Is Melting Pot a Misnomer?

What 69 years of the socialist melting pot looks like.

The Coca-Cola Superbowl commercial this year cranked up a lot of conservatives who claim that it is divisive and some sort of evil liberal plot to promote communism through soft drink commercials.

I didn't get that from it at all. I saw it as an affirmation of America as the melting pot. Remember, the song returned to English at the end as all those languages once again became melded into one. The English language and especially American English is the sum of many languages.

Don't believe me?  Sit down to supper.  Are you having jambalaya, barbecue, burritos or pizza?  Maybe you'll schlep down to the deli for a bagel. You could sit out on the patio and play your banjo, eat a banana or dip some tortilla chips in guacamole made with fresh avocado. Maybe eat a frankfurter or polish sausage. English borrows its vocabulary from the best of every other language there is. I think what we should see from this commercial is not that people come to this country speaking other languages, but that they all contribute to the beauty that is the American language.

Coke's behind-the-scenes video points out that, though we come from many countries with many different languages, we become one country out of all that. Rather than seeing our differences in that brief bit of film, why is it that we are not seeing the things that make us one.

It's little wonder we are called racists so often. There are racists among us as conservatives, though by no means are all racists conservatives. The liberal racism, anti-semitism and cultural paternalism is no lest pernicious.  It is time that Christians and conservatives seize the narrative and interpretation of things like this Coke commercial.  While it may be true that liberals try to make a point and use things like this to damn conservatism as a racist philosophy, it does not follow that these things are inherently racist in and of themselves.

Diversity is not a bad thing. If we as conservatives embraced diversity and made it an essential part of our own narrative, we would defang those leftists who treat people from diverse backgrounds as "groups".  As a conservative, I embrace our differences and believe we should lift up people of all backgrounds. We should point out what we have gained from every single culture we have absorbed into the American stew. I think melting pot isn't a particularly good metaphor.  A melting part makes a homogeneous liquid of everything put into it - everything the same everywhere.  That's a Communist idea.

The reason I put a picture of Moscow at the top of the page is to show what happens when Marxist socialism makes everything "fair" for all people. It created a melting pot that turned the very city of Moscow, once a colorful vibrant city into a bland, smoky gray and dull misery. We do not want that. Free market capitalism doesn't do that. America has never done that before except in places like Detroit where the socialist, central-planning experiment has been conducted with vigor. The consequences are obvious to anyone who looks hard at the historical evidence.

Freedom of opportunity, freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the right to self-defense have allowed us to become a vast stew (note I did NOT say melting pot). We have chunks of this and that and flavors that mingle throughout the broth. We are a banana split, not a milkshake. We are a five course meal, not a smoothie. The conservative ideal that raises the right of the individual human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over everything else can be seen in that Coke commercial.

Let us not let the liberality of the framers of the Constitution be relabeled again. What was liberal in 1776 is now the ideals of those labeled "conservative".  We have seen a shift over 200 years of the opposition as well.  Those who supported government by the elite, central planning and rule by the powerful were once conservatives and sided with the British during the revolution. These same elitist; the same people who once defended the divine rights of kings have simply redefined the nobility as the hereditary smart people. They have appropriated Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to justify the rule of the nation's elite families that for generation after generation attended Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton and went on to become senators, congressmen and presidents.

They have toyed with idea of eugenics to weed out the lower classes, then with Marxism as a tool to pacify the ignorant masses so they would not revolt again as they did in 1776 and endanger the preeminence of the new nobility that the liberal chattering class have fancied themselves to be. They've used Planned Parenthood as a tool to reduce the number of black people and poor people in America through the promotion of abortion generating a death toll of unborn children of more than 57 million. They've used a welfare system that's rigged to discourage the poor from rising above their station where they might make trouble.

They've pounded the middle class with taxation and regulation because the middle class make a disproportionate amount of trouble for our would-be overlords. The don't want to ever see the middle class elect another Reagan as president - someone who threatens change that would derail the steady march of socialism and give hope to the American people again. So they substitute the hope of bread and circuses today for the hope of a better future tomorrow. For the restoration of traditional American values, they substitute change that undermines our lively free-market capitalist economy and turns it into a dismal, over-regulated gradual and seemingly inevitable slide toward socialism.

These are not toy boats. These are full-sized fishing boats.
The Soviet government managed to dry up an entire sea.
That's what a centrally-planned economy will do for you.
Amazingly, we do not seem to be able to learn from this.

Sometimes our fans are our worst enemies where American bedrock conservatism is concerned. The racists, the conspiracy theorists, the paranoid and the ignorant cling to our flanks and weigh us down. We should not fear to shake them off by speaking truth to them. We need only one rule to give us the power to take back our society. It is a golden one and if we practiced that one rule above all others, we would be irresistible. We could take back our country; put it back on the right track.

Sadly, I think it may take the Second Coming to accomplish that. I am not discouraged by this. On the contrary, the more people who come to understand and embrace, freedom, diversity, opportunity and honor, the more fun heaven and the New Earth will be.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King © 2014

Oh, Dear, They Mentioned the "G" Word on the TV.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

I must admit I missed the Super Bowl this year.  I'm kind of like "Are the Cowboys in it?"   If the answer is no, I go chop wood or do something useful.  Dodge, however, had this great commercial, thought that evidently sparked a lot of conversation.  The commercial brings back the inimitable Paul Harvey's tribute to farmers. It's sweet and upbeat and reverent.

So naturally a lot of people were unhappy with it.  In the weeks following it's debut during America's signature sporting event, we were treated to weak-kneed attempts to discredit the commercial's message.  The LA Time's smug piece proclaimed "Here's the Rest of the Story."  I don't think "story" means what they think it means.  The Huffing and Puffington Post, of course, can always be counted upon to put a negative spin on the commercial, pointing out all the evil corporations and laws that make life hard for farmers around the world.

Odd, but they never seem to connect the idea that most of those starving farmers living in near slavery are living in leftist countries like China and Venezuela.  They never seem to remember that most of the farm regulations and systems that hamper farmers and support corporate greed in agri-business were written on their watch when they had control of both the House and Senate and often even the Presidency. 

They miss the point that farmers in a free America can go to the Supreme Court for redress of grievances against those evil corporations as farmer Vernon Bowman is doing against Monsanto. 

Finally the atheists among us haven't let the mention of God in public go uncriticized either.  Twitter blew up after the commercial with Tweets both pro and con in the millions.  Where the two intersected, heated disputes broke out like wildfires between obviously right and left wing commentators. 


It's sad really.  I don't even like Dodge trucks (unfortunate history with Chrysler projects), but I did appreciate the commercial.  If Chevrolet wants to do a commercial called "Allah made a Quickie-Mart Clerk", I really do have no problem with that either.  I'm sorry if that sounded anti-Muslim, it's not. I really admire the way immigrants to this country have stepped in wherever they could and made homes and fortunes doing whatever worked for them.  I wish them all well.

I know we have moved away from the family farm and some corporate abuses have occurred.  It cannot be helped that agriculture is changing.  We have a huge and growing population and we have to find ways to produce as much food that is as healthy as possible.  We will make some mistakes along the way. It was the same way when the economy went from the industrial age to the information age, when the agricultural economy that dominated America moved to the industrial age and all the way back through the Rennaisance, the iron age, bronze and stone ages.  Every shift has required us to find a new balance.

Farmers, however their farms are structured, are hard-working people who are under-appreciated.  Good for Dodge for preparing and paying for this very public tribute for American farmers.

And shame on all of you gripey little girls who have nothing better than to complain about every good and decent thing that comes along.  Get over yourselves for heaven's sake.

...or for your own sake if you don't buy the whole "God" thing.  That much negativity really chews up your guts and gives you diseases.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King