it. Singular "America" in its common usage in English to refer to the US is absolutely not a politically loaded term, at least not in the sense that you are saying. Your assertion to the contrary because you were taught differently in a non-Anglophone country does not change that. Language cannot be divorced from culture.
It is politically loaded to many people who hear it. Testament to the fact: "Murica" is used as a joke word to refer to things such as giant hot dogs, big guns, or invading other countries. Further testament to the fact: the song America the Beautiful, the saying "God bless America", America, land of the free.
Using "United States" in any of these would sound awkward and wrong, right? "United States the beautiful"? That is because "America" is overwhelmingly used with positive connotations, but only for the US, and that is what I'm protesting. The rest of America also wants these positive connotations, but instead we get not-quite-America such as Latin America, South America, or some other-adjective-America.
"America" is the only word in "the United States of America" that is sufficiently unique to identify which country you're talking about. Mexico is "the United Mexican States", so there's a large overlap. Canada's just Canada.
So being pedantically technically-correct, people saying "the United States" or just "the States" are using a name that could be confused for Mexico in theory in some place or time.
> So being pedantically technically-correct, people saying "the United States" or just "the States" are using a name that could be confused for Mexico in theory in some place or time.
In theory, but not in practice. I mean, even inlos Estados Unidos Mexicanos [0], the phrase Estados Unidos without qualification invariably and without confusion refers to the USA, and the things and people belonging to their northern neighbor are described with the adjective "estadounidense".
[0] Which, AFAIK, no one ever actually refers to as such in conversation, and there have even been recent proposals to change the official name to simply México.
So? In the English-speaking world "America" almost never means "North and South America".
I'm not even a native English speaker or US resident and even I would interpret "America" to mean "USA" if it appeared like that in the headline. "Americas" makes it completely unambiguous to all audiences, so why not use it?
As a European in south America, I have noticed that no one from the US says "America" when asked where they are from, they will say the state mostly or the US.
Latin Americans will use America/Americas interchanagebly
Europeans aremost likely to refer to the US as "america" one
The majority of results either specifically mention North/South America by name or use "America" to refer to the US.
Additionally there are of course various results for US-based or US-centric organisations with "America" as part of their name: Bank of America, American Airlines and of course "Au Pair in America" (which offers au pair jobs in the US).
So while someone from the US may say they're "from the US" rather than "from America", it seems like most English speakers outside the Americas mean the US when they say "America" with no qualifier.
Heck, even Wikipedia acknowledges this: "However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_the_Americas)
In other words: if you want to explicitly talk about the entire geographical area of both North and South America, just say "Americas" so you don't confuse anyone (even if it may hurt some people's feelings by making it apparent that "America" is ambiguous).
New Yorker is ambiguous. Could be someone from specifically NYC or someone from Buffalo. South African can be ambiguous. There are lots of cases of this. The official name for Mexico is the united states of Mexico but only the last part is used in daily usage. Same with united states of America. Or the united Arab emirates.
It's common and no big deal. People who argue the case are arguing cross linguistically to make some weird point about their language use and how they expect English to follow similar rules.
It's doubly funny when Mexicans and other latin americans use the term North Americans to mean people from either the US and Canada and not so much Mexico, even if mexico is in the continent of North America, geographically.
The placement of the apostrophe is correct and crucial. "America's" would mean "from the United States of America" while "Americas'" means "from North or South America". The Mayan calendar discussed is from what is now Mexico. So it is Americas' but not America's.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] threadhttp://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=1896
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa#Suppression_of_...
The Christians stopped supporting that type of thing after they lost most of their worldly power.
Now it is just the rest of the murderous and intolerant religions and ideologies left...
Which Christians -- and where -- are calling for the blood of their enemy because of Christianity?
How many are killed? Google tells me it was eight people in total regarding abortion clinics in the US. Over decades.
(Edit: I can tell you that the main Swedish church refuses to criticise the people oppressing, murdering and expelling Christians from Gaza and Egypt. They criticize Israel literally thousands of times more. This seems to be more because they were pirated by left wing extremists than by nazi influence.)
We could talk about the Balkans wars too if you'd like. Or the NLFT in India. Sadly I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
Or that the total non Muslim population is being forced out of the Middle East right now!
The Central African Republic was revenge for what a Muslim militia did -- "Those evil groups are taking revenge in the same way we did to them!" Seriously... that is the worst you have? :-)
From your own article: "... the former Muslim rebels, known as Seleka, who carried out deadly attacks on Christians after they grabbed power in March, prompting the birth of Christian militias called the anti-balaka, or “anti-machete” in the local Sango language. The armed vigilantes have used the power vacuum to step up assaults on Muslims."
And civil wars have always been incredibly horrible and dirty. The Balkans were also more ethnic than anything else -- and not exactly one sided either. :-(
According to Wikipedia, that Indian group had less than a thousand members. In total. That is a joke, compared to European history. (Or what goes on in Pakistan and Afghanistan today, for that matter. Check percentage Hindu of the population of Pakistan and Bangladesh over the last 50 years; it is not only the Middle East.)
Globally, at least the Catholics are heavily influenced by the West, too.
We just need to guard against a recurrence of the bad old days and the Islamists.
My point, to put it another way, isn't that Christianity is nice -- my point is that those clowns are relatively harmless today, compared to history and the Islamists.
However, they are in power today.
I'd say the Obama time contradicts your claims.
The intervention in Syria for example, was just symbolical -- despite systematic torture, bombing of civilians and repeated chemical attacks that resulted in hundreds of thousands dead.
The problem wasn't exactly too much spoiling for trouble...
As I noted above, 8 dead in total over decades from the abortion clinic violence. That is a slow Tuesday morning in the muslim world. :-) :-(
The whole America-means-US thing didn't happen until well into the 19th century.
http://jordi.platinum.linux.pl/piccies/afirmativo.png
That WP page points to http://lema.rae.es/dpd/?key=norteamerica , which says:
> Tanto América del Norte como Norteamérica son designaciones correctas del subcontinente americano que engloba el conjunto de países situados al norte de México y al propio México.
> [Both 'America of the North' and 'North America' are correct designations of the American subcontinent which encompasses the union of the countries north of Mexico and Mexico itself.]
The second definition points out that in Spanish, "North America" is often used as a synonym for the US, with the lovely example:
> En América, solamente la República Argentina tiene organizados sus cultivos usando tecnología moderna, exceptuando Canadá y Norteamérica
> [In America, only the Argentine Republic has organized their crops using modern technology, except Canada and North America]
If you grew up learning that your country was part of America-the-continent, then I can easily see why it's irritating to have others say that it isn't.
I am wary about justifying something with "Just how the terminology evolved". Sometimes language evolves for malicious purposes, or to enforce certain cultural prejudices. Look at recent HN discussions on how "expat" is a high status word for "temporary guest worker from a rich country", or how "jaywalker" was invented to castigate pedestrians who don't give way to drivers.
It is malicious, but so ingrained into the psyche that the malice is forgotten by those into whom it was perpetuated. It is saying that the rest of the continent isn't American, somehow, that when you talk about American dreams and American ideals and the promise of freedom that America once meant to Europeans, you are definitely not extending those promises, dreams, and aspirations to the rest of America. Even the Lebanese diaspora that arrived in Mexico and Colombia (Salma Hayek, Shakira Mebarak, Carlos Slim, Demian Bíchir) were travellers aiming for America and her promises.
"America" is a very loaded term, even when used to refer to the United States. People use it differently. United States is more formal, America more aspirational. Well, the rest of America also has these aspirations. Like Morelos wrote, "That prohibit slavery forever, as the distinction of caste, being all equal and only vice and virtue distinguish an American from the other."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimientos_de_la_Naci%C3%B3n
A whole immense garden, this is America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3u7qU_09w
It's not about English vs Spanish. It's not just a false cognate like "compromise" vs "compromiso" or "preservative" vs "preservativo". It's a term loaded with political meaning. It's about US vs America. Sure, the US is powerful and has managed to convince most of the world, even the parts that don't speak English, that the US is the only America worth talking about. On the other hand, Canada isn't entirely happy about not being America either:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g57XTYgLE
Using "United States" in any of these would sound awkward and wrong, right? "United States the beautiful"? That is because "America" is overwhelmingly used with positive connotations, but only for the US, and that is what I'm protesting. The rest of America also wants these positive connotations, but instead we get not-quite-America such as Latin America, South America, or some other-adjective-America.
Now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
You're essentially arguing that it's a bad thing that this outdated nationalistic concept is not widely attributed to non-US states in the Americas.
So being pedantically technically-correct, people saying "the United States" or just "the States" are using a name that could be confused for Mexico in theory in some place or time.
In theory, but not in practice. I mean, even in los Estados Unidos Mexicanos [0], the phrase Estados Unidos without qualification invariably and without confusion refers to the USA, and the things and people belonging to their northern neighbor are described with the adjective "estadounidense".
[0] Which, AFAIK, no one ever actually refers to as such in conversation, and there have even been recent proposals to change the official name to simply México.
Yes, thank you, that was the joke. Apparently far too subtle.
I'm not even a native English speaker or US resident and even I would interpret "America" to mean "USA" if it appeared like that in the headline. "Americas" makes it completely unambiguous to all audiences, so why not use it?
Latin Americans will use America/Americas interchanagebly
Europeans aremost likely to refer to the US as "america" one
There is no benefit in changing it from "Americas", quite to the contrary: it will confuse readers who equate "America" with "USA".
As you're making it sound as if "America = USA" is a European thing, here are some English-language Google results:
South Africa: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=america+site%3Aza
Australia: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=america+site%3Aau
New Zealand: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=america+site%3Anz
The majority of results either specifically mention North/South America by name or use "America" to refer to the US.
Additionally there are of course various results for US-based or US-centric organisations with "America" as part of their name: Bank of America, American Airlines and of course "Au Pair in America" (which offers au pair jobs in the US).
So while someone from the US may say they're "from the US" rather than "from America", it seems like most English speakers outside the Americas mean the US when they say "America" with no qualifier.
Heck, even Wikipedia acknowledges this: "However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_the_Americas)
In other words: if you want to explicitly talk about the entire geographical area of both North and South America, just say "Americas" so you don't confuse anyone (even if it may hurt some people's feelings by making it apparent that "America" is ambiguous).
It's common and no big deal. People who argue the case are arguing cross linguistically to make some weird point about their language use and how they expect English to follow similar rules.
No, the official English name (and the most accurate translation of the official Spanish name) is United Mexican States.
Its Estados Unidos Mexicanos, not Estados Unidos de México.