It does you no favors to be condescending and incorrect.
Now, I don't for a second doubt that many a "classic" has been established as such because of the internal politics of academia, but what you're not taking into account is the number of works which have been incorporated into the cannon despite starting off as light or popular literature, and the number of those which have dropped off the radar when the influential person who produced them or pushed them was not around anymore. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, classic works have mostly stuck around because they have impressed a body of students and instructors with their merit. Are there other works just as good or better that haven't yet (and might not ever)qualify as classics? Absolutely, but that does not diminish the current classics' work.
And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?The correct answer to the question posed by this thread: Mu.
America is not a conscious entity. It is an abstraction of the aggregate of individuals that make up other aggregates known as States. As America is not itself conscious, it cannot be "Christian" or "Not Christian."
Can American dialogue be dominated by Christian "principles?" Sure. And to a large extent it is. I look forwards to an openly atheist president, but I don't think it's happening anytime soon.
edited 9th Apr '11 2:44:05 PM by TheyCallMeTomu
kashchei, I am not being condescending. (Although I can start, if enough people want to see it.) Nor am I incorrect in any sense that I can determine. Permit me to build off what Rottweiler said a few posts ago:
Given that I found every "classic" I was assigned to read in school tolerable at best, and many of them nigh-unreadable, then if Rottweiler is correct, every single English teacher I ever had was piss-poor at their job. Since I find that highly unlikely, I can only conclude that something is deeply wrong with the canon of literature. All those books that are supposedly the bedrock of our civilization completely failed to engage me, one of the brightest students in my class and a voracious reader on other fronts.
You guys might wanna take this over here.
@Kara: Not that I disagree with your main point, but going by the English teachers I've had, it would be perfectly possible for you to have uniformly crappy teachers. Out of all the years I've taken English, I've had maybe three good teachers, two out of four in high school and one out of four in middle school. And I've been pretty lucky; most people I know in high school have had maybe one, max.
That said, even in the few good classes I found The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick extremely boring, and I would agree with you that even if there is such a thing as an objectively good book, "the classics" are essentially randomly selected and have widely varying quality.
Now, of course, none of them are absolute drivel; the barrier to entry is still strong enough to stop Sturgeon's Law from taking full effect. But while none of them are just plain bad, a lot are mediocre.
Some mediocre authors are indispensable to cultural literacy, for their sheer influence. I'm looking at you, Marx.
Also, this tangent really needs to be in the thread I made for it.
edited 9th Apr '11 3:12:59 PM by Rottweiler
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. BernardBack to the tangent I was on, namely the influence of the Natives: They do learn Native syllabaries, Rott. They learn them when they learn the names of over half our states, and countless municipalities within them.
Just because their introduction to the culture that makes America so distinct from its European forefathers was shit-poor (mostly because our leaders wanted to kill them off and/or take their land), doesn't change what that culture did.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Short answer: Yes and no
Long answer: In the sense that Christianity envelops much of our culture, to a greater or lesser extent, and that a relatively large number of people take it seriously enough to make public decisions based on the doctrines of the Christian religion, it is a Christian nation. But in the sense of a state religion, no. We are not laic like the French, but we are secular in its most basic sense, in that church rates are not levied by the state, and (in theory) cannot be barred from public office based on what I happen to believe or not believe. The long existence of this model of secularism, furthermore, is why the first sense of Christian nation is true. If you want to remove religion as such from the public square, the best way to do it would be to reestablish a church, any church.
BH, don't forget Massachusetts, Connecticut, Kentucky, the Dakotas, Tallahassee, Minnesota...
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

If it's important to you, Usht, you won't need the reminder.
And if you're hoping to shame or intimidate me into using a gutless, self-doubting argument style, you're in for a measure of disappointment.