TENESTRE AND ADELHEIM | 2006-11-08
Part of what Adelheim said below was,
To tenestre again!
I got some criticism. It seemed like they did not understand it. Even the anti-immigration people. Not just the "DUUh" argument. Maybe "melting pot" was not a good idea. Therfore I rewrote it. So what do you think?
ME:
Here is a very American look at Europeans:
IN MY OPINION Europeans have a real problem with any expression of common sense that is NEW to them.
At the Free University of Berlin, in West Berlin, they were completely surrounded by Communist barbed wire and machine guns on every side, but they talked more about the oppression of apartheid in South Africa. If I talked about the Berlin Wall, they sort of goggled at me. This was not what Mommy Professor had been talking about.
Europeans have an ingrained respect for authority. I remember reading A Marxist handout at the University of Vienna that referred to "the revolutionary tradition."
To an American, including a Communist, total Marxist revolution would not refer to a "tradition." But to Europeans, it makes perfect sense.
Americans can usually trace anything here back to some mere humans who set it up, but Europeans see everything as having been there more or less forever. They do not invent their own concepts, so when you speak in a way that they are not used to, they are MUCH harder to get through to.
IN MY OPINION