Nationalism arose from the belief that a major ethnic group should have its own state. In the era before the rise of nationalism, many ethnic groups had little unity; they were collections of related peoples and cultures. In France, for example, the people within its borders spoke different but related languages, and the same holds for most other modern European nations, including the collection of nations now known as the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and so on. Standardization of language was thus one of the first steps toward nationalism, Martin Luther's German Bible translation being perhaps the best example.
Why did ethnic groups need their own states? Mainly because the ethnic group that captures the state favors its own and disfavors others, even if the state's rhetoric declares the theoretical equality under the law of all ethnic groups. That an ethnic group that captures the state will favor its own seems blatantly obvious, but is worth emphasizing in this age of phony equality.
The classic example of a multi-ethnic state run by one ethnic group that favored itself is Austria-Hungary. It is no accident that nationalist agitators were prominent in this state. The Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, etc., saw themselves as discriminated against by the ruling German-speakers, their languages relegated to second- or third-class status, and state positions reserved for the ruling ethnic group. Zionism arose in Austria-Hungary as well, with rising nationalist sentiment convincing Herzl that the solution to the "Jewish problem" lay in statehood, so that the Jews could become a nation like any other.
Besides ethnic groups favoring their own through the machinery of the state, some groups will almost always prosper more than others; here again Austria-Hungary exemplifies this, as the Germans were arguably smarter and harder working than most of the other ethnic groups in the empire, another factor in their domination. Human biodiversity, along with geography and demography, predict that this will happen. For these reasons, it would have been impossible for, say, the Croatians ever to dominate Austria-Hungary.
The idea of a proposition nation, namely that a people or peoples will be unified in a nation without regard to ethnicity, using either a shared history, or geography, or adherence to some abstract principle, turns the notion of a traditional nation-state on its head. Real nationalism arose out of historical circumstances and was based on the historical experience of clashing ethnic groups, whereas propositional nationalism shares more in common with doctrines like socialism or fascism, in which some abstract principle, whether state ownership of "the means of production" (a quaint relic from the age of factories) or corporatism are given excessive importance, to the exclusion of all other social factors.
The proposition nation is no nation at all. Since nationalism is based on a common ethnicity and/or language, and propositional nationalism aims to dispense with these, the latter is not even a nationalism, and the basis for binding people together using an abstract principle is a weak one indeed.
All of this is why the notion of the United States as a proposition nation is unsustainable, and if not stopped, will turn out badly. This is why Arizona is so important.
The United States as it is currently constituted is already dead. The question is whether whites will find the will to create a European ethnostate or not. The alternative is that all of North America becomes Mexico or Brazil. Frankly, speaking as a Western European there are days when I wonder whether the USA needs to die for Europe to survive. Who upholds the proposition nation idea? You. You and France through the EU.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, Dennis.
ReplyDeleteThe EU puts the notion of the "proposition nation" to an even severer test than the US has so far, because of its vastly greater, and geographically localized, linguistic heterogeneity. (That's now changing rapidly here too, of course.) Few things divide, and unite, human groups as effectively as language.
It's wrong that the US is an ethnic nation. That's what Federalist 10 is about, what the D of I is about. So the neo-cons are right about that. The neo-cons fail to recognize that the US is also a former British colony, as is Canada or Australia or India. Unlike Canada, we don't put the queen on the currency. Like India, we're a continental and multiethnic former British colony that experienced a colonial rebellion. So we're a bit of a cross between India and Canada, plus the principles of our founding, as expressed in the declaration.
ReplyDeleteCanada and Australia are both better at immigration precisely because they recognize themselves as Anglo countries. The Canadian national anthem begins "O Canada, my home and native land, true patriot love . . . " When the US had its 500th anniversary recently, it got no attention.
In other words, we're not Germany or Slovakia. We have an entirely different political history. But the neo-cons always see the US as the synthesis of all contradictions. We are the commercial republicans, the republican imperialists, the democratic snobs, the secular religionists, (insert Tocqueville quote here), etc. All of this synthesizing ignores that the US has a very specific political tradition, that of a former British colony. But we are not a Germany or France, we are not an ethnic country. That's the wrong category and a losing proposition.
US is already destined to be multiethnic. Minorities are already majority of births. There is no way to stop or reverse that. That train parted long time ago.
ReplyDeleteThere are several scenarios - dissolution of US and split into several smaller states ( imho the best scenario if you are hoping for mono ethnic state) or becoming agglomeration like Brazil .
2nd scenario imho is alot more likely, barring complete collapse of american society . I dont believe society will collapse completely - there will be hard times and harsh consequences, but I don't think it will be enough for US dissolution.
Only scenario I see which would lead to multi-state scenario is complete chaos combined with armed conflict in competition for very scarce resources. Imho only nuclear war or massive epidemic can cause that, both imho are not the most likely scenarios for next 30 years
That America was founded as a "propositional nation" is undeniable, but there was an underlying (and unspoken) precondition: that these propositions issued from and applied to the European. They were devised as correctives and advances on the European political narrative. The ethnic component was understood. Without that, they can indeed become tools of socialists and fascists, as we are witnessing today. I suspect the founders would be dismayed to learn their propositions were being used to displace and disenfranchise their descendents.
ReplyDeleteIt's wrong that the US is an ethnic nation. That's what Federalist 10 is about, what the D of I is about.
ReplyDeleteUh ..... what? Federalist 10 makes the argument for a federal republic. It says not one word about whether the US is or is not an ethnic nation. The neocons are being their usual idiotic selves in pretending that Federalist 10 calls for a multi-ethnic state. Madison would spin his grave if he heard what was being done with his words.
The D of I likewise is largely silent on the topic of ethnicity. It does begin with these words though.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ...
bjk said...
ReplyDeleteIt's wrong that the US is an ethnic nation.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 defined U.S. citizens as "free white persons", so I'd say that the people of the early U.S. had no problem with defining the U.S. as an ethnic nation. The ethnic group is called American, which is my own. The U.S. was 90% white and English-speaking until 1965, and you're going to tell me that we're not an ethnic nation?
Arizona should be an inspiration for us all, in Europe too. I'm completely enthousiastic about what is happening these days in that state. I love the way the PC apparatchiks - from the mainstream media to the American administration, from Amnesty International to ADL - went insane about the legitimate right of the Arizonan citizens and authorities to decide their fate, in spite of the fact that polls show that a majority of Americans are favorable to the anti-immigration law.
ReplyDeleteSheriff Joe Arpaio is hero material, the kind one can encounter in old western movies. The PC weaklings are not worthy to wipe his boots.
I think that America still has a chance of salvation (which will mean perhaps to secede from the treasonous union) as long as men like him are still born on that land.
And Arizona is an inspiration for us Europeans in the sense that any solution can only come on national/local level, as a grassroot movement.
US is already destined to be multiethnic. Minorities are already majority of births. There is no way to stop or reverse that.
ReplyDeleteOf course there are ways to stop or reverse that. Not ways you would find palatable, perhaps, but ways that have been tried and tested throughout history.
When I wrote this post I thought of a huge exception to ethnic / linguistic nationalism: Switzerland. That nation was forged from a need to band together against enemies, and geography, which overcame inter-ethnic animosities. But even so, Switzerland is around 70% German-speaking, 20% French, and 10% Italian (statistics from memory), so the German Swiss are the country's core, without which I doubt if it would be what it is. And there are indeed ethnic animosities, there being little love lost between the French and German Swiss.
ReplyDeleteBelgium - the country created by the British to annoy the French - looks ready to fall apart, even though most of the inhabitants are Catholic and probably don't even look different from each other. Canada likewise.
Yugoslavia was another multi-ethnic proposition nation, the proposition being communism. That worked out well.
'Sheriff Joe Arpaio is hero material, the kind one can encounter in old western movies.'
ReplyDeletePfft. Arpaio is the reaction to an intolerable situation, but what's heroic about beating retarded people to death? Willingness to actually be tough on illegal immigrants can't make up for all his flaws.
For an interesting window back in time to see what views on ethnicity, nationhood and freedom were like two hundred years ago, I recommend reading Schiller's play 'William Tell'.
Hm, odd that Dennis and I should post at the same time, with similar and yet opposite thoughts regarding the Swiss! But the original core of Switzerland *was* one people; the rest joined gradually over a long period of time, and are (whatever their protestations) really quite similar to the Swiss core. I think there is also something to be said for terroir as it pertains to people; a Tyrolean and someone from Haute Provence likely have much in common in terms of fundamental character, and might even find commonalities with (say) a Kashmiri that would be lacking with a true urbanite from any of the countries concerned. All of which is to say, the Swiss are indeed partly unified by a common geography.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a proposition nation, namely that a people or peoples will be unified in a nation without regard to ethnicity, using either a shared history, or geography, or adherence to some abstract principle, turns the notion of a traditional nation-state on its head.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you're saying here that geography and shared history are abstract principles. If so, I disagree. One thing that inevitably unites a people is a shared history, and geographical proximity isn't by any means an abstract thing though it doesn't necessarily have a uniting influence. Biological ties are far from irrelevant, but aren't the only factor.
Whatever the US was set up to be hardly matters now. Since at least 1865, the US has been an empire, with DC as the imperial capital and the states as subordinate provinces. Some republican characteristics are retained to this day, but the US just isn't a nation anymore, if it ever was.
PS: Mexico and Canada, the EU, and probably Australia as well, are best understood as empires along with the US. The age of empires never really ended.
ReplyDeleteRegarding imperialism: Ibn Khaldun is slightly overrated, but the most useful aspect of his writings is the concept of Asabiyyah to describe the bond of social cohesion or ethnic solidarity in various groups. Whites suffer from a critical lack of Asabiyyah today, and Germanic peoples from northwest Europe especially so. This is now killing us. Western elites see immigration as importing X number of more serfs to their Empire. Moreover, the Globalist oligarchs need a bully class to keep unruly whites in their place.
ReplyDeleteWhite Western elites feel no loyalty whatsoever with lower-class whites. At best, they see them as serfs to be used and abused; at worst, as an obstacle that needs to be removed at all costs. Notice the contempt then-PM Gordon Brown showed for that English woman voter during the election campaign recently. The only thing that's peculiar about Brown is that he is a less accomplished liar than, say, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy or George W. Bush. Mass democracy seems to produce gifted liars like them.
Culture has a powerful genetic component. I am convinced of this. My viewpoint is that we have the genetic potential to do great things, even if we don't do so today. We can go through periods of decline, even long ones, yet reemerge as we did in the Middle Ages if we preserve our genetic legacy. If we lose that then we cannot make a comeback in the future. If we look at historical examples of racial caste systems with a major European component, for instance in India or Latin America, then this shows clearly that only those who preserve their European genes without their genetic profile becoming too diluted can produce what we do. This means that the only viable long-term solution is physical separation. Otherwise, we perish.
Some republican characteristics are retained to this day, but the US just isn't a nation anymore, if it ever was.
ReplyDeleteThere's no connecton between "nation" and "republic". The first word describes a socio-cultural reality, the second is a system of government.
It's true that the US is no longer a nation though. So it's only a matter of time before it ceases to be a country.
Mexico and Canada, the EU, and probably Australia as well, are best understood as empires along with the US.
ReplyDeleteHuh? The EU I get, but Mexico, Canada, and Australia?
Every country that contains an ethnic minority is not an "empire". (Just about every single country does have a minority group within its borders - does that mean every single country is an empire?)
Since at least 1865, the US has been an empire, with DC as the imperial capital and the states as subordinate provinces. Some republican characteristics are retained to this day, but the US just isn't a nation anymore, if it ever was.
What is this supposed to mean? Is "empire" just your word for "powerful central government"? You using this word because everyone knows empires are bad?
The US wasn't any more "imperial" in 1865 than it was in 1860. Real change in the structure and power of the Federal government did not come until 1933.
What ethnicity? British? Most of us have many different grandparents. There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't, and that "European" ignores that we AREN'T IN EUROPE. In that respect, the US has more in common with Haiti than with Denmark.
ReplyDeleteVDH has written some interesting things about coercing assimilation. That's what this school reform law in Arizona is about. That's good for both whites and hispanics. The alternative right should encourage that sort of thing, not white nationalism. It's not possible to encourage assimilation if Americanism is defined in ethnic terms.
"probably don't even look different from each other": it's the sharpest division I've seen in W Europe, in terms of appearence. But then there are many places I haven't been.
ReplyDeleteHuh? The EU I get, but Mexico, Canada, and Australia?
ReplyDeleteI probably shouldn't have included Australia, but Mexico, the US, and Canada are all attempts to unite a groups of disparate peoples under one flag. Far from there just being a 'minority ethnic group', there is rather a series of ethnic groups that may or may not get along with each other.
What is this supposed to mean? Is "empire" just your word for "powerful central government"? You using this word because everyone knows empires are bad?
Empire has nothing to do with the strength of the central government (the roman empire had a far weaker central government than, say, modern day Germany). Nor am I using the word as a pejorative; whether the US should be an empire is beside the point of whether it is or not.
1865 was the *official* end of the voluntary confederation of the Framers. Prior to the conquest of the South, state loyalties were most important. What the civil war represented was the two regions separating, then one conquering and subjugating the other. That they called the South part of the 'USA' and not the 'southern provinces' isn't really important. I hold no brief for FDR, but he did not bring about nearly so sweeping a change in the way Americans saw themselves.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteYou know who was a big nationalist, in the sense you use the term? Wilson. He though every little European ethnic group should have its own state. That doesn't always work well in practice. Look at the Balkans.
"Of course there are ways to stop or reverse that. Not ways you would find palatable, perhaps, but ways that have been tried and tested throughout history."
Where slippery meets slope?
"There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't, and that "European" ignores that we AREN'T IN EUROPE."
This is true, and it also ignores that "European" isn't much of a rallying cry in Europe itself. When it comes to bailing out their spendthrift fellow Europeans in Greece, the average German remains more German than European. When the average Greek remembers the German occupation of his country during WWII, he remains more Greek than European.
A whiter and richer version of Brazil wouldn't be a bad outcome for America, fantasies of race wars aside. Brazil is better off than the U.S. in some respects. In spite of having a much larger black population, Brazil has much less affirmative action and welfare for blacks.
Brazil makes a nominal efforts at diversity, but its power structure is almost entirely meritocratic (which is to say, not very diverse). The Southernmost (and most temperate) states of Brazil remain mostly white. Some ethnic German Brazilians there still carry on the traditions of the country their ancestors emigrated from 150 years ago.
You can find the same homogeneity here, in states like Vermont, Montana, Idaho, etc.
It's not possible to encourage assimilation if Americanism is defined in ethnic terms.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly is it that you want people to assimilate to?
There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't
So say the anti-white left at any rate.
You know who was a big nationalist, in the sense you use the term? Wilson. He though every little European ethnic group should have its own state. That doesn't always work well in practice. Look at the Balkans.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really bad example for you to pick. The problem with the Balkans has always been that it contained a large number of different ethnic groups crammed into a single state - first in Austro-Hungary, than in Yugoslavia. The creation of Yugoslavia flew in the face of the idea that "every little European ethnic group should have its own state".
Where slippery meets slope?
If you want to ask a question, which the presence of a question mark suggests was your intent, then try to make it an intelligble one.
A whiter and richer version of Brazil wouldn't be a bad outcome for America
How is it in any way preferable to a whiter and richer version of America? Why is that not a better outcome?
Come on, Ricardo, this is your chance to disprove all those claims that Jews are driven by an animus against other whites.
Ricardo, you're right about Brazil. The US has alot in common with Brazil and India. The US cannot aspire to being like a bigger Switzerland. The danger with LA immigration is that the US will turn into a Latin American country, with a small white elite at the top. The US would no longer be a middle class country. But turning to white nationalism is just the mirror image of la raza's own sad ethnic resentment.
ReplyDeleteAssimilation to Americanism is the goal, where latinos identify themselves as American first. No country is founded on a proposition -- a country is not a mathematic deduction -- but the US is not an ethnically based country either. The neo-cons did not invent the idea of the proposition nation out of thin air. Reread the Gettysburg address.
"There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't, "
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true, and the most frustrating thing about the white nationalists.
One can be a nationalist who happens to be white. One can not be a nationalist for "the" white nation, because such a nation never existed. That there were multiple nations that were white does not make any of them "the" white nation, and it is impossible to (re)create such a thing.
Most American white nationalists are blind to this, although they seem to just assume a white American nationalism to be what they are aiming for. But even that isn't anything like well defined. There are a multitude of ways in which other allegiances, as weak as they are, will still prove stronger than an allegiance made up out of whole cloth to "the white nation". There is no white nation. There are (or were) white nations. Plural. What national loyalty Americans have is largely towards the form of government and the documents, and as such is entirely beside the point.
"Brazil makes a nominal efforts at diversity, but its power structure is almost entirely meritocratic (which is to say, not very diverse). The Southernmost (and most temperate) states of Brazil remain mostly white. Some ethnic German Brazilians there still carry on the traditions of the country their ancestors emigrated from 150 years ago."
The problem with a Brazil-style society is that over time it turns into India: the whites disappear into the crowd. I like Indians but I don't want to be one. That's why ethnic homogeneity and separation are necessary.
Quebec is actually the one society on the North American continent that I think might have a decent shot at forming an ethnically homogeneous nation populated by whites in the event of a breakup of the federal states. Their political class is a bunch of socialist scumbags parasiting off the rest of Canada right now, but that's not so different from political classes everywhere else in the West. Quebec has established, and gotten the mass media and general consciousness to accept, the principle that they have a culture and a people that have an intrinsic right to be defended, and that Quebecois are entitled to act on that principle. That's more than any other society of European descent. Just extend the antipathy for Anglos against Muslims and francophone Africans, and they're set.
Once the principle and the example are (re)established, it can be extended to other white societies - those that want to adopt it. Those that don't ...
I want to add one thing - a WN counterargument might be that an American white nation DID exist and therefore it is an obvious thing to try to recreate. It existed for about a hundred years, 1865 to 1965. Prior to that it wasn't a "white" nation, it was an Anglo-Saxon nation - a nation of Englishmen, even. During the hundred years of "whiteness", it was a mix of Anglo-Saxon, German, Irish, and Italian. The "white American" identity was never systematically tested in any real way. Real nations - French, Danish, Spanish, Greek - have existed for far more than a hundred years and have their identity built on much more than "we all came here to get rich".
ReplyDeleteI don't say it's impossible to recreate a "white American" nationalism and rebuild an exclusionary state on that basis. I do think however that it is a lot harder than then WNs give it credit for, and by not fairly evaluating the obstacles ahead they are setting themselves up for a fall.
"The idea of a proposition nation, namely that a people or peoples will be unified in a nation without regard to ethnicity, using either a shared history, or geography, or adherence to some abstract principle, turns the notion of a traditional nation-state on its head."
ReplyDeleteMaybe so, but I think there was a time before multiculturalism and political correctness completely took over that there was a true melting pot. Being American meant as much or more than being Irish, Italian even Cambodian. Immigrants learned English quickly; the children weren't even allowed to to use the old language in the house. They enthusiastically embraced American holidays and traditions. Fitting in to get a job or not to be harrassed at school was a goal - unlike today where kids drive around in cars and wear clothes that shout reverence for a $#!^hole country they've never seen! Maybe dissolution was inevitable but the multiculturalist driven media, the leftists and their lawyers are accelerating it.
Arpaio is the reaction to an intolerable situation, but what's heroic about beating retarded people to death? Willingness to actually be tough on illegal immigrants can't make up for all his flaws.
ReplyDeleteHeroes (or those with the potential of becoming so) are not flawless, but people who pursue steadfastly a goal in spite of all their personal flaws. Usually it's the leftists who demand perfection. According to them, Middle Ages monarchs and knights couldn't be great because they often showed cruelty for their enemies (and not only) or the Americans of the Wild West were a bunch of savages because they took justice in their own hands, sometimes harshly. If it's true, so what? Great men are not flawless.
One example is the treatment over time of Wilhelm Tell himself. The "de-mythicized" version after WWII:
Max Frisch in his "William Tell for Schools" deconstructed the legend, portraying the bailiff as a well-meaning administrator suffering from being placed in a barbaric back-corner of the empire, while Tell is a simpleton who stumbles into his adventure by a series of misunderstandings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell
Assimilation to Americanism is the goal
ReplyDeleteLet me ask you again, what is this "Americanism" to which you seek to assimilate people?
The neo-cons did not invent the idea of the proposition nation out of thin air. Reread the Gettysburg address.
Now it's the Gettysburg address? Just a little while ago you cited Federalist 10. Prompted for an explanation on that, you passed. You can't seem to make up your mind whether you want to defend or reject the propositional nation idea.
Shall goverment of the people, by the people, for the people perish from this Earth? If the open borders anti-nationalists have their way, it shall.
No country is founded on a proposition -- a country is not a mathematic deduction -- but the US is not an ethnically based country either.
ReplyDeleteHenry Cabot Lodge refutes your nonsense in no uncertain terms.
http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/lodge_immigration.pdf
His ideas here are not original to him. The Americans of the Revoutionary era also saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons, heirs to a Germanic tradition going back to Roman times.
It's wrong that the US is an ethnic nation. That's what Federalist 10 is about, what the D of I is about.
ReplyDeleteSorry, the D of I expresses the grievances of a particular people. It is not propositional.
In the long view of history, America is the latest and greatest Voelkerwanderung. As such it a collective expression in the New World of the aptitudes, talent and energy of the Germanic peoples that emerged into history about 2500 years ago. This volk was defined by common blood, tongue and disposition, and Americans can adopt this standard today. Let this be the new proposition for the nation.
ReplyDeleteDennis has it right, no nation, Germanic or otherwise, can survive as a "proposition" without reference to an ethnic standard or core. Fjordman notes that such consciousness is lacking today amongst the peoples of the North Sea, and he is correct. However, it should be apparent to everyone here that others define themselves by physical affinity and presence on a certain piece of land, and one or two of those peoples live right here in the U.S.A.
For the life of me I do not understand those who say things along the lines of:
ReplyDelete"What ethnicity? British? Most of us have many different grandparents. There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't, and that "European" ignores that we AREN'T IN EUROPE. In that respect, the US has more in common with Haiti than with Denmark."
So we had "different grandparents". The fact is, white American is a perfectly valid nationality regardless of who your grandparents were, so long as they were of European extraction. The only reason why anyone speaks such idiocies is because, due to the National Suicide Pact of 1965, we've let in so many people of different ethnicities that white Americans are no longer even allowed to claim that they are an ethnic group. The most recent ancestor of mine who was an immigrant came in the 1880s (from Scotland), no one in my family going back many generations has spoken anything but English, all of my grandparents and most of my great-grandparents were born on American soil, and all of my ancestors came from an area bounded by Germany in the east and south, Ireland in the west, and Scotland in the north. Furthermore, I'd say that the situation I just described is quite typical, and even though that does not exhaust the definition of an American as understood in the old days, it comes close.
People who say that white Americans are not an ethnic group and that America was or is not a country of and for white Americans are either ignorant or have an agenda. Why do you suppose America has had a race problem? In part, because blacks did not obviously fit everyone's ideas of what it meant to be an American. They were not even citizens until after the Civil War. The Chinese in California were ruthlessly discriminated against because they were not white and seen as undesirable and unassimilable. But America was 90% white and Christian and English-speaking and always understood by Americans as being a Christian nation whose people were of European extraction.
By the lights of those who say that American isn't an ethnic group, then for the same reasons neither are Australians, New Zealanders, white South Africans. Even France has had a large amount of immigration through the years, from Russia and eastern Europe and Italy, so I suppose that means that France is not an ethnically based nation.
bjk asked: What ethnicity?
ReplyDeleteEurowhite American. As long as (nominally) multi-ethnic people have more rights than (nominally) single-ethnic (crypto-multi-ethnic) people, it is imperative that we become autonomous in the original sense, i.e. that we become nominally single-ethnic.
If that seems like a cumbersome term, consider that what terms are available and what terms seem cumbersome is a reflection of what is taught in schools, and that anti-white leftists control the schools.*
Like all ethnic groups, US Eurowhites are a mixture of preceding groups. The notion that "racial groups have no legitimate right to organize or stick up for each other, while ethnic groups do" is nothing more or less than anti-white leftism. If this notion were applied evenly, Malcolm X would be persona non grata just as much as Jared Taylor.
British? Most of us have many different grandparents.
Agreed.
There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism.
T.E. Lawrence, or at least Peter O'Toole, would probably have said "White nationalists are a silly people."
bjk wrote:
ReplyDeleteIt ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't, and that "European" ignores that we AREN'T IN EUROPE.
Exactly - all the one-word terms we are "left" with are insufficient, on their own.
White includes most Hispanics, who allow their leaders to deny US rights to make or enforce immigration laws, who organize gangs to violently alter the ethnic character of our neighborhoods, and who organize pressure groups to to alter our speaking and writing practices (at no cost to the themselves, only to the US taxpayer. The way the term was used in the 19th Century, it definitely excluded Mexicans (perhaps because the almost-entirely-Spanish set of Mexico wasn't going to be seen much in west Texas, but nonetheless).
European is a term referring to a continent, it's true. Of course, the real dividing line isn't continental or racial or linguistic, it's north-south. The countries letting in tons of immigrants aren't white per se. Is Argentina being throttled by an open borders lobby that owns all the newspapers in Buenos Aires? I doubt it. For some reason, Argentine Eurowhites have are self-confident and proud.
Further more, once a people are largely unified and have something that separates them from others, they begin to exist as a distinct group. A group is indigenous to the place where it became distinct, not the place where it "originated". "Originated" must always be in quotation marks because it is always a matter of how far back you go. Life originated in the oceans, hominids originated in Laurasia or something, humans originated in East Africa maybe....
Where do white Americans originate? The question answers itself.
American is the middle word in "Organization of American States". Thus we see that in a pair of four-word phrases involving America and states, 50% of the words are used inconsistently.
Basically what's going on in is we as a culture are applying lawyer-type arguments to cheat ourselves out of sovereignty. If there isn't a word for it, it doesn't exist. Sort of like gravity.
In that respect, the US has more in common with Haiti than with Denmark.
I'll wager Americans and Danes are much less proud of their homelands than Haitians are (but I admit I am going out on a limb). On the other hand, I doubt that either Haitians or Danes try to figure out new reasons why the words commonly used to identify them are illegitimate and why, consequently, they must allow unlimited immigration
* If you don't believe me, ask a random bunch of Yanks which measure freed the slaves, reminding people that it doesn't rhyme with "irritation". After they give up, ask them who, during his lifetime, was the chief advocate of the 13th Amendment while it was facing defeat in the United States Congress.
They will not know the answer. The only thing certain is they will not be able to name a white man who "freed the slaves". If they use any phrase rhyming with "immolation" or "suffocation" to explain why the white man who supported and signed the 13th Amendment did not "free the slaves", it is because their faculties for logic were destroyed by anti-white propaganda. (Other explanations are welcome if they fit the facts.)
It's wrong that the US is an ethnic nation. That's what Federalist 10 is about, what the D of I is about. So the neo-cons are right about that.
ReplyDeleteHere is a section of Federalist 2
"It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence." --[ emphasis mine] Only once the nation is rooted in what we would now call ethnicity can the details of the national government worked out.
Further , here are some relevant passages from the Declaration of Independence, the most 'propositional'
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, " ...
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
"For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, "
There is no support for the 'proposition nation' being an idea of the founders.
I suggest that Ricardo is wrong about a Brazil-like fate being the kind of future worthy of our great nation. Brazil is a fouth rate country full of disorder and heading for almost certain catastrophe due to resource depletion and a booming population.The Amazon rain forset is being subjected to mindless destruction. Crime is becoming endemic.
ReplyDeleteWhat liberals are planning is a future in which the primary qualities of our European-white civilization will be trampled bemneath the hard-core socialism that will erode meritocracy and tradition while using social engineering to replace middle-class whites with tribally-driven Hispanics and blacks. Obama's farcical Race-to-the-Top is nothing more than the logical outcome of that ideological apparatus.It will fail but failure will be reinterpreted as success because liberals prefer delusions to reality.
Dennis is right about the vacuity of a propositional nation but we have been able to remain quite united until blacks misunderstood their emancipation by President Johnson to mean "equal outcomes" and globalization poured over us just as Mexico exploited our neighborly weakness to mean full-scale invasion of the lowest riff-raff.Either we find a way to counter liberal propaganda and power ploys, or we just might suffer the fate of resembling a Northern Brazil, something I warned about in my own book called Apes or Angels? Arizona is a huge litmus test.
Vox Day considers call for Aztlan revolution
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=151689
Throughout history, when an occupying power has wanted to destabilize and destroy a nation, it has settled a foreign people in its midst. The seeds of the Balkan conflict were sown when the Turks planted Albanian Muslims in Kosovo to uproot the Christian Serbs who had long defended the borders of medieval Christendom and had more than once turned back the tide of an expanding Ottoman empire. The Soviet Union under Stalin methodically encouraged Russian emigration into the occupied Baltic states in a campaign of long-term Russification, to such an extent that nearly 30 percent of the populations of Latvia and Estonia were Russian.
As for the myth of the American melting pot, it should suffice to point out that the idea was popularized by a Russian Jew who emigrated to England, never lived in the United States and was a fervent believer in the cause of establishing a Jewish homeland. Basing immigration policy on the idea of the melting pot is about as rational as setting foreign policy on the basis of the example set by the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek. It is not only fiction, but ignorant foreign fiction at that.
The reality is that America will proceed on one of two paths. The first is to embrace the conflict. If Americans can find the courage to consciously reject the myth of the melting pot and expel the Mexicans from the American Southwest, the Arabs from Detroit and the Somalis from Minneapolis, they can reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. This is highly improbable because so many descendants of that culture have rejected it in favor of the vibrancy of diversity while those who haven't are far too frightened of criticism and social rejection to even articulate their thoughts.
Since no one of national stature is willing to openly defend traditional American society, that leaves only the second path of conflict avoidance. White Americans will continue to vote with their feet, retreating slowly but continuously before the inexorable wave of migrationary expansion. Encouraged by the frailty of American society and the fragility of myth-based American political culture, what are still currently the fringe views of the Aztlan revolutionaries will rapidly become the mainstream opinion of Mexican irredentists in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
Wikipedia has the following definition of an ethnic group:
ReplyDelete"An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed- sharing cultural characteristics.[1][2] This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance." (My emphases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_group)
Based on that, Americans are an ethnic group, because we share a heritage based on real or putative ancestry, religion, language, territory, and appearance. We're an ethnic group for all those reasons and also because we believe that we are.
"Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness.[3][4]"
Quoth I: it is imperative that we become autonomous in the original sense, i.e. that we become nominally single-ethnic
ReplyDeleteUgh, that was bad syntax. When I said "autonomous in the original sense", I mean that it is imperative that we name ourselves. In that way we can come up with a word for this nameless ethnicity. "Gringo-kaffir" just isn't cutting it.
The English speak English, the French speak French, and Americans speak English. It's not the same. I agree that the US won't last much longer if the populace is not majority white. That's why I say that the US would be a Latin American country after a certain amount of LA immigration, regardless of what the consitution says or what the language is. So to that extent, ethnicity is definitive, I agree. But the US doesn't exclude people who aren't white from being Americans. A Turk who is born in Germany will never be German, but the same is not true in the US.
ReplyDelete"A Turk who is born in Germany will never be German"
ReplyDeleteUnless he tries to blow something up, in which case he will immediately become "a German man".
One of the criticisms of nationalism is that it is a substitute for religion that unites otherwise disparate people who nonetheless have substantial things in common (e.g., language, superficial appearance etc.). Nationalism sounds like just the ticket for Americans, who could use it to escape (overthrow) the elite who have plans that are nothing but harmful.
ReplyDeleteWe can see how nationalism has been used to unite Mexicans, who came from different Indian tribes with some infusion of Spanish and African. In Israel the Hebrew language was recreated in order to unite Jews from different European and Middle Eastern states.
In fact, the whole point of nationalism was to create a united people out of folks who were related, but not as closely related as they could be after the nationalist movement was completed. In rejecting the third world colonization of America, the historic population of the USA could become a stable united nation state for a very long time. Look at this as an opportunity born out of the crisis created by the elites attempt to destroy the historic American nation via mass immigration.
All of this is why the notion of the United States as a proposition nation is unsustainable, and if not stopped, will turn out badly. This is why Arizona is so important.
ReplyDeleteYou're damn right it is, Dennis.
See my report from the front lines here.
I'm now in Prescott; not much to add to yesterday's posting, except that when we pulled into a rest stop on I-17, there was a group of schoolkids down from Flagstaff (as indicated by the signage on the bus); the teachers or escorts were all Anglos, the youngsters about one-half Mexican in appearance.
I would like to think I don't have to say this, but for the record, I am not prejudiced against Mexicans. They have their own country which, for better and worse, reflects their culture and values. They are not entitled to my country.
Readers of Dennis Mangan's fine blog, particularly if you are living in a border state: time is getting short.
"The problem with a Brazil-style society is that over time it turns into India: the whites disappear into the crowd."
ReplyDeleteNot really. The country is still about half white, and many of those whites belong to distinct ethnic groups (German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese). Gisele Bundchen is a famous example, but the state she comes from is full of ethnic German Brazilians.
"Brazil is a fouth rate country full of disorder and heading for almost certain catastrophe due to resource depletion and a booming population."
"Resource depletion" is about the last thing Brazil has to worry about. It's energy independent and blessed with copious amounts of hard and soft commodities. I think if you do some research and compare the trajectories of Brazil and the U.S. across a number of measures over the last decade, you might be surprised. Which country's currency has been appreciating? Which one is running primary budget surpluses? Which one's major banks were on the verge of failure in 2008?
What a mass of confusions in this post. I suppose this is what Dennis has in mind when he doesn't seem concerned that his views might be incoherent.
ReplyDeleteSo what does it even mean, at this stage, that we might be a single-ethnic nation? What might this ethnicity be? Simple whiteness? But that comprehends, at bare minimum, every European group, and, quite possibly, a good deal of the Middle East. Does our ethnicity simply comprehend anyone who speaks English? But all of us with ancestors from anywhere but England will likely not be of the appropriate ethnicity by that account, including those of us with ancestors from Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, etc. If, instead, we say that our ethnicity comprehends anyone who learns English, then who is not, in principle, included? Is it OK to call anyone "American" if they are, when they arrive on our shores, both willing and able to learn English?
And, if it is whiteness one emphasizes, isn't it just a tad arbitrary to include any white, but exclude anyone who isn't? How about Asians, who both excel academically and contribute in greatly disproportionate share to important segments of our economy, such as in technology? Isn't it quite completely plausible that we would actually be a less productive and successful nation if we didn't have the contributions of Asians? This is, of course, likewise true of the contributions of Jews, though they certainly by any reasonable account white, even if they are not European.
How does HBD by itself really suggest anything about excluding all but one's own ethnicity from a country? One can make the argument that a country should choose as segments of its population those who are likely to make real contributions -- but that, as it stands, is much more of an appeal to a kind of meritocratic based immigration policy than to any that narrowly focuses only on a rather small number of acceptable nationalities.
Now it may be that we would be a more harmonious nation if we were indeed ethnically homogeneous. Perhaps that is the outcome the famous results of Robert Putnam ultimately suggest.
But the most harmonious nation may very well not be the most productive or most powerful, or even the most interesting or exciting.
Let us always bear in mind the famous lines from The Third Man:
"...in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
"So what does it even mean, at this stage, that we might be a single-ethnic nation?"
ReplyDelete"Nation", in its non-propositional sense, quite often meant exactly what "ethnic group" does today. It certainly has not always meant "country".
From Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911:
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Ger. Österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie or Österreichischungarisches Reich), the official name of a country situated....
The situation, though apparently favourable, was full of difficulty, and only a statesman of uncommon dexterity could have guided Austria with success through the ensuing years. Composed of a congeries of nationalities which included Czechs, Magyars, Ruthenes, Rumanians, Germans, Italians, Flemings and other races, and with territories separated by many miles, the Habsburg dominions required from their ruler patience, tolerance, administrative skill and a full knowledge of the currents of European diplomacy.
Thus, we see that nationality = race, more or less.
(And multinational = a pain to govern.)
"How does HBD by itself really suggest anything about excluding all but one's own ethnicity from a country?"
I myself do not favor ejecting US-born or naturalized citizens from the country on the grounds of race or ethnicity. Several separate process are going on here:
I. The defining of a nationality, or, if you prefer, an ethnic group. I call them US Eurowhites and acknowledge that that is cumbersome.
II. The assertion that this nation has the same rights to self-define and to advocated for its interests that any other nation has.
III. The assertion that it is not in this nation's interests to allow large-scale immigration from Mexico into the country where that nation resides.
IV. Radical constitutional reform proposals to create a new level of government drawn and empowered specifically to protect and nourish the nations of this country. (Although AFAIK I'm the only person working on this item.)
Prior to 1965, nobody really doubted that this was more than merely a proposition nation. It was seen as an anglo-saxon nation to which other europeans had assimilated. And as Dennis and Stari Momak pointed out above, the essentially unitary character of the founding people was recognized by almost everyone, and certainly by the founders of this nation, such as James Madison.
ReplyDeleteWhat really gives the lie to the idea of the "Proposition Nation" is this: Ostensibly it is a proposition nation in the sense that there are certain central ideals (as embodied in our most revered documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the ACLU's charter, the legal opinions of Sandra Day O'Connor, something that Thomas Friedman scribbled on a cocktail napkin, etc.), and that we are somehow bound together as one people by our common assent to be governed by these principals.
Problem is, nobody asked me. When I turned 18, I was not brought up before a citizenship panel and told: "This is what we believe. This is what makes us Americans. Are you in or out?" And needless to say, there are no provisions for anyone who disagrees (other than imprisonment for treason, I suppose).
If the American nation has no fundamental reality except this intellectual and legalistic formulation - in effect that it is an exercise in contract law - then it is deeply, fundmentally illegitimate. How can we be bound by terms which WE did not contract? How can we give assent to a proposition we were never even allowed to debate?
Now if a nation is an organic entity - the people who are related to us by common heritage (and kinship too, to a large extent), well that can command loyalty, just as a family does. We're just born into it, and it's the way of the natural world, like it or not. One may not entirely like one's family - one may find them exasperating - but they remain nonetheless, family. An ethnic nation is like that too. I do not entirely like Americans. There are a lot of things about them that drive me up the wall. But I do recognize them as my people.
Excellent article. But the US today is no Austro-Hungarian Empire. In concrete terms, Latino immigrants are no Croatians and have no national aspirations, but they are being assimilated and losing their identity as fast as they are allowed. The situation is similar to Brasil, where a white minority has culturally assimilated a vast mass of mixed population while maintaining their political domination. Brasil is ruled by the descendants of the Portuguese founders, as Mexico's ruling elite is completely Spanish. America will similarly develope into an homogeneized mixed mass, speaking an English dialect, ruled by the descendants of its Puritan founders. As the generations pass, it will evolve into an ethnic state, just as the French are considered an ethnic group and historic France was an ethnic state(good example in the article).
ReplyDeleteYugoslavia was another multi-ethnic proposition nation, the proposition being communism. That worked out well.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't really all that much more propositional than Germany. The various peoples shared a good deal in common. Religion ultimately proved too divisive, not so much because of people's devotion but because it was an easy pretext for nationalists (many of them more economically motivated than nationalistically) to seize upon to divide the peoples. The racial characteristics of the populace likely also played a substantial role, their lower trust as compared to NW Europeans meaning those who were prepared to set aside their differences and focus on unity never achieved a sufficient mass. If "Yugoslavia" had included Bulgaria (and there were negotiations) in place of Croatia and Slovenia (but kept Bosnia, whose "Islam" was the most innocuous thing going) I think the country would still be around today.
Anon,
One of the criticisms of nationalism is that it is a substitute for religion that unites otherwise disparate people who nonetheless have substantial things in common (e.g., language, superficial appearance etc.).
You could also argue that religion is a substitute for tribal infeeling, and one that, in the case of Islam even more so than Christianity, worked spectacularly well in uniting the disparate units you mention, who for reasons evolutionary, geopgraphic, historical and linguistic nonetheless shared the basic elements of "greater peopledom." Nevertheless once moves beyond the disparate-units-nonetheless-unifiable and attempts to unite even more disparate peoples whose only shared element of any importance (to the consternation of humanists everywhere) is their religious profession rifts readily appear. A good example was some Gulf shiek quoted a few years back as complaining that you can't just flood his emirate with Pakis and Bengals on the basis of "Islam" and call it a society. These issues also plague Israeli society, which is becoming increasingly propositional.
Ricardo,
It hasn't happened yet. But it will eventually happen. Love him or hate him, Richard McCulloch has it right: if racial diversity can be numerically described, a country's racial "average" is its racial destiny. The process requires thousands of years (however monoracial India appears to outsiders, Indians are often keenly aware of differences), and various social factors (anti-miscegenation legislation/pro-mixing propaganda) can delay or quicken it, but it will eventually happen. Of course, of interest to readers of this blog, loosely "whites" or "Europeans" will disappear long before any final, stable state is reached. Evidence, however, suggests an extinction event hundreds of years away is an insipid basis for a call to arms.
Good post.
ReplyDeleteRead this excellent review in this weeks New Yorker of "Toqueville's Discovery of America" which describes the US in 1831, a land completely different from the scrambled mess of scofflaws and political spendthrifts of today who use ethnic identities to advance their own interests. That was a country where the community enforced the law without vigilantism, unlike Europe's habitual sheltering of fugitives from the authorities due to royal and elites' disaffection with their hoi polloi.
Radetzky March by Joseph Roth describes the ethnic divisions of Austria-Hungary across three generations and The Man Without Qualities is Robert Musil's masterpiece demonstrating the bone-deep ambiguities and endemic corruption of an Empire which long ago lost any semblance of moral authority.
BTW, the "anonymous" quote from Graham Greene putting Italy over Switzerland seems to neglect minds like Einstein, Nietzsche, and C.G. Jung to name only three among many others who flourished in the relative non-judgmental Swiss environment. The anti-Swiss agitprop in the US stems from many sources, among them from people who put their flight capital in Zurich in the first and second world wars and employ disdain for the Swiss as a weapon to extract a lot of poorly documented largesse from the Swiss. Greene must have sniffed this viral calumny and passed it along with the rest of the sicko international left.
Oops, Dennis. I hadn't seen your 10:21 AM post of 5/14 when I scribbled my previous post. I had the chance to vacation in a tiny village in French-speaking Switzerland for a week long ago, one far off the tourist track with a Swiss diplomat from Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteThe Swiss don't exactly express their opinions about the other components of the ethno-linguistic compound that makes the Swiss who they are. Suffice it to say that this diplomat had studied at Freiburg and had a relative who was a Roman Catholic cardinal, so he was hardly a typrical Swiss. He was also married to a lovely British girl he'd met while they were students at Oxford, so he went far in the international hierarchy and I believe became a senior UN diplomat before he retired.
I was staying in a small village in Gruyere and there were three times as many cattle as people, plus there was an air force base with Swedish Saab fighters overflying his tiny chateau, set on a mountainside, of course.
From what I could discern in my many visits to Switzerland while living in Lyon, they are the most compact multi-lingual nation imaginable, and despite the three quasi-ethnic components, are all basically of the very same genetic stripe. And not very tolerant of other genetic stripes, I might add.
Works for them, though.
"But the most harmonious nation may very well not be the most productive or most powerful, or even the most interesting or exciting."
ReplyDeleteHey, Anonymous,
If you want to live somewhere interesting or exciting, how about emigrating to un-harmonious New South Africa? Look, especially, at downtown Jo'berg.
You do that, and let me have back my White America circa 1950s, with all its enervating harmony such that people couldn't even be motivated to get up and lock their doors at night. Give me back my unproductive 90% White America that was, at the time, strangely, the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, where "Made in USA" meant quality.
Give me back my boring '50s 90% White America with its pedestrian "heroes" like Alan Shepard who holds only the mild distinction of being the second human in outer space.
You go to SA and enjoy your diversity. The rolling blackouts from ANC's neglect of the power grid ought to provide you plenty of interesting moments.
Johan Norberg once answered Harry Lime's stupid statement about the Swiss only producing cuckoo clocks:
ReplyDelete"You mean apart from the tax revolt, direct democracy and more wealth than any other country ever had? For example the pencil, the newspaper, the first branded article, the electric telegraph, the clock-factory, the internal combustion engine, the Swiss army knife, playing cards, the cartoon, contact lenses, vivisection, organ transplantation, the Red Cross - and Absinthe."
Btw, the cuckoo clock is from Germany.
Bjk,
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to suggest that ethno-nationalism is practically impossible in the US; it's quite another thing to suggest that the US should go forth on the path of being a proposition nation.
No one in the world, except liberal Americans and some ethnic activists, would disagree that the US is at its core an Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation. Most immigrants, thoughout US history, have understood this and tried to assimilate to this ideal. Without it [Anglo-Saxon Protestant core], I doubt the US can even continue to exist as a nation -- it would surely no longer be the US. Just think of the rarity of your country's conservatives to embrace small government; what other country besides UK could claim such a thing?! It's rare and it would be best for Americans and your unending inflow of immigrants to realize this.
The borders must close, otherwise, in the long run, you will all lose.
Frankly, speaking as a Western European there are days when I wonder whether the USA needs to die for Europe to survive.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I've been thinking the same thing. But in opposite terms.
US is already destined to be multiethnic. Minorities are already majority of births. There is no way to stop or reverse that. That train parted long time ago.
I agree with Anon@10:07 on this point. There are certainly ways to cause catastrophic shifts in demography, but decent men prefer not to think about them.
Wasn't it Buchanan who said that inevitability is the language of the tyrant? I'll add that the notion of inevitability is inane. It cannot account for Pestilence, Famine, War and Death.
That's good for both whites and hispanics. The alternative right should encourage that sort of thing, not white nationalism. It's not possible to encourage assimilation if Americanism is defined in ethnic terms.
Race-blind "Americanism" doesn't exist. Past a certain number of aliens(and we're certainly past it), assimilation into the American republic is an impossibility, and impossible propositions shouldn't be encouraged. That's precisely what got us into this mess.
And for the record, I don't give a shit what's good for Hispanics.
A whiter and richer version of Brazil wouldn't be a bad outcome for America, fantasies of race wars aside.
Let's place Race War and the Long-Term Success of a Brazil-Like America and on the scales of probability and see which is the heavier. In fact, we're already in a low-level race war; whites simply aren't fighting back yet. In my experience, those who dismiss racial conflict as a fantasy, even with the copious evidence of non-white-on-white savagery, are generally the ones who wish to preserve the status quo.
But the US doesn't exclude people who aren't white from being Americans. A Turk who is born in Germany will never be German, but the same is not true in the US.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's true. The assertion that some Turk fresh off the plane from Ankara becomes, upon setting foot on American soil, just as American as your father is fanciful. A child could see the falsity of this assertion, and in this way a child is wiser than a liberal. What defines the modern American Citizen is purely technical. If the federals decide to amnesty 12 million illegal Mestizos, they will be American Citizens but they will never be Americans.
"Resource depletion" is about the last thing Brazil has to worry about. It's energy independent and blessed with copious amounts of hard and soft commodities.
Sounds like a wonderfully dynamic place. When does your plane leave?
So what does it even mean, at this stage, that we might be a single-ethnic nation? What might this ethnicity be? Simple whiteness? But that comprehends, at bare minimum, every European group, and, quite possibly, a good deal of the Middle East. Does our ethnicity simply comprehend anyone who speaks English?
I was born and raised in Arizona, of Scots-Irish extraction. If I met on the road a farmer from Iowa whose people came from Bavaria, we would meet as two white Americans. All else is sophistry. On a visceral level, white Americans understand exactly what they are; they understand each other (look at the aftermath of the Nashville floods). They don't have to prove it to anyone. And if there is any doubt of this, my guess is that external pressure will cure it. Blacks and Mestizos are targeting whites for destruction, so the battle lines have already been drawn without regard for argument or consent.
"...in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
And the Sig 550. And anyway, the terms are not the same. In your scenario, all the actors are white. I seriously doubt an America consumed with conflict betweens whites, blacks, asians and Mestizos is going to produce great works of art and further Western civilization.
Anon @7:47
ReplyDelete"And, if it is whiteness one emphasizes, isn't it just a tad arbitrary to include any white, but exclude anyone who isn't?"
This is completely nuts. If whiteness is what is emphasized, whether it is arbitrary is of absolutely no significance. What matters is what it means. So no, no Asians or Jews. And no, Asian immigration did not do much. Name the Asians from the period 1880-1965 who were great inventors and leaders and teachers.
"But the most harmonious nation may very well not be the most productive or most powerful, or even the most interesting or exciting."
You go live in vibrant diverse areas. Don't force me to. If you try, the time will come when force will be applied directly to you, personally.
Whoever you are, you're pretty much deliberately dishonest.
Outland, Norberg also left out LSD, for what it's worth!
ReplyDeleteAmerica will similarly develope into an homogeneized mixed mass, speaking an English dialect, ruled by the descendants of its Puritan founders.-J
ReplyDeleteYou're really out of touch with developments in the US:
http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/090729_kaufmann.htm
(...)
Kaufmann charts the decline of Anglo-Saxons and the rise of the Jews in all areas of the American elite, from university departments of political science to the federal civil service. “For twenty years, the de-WASP-ing of the ruling elite in America has proceeded at a breathtaking pace.” Kaufmann cites the important study of Lerner et al. (American Elites, 1996) showing that by the1990s there were “roughly the same proportion of WASPs and Jews at the elite levels of the federal civil service, and a greater proportion of Jewish elites among corporate lawyers.” Jews outnumbered Anglo-Saxons 58–21 among elites in television, 48 to 25 among “public interest” elites, and 40 to 21 among legal elites. The same study found that, “in stark contrast to the Jews, WASPs were not overrepresented within the ranks of the national elite.”
Given that Jews constituted less than 3% of the population, these are very high overrepresentations indeed. In contrast, White Protestants became underrepresented in corporate elites by the 1980s, and there was a steady decline in their political power in Congress.
(...)
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/100308_jewish_ruling_class.htm
(...)
And yet that plain fact is that in modern America, Jews are the biggest winner among ethnic groups. Although only two percent of the American population, Jews make up about 35 percent of the Forbes 400 wealthiest individuals. (That percentage is from after the financial bubble burst in 2007-2008, so it likely reflects a long-run baseline.)
(...)
So people have great difficulty with the statement from The Third Man. It's called an hyperbole. One isn't expected to take it quite literally.
ReplyDeleteBut does anyone really believe that Switzerland's contributions to Western Civilization match those of the bloody Renaissance in Italy?
Look, the point is that there really does seem to be a tradeoff between harmony and creativity or even productivity in a culture. The components that make up the basis for intellectual and technological progress may very well require some real tension among the underlying groups of people involved. The history of human accomplishment is rarely one of human harmony.
The irony of those who pine for ethnic purity in America, and the greatness of America they remember from earlier times, is that it is they who, if their desires for purity were satisfied, would be the major agents of destruction in America's greatness. Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today? A good deal of the reason America stands so far above other nations in accomplishment is that we have reached a critical mass of high achieving individuals in vast swaths of science and the arts. If one eliminates the contributions of significant segments of the people involved in that accomplishment, the critical mass can easily be lost -- and America returned to its previous state as a secondary power. Why would any rational patriot choose that course?
For those who simply can't abide "dynamism" that involves any amount of disharmony, I suggest that you simply move out to the sticks where you can get all the harmony you might ever want. Go to North Dakota and ignore the Native Americans. It's the boring but "harmonious" life you deserve.
But does anyone really believe that Switzerland's contributions to Western Civilization match those of the bloody Renaissance in Italy?
ReplyDeleteSwitzerland is landlocked, away from major trade routes, has an inhospitable climate and terrain, and has about 12% of Italy's population, so the comparison is unjust. The Swiss have done quite well for themselves, especially considering how well Italy has done lately.
A better question is whether you'd rather live in Renaissance Florence or in Switzerland. I imagine that few of the Swiss at the time would have wanted to trade places.
Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today?
Yes, I do anyway. America was the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet long before we had any Asians, and long before Jews became hugely overrepresented in elite professions. Edison, Morse, Bell, Ford, Shockley, Hewett and Packard, Thomas J. Watson (IBM); Washington, Grant, Sherman, Lee, Eisenhower, MacArthur; Melville, Mencken, Twain, Emerson; the list could go on, but it's funny how we didn't need diversity to thrive and prosper.
Look, the point is that there really does seem to be a tradeoff between harmony and creativity or even productivity in a culture.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a point, it's an unsupported assertion. New York City is NOT in fact a fertile creative breeding ground for ideas.
Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today?
Setting aside the fact that the mono-cultural America of the 1960's was already the most powerful country in the world, what makes you think that power is the goal which we should stive for at the expense of everything else?
If one eliminates the contributions of significant segments of the people involved in that accomplishment, the critical mass can easily be lost -- and America returned to its previous state as a secondary power
America's previous status was not that of a secondary power.
Why would any rational patriot choose that course?
Because a rational patriot loves his country first and worships power a very distant second.
For those who simply can't abide "dynamism" that involves any amount of disharmony, I suggest that you simply move out to the sticks where you can get all the harmony you might ever want.
ReplyDeleteAnd for those of you who think that disharmony translates into "dynamism", I suggest you go live in the Balkans.
if your kooky theories were correct, Yugoslavia should have invented a workable nucular fusion reactor, a cure for cancer, and FTL travel.
For those who simply can't abide "dynamism" that involves any amount of disharmony, I suggest that you simply move out to the sticks where you can get all the harmony you might ever want. Go to North Dakota and ignore the Native Americans. It's the boring but "harmonious" life you deserve.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful to have bicoastal elitism distilled down to such a shiny, perfect crystal.
Here's some boring dull rural stuff for you.
But really, disharmony isn't the problem, is it? The problem is that the areas you are inviting us to flee to are next. That will be the case until either the illegal aliens are packed off and gringo birthrates recover or until intermediate levels of government are empowered to raise internal partitions against migration.
"So people have great difficulty with the statement from The Third Man. It's called an hyperbole. One isn't expected to take it quite literally."
ReplyDeleteYou ended your statement with the Lime quote. It summed up the essence of your thought: chaos, war, hardship, disorder, flux, diversity and so and so are positive impulses for achievement. Wrong. Because the Swiss thrive despite all that.
Anyway, a hyperbole it may be, but it was a wrong hyperbole. See, a wrong example/ anecdote in making a point isn't just a gaffe. Most people only have examples/ anecdotes as proof to claim anything.
"Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today?"
This is what's estranging for non-Americans like me. Why should the US have to be the world power anyway? Would your world fall apart if smart immigrants invented stuff in their own countries? It's OK for the US to just be the US and nothing more -- even then, they'd be above most of the world without effort. Americans don't need to be improved; you can survive by just being Americans.
"The history of human accomplishment is rarely one of human harmony."
Human accomplishment has to do with human genius; it's a matter of being born with the right genes and means to express your talent. The latter may even be less important, as Galton pointed out in 'Heriditary Genius'. People with unusual talent succeed against all odds; it doesn't matter much if they're born in boring Switzerland or Borgia Italy.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteIt's not a question of whether we need diversity to thrive and prosper. Yes, America would be an important power if we were composed entirely of those of European extraction.
But would we be the hyperpower we are today? Would we be able to maintain that status across the next century?
What's obvious to me is that the ability both to achieve that status and maintain it depends on achieving and maintaining the critical mass of highly accomplished individuals in various disciplines, stretching from the sciences to the arts to popular entertainment. All of these areas are absolutely dominated by America today, and certainly weren't so dominated, say, back before WWII.
Now suppose one looks at the representation of various groups at elite institutions as some kind of rough metric for the centrality of those groups in intellectual, artistic, or technological achievement. In that case, Jews and Asians would represent 50% of that elite. If this figure is even close to a ball park estimate of their importance in those areas, then America will be greatly diminished were their contributions removed. By any rational reckoning, reducing America's intellectual output by such a sizable amount would enormously reduce our ability to compete against other nations and cultures in those areas.
And it's important to bear in mind how essential critical mass is in a nation's overall productivity. Silicon Valley succeeds as it does most importantly because it is the place one goes to when one has an important new idea. Likewise one goes to Hollywood with great ideas for entertainment (however detestable Hollywood may be politically, it exerts a crushing dominance over the very profitable and highly influential entertainment industry worldwide).
I ask again: why would a rational patriot wish to upset the balance that lies behind America's current greatness?
Others can choose America The Harmonious. I choose America The Great.
Others can choose America The Harmonious. I choose America The Great.
ReplyDeleteFalse dichotomy. You've offered no evidence that disorder or disharmony are a necessary precondition for "greatness". Those Asians and Jews in elite institutions and professions have for the most part *usurped* places that would have gone to people of American stock. How many white, gentile Americans get rejected from Harvard, do you suppose? They don't get rejected because they're not qualified.
Others can choose America The Harmonious. I choose America The Great.
ReplyDeleteCome on. You choose an America in which people of your own tribe are prominent. Whether that results in an America The Great or an America The Damned is not really material to you.
It's the cynical dishonesty of these arguments which gets tedious.
"America the Great"
ReplyDeleteLOL! We have diversity up the ying-yang and yet are clearly a country headed for, if not the dustbin of history, something close.
You can not be serious.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteHere's my argument that some level of disharmony is a necessary precondition of global greatness today.
It derives most basically from my acceptance of the lessons of HBD, along with a pretty obvious observation from history and economics.
I accept that various ethnic and racial groups are most at ease -- experience the most harmony -- when they are surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race. I take this to be lesson 1 of HBD.
Lesson 2 of HBD is that the most able individuals in the world can be found across a multitude of ethnicities and races.
Let me add Lesson 3, which comes from history and economics: the dominant power in science and culture is that which assembles the greatest number of the most capable individuals in the same place.
Put these three lessons together and what you get is this: the most powerful nation will be that which can bring in capable individuals from across all ethnicities and races, but the price to be paid will be some level of disharmony.
I think this is well captured in the current dominance, but relative disharmony, to be found in America today.
So there is a dichotomy there, but not a false one.
You seem to pine for a scenario in which everything is upside. But if you regard as a realist, why should that be so?
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteBut does anyone really believe that Switzerland's contributions to Western Civilization match those of the bloody Renaissance in Italy?"
Yes. A prosperous, productive, and peaceful society is a great accomplishment - worth more than a few choice frescoes and statuary.
"Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today?"
Yes, and the point you are trying to make is tendentious nonsense. If you are trying to alienate white gentiles, then you have hit on a winning formula here. Asians were mostly irrelevant to American society until after 1965. Without jews, science and medicine in this country would have been somewhat poorer, but no worse off then in England. Engineering would have suffered not at all. Music, somewhat, but not unbearably. The entertainment business would not be nearly as important or influential as it is now. But I do not count that a bad thing.
You keep admonishing us that the country we want is not the country we should want, and that we should just go elsewhere (move to the sticks, you said). I have an alternate suggestion. Why don't YOU go find yourself another country, and leave ours the hell alone.
Anonymous makes some sound points about the supreme value of a critical mass of talent, especially high IQ science and engineering types. Dennis was also correct about the pre-Sixties America leading the world with a white European population of 90%. However, the Jews and Asians are significant additions to our ethnic brew despite their respective dystopic features.Jews cause sociopolitical upheaval and Asians assimilate rather poorly and remain intellectually rather dormant and timid in the public forum.
ReplyDeleteIn his intrepid travels across the world the writer Robert D. Kaplan repeatedly finds diversity to be a source of dysfunction. The ethnic, religious, language, and other distinctions in various Central Asian countries are almost laughable were they not real causes of violence and socioeconomic disrepair. Democracy cannot triumph across the globe in part because of tribal hostility and malfunctions based upon "diversity" such as unequal IQ distributions. That is why Kaplan predicts anarchy across much of the world, as we have indeed witnessed since he wrote "The Coming Anarchy" in 2000.
America has no magic solution to excessive diversity as a cause of societal dysfunction. The world that Dennis and I admire is gone forever but the lessons from the Balkans and numerous other places must be learned and used as a basis for future immigration laws. While some highly selective immgration could be a useful future tool, the diaster of Mexican and low IQ Latino immigration will form an incurable cancer unless what happened in Arizona becomes a national movement.Socialists like Obama will fight our efforts but must be defeated as we build the border fence that is a precondition of future American greatness. With reasonable restrictions on immigration, the wave of pathological diversity will be stopped in its tracks. Those who invite the world will surely reap a harvest of sorrow.
"Go to North Dakota and ignore the Native Americans. It's the boring but "harmonious" life you deserve."
ReplyDeleteWhy should WE have to go anywhere? We had lots of harmony in, say, Colorado. Now, not so much, since the mestizo invasion that YOUR sort enabled.
And many of the Coloradans who went there while it was still harmonious, did so at great personal expense and tribulation to escape the "dynamism" of "integration" and "busing" that your sorts sprung on them.
So what's to stop you from importing more "dynamism" on the North Dakotans, just like you did to the Coloradans? Nothing. (Yet.)
I, as a matter of fact, DID flee to the "boring, harmonious" north from the "dynamic" -- and now bankrupt -- CA. Your buddies send any MORE "dynamism" to follow me, and I for one am prepared to stand, this time, and fight.
the most powerful nation will be that which can bring in capable individuals from across all ethnicities and races
ReplyDeleteThat's not a nation. It's a multi-national corporation. A completely different beast which pursues completely different goals, "power" being one such.
There's no reason why your collection of "capable individuals from across all ethnicities and races" need to be located in one geographical area, let alone that the geographical area be America.
Ricardo said...
ReplyDelete"Resource depletion" is about the last thing Brazil has to worry about. It's energy independent and blessed with copious amounts of hard and soft commodities."
As I understand it, Brazil's vaunted energy independence comes largely from selling it's oil for foreign exchange, and fueling it's own relatively modest energy needs with ethanol produced from sugar cane - the cane harvested by machete-wielding coolies.
http://bobmoser.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/cane-cutters-%E2%80%94-the-backbone-of-brazils-ethanol-industry-day-3-of-4/#more-26
That sounds like a not very sustainable model for any country, and certainly not a desirable one.
I don't wish to live in Brazil, a country where wealthy people move from gated compound to gated compound by helicopter so as to evade the ever present risk of kidnapping, street-people are dealt with by killing them in the night, and heavily harmed street gangs have been known to lay siege to police stations. That doesn't sound like it's one or two steps down from 1960s America - it sounds like it's just one or two steps up from "Beyond Thunderdome".
For those who simply can't abide "dynamism" that involves any amount of disharmony, I suggest that you simply move out to the sticks where you can get all the harmony you might ever want.
ReplyDeleteAnd I suggest you move to Israel and leave us alone.
Martin B is on target as regards Brazil. We would be insane to allow liberal mythology to win out over the harsh realities of HBD. The Latino lobby, the black power elite, and numerous American corporate idiots use a variety of rationalizations for attenuating white dominance and success. Liberal mythology covers a multitude of sins but tribal values trump all else.
ReplyDeleteWhites have failed to identify themselves as an unified party in the spoils race. Blacks now have ridden their "favored" status to great heights of delusion in which they now dominate TV "intellectual air space" with their ethnocentric mutterings and shallow disquisitions on sex, love, and life.Cable TV is a circus of black egotism as they are rarely told of their serious imperfections. Tyra Banks is now a noted author, but why not? Empty black suits abound and pop culture seems entranced by the hip-hop low life zeitgeist.
As Robert Kaplan shows in his vast travels, diversity is full of stress, conflict, and even terror. Culture is an organic thing that takes thousands of years to evolve and requires harmony and consanguinity on multiple points of contact. A single factor like religion can cause the stew to boil over. Islam is such an example and it caused warfare, homicide, and enormous personal suffering. Look at the belief that albinos can cause evil but their body parts can be used as medicinals to correct various disprders or protect against diseases. Albinos are murdered in parts of Africa simply because they possess a mutant form of gene.Third World peoples come with an enormous array of superstitions, diseases, and bad habits. New York City's prodigious diversity survives because people use avoidance, silence, and simple lies to escape serious attacks. In no way does the culture of New York integrate anyone in more than an utterly superficial way. The "Kitty Genovese Syndrome" is a disorder derived from the failure of neighbors to save a woman screaming for help. The price we pay for New York's diversity is a high one indeed.
Why don’t we call the left wing anonymous “Harry Lime”? It is more or less the name he chose for himself.
ReplyDeleteI think it is clear that Harry Lime is bigoted against white gentiles. Harry Lime tries to craft his arguments to fit with his bias against white gentiles. And if white gentiles are so incapable of keeping America a great country, why would he be so concerned about making sure they are reduced to a minority in the great country they created in the first place?
Harry Lime doesn’t care about how much of a mess his policies will make (have made) of America as long as his kind is on top of the dung pile.
OK, I accept the name Harry Lime, which is amusing enough.
ReplyDeleteNow why everyone has seem to have concluded I must be Jewish rather escapes me. In fact, FWIW, I'm neither Jewish nor Asian, and am wholly of European extraction, mostly pretty well Northern.
I'm doing little more than following the evidence I see where it takes me. I noted my three "lessons". If you don't accept my conclusion, I think you're going to have to disagree with one of those lessons.
In general I think that there simply exists a tradeoff between harmony and overall achievement in a country. It's best to think of them as represented by some kind of function -- imagine a graph if you will, plotting harmony vs. achievement. Now, no doubt there's a maximum in that graph, a point at which, beyond a certain level of disharmony, overall achievement goes down instead of up. But what I'm sure of is that the maximum in that graph is NOT also a minimum in disharmony. I would choose a country in which some point near the maximum in achievement is attained. Obviously others would choose less disharmony and smaller achievement.
And I can't help but wonder about the obsession with Jews in these parts. Look, Jews are pretty much factoring themselves out of the equation in a way almost ideal for those who are seeking greater harmony. The intermarriage rate for Jews -- which dismay many of them -- is close to 50% (higher among secular Jews), and the birthrate is well below replacement levels, particularly among secular Jews, who represent the most powerful segment of Jews in our society. How many generations do you imagine that a group with such an intermarriage and replacement rate can exert great and concerted influence over our society, however prominent? And isn't hard to declare that they are as a group to this day disturbingly insular, while they intermarry at such rates? Does that make any sense at all? Don't you imagine that they -- and even more their progeny -- don't have anything like the commitment to all things Jewish (including of course Israel) that those who refused to intermarry did?
A few generations down the line, I expect that the vast majority of people who call themselves Jews will be only a fraction Jewish, with all the attendant dilution of concerted purpose that implies.
Honestly, viewing them as an ongoing "threat" to the American way of life and nation impresses me as paranoia, pure and simple.
Now why everyone has seem to have concluded I must be Jewish rather escapes me.
ReplyDeleteI took you for a non-Jew with an excessive fixation on Jews all along.
No doubt you mean well, but you are doing Jews no favor by setting them up on that towering pedestal of yours. You seem to look at Jews as some quasi-mystical entity - almost like a displaced religious impulse.
That's not a burden any mortals can bear. Eventually the rest of the world would discover that their Jewish godlngs are as stupid and venal as everyone else, and wreak a terrible vengence.
In general I think that there simply exists a tradeoff between harmony and overall achievement in a country.
Yes, I believe you've said that a few times already. You've still offered nothing to back it up though.
I can't help but wonder about the obsession with Jews in these parts. The intermarriage rate for Jews -- which dismay many of them -- is close to 50% (higher among secular Jews), and the birthrate is well below replacement levels, particularly among secular Jews, who represent the most powerful segment of Jews in our society.
Then look inside yourself, as you appear to be as "obsessed" with Jews as anybody here. I can only imagine how many Jewish facts you'd have at your fingers if you were really taken with them!
A few generations down the line, I expect that the vast majority of people who call themselves Jews will be only a fraction Jewish, with all the attendant dilution of concerted purpose that implies.
You are mistaken. "Jewish" denotes a mindset, not a bloodline. Most Jews are already only a fraction "Jewish", in the sense of tracing their ancestry back to King David. The dilution of bloodlines does not diminish the sense of purpose though.
You can see the same thing at work with American blacks. Some of the most black-racially conscious of them are three-quarters white.
Harry, feel free to correct us all, but aren’t you the one who claimed that “without Jews and Asians” America wouldn’t be great in future?
ReplyDeleteSounds like YOU are the one obsessed with Jews, especially as you seem to assume that reducing immigration and keeping America a European majority nation somehow implies that Jews wouldn’t fit in to the picture. That assumption doesn’t really make much sense to me, but it seems to be the basis of your anti-white gentile position. After all, European Jews seemed to do very well in a majority European America for the past century. Why would that change if America settled down and maintained its historic identity? In fact, a white gentile majority America would seem the best security American Jews could possibly get.
What is a threat are people (like you) and groups that want to destroy America’s historic majority nation and replace it with something out of Blade Runner. After all, you said yourself that what you want is conflict, spilled blood, violence and ruin all in the service of replacing the majority nation with something else. I’d call that threatening but I guess from up there on the Ferris wheel the old America nation looks like a punch of ants to be stepped on.
Harry Lime,
ReplyDeleteYou've addressed some of Mangan's arguments, but there are 6-7 others who have countered your arguments and you've (conveniently?) ignored them. Answering them will do much for your credibility. Continuing to pontificate as if those arguments were never made will have the opposite effect.
It is possible to have a non-stagnant society with the disharmony that results in creativity and action, WITHOUT necessarily being involved in a process that will destroy the very people that created the nation in the first place. This is not an either/or proposition. That you present it as such is dishonest.
ReplyDeleteYou've addressed some of Mangan's arguments, but there are 6-7 others who have countered your arguments and you've (conveniently?) ignored them.
ReplyDeleteLook, I presented an argument pretty much from basics -- the three lessons I described above. If anyone has shown how one of those premises isn't true, or how my point doesn't follow from them, it has eluded me. I further pointed out that one might consider the function of achievement based on disharmony. That function has some maximum of achievement which differs from a maximum of harmony. I believe that only in a delusional world, not the real one, does it work out otherwise. Liberals have their delusions when it comes to such things - but conservatives, or at least some of them, clearly have their own.
As far as my obsession with Jews go, I suggest you look to the debate as it actually ensued. I mentioned that Jews and Asians represented a goodly portion of the elite in America. I don't know how one could not mention their presence in such a context, given the numbers involved.
And then it was off to the races with the Jews again (poor neglected Asians! Have they no paranoids worried about them?) as it always seems to be on this blog.
As I said, I personally don't sweat the Jews much as a long term impediment to "harmony" -- they are progressively taking themselves out of the equation, as I pointed out. The idea that they are as loyal to some insular "cause" even when diluted by blood is frankly rather laughably paranoid.
"Harry Lime said...
ReplyDeleteOK, I accept the name Harry Lime, which is amusing enough."
I will assume that you do not make your living selling watered-down penicillin to orphans.
"In general I think that there simply exists a tradeoff between harmony and overall achievement in a country. It's best to think of them as represented by some kind of function -- imagine a graph if you will, plotting harmony vs. achievement. Now, no doubt there's a maximum in that graph, a point at which, beyond a certain level of disharmony, overall achievement goes down instead of up."
Perhaps we can call this "The Looter Curve" or some such, if Arthur Laffer is not offended.
I agree with you that a society of bland and stodgy conformists is unlikely to achieve "great" things. Although it should be pointed out that not all great things are great in the same way. Not all great things are even good. Beethoven was great. Napoleon was great. Count me in favor of one kind of greatness, and not the other.
But nonetheless, great things were accomplished in Europe in countries that were essentially mono-ethnic. There wasn't a great deal of ethnic diversity in Britain in the period between the end of the Civil War and the end of WWII, yet THAT Britain produced Newton, Smith, Newccomen, Watt, Cook, Gibbon, Davies, Faraday, Maxwell, Thomson, Dickens, Elgar etc. Not to mention all those descendents of Britain in the anglophone world. The same can largely be said of France, Germany, Italy, and other peoples as well. I think that Mozart would have been possible, even in the absence of Austria having a lot of chinese dudes.
Even your example of the Italian Renaissance is, I think, suspect. Yes, there was great intellectual ferment, and there was great strife. But they weren't always in the same places. Florence was pretty stable. Rome, not so much. What did Rome contribute to the Renaissance other than papal patronage, which was only made possible by the church's prodigious powers of fund-raising? I don't doubt that some of the leading lights of the Renaissance came from Rome, and I may be wrong that very few did. Never-the-less, they were all mostly Italians - not Aztecs, Bantus, and Laotians.
Harry Lime (assuming you are the Anonymous of 11:51 fame):
ReplyDeleteI'll do you the courtesy of not making any assumptions about your ethnicity or motivations. Let's talk about your Lessons of HBD.
You say: "Lesson 2 of HBD is that the most able individuals in the world can be found across a multitude of ethnicities and races."
That is true, in a sense: biodiversity has enabled every strain of mankind to produce outstanding individuals ... but not in the same way. If I understand what is generally meant by HBD, it is that evolution has gradually directed people living in various environments toward mastering those environments. But the psychological and biological "tools" that different historical environments have selected for are by no means the same.
To take the most extreme case, Africans evolved in ways that were positive for survival in their native environment. Certainly some were very "able," but that ability is skewed toward physical speed and agility. Also, for some reason I don't understand, talent in rhythm-centered music. (All right, I know it's supposed to be racist to say that Africans have a "natural sense of rhythm," but I don't see why; what is wrong with that ability?)
Yet an environment that lacked extreme changes of season and required little in the way of ingenuity to acquire food -- let's face it, it doesn't take much intellect to chase, then stick a spear into an animal, or pluck fruit from a tree -- didn't select for verbal and intellectual traits.
People who survived in more difficult climates couldn't just rely on physical prowess. I include in "more difficult climates" barren and desert environments. For all its differences with the Western world, the Middle East has not been lacking in civilization -- at least, until it came under the sway of fundamentalist Islam.
We now have a worldwide situation in which people whose genetic makeup is designed for a particular environment are uprooted from that environment, and they are supposed to seamlessly adapt to a very different one. And it's not working very well. So just saying that "able individuals" can be found among all ethnicities doesn't imply that they are interchangeable.
You say: "Let me add Lesson 3, which comes from history and economics: the dominant power in science and culture is that which assembles the greatest number of the most capable individuals in the same place."
That follows logically from your Lesson 2, but also from the same false premise, that "most capable" is a single quality that applies equally in all existing cultures and environments.
Finally: "Put these three lessons together and what you get is this: the most powerful nation will be that which can bring in capable individuals from across all ethnicities and races, but the price to be paid will be some level of disharmony."
As another commenter has pointed out, "most powerful" may not be the most important criterion for a humane environment in which people can realize their potential. I suppose Sparta was by some measures the most powerful city-state in ancient Greece, but most people admire Athens more, for reasons tht have nothing to do with sheer power.
Setting that aside: I think you understate the degree of "disharmony" that results when a political entity becomes a patchwork of radically different ethnicities. It is true that a certain amount of variation within a culture is healthy because it is stimulating. But there is also a point of diminishing returns, and beyond that a point where the "disharmony" becomes toxic.
I doubt that anyone here wants a culture of pure homogeneity. But we are treading a dangerous path toward the opposite extreme.
One other quick point.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, many liberals and many conservatives here are really united in one delusional belief: that the most productive, creative society is the most harmonious. Liberals believe it because they believe that diversity has no real downside, and is the most harmonious society. But conservatives here labor under the same delusion, with a nearly opposite underlying belief: they believe that the most harmonious solution, which is also the least diverse, is also the most productive and creative.
I hold that they are both wrong, and for the reasons I brought forth.
There is a law professor at the University of Chicago, one of the law and economics school there, named Epstein who argues that the more homogenous a company or firm is the more productive it is owing to a lack of internal conflict.
ReplyDeleteI’d suggest that Harry Lime look up Epstein’s work in this area and refute it. Good luck.
Japan of course must be neither productive nor creative owing to its lack of diversity and its well known focus on harmony.
China must also be very diverse or else it won’t get anywhere. No more domination by the Han or its ship will sink. China of course must import more non-Chinese and Japan must import more (some at least!) non-Japanese! Because of course ideas can’t cross borders without alien people crossing them!
"I hold that they are both wrong, and for the reasons I brought forth."
ReplyDeleteBut you are NOT presenting reasons. You are presenting assertions, and ignoring discussion of actual cases that invalidate your assertions.
You are dishonest.
Part I
ReplyDeleteHarry Lime's argument is a variation of what David Stove called "The Columbus Argument". Stove defines the argument as:
Throughout almost all of human history, people who have proposed innovations, whether in belief or in behaviour, have met with hostility. Death, or persecution, or derision, or at best neglect, has been the regular reward for their efforts. Yet whatever improvements have actually been made in human life, either in our opinions or in practice, have depended, and must always depend, on some innovator in the first place. We ought, therefore, not merely to tolerate, but to welcome, innovators."
Stove states that this argument above is essentially the argument put forward in John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty".
You can see the similarity with Lime's argument that there "...exists a tradeoff between harmony and overall achievement
in a country."therefore, Lime concludes, the more disharmony there is the more creativity there will be. Though Lime does limit that trade-off to "...a point at which, beyond a certain level of disharmony, overall achievement goes down instead of up."
In our leftist world the Columbus argument goes ""For they all laughed at Christopher Columbus" led, by a transition both natural and reasonable,to "It's an outrageous proposal, but we'll certainly consider it." That in turn led, naturally enough, to "We must consider it because it's an outrageous proposal." And this in turn has brought us to the uncontrollable violence and irrationality of lie in the free countries in 1987." (emphasis in original Stove essay).
Likewise we have Lime asserting that we must have disharmony so that we can be creative, or his undefined national "greatness". Lime concedes there is a limit to how far you can take disharmony but that limit is on an imaginary graph which has an unknown point that can only be known once disharmony becomes so great that creativity ceases and civilisation collapses.
The only support he gives to this argument is a single example, that being the contrast between Italy under the Borgias contrasted with Switzerland producing Cuckoo Clocks.
Part II
ReplyDeleteAgain the similarity to Stove's Columbus argument for, in asking "How did an argument so easily answered ever impose upon intelligent people?" the answer is, "Easily. It was simply a matter of ensuring what Ludwig Wittgenstein (in another connection) called a one-sided diet of examples. Mention no past innovators except those who were innovators-for-the-better. Harp away endlessly on the examples of Columbus and Copernicus, Galileo and Bruno, Socrates and (if you think the traffic will bear it) Jesus. Conceal the fact that there must have been at least one innovator-for-the-worse for every one of these (very overworked) good guys. Never mention Lenin or Pol Pot, Marx or Hegel, Robespierre or the Marquis de Sade, or those forgotten innovators of genius to whom humanity has been indebted for any of the countless insane theories...There is no weakness in the Columbus argument which cannot be more than made up for by a sufficiently tendentious choice of examples.
And the weakness in the Columbus argument is "...perfectly glaring. No doubt it is true that, for any change for the better to have taken place, either in thought or in practice, someone first had to make a new departure. But it is equally true that someone first had to make a new departure in order for any change for the worse ever to have taken place. And there must have been at least as many proposed innovations which were or would have been for the worse as ones which were or would have been for the better. But if in the past bad innovations have been at least as common as good ones, then we have at least as much reason to conclude that we ought to discourage innovators in the future as to conclude that we ought to encourage them."
And so too the weakness in Lime's argument is glaring. It is true that creativity has come out of disharmony but it is equally true that disharmony has more often than not destroyed creativity. How many examples of a dis-united and unharmonious society must we give to counter Lime's one example he readily admits is born of "hyperbole"? Anon above succinctly rebutted Lime's argument allready "And for those of you who think that disharmony translates into "dynamism", I suggest you go live in the Balkans."
Does Lime practice this disharmony that gives birth to creativity in his own life? I wonder how creatively productive he would be in the workplace should we sit him between an Islamic Jihadist and a Zionist zealot. Perhaps at intermittent moments throughout the day his colleagues could sneak up behind him and bang a gong, or lay trip hazards at his feet. Maybe block the urinals, and broadcast Barry Manilow at full volume throughout the day. Throw in a gang of Tamil Tigers in his cafeteria and a horde of Chinese Communists in HR and his creativity will no doubt go through the roof.
Though Lime's argument is so pathetically weak that Anon dismantled it in a sentence it has been a worthwhile opportunity to publicly expose the poor thinking of the Left to the simple logic of the philosopher David Stove.
It's also an opportune moment to think about the inherent lunacy of Leftists such as Harry Lime and the destructive consequences of their lack of rationality.
Pat Hannagan
@ “How about Asians, who both excel academically and contribute in greatly disproportionate share to important segments of our economy, such as in technology?... This is, of course, likewise true of the contributions of Jews...”
ReplyDeleteNope! Asians cannot produce white babies and therefore they have no business near us. As to the Jews, even Lawrence Auster has stated that it is “not healthy” that the Jews “become dominant” in America. Of course, the Jewish Auster understates the case. It is not only unhealthy that Jews “become dominant”, but outright suicidal for white Americans.
There is a law professor at the University of Chicago, one of the law and economics school there, named Epstein who argues that the more homogenous a company or firm is the more productive it is owing to a lack of internal conflict.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, do you get nothing in my original argument? What I'm NOT arguing is that disharmony, per se, is necessarily good for creativity and productivity. I'm arguing that disharmony is a side effect of the mechanism that really enables greater creativity, namely the assembly in one place of the most talented people across ethnicities and races.
Now I'd expect generally disharmony might have some negative, not positive, impact on productivity. I do wonder, though, if it may not sometimes be positive in a culture, as opposed to a company.
But I have to say I'm rather surprised that so many don't accept in any way the idea that disharmony is a cost of maximum productivity/creativity in a country.
Again, consider Jews as Exhibit A. Is there anyone who seriously dispute that on balance they haven't contributed considerably to American culture and productivity? And if you grant that, who will dispute what this very thread demonstrates: that Jews tend to create disharmony?
So what's left for me to prove?
I just don't care about this country. I feel like the elites gave it away with immigration. We let all these people in to take our jobs and change cities, while the native born are being left out. Look at all the foreign baseball players. Why would you give these jobs to foreigners? As soon as this happens, the "country" doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel close to any "citizens" and I would never fight for this country.
" It's not possible to encourage assimilation if Americanism is defined in ethnic terms"
ReplyDeleteWe don't want them to assimilate because they shoudn't be here in the first place.
"Jews and Asians would represent 50% of that elite. If this figure is even close to a ball park estimate of their importance in those areas, then America will be greatly diminished were their contributions removed. By any rational reckoning, reducing America's intellectual output by such a sizable amount would enormously reduce our ability to compete against other nations and cultures in those areas.'
ReplyDeleteWhat great contributions have Asians made to this country? Some H1b holding engineers stealing jobs fom Americans. Indians are not that smart as a whole.
How many great discoveries have East Asians made in science? How many Nobel winners in the sciences are Asian?
"If the federals decide to amnesty 12 million illegal Mestizos, they will be American Citizens but they will never be Americans."
ReplyDeleteThat's true,Niether are the Polish,Russian, Asian immigrants.
If you are non-white,except for black, you may never really be considered an American, even if you are born here.And blacks were marginalized. Real Americans know who a real American is.
Sorry, Harry Lime's argument is complete and unadulterated nonsense.
ReplyDelete1) "Disharmony" does not bring achievement. It bring war and chaos.
2) The presence of Jew and Asians in the elite ranks of society is due to the post-1965 cultural revolution that created the conditions of their ascendancy. It was not because of their ability. Both of these groups of people have a parasitic and adversarial relationship with the American host country. They are unscrupulous. That is why they have succeeded in becoming the elite.
3) The ascendancy of the Jew/Asian has resulted in America going into decline. These people have run the country into the ground in a way the WASPS never could.
4) Asian/Indian science, engineering, and medicine is complete junk. Compare the level of revolutionary scientific achievement in the pre-1965 period compared to the post-1965 period. The pre-65 period showed stunning advances that completely altered our way of life. The post-1965 period is just minor evolutionary changes occurring due to the sheer quantity of Asian/Indian mediocrity infesting the grad schools. Really, just utter garbage.
Here is a sample of the great inventions and scientific discoveries of the pre-1965 era: air conditioning; aircraft; autos; rockets; radio; radar; nuclear energy; satellites; polio vaccine; the computer; discovery of DNA; combustion engine; jet engine; the vacuum tube; the transistor; the internet.
What are the revolutionary inventions and life-altering discoveries of the post-1965 era?
Nothing. Everything we have today are mere evolutionary changes of towering intellects from the past.
When America was ruled by WASPs, we had William Shockley. Now that Chindu science runs everything, we have the guy who co-invented the USB port. Think about that. A doctorate in electrical engineering to invent so peripheral used to store porn.
Pathetic.
It's time this nonsense of "dynamism" and importing "the best and brightest" ended. We don't need some Asian toy-maker or puzzle-solver and we certainly don;t need any "verbose" Jewish I-Banker and lawyers. They did a great job managing the recent market crash.
There's something really pathetic about this white nationalism. It ignores the fact that "white" is empty in way that "German" isn't
ReplyDeleteBut turning to white nationalism is just the mirror image of la raza's own sad ethnic resentment. Assimilation to Americanism is the goal, where latinos identify themselves as American first.
White isn't any more empty or sad than black, jew, or latino. This isn't confusing, and only people of ill-will toward Whites would assert as much without also attacking black, jew, or latino identity. White is as valid a biopolitical grouping as any if those others. If jewish nationalism makes sense then so does White nationalism, for both the original European ethnies and for the various amalgamated Europeans in diaspora.
Harry Lime doesn’t seem to understand what an “elite” is, and it appears he thinks it is the same thing as a meritocracy or an aristocracy, a rule by the best and brightest. That simply isn’t the case. The term elite has traditionally been used to denote a class that has obtained an elevated position usually by some means unrelated to merit. I think that applies to the “elites” of the Western world in general and America in particular. This view could also be combined with the Burnham theory of the “managerial elite” who rule by fraud and misdirection rather than by force.
ReplyDeleteI see little evidence that our current elite, Jewish or otherwise has contributed much of value, either to culture or to the more material aspects of civilization. Instead they have taken much and given back little to nothing. The economy has been torn down and not built up, the culture is a disaster and society has been fatally undermined. The elites that Harry Lime praises have contributed to this to be sure, but the destruction is easy the while the creative part is lacking.
Please Harry Lime list for us the great elites of the arts you admire, the great leaders of industry and technology as well as the great political leaders. . Increasingly, our “elite” is made up of affirmative action figures such as Barack Obama, Kagan and the failed Senate appointee Caroline Kennedy. These elites are empty and fake, privileged and wealthy to be sure, but accomplished and meritorious not in reality.
It is true that creativity has come out of disharmony
ReplyDeleteThat's debatable. At the least, creativity has not normally come out of ethnic disharmony. There were not a lot of Chinese or Indians in the Florence of the Renaissance, or England of the Industrial Revolution, or Greece of the Golden Age.
To the extent that disharmony leads to news ideas, it's intellectual disharmony at work. But the modern multi-culti state is notable for its rigid intellectal conformity.
"So what's left for me to prove?"
ReplyDeleteWell done, Harry! Declare victory and depart the field.
Lol.
"As I understand it, Brazil's vaunted energy independence comes largely from selling it's oil for foreign exchange, and fueling it's own relatively modest energy needs with ethanol produced from sugar cane - the cane harvested by machete-wielding coolies."
ReplyDeleteNot exactly. Here's a history of how they became energy independent, by the Wall Street Journal. A couple of snippets show that there was more than cheap labor involved:
"While other countries were busy mapping the human genome, Brazilian scientists at
the Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira, a research lab funded by sugar growers, were decoding the DNA of sugar cane. That helped them select varieties that were more resistant to drought and pests and yielded more sugar content."
And,
"Fernando Damasceno, chief engineer at the Brazilian unit of Italian car parts company Magneti Marelli, thought the solution was to create cars that ran on either fuel equally well. Ford Motor Co. had offered flex-fuel cars in the U.S. since 1991 but the Brazilians thought its flex-fuel device expensive and cumbersome.
Mr. Damasceno created a cheaper device by programming a standard car computer to constantly calculate the mixture of ethanol versus gasoline in the tank and adjust the engine accordingly. In 2002, the team sold the device to Volkswagen, which introduced its flex-fuel Gol the next year. Mr. Damasceno's black box is now sold by five major car makers in Brazil. Even Ford's Brazil unit uses the Damasceno device."
And, by the way, Brazil is not a "proposition nation". It has a national language and culture (even if some ethnic minorities, such as the Germans and Japanese, continue speaking their ancestral language in addition). Proposition nation versus mono-ethnic state is a false dichotomy.
"Ricardo said...
ReplyDelete""As I understand it, Brazil's vaunted energy independence comes largely from selling it's oil for foreign exchange, and fueling it's own relatively modest energy needs with ethanol produced from sugar cane - the cane harvested by machete-wielding coolies.""
Not exactly. Here's a history of how they became energy independent, by the Wall Street Journal. A couple of snippets show that there was more than cheap labor involved:"
An interesting article, and thanks for posting the link. However, this passage from the article you cited:
"Brazil is also fortunate that sugar is the cheapest way to make ethanol and Brazil has the right conditions for growing the crop -- plenty of land, rain and CHEAP LABOR." (emphasis mine)
would seem to make my point. Yes, the genetic engineering of sugar is a way to maximize production, but that production is still dependent on peasants doing hard manual labor. Scientific illiterates, like the sort of people who write for the WSJ, think that Ethanol is some kind of magic fuel that gets around the law of conservation of energy. It is not.
In the US, ethanol is primarily made from corn and is most likely a net energy sink in terms of petroleum replacement, not a source - once you factor in the petroleum required to make the fertilizer, fuel the farm equipment, fire the distillation plant, and transport everything all along the chain of production. Brazil does have an advantage in having a sunny tropical climate amenable to sugar production (a more highly concentrated feed-stock for alcohol production) and in having...............cheap labor. If you have scrawny, malnourished peons harvesting your crop instead of great big combines that run on diesel fuel, then perhaps you can actually produce more energy then if you just used petroleum. In any event, an economy based on agricultural stoop-labor is not one I aspire too.
Here are some other choice quotes from the article you cited:
"In 1975, Brazil's military leader, Gen. Ernesto Geisel, ordered that the country's gasoline supply be mixed
with 10% ethanol, a level Brazil steadily raised to 25% over the next five years."
"Brazil's new leader, Gen. Joao Baptista Figueiredo, ordered sugar companies to ramp up production."
I am reminded of David Frost's joke: "There's going to be another general election in Greece, and we all know which generals are going to be elected." You have said that we should aspire to the brazilian model, or at least reconcile ouselves to it. Why? In addition to having an economy largely based on peonage, Brazil seems to have a penchant for government by militarists in ridiculously big hats. Is this supposed to recommend their system to us?
There was also this quote:
"Last year, thieves stole an ethanol-only, 1994 Ford Royale, owned by Francisco Baccaro Nigro, one of the engineers who helped develop ethanolonly cars. "I'm sure it's because ethanol is cheaper," Mr. Nigro says. "Thieves know this.""
At least their system works well for thieves.
Remind me again - that WSJ article you cited - was that in support of your contention. Or mine?
I am aware of the problems with corn-based ethanol, and the advantages of sugar cane-based ethanol. What does it say about us that we continue to subsidize corn-based ethanol despite that?
ReplyDeleteFarm labor in Brazil is certainly cheaper than here but it's even cheaper in African and other countries in the tropics. Brazil didn't become an agricultural super power just because it has cheaper labor than us. It's agricultural sector incorporates similarly high levels of technology and mechanization.
As for Brazil's military dictatorship of the 1970s, it has had a stable democracy since the late '80s.
Again, I advise you to look at the respective trajectories of both countries over the last decade or so. Look at a chart of the stock prices of Brazil's leading bank, Itau, compared to our leading bank, Citigroup over the last five or ten years. Compare our trade deficits to their trade surpluses, our fiscal deficits to their primary fiscal surpluses, etc. Brazil has been getting its act together recently.
The healthiest societies have the highest degree of consensus, and so require the least amount of enforcement.
ReplyDeleteIf we want a healthy nation, the people should be of similar intelligence, ethnic background, religious or philosophical ideals, and through years of natural selection while the civilization was forming, similar outlook and abilities.
That's how to have a happy society. You can, instead, choose to take the moral superiority path and jam everyone in together, then ignore widespread misery as is the case in the USA and Europe.
Ricardo:
Brazil is not a "proposition nation". It has a national language and culture (even if some ethnic minorities, such as the Germans and Japanese, continue speaking their ancestral language in addition).
Brazil has been a mixed-race nation from the outset; in fact, it's one of the most mixed on earth. There is no dominant national culture, but they've faked one with politics.
"What great contributions have Asians made to this country? Some H1b holding engineers stealing jobs fom Americans. Indians are not that smart as a whole.
ReplyDeleteHow many great discoveries have East Asians made in science? How many Nobel winners in the sciences are Asian?"
Well, they co-invented the USB port.
"a side effect of the mechanism that really enables greater creativity, namely the assembly in one place of the most talented people across ethnicities and races."
ReplyDeleteBut that's NOT what enables greater creativity because precisely that situation did NOT exist at the time when this country was at its most productive.
"So what's left for me to prove?"
Well, you've proven you're incapable of saying anything that's true.
"White isn't any more empty or sad than black, jew, or latino. This isn't confusing, and only people of ill-will toward Whites would assert as much without also attacking black, jew, or latino identity."
ReplyDeleteNo. Recognizing and acting against an enemy is very different from loyalty to a patria.
The Latinos who are trying to carve out Aztlan are "Latino" in precisely two senses 1) they speak Spanish, 2) they are united in opposition against the Anglo USA. Once their victory is won, they will split up again - Mexicans and Cubans are not going to consider each other "the same". The odds are decent there won't even be any unification with Mexico, that's the whole point of the "Republica del Norte". There is no "Latino nation". There is no "black nation"; recent immigrants from Africa view African-Americans with a bit of a jaundiced eye (they see 'em as whiners), and I see no reason to think Somali immigrants would get along with Nigerian immigrants except as a matter of convenience and alliance against a stronger foe. I'm not going to discuss the jewish case because the numbers involved are orders of magnitude smaller and I think that affects things.
You're completely ignoring what a nation _means_. You can't reach sensible conclusions when you do that.
Do they really believe that if America didn't include Jews and Asians and other highly accomplished people from throughout the world, America would be the power that it is today?
ReplyDeleteOh well, us and the Israelis, we're just crazy like that. Wanting to have a shot at having a territory and state for our great-grandkids to inherit? Crazy-talk!
Why have I never, ever, stumbled upon a long conversation about how Israel would be soooooo much better off if it went multi-culti? Am I just looking in the wrong places?
But would we be the hyperpower we are today? Would we be able to maintain that status across the next century?
China's showing how homogeneity and a total disregard for intellectual property rights can get the job done. :) Gosh, I wonder if Japan knows how much it sucks? Please explain what we get out of multiculti. You're asserting how wonderful it is, but where's the beef? Why would we go all limp without non-whites? Please be specific.
As for the next century, following your advice would almost certainly doom it as far as we're concerned. Nations don't survive the poison that you're prescribing.
Now suppose one looks at the representation of various groups at elite institutions as some kind of rough metric for the centrality of those groups in intellectual, artistic, or technological achievement. In that case, Jews and Asians would represent 50% of that elite. If this figure is even close to a ball park estimate of their importance in those areas, then America will be greatly diminished were their contributions removed. By any rational reckoning, reducing America's intellectual output by such a sizable amount would enormously reduce our ability to compete against other nations and cultures in those areas.
By this metric, Asia and Israel are destined to be the hyperpowers, unless our Asian and non-gentile populations exceed theirs. WHY they aren't the hyperpowers could do with some explaining, though. HOW America was top dog prior to 1965 could use some explaining, too.
Basically for this stuff to work for me I'd have to be convinced as to why all white men should kill their children and adopt Asians and non-gentiles in their place. "You'll be wealthier and more powerful" really isn't doing it for me.
Then there's the question of selection bias; if I were to judge all Europeans by those living in China, I'd conclude that Europeans were a race of rich entrepreneurs, but I'd be wrong.
I ask again: why would a rational patriot wish to upset the balance that lies behind America's current greatness?
Because we know that whites are responsible for the vast bulk of human accomplishment, and object to the silly idea that Asians/non-gentiles are "behind" American greatness. We've stagnated since 1965 in terms of real wages, so bye-bye theory of multiculti American greatness. Overall, "diversity" is a lodestone around our necks. We'd be far better off without "diversity."
In fact, non-gentiles manifestly need Europeans far more than vice-versa; non-gentiles have benefited far more from Europeans than vice-versa. If I followed your logic, I'd conclude that Sicilians are the best qualified to run unions.
Now why everyone has seem to have concluded I must be Jewish rather escapes me. In fact, FWIW, I'm neither Jewish nor Asian, and am wholly of European extraction, mostly pretty well Northern.
Your tribal loyalty doesn't depend on acknowledgment; you're carrying their water, and that's where your loyalty lies. If you don't get the perqs, that's your problem.
In general I think that there simply exists a tradeoff between harmony and overall achievement in a country.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any evidence for this thought? Because so far, that's all it is. We've shown many down sides, and all you have as an upside is your assertion. Saying "our" country will be "better" if we give it over to "Asians and Jews!" is problematic, as it won't be ours anymore, it'll be theirs. I doubt the slaves coming across the Atlantic rejoiced at any boost they gave to the GDP.
As for non-gentile intermarriage, I'll post it again (read the first few comments). Non-gentiles intermarry at about half the rate of Euros. They've been around for three thousand years, but now all of a sudden they're going the way of the Dodo? Laughable.
Even your example of the Italian Renaissance is, I think, suspect.
Of course it is. Even if we accept that disharmony was the key to Italy's success, how do we segueue from that to "bring in the Asians and the Jews!" The lesson would seem to be "bring on the warring honkeys!"
The only support he gives to this argument is a single example, that being the contrast between Italy under the Borgias contrasted with Switzerland producing Cuckoo Clocks.
Trade routes and maritime power were the key to Italian wealth (and hence innovation), not conflict (or "bring on the Asians and Jews!"). Then was also the Black Death, a permanent reminder that low population means labor shortage means higher wages.
It makes more sense to say that Italy innovated despite the strife, not because of it. There's also reason to say wealth caused the strife, not the other way around; cities in northern Italy became so rich, they got too big for their britches and fought amongst themselves for dominance. As the wealth faded, so did the conflict, and the mercenaries they'd drawn from all over Europe faded, too.
Certainly innovations in warmaking (and associated peripheral innovations) are made at a higher rate in times of war, but that hardly makes war something to be sought out for the common man.
Here's my argument that some level of disharmony is a necessary precondition of global greatness today.
What is global greatness?
It derives most basically from my acceptance of the lessons of HBD, along with a pretty obvious observation from history and economics.
ReplyDeleteI accept that various ethnic and racial groups are most at ease -- experience the most harmony -- when they are surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race. I take this to be lesson 1 of HBD.
Lesson 2 of HBD is that the most able individuals in the world can be found across a multitude of ethnicities and races.
I reject lesson 2. For example, pursuing Euro ethnic interests is something Euros are better at than anyone. Having Euro babies is something Euros do better than Asians, non-gentiles, or anyone else. Controlling their own destiny to their own advantage is something Euros are better at than any other group in the universe.
Let me add Lesson 3, which comes from history and economics: the dominant power in science and culture is that which assembles the greatest number of the most capable individuals in the same place.
Lesson 3 doesn't follow. E.g., assemble the greatest minds for naught if all they do is squabble and screw one another over, something people generally prefer to with and to outgroups, aberrations aside.
Put these three lessons together and what you get is this: the most powerful nation will be that which can bring in capable individuals from across all ethnicities and races, but the price to be paid will be some level of disharmony.
I can dump all the Ferrari parts I want in a big pile, doesn't mean I'll have a Ferrari. To get a Ferrari you need a team of people sharing a common vision. Dump a bunch of Asians, non-gentiles, and Euros in a pile and stand back, and what you'll eventually see is a bunch of Asians working on an Asian-mobile, non-gentiles working on a non-gentile-mobile, and Euros working on a Euro-mobile. If you're lucky, you won't see anyone stealing parts, ideas, etc. Only if you coerce them will they form AIE (Asiatic-Israeli-Euro) motors, and only for as long as you coerce them.
I think this is well captured in the current dominance, but relative disharmony, to be found in America today.
Like Renaissance Italy, we are succeeding in spite of the strife, not because of it. And we're seeing diversity because of our wealth, not the other way around.
You seem to pine for a scenario in which everything is upside. But if you regard as a realist, why should that be so?
The downsides to ethnopatriotism (externals (e.g., "we'll smash you if you try to escape") aside), are minuscule compared to the upsides. It's the difference between being five dollars richer, and dead, or five dollars poorer, and alive.
As is often the case in these scenarios, it comes down to freedom; you're free to have your way, we're not free to have ours, and you're content with that, and we aren't. May no one treat you so should you find the tables turned.
But maybe I'm being too serious. I get the impression Mr. Lime is playing Devil's Advocate; nobody really thinks in such a Loony Tunes fashion.
To look at the situation logically:
The cognitive elitists say if we "bring on the Asians and Jews!" we'll be wealthier than if we don't. They don't say how much wealthier; they don't seem to deny that we were doing swimmingly without non-whites, only that we'll be doing better with more of them; so they seem to be saying we'll do swimmingly without them, too.
The ethnopatriots, WNs, what have you, say if we "bring on the Asians and Jews!" we might be a bit wealthier in the short run, but in the long run we'll be devastated.
The up side is small and the down side is huge. If the ethnopatriots are wrong, no big loss. If they're right, we ward off devastation. If the cognitive elitists are right, no big gain. If they're wrong, devastation. The safer bet is to believe the ethnopatriots. "Bring on the Asians and Jews!" is a sucker's game.
In the US, ethanol is primarily made from corn and is most likely a net energy sink in terms of petroleum replacement, not a source - once you factor in the petroleum required to make the fertilizer, fuel the farm equipment, fire the distillation plant, and transport everything all along the chain of production.
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with this assertion. It's often said but I've never seen it properly explained. I haven't looked into it much, but I have reason to believe it's based on semantics. Then there's the fact that tractors can be run on batteries.
I have a much easier time believing the argument that an ethanol economy isn't doable owing to the scale of agriculture required vs. the population figures. That I can buy; from my looking, it takes quite a bit of land to sustain an ethanol economy. But I don't buy the preceding assertion. If someone wants to explain it to me in enough detail, I'm listening.
But I have to say I'm rather surprised that so many don't accept in any way the idea that disharmony is a cost of maximum productivity/creativity in a country.
ReplyDeleteAgain, consider Jews as Exhibit A. Is there anyone who seriously dispute that on balance they haven't contributed considerably to American culture and productivity? And if you grant that, who will dispute what this very thread demonstrates: that Jews tend to create disharmony?
So what's left for me to prove?
That you can handle arithmetic? Add positive and negative non-gentile contributions, subtract non-gentile withdrawals, and you come up with a very large negative sum. Also, I don't think technical innovation should go into the ledger; we no more need a non-gentile population among us for that than the Chinese need a European population among them to use the light bulb.
Non-gentiles' national pastime is and has been destroying our nation, an idea you want to dismiss as "paranoid" but it's a bit late for that, the Internet screwed that pooch good and well.
You're completely ignoring what a nation _means_.
No, I'm not.
First, you've helped make my point with regard to latinos and blacks. And waving away the identity and nationalism of jews doesn't make the double standard there go away. Second, I'm well aware what nation means, and how its meaning has shifted.
From Online Etymology Dictionary:
nation
c.1300, from O.Fr. nacion, from L. nationem (nom. natio) "nation, stock, race," lit. "that which has been born," from natus, pp. of nasci "be born" (Old L. gnasci; see genus). Political sense has gradually taken over from racial meaning "large group of people with common ancestry."
From Wikipedia:
A nation is a grouping of people who share common history, culture, language and ethnic origin, often possessing or seeking its own government.
. . .
In the strict sense, terms such as "nation," "ethnos," and "people" (as in "the Danish people") denote a group of human beings. The concepts of nation and nationality have much in common with ethnic group and ethnicity, but have a more political connotation, since they imply the possibility of a nation-state.
Nationalism is biopolitical. Wh