U.S. Being Invaded Slowly from the South

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

[quote]Rohnyn wrote:
So we’re alienating the Latinos here, but to me it seems the Jews and Catholics verily fail said oath. Loyalty the Pope is Loyalty to a potentate; I’ve grown up Catholic and I can tell you that most practicing Catholics I know say “the United States is temporal, nations rise and they fall. The Church is eternal - of couse I will always in the end side with the Church.” This would refer specifically to the Pope being their true figure of authority and not the President.

Jews and Israel, Jews and Israel - I don’t think I need to explain that one. Especially considering they are so loyal to the their Jewishness over their American natinality, that they swarm and infiltrate the gov’t to further their Zionist agenda en contra to the interests of all other citizens.

Let’s deal with unilaterally and not just isolate these Latinos, who by and large when taking on citizenship probably assimilate far better than you’re making it out to be.
[/quote]

Heh, no wonder some Baptist conspiracy theorists think that the Vatican is out to destroy the US. To me, its more stupidity than any kind of conspiracy. Too bad you’re such a moron on immigration policy since your foreign policy views seem in line with reality. That’s the problem with both the left and right though. Their both full of shit on something. Try thinking for yourself here and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.[/quote]

It may be reading comprehension failure on my part, but I have the impression that Rohnyn grew up Catholic, but no longer practices.

He previously wrote: “I have been Catholic longer than I haven’t…”

While ‘have been’ is present perfect and would indicate an ongoing condition, he writes later that he grew up Catholic. This indicated to me that the previous statement was a common grammatical error.

I then searched some posts to see if he was presently Catholic and found that Rohnyn describes his beliefs as agnostic/deist.

42

“London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady.”

When was that song written?

What you fear, and it is fear we are talking about, is the fear of death. The only way to completely eliminate this fear is to die.

So be nice to the Mexicans; they are strangers in a strange land!

43

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:
For those of you so impolite as to insult that poster’s parents:

First: Shame on you. What a real lack of class.[/quote]

Agreed.

[quote] Secondly, if you believe that one can be just as fluent in English regardless of whether or not they are “bilingual,” you are incorrect. Sure one can become pretty damned “truly bilingual,” but there is always some amount of spillover between languages, preventing the speaker from realizing his ultimate potential in EITHER language.

You may say the spillover is minimal, which is fair enough. But to deny that it is there is incorrect. If that poster’s parents wanted their son to be as skilled at English as he possibly he could, they did the right thing.

I’m sure the “truly bilingual” posters here will disagree, but all one need do is read their posts closely to see what I’m describing. [/quote]

Their “ultimate potential”? I’m not sure I fully understand what you are getting at here. Are you arguing that growing up with two languages prevents one from fully understanding either? I’ve not seen that. What I have seen is that most bi-lingual speakers have a “first language” despite being bi-lingual. This language is usually the “language of education” as it were.

I know a few people who are Japanese-Americans who grew up in the US with a few years in Japan growing up, they were educated in English and it shows, sometimes even I was able to correct some Japanese despite their being FAR more fluent and literate than I.

I have a friend who grew up in PR speaking Spanish. He went to Uni with me in the US. Sure, he still makes some mistakes here and there when speaking in English. But what I found interesting is he said that when he does Engineering projects in Spanish, he sometimes doesn’t know the Spanish word, because his engineering education was in English. Is he an example of the people you are talking about?

I guess, I simply disagree if you are arguing that learning a second language growing up prevents one from “mastering” their “other” language. From my experience with bilingual people, most people tend to have a “first language.” Further, talk of “ultimate potential” seems silly to me in general. There seems to be a lot more “potential” for someone who can “pass” in two societies, even if they make a mistake here or there in their grammar. I guess my final point is that even if parents choose English over another, that is no guarantee of any sort of “ultimate potential.” I know plenty of “English only” speakers who, for example, don’t speak English as well as the people I described above.

But I am perhaps missing your point. As always, I’ve enjoyed your and Cortes’ posts.
[/quote]

Raising my 2 and a half year old son as a bilingual kid, I think I get what Chushin is alluding to, and it is not your fault at all for not catching this (and hell I may be understanding him wrong).

I’ll demonstrate by personal example.

My son is getting his Japanese from his mother and basically every other person he comes into contact with all day, every day. He is getting his English from…me. At this point in his development, while there are secondary sources of education that are also quite influential such as TV, educational toys, my and my wife’s iPhone and my iPad (the independent use of both of which he has been highly proficient in since just after his first birthday, no kidding!), among others, I believe that kids this age get most of their language directly from the people they interact with.

A quick side point that will lead into my greater point: Now, since I am running a business and I have a lot of other things going, his time around other people overall (primarily his mother and Japanese grandparents) is necessarily limited. Unsurprisingly, at this point he tends to speak a lot more Japanese than he does English, though he appears to understand the two languages equally. He is actually quite amazing in that he will be speaking with me, then turn to any other Japanese person to include them in the conversation and he will automatically and flawlessly switch to using Japanese. We neither encourage nor discourage this. It is something he just does (that I continually find incredibly cool).

Now, whether or not he is actually getting “filled up” and there is a trade-off occurring in the fulfillment of his language potential in either language at this point, it does appear that by the time kids reach basic language proficiency around 5 years or so, this issue, if it exists, appears to clear up and balance out by whatever unknown mechanism, and most kids raised in the manner my son is will have achieved language proficiency in both languages pretty much indistinguishable from that of a native speaker of either of the two languages he speaks.

You know what? I’m gonna break this up into two posts. I can’t see my cursor anymore and it’s driving me insane.

44

NOW. (finally)

The important part comes from this point onward. Think about this: Most people reach the limit of their language ability (not potential) around their late teens to mid 20’s or so. I would guess because of university studies in the later cases. However, this says nothing of their ultimate POTENTIAL. Language is pretty much unlimited, as I’m sure you know. And after a certain point ALL of it has to come from books and study. I don’t use words like “supercilious” in almost any of the face to face conversations I can think of. But I wouldn’t feel weird about using that word here. In fact, I have a whole bunch of words like that that I don’t even write here or anywhere else, but I know them when I see them in a Faulkner or McCarthy novel, or when reading an article in Science. I’ll bet you do, too.

The point (seriously! :slight_smile:

All those words you know that were acquired by study required one very important element: Time. If you want to know how to get to Disney Land on a visit to LA from overseas, you can probably limit your vocabulary to a travel survival guide and some imaginative hand gestures and be okay. But if you want to appreciate Shakespeare? If you want to understand quantum mechanics? If you actually read this far end your next post with the word banana for a free beer if we ever meet. If you want to become a pilot? All of that stuff takes TIME. And TIME spent focusing upon one language will necessarily, in one way or another, create limitations upon the time you will be able to devote to another language. It is unavoidable.

I REALLY HOPE that’s what Chushin was getting at and what you were wondering, because if not, I just devoted the better part of 20 minutes to probably the most ironic thing I’ve ever written! :wink:

Seriously, though, very interesting topic, especially as it has been on my mind in particular lately, as my son is beginning to become able to read, and I’m thinking about the way Japanese kids study (Yall know.) and how we are going to organize his time so that he is able to get both an adequate technical and literary education in English in addition to the one he will necessarily receive in Japanese, and the proper priority to assign to each.

45

[quote]Chushin wrote:
First: Shame on you. What a real lack of class.
[/quote]

And in case it was not clear from my last post, I agree 100% with Chushin here. And both my wife and I are bilingual raising our son bilingual.

46

[quote]Christine wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

[quote]Rohnyn wrote:
So we’re alienating the Latinos here, but to me it seems the Jews and Catholics verily fail said oath. Loyalty the Pope is Loyalty to a potentate; I’ve grown up Catholic and I can tell you that most practicing Catholics I know say “the United States is temporal, nations rise and they fall. The Church is eternal - of couse I will always in the end side with the Church.” This would refer specifically to the Pope being their true figure of authority and not the President.

Jews and Israel, Jews and Israel - I don’t think I need to explain that one. Especially considering they are so loyal to the their Jewishness over their American natinality, that they swarm and infiltrate the gov’t to further their Zionist agenda en contra to the interests of all other citizens.

Let’s deal with unilaterally and not just isolate these Latinos, who by and large when taking on citizenship probably assimilate far better than you’re making it out to be.
[/quote]

Heh, no wonder some Baptist conspiracy theorists think that the Vatican is out to destroy the US. To me, its more stupidity than any kind of conspiracy. Too bad you’re such a moron on immigration policy since your foreign policy views seem in line with reality. That’s the problem with both the left and right though. Their both full of shit on something. Try thinking for yourself here and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.[/quote]

It may be reading comprehension failure on my part, but I have the impression that Rohnyn grew up Catholic, but no longer practices.

He previously wrote: “I have been Catholic longer than I haven’t…”

While ‘have been’ is present perfect and would indicate an ongoing condition, he writes later that he grew up Catholic. This indicated to me that the previous statement was a common grammatical error.

I then searched some posts to see if he was presently Catholic and found that Rohnyn describes his beliefs as agnostic/deist.
[/quote]

I meant to direct the last sentence toward Catholics in general which is why I was speaking generally in the first sentence. I then directed it specifically toward him but failed to go back to generally speaking. Re-reading it I can see how I should have written:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.

Other than that I stand by what I said. It was just a piss-poor job of organizing my thoughts.

47

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.
[/quote]

So you remedy incompetence with ignorance and narcissism. To each his own, I guess.

[quote]
Other than that I stand by what I said. It was just a piss-poor job of organizing my thoughts.[/quote]

Believe it or not, sometimes rendering one’s private beliefs crystal-clear is not intrinsically the smartest course of action.

48

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.
[/quote]

So you remedy incompetence with ignorance and narcissism. To each his own, I guess.
[/quote]

A mirror might be nearby you know. Look at it when you get the time. Of course not that you would even notice.

49

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.
[/quote]

So you remedy incompetence with ignorance and narcissism. To each his own, I guess.
[/quote]

A mirror might be nearby you know. Look at it when you get the time. Of course not that you would even notice.[/quote]

My point is that Catholics do indeed think for themselves. Seriously. We really do.

Except for those who don’t.

And then there are all of those Catholics in-between who do some thinking for themselves, and then sort of prioritize and delegate some portion of their thinking out to someone else.

The rough make-up of the Catholic Church of has the third group taking up the biggest portion of the pie, and the other two groups confined to significantly smaller, similarly sized slices. The overall ratios of which are, shockingly, not that much different from every other large cultural or religious group of humans on earth.

Unless you’d care to demonstrate otherwise?

50

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.
[/quote]

So you remedy incompetence with ignorance and narcissism. To each his own, I guess.
[/quote]

A mirror might be nearby you know. Look at it when you get the time. Of course not that you would even notice.[/quote]

My point is that Catholics do indeed think for themselves. Seriously. We really do.

Except for those who don’t.

And then there are all of those Catholics in-between who do some thinking for themselves, and then sort of prioritize and delegate some portion of their thinking out to someone else.

The rough make-up of the Catholic Church of has the third group taking up the biggest portion of the pie, and the other two groups confined to significantly smaller, similarly sized slices. The overall ratios of which are, shockingly, not that much different from every other large cultural or religious group of humans on earth.

Unless you’d care to demonstrate otherwise?[/quote]
The Church tramples on critical thinking and thwarts at every opportunity. You cannot be a Catholic in good standing while the opposing the dogma and doctrines of the Church. A great deal of Catholics, perhaps even a majority disagree with at least one aspect of Church doctrine. What you will note about this however, is that these Catholics are not vocal about their dissent, and the Church does not aim to root them out. It is politically expedient for the Church to not go alienate it’s followers, and those pseudo-apostates are still so mentally enslaved that they maintain very real fears that prevent them from outright vocalizing that which they find to be irreverent in the Church line.

In the end, the hierarchy reminds and the Catholic man is never truly free. He has a Father in the Church, and that man has a Father all the way up until the Pope. All men down the pyramid are held by the chains of fear and the braces of guilt; with the puppet master at the top echelon.

For a Catholic man to become a vocal opponent of any part of the Church doctrine, would result in his excommunication.

Slavery of the mind is bad, very baaad.

51

Bah some of you guys suck. You know why? You’re a bunch of wait to talk kinda responders and don’t read the other guy’s post. Banana.

52

Oh… and I thought this thread was going to be about drug cartels and paramilitaries… I’m dissappointed.

54

[quote]groo wrote:
Bah some of you guys suck. You know why? You’re a bunch of wait to talk kinda responders and don’t read the other guy’s post. Banana.[/quote]

Nice :smiley:

What kind of brew do you like?

55

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:
For those of you so impolite as to insult that poster’s parents:

First: Shame on you. What a real lack of class.[/quote]

Agreed.

[quote] Secondly, if you believe that one can be just as fluent in English regardless of whether or not they are “bilingual,” you are incorrect. Sure one can become pretty damned “truly bilingual,” but there is always some amount of spillover between languages, preventing the speaker from realizing his ultimate potential in EITHER language.

You may say the spillover is minimal, which is fair enough. But to deny that it is there is incorrect. If that poster’s parents wanted their son to be as skilled at English as he possibly he could, they did the right thing.

I’m sure the “truly bilingual” posters here will disagree, but all one need do is read their posts closely to see what I’m describing. [/quote]

Their “ultimate potential”? I’m not sure I fully understand what you are getting at here. Are you arguing that growing up with two languages prevents one from fully understanding either? I’ve not seen that. What I have seen is that most bi-lingual speakers have a “first language” despite being bi-lingual. This language is usually the “language of education” as it were.

I know a few people who are Japanese-Americans who grew up in the US with a few years in Japan growing up, they were educated in English and it shows, sometimes even I was able to correct some Japanese despite their being FAR more fluent and literate than I.

I have a friend who grew up in PR speaking Spanish. He went to Uni with me in the US. Sure, he still makes some mistakes here and there when speaking in English. But what I found interesting is he said that when he does Engineering projects in Spanish, he sometimes doesn’t know the Spanish word, because his engineering education was in English. Is he an example of the people you are talking about?

I guess, I simply disagree if you are arguing that learning a second language growing up prevents one from “mastering” their “other” language. From my experience with bilingual people, most people tend to have a “first language.” Further, talk of “ultimate potential” seems silly to me in general. There seems to be a lot more “potential” for someone who can “pass” in two societies, even if they make a mistake here or there in their grammar. I guess my final point is that even if parents choose English over another, that is no guarantee of any sort of “ultimate potential.” I know plenty of “English only” speakers who, for example, don’t speak English as well as the people I described above.

But I am perhaps missing your point. As always, I’ve enjoyed your and Cortes’ posts.
[/quote]

Raising my 2 and a half year old son as a bilingual kid, I think I get what Chushin is alluding to, and it is not your fault at all for not catching this (and hell I may be understanding him wrong).

I’ll demonstrate by personal example.

My son is getting his Japanese from his mother and basically every other person he comes into contact with all day, every day. He is getting his English from…me. At this point in his development, while there are secondary sources of education that are also quite influential such as TV, educational toys, my and my wife’s iPhone and my iPad (the independent use of both of which he has been highly proficient in since just after his first birthday, no kidding!), among others, I believe that kids this age get most of their language directly from the people they interact with.

A quick side point that will lead into my greater point: Now, since I am running a business and I have a lot of other things going, his time around other people overall (primarily his mother and Japanese grandparents) is necessarily limited. Unsurprisingly, at this point he tends to speak a lot more Japanese than he does English, though he appears to understand the two languages equally. He is actually quite amazing in that he will be speaking with me, then turn to any other Japanese person to include them in the conversation and he will automatically and flawlessly switch to using Japanese. We neither encourage nor discourage this. It is something he just does (that I continually find incredibly cool).

Now, whether or not he is actually getting “filled up” and there is a trade-off occurring in the fulfillment of his language potential in either language at this point, it does appear that by the time kids reach basic language proficiency around 5 years or so, this issue, if it exists, appears to clear up and balance out by whatever unknown mechanism, and most kids raised in the manner my son is will have achieved language proficiency in both languages pretty much indistinguishable from that of a native speaker of either of the two languages he speaks.

You know what? I’m gonna break this up into two posts. I can’t see my cursor anymore and it’s driving me insane.

[/quote]

Hey Guys,

In the US, jet-lagged & just got in from a long day, so I’ll keep this short.

In a nutshell, Cortes – wise young man that he is – actually EXPLAINED what was simply an observation on my part. So, thanks Cortes!

Oh, and since I’m one of the few who can actually collect: Banana!

PS Isn’t it nice to have civil discussions? Thanks to you both for your contributions.[/quote]

Hahah! Well, I’m happy to know that my time was not wasted.

And it will be my pleasure to provide, here or there. Preferably there, though. It’s pretty here, but booooooring.

56

[quote]Chushin wrote:
I’m sure the “truly bilingual” posters here will disagree, but all one need do is read their posts closely to see what I’m describing. [/quote]

Lol!

I can’t believe, after all I wrote, that I somehow missed this sparkling little gem.

You, my friend, get two beers.

59

[quote]Chushin wrote:

I’ll give you some time to visit and pay up…

And then if you don’t, I’m coming there to collect young man![/quote]

I’ll just slip out the back door and blend into the crowd.

Wait a minute…

60

[quote]Rohnyn wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]cloakmanor wrote:

“Catholics should try thinking for themselves and not let some old fart thousands of miles away do your thinking for you.” Dumb-ass goof on my part.
[/quote]

So you remedy incompetence with ignorance and narcissism. To each his own, I guess.
[/quote]

A mirror might be nearby you know. Look at it when you get the time. Of course not that you would even notice.[/quote]

My point is that Catholics do indeed think for themselves. Seriously. We really do.

Except for those who don’t.

And then there are all of those Catholics in-between who do some thinking for themselves, and then sort of prioritize and delegate some portion of their thinking out to someone else.

The rough make-up of the Catholic Church of has the third group taking up the biggest portion of the pie, and the other two groups confined to significantly smaller, similarly sized slices. The overall ratios of which are, shockingly, not that much different from every other large cultural or religious group of humans on earth.

Unless you’d care to demonstrate otherwise?[/quote]
The Church tramples on critical thinking and thwarts at every opportunity. You cannot be a Catholic in good standing while the opposing the dogma and doctrines of the Church. A great deal of Catholics, perhaps even a majority disagree with at least one aspect of Church doctrine. What you will note about this however, is that these Catholics are not vocal about their dissent, and the Church does not aim to root them out. It is politically expedient for the Church to not go alienate it’s followers, and those pseudo-apostates are still so mentally enslaved that they maintain very real fears that prevent them from outright vocalizing that which they find to be irreverent in the Church line.

In the end, the hierarchy reminds and the Catholic man is never truly free. He has a Father in the Church, and that man has a Father all the way up until the Pope. All men down the pyramid are held by the chains of fear and the braces of guilt; with the puppet master at the top echelon.

For a Catholic man to become a vocal opponent of any part of the Church doctrine, would result in his excommunication.

Slavery of the mind is bad, very baaad.[/quote]

Ok. I tried. I tried really hard just to leave this alone. But you know what? Fuck it.

I’m not going to waste anyone’s time countering preposterous statements. You don’t have the slightest authority to give your opinion on the Catholic church. Whenever someone else starts repeating the same tired manufactured distortions about the Catholic church I can usually excuse the person because I know how hard it must be for so many people to believe anything good about the church when there is so much defamation to counter (along with her own real internal problems).

But you. You actually piss me off. Because you know better. And you lie anyway. You know this. And I know this. And you know that I know. Yet, here you are, needling me. So. Shall I humbly oblige you?

Maybe you’d like me to go hunting for that old thread where you earlier displayed your vast, in depth, first hand experience and knowledge of the Catholic church? We both remember how well that went, don’t we?

Yes, you must remember, that other thread where you belched up a bunch of easily disprovable libel about the Catholic church and I fact checked your ass and you backpedaled and muttered and then poofed out of your own thread like David Copperfield after a one night stand?

Oh wait here it is right here.

http://tnation.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/world_news_war/catholic_church_your_opinion?id=4112225&pageNo=1

6th post down on page two, my post quotes your fabrications and the rest of the thread displays your character.

And let it be known that until you own up to this, every time I see you pollute this forum by dropping another libelous turd about the Catholic church I will be reposting this link so that everyone can see what kind of authority lies behind those lies.

I eagerly await your response.