March 31, 2013

David Goodhart: "The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration"

David Goodhart writes in The Guardian:
Why the left is wrong about immigration
Mass immigration is damaging to social democracy, argues David Goodhart in his controversial new book – it erodes our national solidarity. What's more, welcoming people from poor countries into rich ones does nothing for global equality

The word "controversial" has evolved over the course of my reading lifetime from meaning "hubba hubba" to meaning "you aren't supposed to like this"
David Goodhart 
In busy offices up and down the land some of Britain's most idealistic young men and women – working in human rights NGOs and immigration law firms – struggle every day to usher into this society as many people as possible from poor countries. 
They are motivated by the admirable belief that all human lives are equally valuable. And like some of the older 1960s liberal baby boomers, who were reacting against the extreme nationalism of the first half of the 20th century, they seem to feel few national attachments. Indeed, they feel no less a commitment to the welfare of someone in Burundi than they do to a fellow citizen in Birmingham. Perhaps they even feel a greater commitment. 
Charity used to begin at home. But the best fast-stream civil servants now want to work in DfID, the international development department. Their idealism is focused more on raising up the global poor or worrying about global warming than on sorting out Britain's social care system. 
Many people on the left, indeed many Guardian readers, are sympathetic to these global citizen values: they see that the world has become smaller and more interdependent, and feel uneasy about policies that prioritise the interests of British citizens. The progressive assumption seems to be that it is fine to have an attachment to friends and family, and perhaps a neighbourhood or a city – "I'm proud to be a Londoner" – and, of course, to humanity as a whole. But the nation state – especially a once dominant one like Britain (above all its English core) – is considered something old-fashioned and illiberal, an irrational group attachment that smart people have grown out of. 

In the 21st Century, the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives have concentric loyalties while liberals have leapfrogging loyalties.
... If all human lives are equally valuable, how can we any longer favour our fellow national citizens over the impoverished masses of the global south?

You know, you can always donate your own money to the impoverished masses of the global south. A pound goes a lot further toward feeding the hungry in the Congo than in England.
This "post-nationalism" nags away at the conscience of many liberal-minded people.
But it is a category error. It does not follow from a belief in human equality that we have equal obligations to everyone on the planet. All people are equal but they are not all equal to us. Most people in Britain today accept the idea of human equality, but remain moral particularists and moderate nationalists, believing that we have a hierarchy of obligations starting with our family and rippling out via the nation state to the rest of humanity. Britain spends 25 times more every year on the NHS than on development aid. To most people, even people who think of themselves as internationalists, this represents a perfectly natural reflection of our layered obligations, but to a true universalist it must seem like a crime. 
Many people on the left are still transfixed by the historic sins of nationalism. But if people are squeamish about the word "nation" they should use another: citizenship or just society. And the modern law-bound, liberal nation state is hardly a menacing political institution. You join automatically by birth (or by invitation) and an allegiance to the liberal nation state is compatible with being highly critical of the current social order and with support for bodies such as Nato and the EU. 
Indeed, the modern nation state is the only institution that can currently offer what liberals, of both right and left, want: government accountability, cross-class and generational solidarity, and a sense of collective identification. As societies become more diverse, we need this glue of a national story more not less. This is ultimately a pragmatic argument. The nation state is not a good in itself, it is just the institutional arrangement that can deliver the democratic, welfare, and psychological outcomes that most people seem to want. It is possible that in the future more global or regional institutions might deliver these things; the EU is one prototype but its current difficulties underline what a slow and stuttering process this is likely to be. (Germany, the least nationalistic of the big European states, was happy to spend about $1tn on unification with east Germany but is very reluctant to spend much smaller sums supporting the southern European economies.) 

We have a hard enough time policing corruption in our own country. The Euro Follies show that corruption fighting is that much harder spread across languages and cultures.
Anti-nationalists also underestimate just how much the nation state has liberalised in recent decades. One might say that the great achievement of post-1945 politics, in Europe at least, has been to "feminise" the nation state. 
The nation was once about defending or taking territory and about organised violence.

It still is.
But now that Britain's participation in a world war is highly improbable, the focus has switched to the internal sharing of resources within the nation – and the traditionally feminine "hearth and home" issues of protecting the young, old, disabled and poor. Notwithstanding recent trimming, Britain's social security budget has increased 40% in just the last 15 years. 
The modern nation state has become far more inclusive in recent generations and is underpinned by unprecedented social provision, free to all insiders – but towards the outside world it has become, or is trying to become, more exclusionary. There is nothing perverse or mean-spirited about this. As the value of national citizenship in Britain has risen, so the bureaucracy of border controls has had to grow. 
No one knows for sure how many people would come to live in a rich country like Britain if border controls were abolished. But in many poor parts of the world, in Africa in particular, there has been rapid urbanisation without industrialisation or economic growth or job creation. That has created a large surplus of urban labour well connected enough to know about the possibilities of life in the west and with a miserable enough life to want to get there. Who could say confidently that 5 million or 10 million people would not turn up in the space of a couple of years, especially to a country with the global connections that Britain already has? 
A few countries, such as the Philippines, have become part-dependent on exporting people to rich countries and benefit in many ways from the process.

Personally, I think of the Philippines as a major underachiever, with too high of a total fertility rate and lousy government. Emigration to the U.S. provides an outlet that that lets the country not fix itself up. I remember when Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos got kicked out and that was supposed to put the country on the road to reform. Well, that was a generation ago.
But they are the exception. Most poor countries are actively hostile to permanent emigration. And it is hardly surprising. Desperately poor countries cannot afford to lose their most ambitious and expensively educated people. 
... Rich countries should be saying: we will help you to grow faster and to hold on to your best people through appropriate trade and aid policies; we will also agree not to lure away your most skilled people, so long as you agree to take back your illegal immigrants (which many countries don't). The coalition government's combination of a lower immigration target and its exemption of the aid programme from cuts is an expression of this idea.

100 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Steve, read some of your comments at Slate. It's generally a good site but it'd be perfect if the excised the feminist nags.

ATBOTL said...

Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe? Why is the political center right in US advocating amnesty for illegals while the center left in Europe is now conceding that mass legal immigration is harmful? Why are conservative voters in Europe flocking to "far right" nationalist parties while conservative voters in the US are flocking to open borders libertarianism? Why are US conservatives not noticing all of this?

Anonymous said...

This article in the Daily Mail is also highly "controversial".

How the invasion of immigrants into every corner of England has made a mockery of PM's promise to close the door

Orthodox said...

ATBOTL,

UK is an interesting case because it seems to have gone further than the U.S. in PC and multiculturalism. I'd say they hit the wall first and can see the end game if they don't change pronto.

Europe is more nationalist in general because their states are still mostly ethnic, which limits the reach of multiculturalism. Europe's right-wing is anti-democracy, in part because Europe lacks the Anglo-Saxon liberal tradition. The Europeans therefore are able to clearly see that letting in Third World immigrants means a changing electorate that will destroy Western civilization, but Americans still think people are equal and that democracy equals freedom, when in fact they are polar opposites.

Aaron Gross said...

In the 21st Century, the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives have concentric loyalties while liberals have leapfrogging loyalties.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. If the word "concentric" means anything at all here, then both conservatives and liberals have concentric loyalties. I've explained the errors in comments here before, so I won't bother repeating it.

Concentric Loyalties is one of the Big Ideas that Steve Sailer gets really wrong. Another one is Race As an Extended Family. "Citizenism," too, if you count that as a big idea. And probably some others I can't think of off-hand. The good thing is that Sailer is often wrong in interesting ways. (GK Chesterton was also like that.)

For some reason, the little ideas here get lots of skeptical and critical attention - statistics and stuff - but the Big Ideas get accepted uncritically.

Anonymous said...

That's he first time I've evr heard of yer typical shyster immigration lawyer being motivated by 'compassion and idealism' rather than just cold, hard. plain cash.

Anonymous said...

ATBOTL,
What Britain's political class is to dumb and ignorant to understand is the plain and obvious fact, a fact plain and obvious to every long time observer of Britain, right through the centuries,that the British are an insular island race with a deeply engrained sense of self and their uniqueness and a mistrust of foreigners. The more a foreigner is alien to the British, the more he is mistrusted.
Despite all the bull and rhetoric, this attitude hasn't gone away in the 'modern cary-shary liberal age', it's still there and writhing with resentment.
The British political class were protected by the FTPT voting system that penalizes small parties and by the unelectability of the BNP. UKIP - capitalizing on the obvious catstrophic failure of the EU - is a real game-changer,, that has brought this hidden, seething resentment to the surface.
Well it's shit or bust time for the English, the last census returns show that (London mostly non-white, a non-white majority Britain by 2040), and UKIP is the last straw to clutch at. Many English inherently recognise that.

Anonymous said...

Why do people who work in NGOs and other helping people jobs prefer to solve problems in the third world and not in Britain?

Because those jobs are punchier.

If you work as a Health Officer in Britain you deal with old people, and with telling people to lose weight. We like to think that people enjoy nagging but they don't. If you use your skills to help Burundi then you deal with cholera epidemics and your actions directly save lives.

Furthermore, because the punchier jobs involve a bit more personal sacrifice, such as having to go to failed states, everyone in those industries give them more credibility. Partly because they deserve it and partly because those who work in Britain feely guilty because they have taken the easy option and will make up for the disparity by vocally giving their respect. This means that within government, NGOs, charities and so on helping third world countries has more influence. It is seen as nobler because it involves more personal sacrifice, and most importantly, gives you the best stories at drinks i.e equals social dominance.

The head of the Army always comes from the combat arms and not the support arms for the same reason.

Anonymous said...

I think of the Philippines as a major underachiever, with too high of a total fertility rate and lousy government. Emigration to the U.S. provides an outlet that keeps that lets the country not fix itself up.

I disagree. The Philippines are too multicultural, multilingual, and scattered to manage well. I know many talented Filipinos, but don't see them becoming Japan, anytime soon.

john marzan said...

"Personally, I think of the Philippines as a major underachiever, with too high of a total fertility rate and lousy government."

PHL was colonized by spain for 350+ years and USA for 50 yrs. the country still behaves more like a former spanish colony but with english as the 2nd language, not espanol.

bjdubbs said...

I wonder if this is a delayed reaction to the riots from a couple years ago. Having a bunch of foreigners torch and loot a large part of your city could make even a liberal reconsider.

Anonymous said...

The Philippines: $2500/per capita
Mexico: $10,000/per capita

I agree with you Steve. I think Filipinos can get to a Mexican standard of living.

Beefy Levinson said...

Emigration to the U.S. provides an outlet that keeps that lets the country not fix itself up.

A Catholic priest friend of mine described Filipinos as the new Irish because of how much they've come to dominate the ranks of the clergy, especially here in California. Some of them are good priests, and others take full advantage of living in a First World country in varying ways.

Anonymous said...

"that keeps that lets the country not fix itself up"

this needs to be edited. Feel free to delete this.

Anonymous said...

"while conservative voters in the US are flocking to open borders libertarianism"

Is this really true? I would say that some are voting for Repubs merely because Dems are so distasteful. And a lot are staying home and not voting.

Anonymous said...

Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe?


The rise of Chinese-Americans where I live have actually made things less anti-White in many ways.

For decades, every bout of Black violence against Whites/Hispanics/Asians/LGBTs led to elderly WASPs, doddering mainline Protestant clergy, Blacks, and Jews convening “community meetings” that blamed the attacks on White “racism” and “privilege.” These doyennes of diversity would then demand that all Whites –- including the White victims--- literally get down on their knees to apologize to random Black people for racism and for complaining about the “needed deconstruction of [Whites'] unearned White skin privilege” that the attacks signified. Local Jewish leaders scolded the audience how calls for more police patrols and security cameras are an “authoritarian” response indicating that the requester is a potential fascist and Holocaust perpetrator.

A few years ago, a series of brutal anti-Chinese attacks by Blacks led the Jews, Blacks, and a few elderly Whites to try their usual tactics. Not only did the Chinese not apologize, they demanded that the attackers – all of them – receive the death penalty for their crimes. One city-sponsored meeting on “racial healing” nearly devolved into a full-blown race riot when the Chinese participants refused to apologize and demanded police sweeps of Black neighborhoods. A significant number of Asians began expressing interest in purchasing firearms. Others spoke of hiring Chinese gang members to do what the police would not. After a while, the Blacks stopped demanding apologies and reparations from the Chinese community.

And the city stopped convening meetings; no one really cares what some sanctimonious Episcopal clergyperson thinks about anything.

Black-on-Asian violence came to a screeching halt, as did Black-on-White and Black-on-LGBT violence. As local White professionals feel safer, my neighborhood is seeing a White baby boom. The Asians are helping to ensure the survival of the White race and a future for White children.

Nor do Chinese-Americans donate their money to endless anti-White campaigns. While Chinese are dedicated and extremely effective enthno-nationalists, they have little interest, unlike Jews and bourgeois WASPs, in spending their money on finding new ways to force Whites to apologize to the Blacks for slavery, the Native Americans for Columbus, etc.

Were it up to the Chinese community here, we would have New York-style “stop and frisk” policies, an Israeli-style security fence around Black neighborhoods, and a substantially expedited death penalty process to deal with Blacks who kill elderly Chinese-Americans. As it is now, they are openly relying on gentrification to rid the city of non-elite Blacks by around 2020 or so.

Anonymous said...

The UK is unsalvagable . Sadly ( I speak as one who enormously admires Britain's historical legacy )the place has become the land of the beta male and the home of the girleyman

Still , just as the UK was the first country to experience the Industrial revolution and then became the first post industrial country , the rest of us can still learn from their experience before it's too late IF we pay attention

Anonymous said...

I'm very surprised they printed the Hitchens article at the Daily Mail. With the exception of the Enoch Powell bashing, it is a very good article the likes of which aren't seen very often at all in the MSM. The times, they are a-changin'. We are certainly seeing some long overdue sentiment in the news outlets, and the comments are even better.

My guess is that we will see the rise of defacto white parties in our lifetime, probably followed by financial measures to gently encourage emigration of recent immigrants back to their home countries. A generation's mass insanity and leadership treachery should be no reason to permanently say goodbye to the country you once knew.

Anonymous said...

"Controversial" is also a placeholder, a way to quickly say "some people have objections, but I don't have the space in this article to get into that."

Ergo, Louis Farrakhan is "controversial" as is Michele Bachmann and even Piers Morgan.

It also carries the subtext of "please do not link me, the journalist, to this person or position; by this word, I am creating distance between the reporter and the reported."

Brett_McS said...

There are clearly two types of anti-Nationalist: the libertarian, small government set on the right and the big government, internationalist set on the left.

The former won't get anywhere in our life times.

The later are scary though, in a "Forbin Project" kind of way.

Daniel C. said...

"Rich countries should be saying: we will help you to grow faster and to hold on to your best people through appropriate trade and aid policies; we will also agree not to lure away your most skilled people, so long as you agree to take back your illegal immigrants (which many countries don't)."

That's a start, but still too feminine. What they should say to the poor countries is that if we help you grow it is because you will be doing something of equal or greater value to us. And as far as the illegals go, screw whether they will take them back or not. Dump them back on them, that is, after seizing their resources and/or forcing them to do prison labor to cover the costs of doing so.

There are clear and beneficial ways of dealing with illegal immigration, but it involves growing a pair.

carol said...

OT anyone see 60 Minutes last night? They ran an extended story about the resettlement of primitive Sudanese refugees in Kansas City....jesus what an embarrassing farce. Lots of hedging and weasel words, and a visual of some poor country schmuck trying to drive a car and immediately crashing it.

And we have to take these people, why, exactly - ?

Jones said...

Its funny- Aaron Gross goes on about how Steve is "Wrong wrong wrong" but doesn't provide a single detail of how.

PropagandistHacker said...

if you google this phrase:

Immigration lobbies spent $1.5 billion since 2007


you will find an interesting article from the daily calller about how the corporations have been going on a spending spree trying to push the immigration reform measure. Now some of the paleocons have noticed that the media has been on a major pro-immigration reform push in the last year or so. In the last 6 months the pro-immigration propaganda from the media have reached a fever pitch. Now, when I say that the paleocons have noticed this phenomenon, I mean that the paleocons have typically mentioned this surge of propaganda in the context of demonizing the dreaded liberal and used it in the context of "triumphalism' or something similar. The paleocons seem to think that the obama win over romney has induced some sort of intoxicated, post-election binge of 'ha ha we won you lost' 'triumphalism' in the corporate media. Well, maybe money has something with it instead. Media outlets are businesses, after all. How shocking that money might come into play with corporate entities, huh? Go figger....

It is not just triumphalism with this media surge in immigration propaganda, my dear paleocons. It's paid advertising. The corporate media gets paid by the corporate lobbies to boost immigration. Period.


I seem to be the only person who has noticed this. Makes wonder sometime if I am mentally ill or something. But then I read things like this article and that confirms my position: the media is being paid to promote immigration.

Why am I seemingly the only person in the world to notice this?

Likewise, whenever some new commercial product like a big new money or a new cell phone comes out, the media pushes it like a mexican pushes a stalled car down the freeway. I have think that money is involved somehow. Sweetheart quid pro quo deals on advertising buys, maybe? Or maybe just a straight-up check in the mail?

Why am I the only person on the internet to even pose this question? It's like I am a one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Oh, that's right: I am a whack-job conspiracy theorist. Illuminati! The Masons! The Stonecutters!

Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do!

Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do! We do!

Who pays the mass media to promote mass immigration? We do! We doooooo.....

Luke Lea said...

Part of the problem is that these poor countries are not nation states themselves and hence their most talented members feel no sense of loyalty to them. To expect these talented tenths to voluntarity stay (or come back) home and take on the onerous burden of developing their home countries seems a stretch.

It will only hapen if they are given no choice in the matter. In other words if the decision is made in the West. It has the best chance of being made if it is justified on the basis of the very ideals that now justify mass immigration: that this is the quickest way to do the most good for the most people in the world, thereby reducing world inequality.

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, in white people news: http://2013.pillowfightday.com/

Anonymous said...

“There is no doubting the influence of UKIP is now being felt in our immigration debate, partly because the main parties have refused to have a debate about this before,” said Keith Vaz, a Labor Party lawmaker. “We should stamp out illegal immigration, but we also need to avoid an arms race between the parties as they react to UKIP support.”

From: Washington Post article, "U.K. Independence Party finds its voice amid growing anti-immigrant wave."

It really is a conspiracy.

Anonymous said...

Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe? Why is the political center right in US advocating amnesty for illegals while the center left in Europe is now conceding that mass legal immigration is harmful? Why are conservative voters in Europe flocking to "far right" nationalist parties while conservative voters in the US are flocking to open borders libertarianism? Why are US conservatives not noticing all of this Good point, I notice a shift on the right in the US on the illegal immirgation recently. About 5 years ago most of those against illegal immirgation were on the right if you read comments in newspapers while you see few in the middle or the left. Now most are people that are more politcally in the middle that don't like either political party. The rise of the Tea Party made Immirgation a second issue unless you are letting out illegal crimmals a lot on the right buy into Rand Paul's ideas.

Chicago said...

People keep debating the subject while the situation continues to go on. Talking about it endlessly won't do a thing. If the debate shifts towards a general agreement that massive immigration was a mistake, what then? Will they then expel them or will they accept the fact they've irrevocably transformed their country?
One feature of British discussions about immigration is that they always try establish their non racist credentials by being sure to first point at European immigrants living there, such as Poles, before going on to mentioning the third-worlders. Bashing other Europeans is more comfortable and safer than criticizing non-whites. Lithuanians and Hungarians, for example, are absolutely not in the same category as Muslims from Pakistan or Somalia and should not be equated. Perhaps at some point they'll be able to overcome their squeamishness on this point and actually say it out loud, that they're not all equal and that the third-worlders are undesirable. It's apparent that what took a thousand years to build up can be destroyed in just fifty.

Anonymous said...

Atbotl and Orthodox

It is ultimately a physics question:there are no more places to run away to in Europe. The amount of available land determines the cultural carying capacity of a nation.

White Liberals will be the last holdouts. And that's because they obviously have a severe psychiatric disability that blinds them to the obvious.

As far as the US goes. I believe that when it really hits millions of White Americans that-as they say in real estate-they ain't making any more of it-land that is,it could really get very nasty in the near future. It is an old story you know, they should have seen it comming. I don't think any mercy will be shown when Whites wake up. Just wait, when he Koreans discover surf casting for strippers at Montuak in October. They will challenge the sacred rights of White Male surfcasters for their claim on a favorite beachspot by the Lighthouse. Now scale this up across the US.It is going to be quite nasty.

Superman said...

With the exception of the Enoch Powell bashing

Other than the fact that Hitchens blames the one person who publicly identified the problem and predicted our current problems ... other than that ...

Rohan Swee said...

What is that odd sound I hear? The slow drip, drip, drip of cold sweat off the brows of goodthinkers who are finally absorbing what badthinkers have pointed out from the beginning?

Diversity and Immigration - it's all fun and games until people like me start getting inconvenienced.

Rohan Swee said...

ATBOTL: Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe? Why is the political center right in US advocating amnesty for illegals while the center left in Europe is now conceding that mass legal immigration is harmful?

There is a deal of ruin in a nation, but it's still too easy for the people who matter to get away from the ruin in the big ol' USA.

Why are conservative voters in Europe flocking to "far right" nationalist parties while conservative voters in the US are flocking to open borders libertarianism? Why are US conservatives not noticing all of this?

Probably because conservatives in continental Europe are often actually conservative.

I think, at least for the time being, that "flocking to 'far right' nationalist parties" is a considerable overstatement. Time will tell.

Pat Boyle said...

I have a very simple notion to help solve our immigration problems. Many people have hinted at it but it never seems to be seriously regarded.

Society has peoples at all levels of talent. We have smart people who become CEOs and professors. We have the great middle who become accountants and salesmen. And at the bottom we have the slower minds who clip lawns and clean toilets.

It seems to me that our failure is with blacks not Hispanics. Hispanics are merely rushing in to fill the vacuum. Why is black unemployment 50% to 100% higher than white? It didn't used to be. Thomas Sowell tells us black unemployment was once less than white.

But for a variety of reasons blacks no longer accept many jobs for which they are qualified. That sends a signal across the border for poor Mexicans to come north. Many jobs that you can do await.

The result is that we get undesirable immigrants and unemployed blacks.

The simplest solution would be to eliminate all or most income maintenance programs as well as Food Stamps and housing subsidies. We would also need to alter the message we send to blacks. We should emphasize the nobility of labor and self reliance rather than feed their resentment at being excluded from positions like Pediatric Neurosurgeon.

Such a plan puts our least talented sub population back to work and drys up most of the attractants that draw Mexicans north.

Albertosaurus

Bob Arctor said...

Jones:
"Its funny- Aaron Gross goes on about how Steve is "Wrong wrong wrong" but doesn't provide a single detail of how."

Especially since "Citizenism" is a subjective and ethical stance toward politics, not a descriptivist theory of reality, and therefore can't really be "incorrect." I noticed that too, good catch.

Anonymous said...

The rise of Chinese-Americans where I live have actually made things less anti-White in many ways.

Let me guess... San Francisco? Philly?

Anonymous said...

I actually went to the trouble of trying to google Aaron Gross's previous comments and well, found nothing where he said why Steve was "wrong wrong wrong." Instead, lots of phrases like "I think there are several factors, some more applicable than others to various groups."

What a windbag.

Anonymous said...

Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe? Why is the political center right in US advocating amnesty for illegals while the center left in Europe is now conceding that mass legal immigration is harmful?

We've run out of room in Europe? In the US there are still plenty of places for white Americans to run away to.

Anonymous said...

"That has created a large surplus of urban labour well connected enough to know about the possibilities of life in the west and with a miserable enough life to want to get there. " - Also creating Large surpluses of labor: having a TFR of 9.

Anonymous said...

"Its funny- Aaron Gross goes on about how Steve is "Wrong wrong wrong" but doesn't provide a single detail of how." - perhaps the correct term, if Aaron is just splitting hairs, would be contiguous concentric loyalites vs discontiguous concentric loyalties. Though in reality the leftist statuswhore's loyalty is only to himself.

Cail Corishev said...

"while conservative voters in the US are flocking to open borders libertarianism"

Is this really true?


No, it's not. Conservatives vote Republican because, as you say, the Democrats are worse. They figure: better the party that doesn't care about me and will give my job to a foreigner (assuming I can take some classes and get a better one, of course) so some company's stock can do 0.0001% better; than the party that hates me and will laugh at me and say it's my fault if some vibrant member of the community breaks into my home and kills me.

It's true that conservative Americans, like almost everyone else, have bought the Ellis Island myth of immigration making everything totally awesome. But being conservative, they believe in having laws and following rules, so they're for lots of controlled, legal immigration -- filtering out criminals, for instance -- not open borders.

Harry Baldwin said...

Aaron Gross said... I've explained the errors in comments here before, so I won't bother repeating it.

Please do, rather than expect us to recall what you said in some former comment. We have short attention spans.

Pink Desert Arrow Lady Gal said ...But then I read things like this article and that confirms my position: the media is being paid to promote immigration.

What makes you think they have to be paid for it? They gladly do it for nothing and would even pay to do it. They're liberals, they love seeing the end of white cultural hegemony.

Anonymous said...The rise of Chinese-Americans where I live have actually made things less anti-White in many ways.

Where is this wonderful place where the Chinese have subdued the black people?

Anonymous said...

From Charles Murray's facebook page.

http://economics.mit.edu/files/8754

vinteuil said...

@Pink Arrow Guy:

"I seem to be the only person who has noticed this. Makes [me] wonder sometime[s] if I am mentally ill or something."

Earth to PAG: paleocons constantly harp on the role of big business in promoting open borders. You seem to be the only person who has *not* noticed this. Makes *me* wonder sometimes if you are mentally ill or something.

Oh, and the avatar? Pathetic.

Anonymous said...

If this news story is true..

http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/01/report-lady-gaga-declined-1-million-to-perform-at-rnc/

I mean time to kill the GOP. Enough already.

Matthew said...

"Why is the debate on immigration moving in the wrong direction in America and the right direction in Europe? Why is the political center right in US advocating amnesty for illegals while the center left in Europe is now conceding that mass legal immigration is harmful?"

Three reasons: the first is that the United States has gone past the turning point, where minority races are far too large a share of the population.

The second relates to the fact that Europe has a vigorous multiparty system, where small parties routinely sprout up and try to win votes by, ya know, addressing people's concerns.

The third relates to members of a certain ethnoreligion - mostly now absent from continental Europe, but who are disproportionate in number in the Anglophile countries - who have disproportionate say over what opinions are allowed and which are considered thought crime.

Anonymous said...

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/jeb-bush-economic-growth/2013/03/31/id/497076

"Jeb Bush: Entitlement System Will Collapse If We Don’t Act Now"

Hahahaha. Yeah, we must act now to save the system... by giving amnesty to over 11 million illegals and inviting many more.

Just a nobody said...

“There is no doubting the influence of UKIP is now being felt in our immigration debate, partly because the main parties have refused to have a debate about this before,” said Keith Vaz, a Labor Party lawmaker. “We should stamp out illegal immigration, but we also need to avoid an arms race between the parties as they react to UKIP support.”

From: Washington Post article, "U.K. Independence Party finds its voice amid growing anti-immigrant wave."

It really is a conspiracy.

* * *

It's even more sickening when you focus on Vaz's wife, Maria Fernandes.

"The principal of the firm is Maria Fernandes who has specialised exclusively in immigration and nationality law for well over 20 years.

She established Fernandes Vaz in 1995 with the intention of offering a wide range of immigration services.

She serves on a number of Panels established by the Home Office and Foreign Office on behalf of organisations and has chaired a series of high profile meetings on Work Permits and Visitors where the then Immigration Minister Liam Byrne was invited to consult with members of the Asian community. The changes reflected the fact that their views had been taken into account.

She has developed a particular following of restaurateurs with whom she has worked for several years to provide recognition of the shortage of skilled staff in this industry. She wrote a major report on the shortages and later gave evidence to the Migration Advisory Committee. The report was later quoted at length in MAC’s conclusions."

No possible conflict of interest there!

Anonymous said...

"is that we will see the rise of defacto white parties in our lifetime"

We've seen several de facto white parties in the UK.

1970s/80s - National Front
1990s/2000s - BNP. Only a few years ago they were winning council seats and getting double-digit support. The leaking of the names and addresses of their entire membership, many of whom suffered harassment and vandalism, was quite an effective damper on their rise.
2010s - UKIP

There's been no shortage of white parties, but all have come under sustained media (and often physical) attack.

ATBOTL said...

"UK is an interesting case because it seems to have gone further than the U.S. in PC and multiculturalism."

That's not true at all. Over the last 15 years, major daily papers in the UK regularly run front page stories like "most gang rapists black," "white girls targeted by Asian sex fiends" and "bogus asylum seekers costing billions."

National Review wouldn't run stories that, let alone daily papers.

American conservatives have this complex where they bash Europeans to distract from their own weakness and cowardice. The US is by FAR the Western country with the worst demographic problem and the most stifling PC regime.

Svigor said...

ATBOTL,

UK is an interesting case because it seems to have gone further than the U.S. in PC and multiculturalism. I'd say they hit the wall first and can see the end game if they don't change pronto.

Europe is more nationalist in general because their states are still mostly ethnic, which limits the reach of multiculturalism. Europe's right-wing is anti-democracy, in part because Europe lacks the Anglo-Saxon liberal tradition. The Europeans therefore are able to clearly see that letting in Third World immigrants means a changing electorate that will destroy Western civilization, but Americans still think people are equal and that democracy equals freedom, when in fact they are polar opposites.


I don't claim to have a solid explanation, but as Whiskey's always inadvertently pointing out, America has a Jewish-dominated media and far more Jews in power than Europe, and has a big immigration problem and essentially no nationalist political representation; Europe has a far smaller Jewish presence in the media and political elite, and a far smaller immigration problem and much better nationalist political representation. Britian is an English-speaking country with strong ties to the US, which might explain why it has a bigger immigration problem than most of Europe and less nationalist political representation.

Or maybe it's the Parliamentary system that predominates in Europe? And the fact that Europe wasn't recently colonized? Or all three, inter alia?

For some reason, the little ideas here get lots of skeptical and critical attention - statistics and stuff - but the Big Ideas get accepted uncritically.

Silence is assent, I suppose? I've always thought Citizenism was a pile of crap. Better than what we have, but still crap. And I don't care about concentric loyalties, it never blew my skirt up one way or the other.

On the other hand, race as an extended family makes perfect sense and you're going to have to make your case against it.

4/1/13, 4:03 AM

Unfalsifiable until you name the municipality.

There are clearly two types of anti-Nationalist: the libertarian, small government set on the right and the big government, internationalist set on the left.

The former won't get anywhere in our life times.

The later are scary though, in a "Forbin Project" kind of way.


First thing that springs to mind for me is that the former are a Trojan Horse designed to erode the right's cohesiveness. Second thing that springs to mind is that one way to fight the latter is to set up a competing, pro-white version, that is in every other way identical; divide and conquer.

That's a start, but still too feminine. What they should say to the poor countries is that if we help you grow it is because you will be doing something of equal or greater value to us. And as far as the illegals go, screw whether they will take them back or not. Dump them back on them, that is, after seizing their resources and/or forcing them to do prison labor to cover the costs of doing so.

There are clear and beneficial ways of dealing with illegal immigration, but it involves growing a pair.


Screw dumping them, period. That's what their legs are for. Deny them anything having any connection to taxpayer money. Target the employers with draconian fines. Turn off the tax money spigot and turn employing illegals into a bankruptcy lottery and watch those legs carry them...wherever (who cares where?).

Anonymous said...

First divide the white race into men and women. Use white women(as allies of people of color) against white men. And then, make a movie against white women as well. Divide and conquer.

http://www.censorbugbear.org/africa/south-africa/all-whites-now-finally-excluded-from-the-south-african-job-market

Mr Lomez said...

"The nation was once about defending or taking territory and about organised violence."


It still is.


Then at least the means are more feminine. Passive-aggressive carrot-and-sticking. Pillaging resources but under the pretense of good intentions. Diplomatic mediation. Etc.

This is almost certainly a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Off topic, but this might interest you given your coverage of PISA scores. This article covers test scores between KS and TX.

Kansas students score better than Texas students, that is true. It is also true that Texas white students score better than Kansas white students, Texas black students score better than Kansas black students, and Texas Hispanic students score better than or tie Kansas Hispanic students. The same pattern holds true for other ethnic subgroups.
...
In this case, the confounding factor (“lurking” variable) is that the two states differ greatly in the proportion of white students. In Kansas, 69 percent of students are white. In Texas it’s 33 percent. This large difference in the composition of students is what makes it look like Kansas students perform better on the NAEP than Texas students.

Anonymous said...

We've run out of room in Europe? In the US there are still plenty of places for white Americans to run away to.

Such as where?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said..."The rise of Chinese-Americans where I live have actually made things less anti-White in many ways."

Where is this wonderful place where the Chinese have subdued the black people?


In China. You won't find too many surviving black people there.

Anonymous said...

It's even more sickening when you focus on Vaz's wife, Maria Fernandes.

...She established Fernandes Vaz in 1995 with the intention of offering a wide range of immigration services.


Out of curiosity, is "Vaz" an English name? It sounds more like it is French or Spanish.

Harry Baldwin said...

The Peter Hitchens column in the Daily Mail linked above is interesting but ultimately disappoints due to a reflexive need to placate the PC gods; i.e., Hitchens spends much more time worrying about Poles and Estonians than blacks and Muslims, and offers the de rigeur savaging of Enoch Powell. Powell's sin seems to have been being much too prescient at a time when it was not yet too late to save Britain--this angers Hitchens. Powell was a reactionary, while Hitchens is a conservative, as in this insight from Lawrence Auster:

A traditionalist (or a reactionary) recognizes a threat to his society the moment it appears.

A conservative recognizes the threat when it has half-destroyed the society.

A liberal only recognizes the threat after it has completely destroyed the society, or, alternatively, he never recognizes it at all.

Cail Corishev said...

And we have to take these people, why, exactly - ?

Do TPTB even bother to try to make a case anymore? There have been cases where the American people might agree that taking refugees from a particular nation is the right thing to do. Kurds fleeing Iraq after we talked them into rebelling and then left Saddam in charge the first time, for instance. Or Cubans who had to flee because they spoke out against Communism. Agree or disagree: at least in those cases there's an argument to be had.

But does the average American know why we're taking people from the Sudan, or even where Sudan is? Was he ever asked whether he wanted to take large numbers from Sudanese into his towns? Was it ever debated in a single election, so he could base his vote on it?

The whole distinction of refugee/visitor/student/guest-worker seems to be moot at this point -- if someone somewhere wants to come here, preferably from a crap-hole of a nation, he's entitled to do so, and anyone who complains is a racist. Even trying to start a discussion about whether a particular country's fleeing hordes are refugees or not is racist.

Anonymous said...

Keith Vaz is a South Asian from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India.

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Vaz

"A piece of work"

Anonymous said...

"They are motivated by the admirable belief that all human lives are equally valuable."

What a dummy. He lost his own argument right there.

It's also stupid because he thinks the left is gonna go easy on him for sounding so sympathetic.

Anonymous said...

Keith Vaz is a South Asian from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India.

"Vaz" may be an anglicization of Vazquez or Vasco.

Anonymous said...

In China. You won't find too many surviving black people there.

Or many black people elsewhere who want to emigrate there, despite its dynamic economy.

Anonymous said...

Another reason for UKIPs success is that they have the EU to direct their anger at. They argue against the EU and get anti-immigration as a side effect. The US doesn't have anything similar to divert attention.

Anonymous said...

I think the reason that Europe is moving faster than the US on this issue is because their democracies are gifted with better and more responsive right-wing parties. As a liberal who leans way, way right on this one issue, I do wish we had a right wing party that wasn't so singularly focused on protecting the wealth of plutocrats and oligarchs, and so spectacularly disinterested in immigration.

Another thing to consider is the quality of the invaders. It's a lot easier to convince people to be skeptical of ever-skyrocketing immigration if the newcomers have a religion that has been at war with yours for thousands of years, and who young men tend to blow themselves up on trains. Mexicans, on the other hand, tend to low in human capital, but their religion, language, and culture are all essentially first cousins of our native Anglo peoples' language, religion, and customs.

Anonymous said...

"The UK is unsalvagable . Sadly ( I speak as one who enormously admires Britain's historical legacy )the place has become the land of the beta male and the home of the girleyman

Still , just as the UK was the first country to experience the Industrial revolution and then became the first post industrial country , the rest of us can still learn from their experience before it's too late IF we pay attention"

The US already is much worse than Britain in demographic terms.

If Britain is gone, the US was gone a long time ago.

Anonymous said...

"UK is an interesting case because it seems to have gone further than the U.S. in PC and multiculturalism."

That's not true at all. Over the last 15 years, major daily papers in the UK regularly run front page stories like "most gang rapists black," "white girls targeted by Asian sex fiends" and "bogus asylum seekers costing billions." '

Good point, but on the other hand they also arrest people for tweeting "racist" tweets in Britain.

MarkII said...

"Another reason for UKIPs success is that they have the EU to direct their anger at. They argue against the EU and get anti-immigration as a side effect. The US doesn't have anything similar to divert attention."

The federal government? Both provide an ample supply of overbearing parasitic mandarins to rail at, at least.

Anonymous said...

"Another reason for UKIPs success is that they have the EU to direct their anger at. They argue against the EU and get anti-immigration as a side effect. The US doesn't have anything similar to divert attention."


Yes we do its called social conservatism. But alot of the alt right (in typical status mongering fashion) craps on the socons in order to gather status points.

Anonymous said...

Aaron Gross: "Wrong, wrong, wrong. If the word "concentric" means anything at all here, then both conservatives and liberals have concentric loyalties. I've explained the errors in comments here before, so I won't bother repeating it."

I suspect your real problem with this is that if genetically concentric loyalties become a guiding principle as to who stays or goes in a given nation, then this may put Jews in a pickle (as they appear to be closer to Arabs than Europeans, but in any case, closer to Europeans than say, blacks, Amerinds or East Asians). It seem reasonable that now or in the future it may be possible to devise a cheap and easily administered DNA test to decide this sort of issue.

This is the same root issue that would also give you a problem with the idea of "race as an extended family". If that becomes a tenet, are pogroms in the cards?

I can't blame you for having such concerns. But are they warranted? Can you think of another way where the immigration situations can be reversed in European countries, and promote this yourself? My guess is that a reaction against mass immigration will probably happen anyway whether you want it or not.

I think that especially the Anglosphere has been tolerant to Jewry and probably benefitted from them for centuries, as has the rest of Europe to probably a lesser extent. If efforts are made to turn things around now and are both made and seen to be made by Jews, then I don't see why things can't go back to being the way they have been before.

I don't see why Jews can't be grandfathered into staying. Using the above argument (overall contribution positive, making amends for recent bad judgement) and also the practical issue of the very murky and intractable situation of mass Jewish outmarriage into the European (assumed) elite demographic that has effectively bound them both by blood - I don't see this as being a huge issue.

I'd be very happy to be able to go back to a 1950s America style existence if I didn't have to do all the work to achieve it. I think that a lot of Jews would prefer this as well. They have at least a thousand years of adaptation to suit living in diaspora amongst Europeans. They are not adapted to living amongst blacks, Amerinds or East Asians.

Realistically, it would have made more sense for them to have kept encouraging Euro colonisation and ridden the advancing wave of their host than to attempt to kill it off via Frankfurt school idiocy.

Matthew said...

"The UK is unsalvagable [sic]."

No country is unsalvageable. If you are a Mexican in 1953 looking to make the USA 30% Hispanic and over 50% non-white would you ever think it possible? No, but it happened, and in just 60 years - less than 50 years, actually.

What the last 3 decades have proven is that demographics can change, and dramatically. Yes, fight for political power. Yes, fight for reduced immigration, But first and foremost, if you aren't married, is go out there and find yourself a respectable husband or wife, and have some kids. Have 3-4, at least. Don't be such a pussy. Buy a gun. Buy one for your wife. Don't worry too much about living in a neighborhood with lots of minorities, just raise your kids not to think and act like them, the same way Asian immigrants do.

It ain't that hard. We have the skill set. We have the social capital. We can breed as prolifically as they can. And when the welfare money runs out, guess what? They'll be high and dry, unable to sustain their families without government money...but we won't, because we're actually smart enough to hold down decent jobs.

Stop obsessing about the death of the West and just get in the game and breed, damnit. It's actually quite fun.

"Keith Vaz is a South Asian from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India."

Wikipedia has this little gem on him: "Shortly after being elected in 1989, Vaz led a march of thousands of Muslims in Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses to be banned."

The kicker? Vaz isn't even Muslim, but Roman Catholic. This is how brown-ness works in the West. In the old country Hindus, Muslims, and the occasional Christian all fight each other. In the West, they realize that what unifies them is their brown-ness, not their religion. The Indians I grew up with - Hindus all - are adamantly opposed to any Westerner who criticizes Islam.

Aaron Gross said...

OK, I'll summarize why Steve Sailer is wrong wrong wrong. Dunno if anybody's still reading this thread, but for future reference anyway.

1. Concentric circles are never defined, and their definition is far from obvious. Are they defined by kinship, as in primitive societies? By some kind of social "closeness"? By loyalty itself?

2. If by kinship - which I don't think is what is meant, but only Steve Sailer knows what he means, and he's not telling - if it's kinship, then both conservatives and liberals mostly leapfrog these circles. For one thing, they practice loyalty to spouses over kin (e.g., cousins) - more loyal to people outside the circle than inside.

3. If it's ethnic or national loyalty, which might be what Sailer means, then note that the definition of circle is completely arbitrary. There's no reason to choose nation rather than state or race or confession, without begging the question.

Conservatives (here I mean "true" conservatives) have often been more loyal to their race than to their state. This is most obviously true of southern conservatives during the Civil Rights movement, when American opinion and government was against them.

Even now, white liberals are more loyal to the polity than are "true" conservatives when it comes to race. Why is race one of those "concentric circles" but polity not? Racial loyalty is by no means natural or widespread. (Most communities have been single-race.)

So again, if this is a concentric circle, then it was chosen completely arbitrarily. There are plenty of similar examples. By making another, equally arbitrary definition, conservatives could be shown to leap-frog more than liberals.

4. Probably, the one example supporting the "concentric circles" metaphor is liberal internationalism or humanitarianism. That sort of works, because humanity is a circle that includes all others. But liberal loyalty to humanity is not that deep. Most liberal political programs are domestic, not international. Liberals talk a lot about human rights, but they don't put much blood or money - much loyalty - into that in practice. If you look at what they do in government, it's mostly loyalty to the United States of America, not to the world or to the white race or whatever. Even immigration, the topic of this post, is usually supported in America as being good for America, not good for the immigrants.

So in the only natural definition of a circle - humanity - liberals are slightly more leap-frogging than conservatives, but their actions are far less leap-frogging than their words.

5. Finally, is "circle" defined simply by how close people are socially? That would be begging the question as well. In that case, the so-called "leap-frogging" actually creates the circles themselves.

Wrapping it up: Both conservatives and liberals have intricate "circles" of loyalty, circles which are not concentric, but overlapping. (The only place that a "concentric circles" metaphor might make sense is in a primitive, kinship society.) White liberals might feel more loyalty to their black neighbors, or fellow citizens, than do "true" conservatives. Nobody's "leap-frogging" there; both are loyal to their own "circles." The Concentric Circles of Loyalty metaphor is vague, inaccurate, and misleading.

When I said that Steve Sailer's Big Ideas are wrong, my goal was to encourage critical thinking. That was the goal more than explaining my own objections (which I just jotted down here in a rough first draft off the top of my head). Mainstream pundits just ignore his Big Ideas on concentric circles, race as extended family, and "citizenism," as they should, because they're wrong. But I think it would be interesting if people would examine them critically, because as I said, some of them (the so-called "definition" of race, especially) are wrong in interesting ways.

Aaron Gross said...

P.S. The reason I didn't write all this stuff the first time is that Steve Sailer said that he was going to publish an article explaining/defending the "concentric circles" thing against my criticism, so I didn't see any point in continuing with it right then.

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 6:46. Agreed. I genuinely wish we could return to the 50's, and hope more fellow Jews get on board with immigration policies that are not batsh*t crazy. My comfortable but non-elite family has lived in the LA area since the early 1920's and I am envious those who can remember the mid-century middle-class paradise that existed before things fell (or were pushed) to ruin.

I have concluded that while my family's home of 4 generations may be irrevocably lost, I have to maintain some hope that the rest of the country can avoid getting on "the right side of history" by becoming a dystopian flop-house for scab labor. True immigration reform = moratorium.

Steve Sailer said...

Dear Aaron:

You are being too literal-minded. I've never promised that there is any one single dimension along which loyalty should be demarcated.

Much of the interest of history is deciding which circles are most relevant. For example, George Washington is a major historical figure because he was closely involved in redrawing circles twice: in splitting up the British Empire and in drawing the 13 colonies closer together. Those two changes have endured, so Washington is vastly important.

That said, the emotional impulse is distinct: Red Dawn is a conservative movie of concentric loyalties: it's key line is "Because we live here." In contrast, Avatar is a liberal movie of leapfrogging loyalties: the human hero fights for the 10' tall blue space monkeys because they live there.

Matthew said...

"Even now, white liberals are more loyal to the polity than are "true" conservatives when it comes to race."

When liberals are trying to remake the polity in order to achieve ideological victory, they are not being loyal to the existing polity.

Also, loyalty to one's spouse over relatives is hardly an example of leapfrogging loyalties. The most natural reason to be loyal to a spouse is because of shared offspring. Loyalty to a spouse does not preclude loyalty to kin.

Defining liberals as having "leapfrogging loyalties" is not some all-encompassing way to undertstand their behavior. It's just a bizarre aspect of that behavior - more a debating point than a theory. It's odd that internationalist bureaucrats are more loyal to, say, would-be Somali or Pakistani immigrants than to native Britons, especially when their homes, their jobs, and everything else depends on the efforts of native Britons, not foreigners.

Steve Sailer said...

"Defining liberals as having "leapfrogging loyalties" is not some all-encompassing way to undertstand their behavior. It's just a bizarre aspect of that behavior - more a debating point than a theory."

No, it's a reductionist insight. Once you notice it, you'll get a lot of laughs out of noticing it over and over.

Aaron Gross said...

Steve, your Red Dawn example proves my point. Liberals are loyal to their ethnically and racially heterogeneous neighborhood or to their heterogeneous polity "because we live here." Many on the paleo/alt right are more loyal to people who live far away than they are to their neighbors.

The movie Avatar is sort of anti-Vietnam, anti-imperialism - a stance shared by liberals and "true" conservatives. It's no more disloyal to America than was opposition to the Iraq War. The government is not the polity.

Finally, what you said about dynamically drawing circles just illustrates my point (5) above. If the circles are constructed socially in real time, then it's completely arbitrary or meaningless to use your own favorite circles as a standard. Liberals and conservatives both construct overlapping circles, and both systems show equal "concentric loyalty" by their own standards. For your criticism to be meaningful, you have to define circles by some objective standard (ethnicity, confession, social class, etc.), and defend that standard as the correct one.

Aaron Gross said...

Last comment (?). It just occurred to me: You might be saying nothing more than that liberals have a natural stance in favor of "the other." I agree with that! At least in their words, more than their actions.

But why do you need this pseudo-anthropological verbiage about circles just to express such a banal point? If that's all you mean, then yes, I agree with you about leap-frogging concentric circles of loyalty, with the proviso that your circles are (at best) defined arbitrarily or tautologically (point (5) above), that they are not concentric, and that there is no leap-frogging. But other than that - yeah, sure.

Steve Sailer said...

"Liberals are loyal to their ethnically and racially heterogeneous neighborhood or to their heterogeneous polity "because we live here.""

And, I frequently recommend that such behavior be studied for purposes of emulation. For example, I've several times pointed out that the nice liberals of Beverly Hills have turned the privilege of attending Beverly Hills public schools into one that passes down to _grandchildren_ of Beverly Hills residents even when they don't live in Beverly Hills. Rather than excoriate Beverly Hills liberals for hypocrisy and try to dream up some voucher system to flood their schools with South-Central kids, I like to point out that the same principle could be validly drawn upon in designing immigration policy by less privileged Americans to privilege their own grandchildren over those of foreigners.

Steve Sailer said...

Aaron says:

"Finally, what you said about dynamically drawing circles just illustrates my point (5) above. If the circles are constructed socially in real time, then it's completely arbitrary or meaningless to use your own favorite circles as a standard."

Once again, you are ignoring liberal rhetoric, which takes great pride in espousing the welfare of The Other over those awful people fairly near at hand that you can't stand.

Moreover, the term "completely arbitrary or meaningless" is overstated. Loyalties are always going to be constructed about various tendencies, some biological, some cultural. But, successful mutual loyalties aren't going to be "completely arbitrary or meaningless." I've explained elsewhere at length why I think American citizenship is one of the better dimensions for American citizens to keep in mind.

Steve Sailer said...

"But why do you need this pseudo-anthropological verbiage about circles..."

It's not anthropological, it's alliterative:

Liberals: leapfrogging loyalties

Conservatives: concentric circles

Matthew said...

Allow me to repeat myself, Aaron: whatever else you want to say about liberal loyalties to the polity, wanting to completely remake that polity in order to enact your ideological agenda does not demonstrate loyalty to the polity.

If Group A votes for X, but you forcibly add Group B to A in order to get them to vote for Y instead, then you are not being loyal to Group A. Loyalty would demonstrate a respect for their preferences, or at least their welfare.

Anonymous said...

"In China. You won't find too many surviving black people there."

Since China has always been an emigration country and has not developed a mature immigration administrative system, there is no official data on immigrants in China. However, according to Chinese media, there are now between 20,000 to 200,000 African immigrants living in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou Academy of Social Science, a research institution with governmental background, declared that the number should be around 100,000.(2)

http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=963:go-east-african-immigrants-in-china&catid=58:asia-dimension-discussion-papers&Itemid=264

Hunsdon said...

Aaron Gross said: The movie Avatar is sort of anti-Vietnam, anti-imperialism - a stance shared by liberals and "true" conservatives. It's no more disloyal to America than was opposition to the Iraq War. The government is not the polity.

Hunsdon: Except that in Avatar, the Earth's resources were exhausted, and humanity would DIE without the resources of the blue monkeys' planet. Thus, the actions of our hero (our Aussie hero) in choosing the blue monkeys isn't disloyalty to America---it's disloyalty to the human race.

Aaron Gross said...

OK, so I was the chump for assuming that words were being used as if they actually meant something. Silly me. (By the way, "loyalty" doesn't apply here any more than do "concentric circles" or "leap-frogging" - sympathy is not the same as loyalty. I mean, if they weren't just some syllables intended to sound good.)

I do agree that liberals tend to be more sympathetic to ten-foot blue people, to Vietnamese people, etc. I've made the same point myself. The hero of Avatar really did switch loyalties, which actually shows the contrast between him and most liberals.

Aaron Gross said...

@Hundson, fair enough. An anecdote: A couple years ago I took my daughter, then about ten, to see Avatar. (She loved it.) She was born and raised in Israel, and she referred to the humans in the movie as "Americans." I was almost going to point out that they were earthlings, not Americans, but then I realized that she was absolutely right. They were portrayed as Americans.

Aaron Gross said...

@Matthew, I didn't answer your comment the first time because I thought it was stupid and obnoxious, but since you insist: White liberals who support mass immigration are acting out of loyalty, out of patriotism, just as opponents of immigration are. Pro-immigration people believe that immigration is good for America.

The vast majority on both sides are patriots. One side is right and the other is wrong, but both are equally loyal and equally patriotic.

Matthew said...

"Pro-immigration people believe that immigration is good for America."

No, they don't. That idea is stupid and obnoxious.

They support immigration because they believe it is good for them, possibly the immigrants, and as a way to impose their ideology on the rest of us.

Janet Napolitano is openly celebrating mass immigration turning Arizona into a blue state. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro is openly celebrating mass immigration turning Texas into a blue state. A great, great many on the Left have been celebrating this for years. Labour changed immigration policy in Britain specifically for the purpose of transforming the population of Britain, moving it to the Left and, in many cases, deliberately 'rubbing the noses of native Brits in diversity,' to paraphrase a former Labour politician.

These are really basic facts. Feel free to get them right.

Cail Corishev said...

Matthew,

If you're talking about the elites who are pushing mass immigration, then I agree: they don't know or care whether immigration is good for America; they want it because of what it will do for their pocketbook and their ideology.

But if you're talking about average middle-Americans, you're wrong: many of them are "pro-immigration" in the sense that they think immigration has been good for America in the past ("nation of immigrants" and so on), so it's inherently a good thing. They also, being hard-working folks themselves, are susceptible to the "jobs Americans won't do" lie, because it plays into the popular belief that "kids these days" (and adults) are lazier than their parents, and Americans just don't work like they used to.

They think it should be done by the rules, and they would be open to arguments about securing the border first, sending illegals back to their own countries to apply, etc., as long as those arguments are made carefully. But if you say that legal immigration is a net loss for America, or that some groups are simply incompatible with our culture, they'll start backing away, because they know that's raciss, and they're "nice" people.

I'm not talking about Beltway reps here; I'm talking about plumbers and teachers in Iowa who have been taught all their life that America is the "melting pot" that can take people from anywhere and bring out their best. They figure it worked for their great-grandparents (without knowing how long it took, or how much social strife it caused in the process), so why can't it work for some undetermined number of Mexicans or Somalis?

Anonymous said...

James Bowman has been stuck on that transmutation of "controversial" for a while; it almost never now refers to a subject literally disagreed over by open factions, more often is just the synonym for

1) "something persistently distasteful we're trying to wish away"
or 2) "something routinely and boringly disgusting to 99% of the population that it's fun to shove in their faces"

Anonymous said...

"Leapfrogging loyalties" isn't a good descriptive term. Fake loyalties would be more accurate. SWPLs deploy strategic concern for hopeless Haitians or whatever as a solidarity wedge and a method of stabbing at perceived white rivals, but going the full measure, jihad-dynamite-belt-style, to support the leapfrog comrades? Yeah right. I have never met a white liberal in West L.A. who sincerely cared about the fate one way or another of blacks living 7 miles to his southeast, much less some earthquake-prone overseas wogs who don't even speak English or watch the newest HBO original series. The inherent strain in the current left-wing coalition is that the brass expect everyone further down the pyramid to emulate their leaders/betters' own refined disloyalty in all areas of life.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

It catches my eye that Brits do protest much about the swarm of Poles, especially into the service jobs. Is there some cultural nuance unmentioned here? I've briefly traveled/vacationed in both countries and just can't figure whence it viscerally agitates the locals, it's even a bit funny for an American.

Unless merely a red herring for other minorities (as others around have persuaded themselves) I'd love to know what unique problems present from this pool of whatever quality Polish show up. Can't just be the Catholic thing, that's old hat by now

Matthew said...

"But if you're talking about average middle-Americans, you're wrong: many of them are "pro-immigration" in the sense that they think immigration has been good for America in the past ("nation of immigrants" and so on), so it's inherently a good thing."

Fair enough, and I agree with that for the most part. Many average liberals think it's good for America. Many of my liberal friends do. But many average liberals don't really think about what it's doing to America. They only think about the immigrants. At some point in the conversation, or one of the columns under discussion, we were focusing on politicians, journalists, government bureaucrats, and NGO employees, not "average liberals."

Matthew said...

"It catches my eye that Brits do protest much about the swarm of Poles, especially into the service jobs. Is there some cultural nuance unmentioned here?"

I have to guess they complain about Poles, in large part, because it can't be called racist to criticize immigration by white Christians. Just goes to show you how much PC reallt does squash any debate.

Prior to opening their doors to Polish immigration there was lots of speculation about how many Poles would come. Labour and the Left claimed it was all exaggeration, but the worst predictions came true.

It's like with the industrial revolution, but this time Eastern Europe is the rural countryside and all of England is the city, and the people of England are expected to bear the brunt of all of it.

Anonymous said...

I see absolutely no problem with Polish immigration at all. It is a long term investment in the future of the white community.

Anonymous said...

If turning yourself into an impending minority in your own country is a "success" then Britain is at the top of the charts. Somehow though, I can't see the Japanese doing that.

Anonymous said...

I see absolutely no problem with Polish immigration at all. It is a long term investment in the future of the white community.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to fill England with Poles as an "investment". Poland and England stack up about equally in Human Accomplishment.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoNdrNXh5E