Levin says that modern conservatism involves
skepticism of arrogant claims to knowledge and power, and makes us protective of those ways of living that have led prior generations not only closer to social peace and economic prosperity but closer to justice and to God. It also leads us to a reverence for community, for history, for culture, and to emphasize the importance of the preconditions for raising children.
On nationalism, Levin says
The nation is not best understood as one whole to be divided into parts but as the sum of various uneven, ancient, loveable elements. This has everything to do with Burke’s concern for national sentiment and love of country, and with his emphasis on national character. We are prepared for love of country by a love of home.
And concerning our current political temper, he says
Those with whom we disagree in our society are not our enemies; they are our neighbors. They are not out to do harm to our country; they differ with us about what would be good for it. To love our country is to love them too—even when they do not show us the same regard, even when they are illiberal and we have to quarrel with them in the public square.
“To love our country is to love them too—even when they do not show us the same regard, even when they are illiberal and we have to quarrel with them in the public square.”
I’m not sure this is true. I don’t think they love me, now or ever. I don’t think I should respond to bad actions with passive submission. We aren’t really a country at all, more like to separate peoples bound together by force due to historical circumstances.
Are these people I’m supposed to love?
https://www.theblaze.com/news/watch-baltimore-police-dept-employee-brutally-beaten-robbed-in-street-and-police-commissioner-says-its-extremely-shocking
I had this conversation with my pastor one day. We had gone into the ghetto to do charity work with some very antagonistic poor black people. When we got back to the church our cars had been broken into to steal the GPS or whatever else was there (I had my car broken into and the GPS stolen five times in a couple of years when I still lived downtown). I asked, essentially, what all this was supposed to accomplish? What was the endgame he envisioned? Would it just be like this forever? How could I love people who behaved this way and would probably behave this way no matter what we did for them? Most especially, I was just angry that these people hurt the people I cared about with abandon.
He didn’t have any answers. He didn’t even have many words. I got the impression walking out of that meeting that the church didn’t have any answers for dealing with these problems, even though they were pressing problems I had to live with.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore came out against Trumps statements, and I was surprised to see so many of my friends fight back on Facebook. They are so gentle and kind and polite I just kind of thought they never would. But they know what a shithole Baltimore is, and they know people like Cummings are part of the problem. For some of them watching the Archdiocese throw the Covington Catholic kids under the bus so fast was a reminder that the church wasn’t looking out for them, and some even mentioned it in their posts. I always wondered if I was the only one who questioned the futility of all this, because I was the only one alone in a room asking my priest about it. But then I realized a lot of my ultra nice ultra polite Christian friends who are way more faithful then me also recognize what a con is going on. They too know the church doesn’t have many answers to help them navigate the actual problems in their lives. It’s not even particularly interested in helping them.
Levin was referring to “Those with whom we disagree in our society”. I think you are referring to those who would do us physical harm or steal/damage our personal property. We should follow the Golden Rule with people who disagree with us.
How to react to people who violate the Golden Rule is a separate matter. I don’t think PR statements from POTUS or “The Church” is key to solving a seemingly intractable problem like the one you describe in Baltimore.
The wild-eyed blogger and mystic Bruce Charlton once wrote that nowadays we have trouble remembering who an enemy is.
To paraphrase, an enemy is not someone who disagrees with you. An enemy is someone who attacks you.
If you are familiar with his writing, you will not be surprised by the Christian theme of his point.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-left-is-self-deceptive-enemy-of.html
They goon to bedde, as it was skile and right;
For thogh that wyves be ful hooly thynges,
They moste take in pacience at nyght
Swiche manere necessaries as been plesynges
To folk that han ywedded hem with rynges,
And leye a lite hir hoolynesse aside,
As for the tyme, — it may no bet bitide.
-Chaucer
The libertarian open border movement championed by Bryan Caplan among others, advocates undermining or abolishing the premise of nation states and “country” and undermining unity in the country to facilitate more free market reforms. I’d pass the ideological Turing Test on this, I’m not misrepresenting that viewpoint. My point here, is it is genuinely not true that other people love this country. I’m sure they love pieces of this country, but they clearly oppose the premise of existing as a country.
Or to quote Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission:
It’s the “stupid nationalists” that love their own countries. The EU has quite deliberately tried to undermine and weaken or destroy distinct national identities in Europe. I presume Yuval Levin was discussing the US, not Europe, but it’s clearly not true that the pro-EU have a love for European countries. They have a love for “Europe”, but not the traditional Europe with distinct countries like Italy and England and France and Germany in it.
The libertarian open border movement championed by Bryan Caplan among others, advocates undermining or abolishing the premise of nation states and “country” and undermining unity in the country to facilitate more free market reforms. I’d pass the ideological Turing Test on this…
No, it doesn’t, and no, you wouldn’t. Open borders no more undermine or abolish the premise of nations than open borders within the U.S. undermine and abolish the premise of states, counties, cities, towns, villages, etc. During much of the 19th century and into the early 20th, U.S. borders were effectively open and millions of Irish, German, Italian, Chinese and others immigrated here (20 million between 1880 and 1920 alone). Included in the millions of German immigrants were some of my great-grandparents. Neither they nor the rest of the immigrants of the time ‘abolished or undermined the premise of the nation’.
I think we agree – no one feels any allegiance to Virginia anymore. Can you imagine someone putting allegiance to Virginia above allegiance to the US anymore?
Once upon a time we did. Most would argue it’s a good thing that we no longer do.
So it seems obvious to me that territorial allegiances are bound up in borders and that weakened borders weakens those allegiances regardless of scale.
Can you imagine someone putting allegiance to Virginia above allegiance to the US anymore?
Oh, I don’t know — it’s not so hard to imagine some people putting allegiance to California above allegiance to the U.S., is it?
“So it seems obvious to me that territorial allegiances are bound up in borders. and that weakened borders weakens those allegiances regardless of scale.”
Why does that seem obvious? Is there any evidence that there were stronger borders between states during the colonial era? Were there walls, fences, guards, immigration checkpoints, etc at the Virginia-North Carolina border that we’ve somehow all forgotten about? Or were there legal restrictions against moving from one colony/state to another? If not, in what sense did the Virginia-North Carolina border weaken?
The idea that a nation exists to serve its existing members over outsiders, a particular history, culture, language, identity, and even ethnic identity, that is what the open border libertarians intend to undermine.
The idea that nations exist as a geographic marker or in some other fashions, sure, libertarians don’t oppose that.
To quote Bryan Caplan from (https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/ethnic_diversit.html):
“One of my arguments is that immigration increases diversity, which undermines solidarity, which mutes public support for the welfare state. […] Solidarity stands in the way of free-market reforms in pensions, education, health care, taxation, agricultural policy, and much more.”
I agree with much of this logic and with the related broader AnCap philosophy of moving society towards opt-in market interactions and less centered around elected governments.
You are reciting practiced rhetorical speaking points designed to manipulate and persuade and partially to confuse.
The idea that a nation exists to serve its existing members over outsiders, a particular history, culture, language, identity, and even ethnic identity, that is what the open border libertarians intend to undermine.
Again, no. A nation, a state, a city, a county — all exist to serve their current residents. The culture, language, and identity of a nation/region/city are durable but also exhibit large changes over time. Changes occur for many reasons. Economic growth and decline (or just changes in types of businesses in the area). Population growth (or decline), evolution in tastes, beliefs and practices, and — yes — sometimes immigration. But immigration does not particularly stand out.
To quote Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan is one libertarian, not the elected thought leader of libertarianism. And you’ll note that in the very piece you cite, he’s criticizing other libertarians who worry that immigration will increase electoral support for leftist/statist government. So there is obviously no general libertarian agreement here. Also you quote him arguing that immigration may (hopefully in his view) undermine support for big government programs, NOT that it may undermine the notion of nationhood itself — so you haven’t even found one libertarian yet who wants to ‘undermine the premise of a nation-state’.
“You are reciting practiced rhetorical speaking points designed to manipulate and persuade and partially to confuse.”
What? No. I did not copy/paste ‘speaking points’ from anywhere. I’m simply pointing out that we have open movement across borders between the state and local units of government within the U.S. and this does not, in any way, undermine them or render them meaningless and never has. Similarly, at times in our history, we have had very high levels of foreign immigration into the U.S. (and, by extension, into particular regions within the U.S.) again, without undermining our nation-state or our smaller units of government.
When I read your first reply, I regretted using vague phrasing like “premise of the nation state”. You could be quite flexible about the definition of what the “premise of a nation” is, and that claim loses meaning.
In my last comment, I attempted to restate and clarify my assertion; I attempted to state which aspects of nations that open border libertarians intended to undermine and which they do not. You evaded my clarified assertions and resorted to my previous vaguely worded assertion.
You are making rhetorical arguments that I’ve heard from prominent immigration activists. They are accurate at some level, yet I disagree with implications that you are making. They are manipulative rhetorical arguments, simply stated or not.
Bryan aims to undermine “solidarity”. It’s pretty clear, especially in context, that he means that if people don’t feel like they are a part of society they may withdraw their support from society and treat “society” at arms length. One effect of not having any allegiance to society might be less charitable, especially as regards the welfare state.
Some think this claim dubious. There is very little solidarity in Baltimore, MD and it doesn’t stop the local government from charging some of the highest taxes in the entire country and blowing it on leftist big government programs that do little to improve things.
There exist no “low trust, low solidarity” first world countries. There are some low trust societies with Government/GDP ratios that are similar or less than America, but this has a lot to do with their being poor. You can’t tax a surplus that doesn’t exist.
Lastly, there are a lot of side effects to living in a low trust society. Paring back the welfare state might not be a fair exchange for living in a low trust society, even if it were possible to make such a trade (you could easily end up in a low trust/high welfare state equilibrium).
In Burke’s time you have nationalists in America talking about the rights of Englishmen. You have nationalists in France talking about subduing their fellow citizens in the Vendee. You have nationalists in Germany talking about the forest and fairy tales. And you have Burke himself talking about “binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections.”
Different national characters produced these different kinds of nationalism. Very different kinds of nationalism. We can even talk about imperialism as one of the alternatives to nationalism, but imperialism is clearly also one of the sources of nationalism, so in that sense imperialism entails nationalism as its inevitable consequence. By arguing for imperialism Juncker is really arguing for the nationalist product and result of imperialism. He can’t, in practice, have one without the other.
Imperialists can disavow the inevitable result of imperialism, and rant about “these populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries,” but there’s a blindness there. Like the Frenchmen setting out on their mission civilisatrice within France itself, they imagine “that all local ideas should be sunk, and that the people should no longer be Gascons, Picards, Bretons, or Normans, but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one assembly.” And people fight back against this “jerk of authority.”
The mistake of the supernationalists isn’t their disdain for love of country – they’re right on that front – but their substitution of a continent for it.
As much as I sound like Sonny Corleone here, your country isn’t your family, and isn’t analogous to it. Familial affection is borne if familiarity (not genetics; I think few would dispute that adopted siblings have more affection for each other than cousins who’ve never met). Levin’s analogy interesting though in explaining the sentiment: nationalism is like the opposite of a metonymy, where one associates a larger abstraction with a small component thereof with which one is familiar, I.e. I think my neighborhood or hometown is America; the sentiment is a category mistake that conflates the metonymy with the thing it metonymizes.
The only coherent case for nationalism imo is that it’s a useful fiction for inducing cooperation. That itself is a pretty doubtful claim, but it’s hard to pay serious attention when someone is trying to argue I should actually believe in nationalism.
Levin has outdone himself here and this is a piece to be remembered.
The three excerpts are exceedingly fine sentiments: would that they all be so. Conservatism ought strive to a credo as wise as “skepticism of arrogant claims to knowledge and power, and makes us protective of those ways of living that have led prior generations not only closer to social peace and economic prosperity but closer to justice and to God.” And all honest nationalists would accept that a love of “the sum of various uneven, ancient, loveable elements” must rise above mere idolatry yet nor is it to be contemned. And we must indeed, love those of of our citizens with whom we disagree regardless that love be unrequited, for it is that love which matters most. A place not had by love is a place not worth having.
Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori.
Note well that all these fine points are entirely consistent with pragmatic radicalism which places an even higher value upon Levin’s penultimate observation: the task of those who would ameliorate our current temper “is to persuade a larger society that is not so sure that either side of our politics has got its head on straight.” To which the radical riposte is and if both their heads be not straight, allow us a chance to persuade you of a nobler path and altar.
This “skepticism of arrogant claims to knowledge and power” is right. Some people talk like they’ve never heard of identity politics. The existence of tribalism has somehow passed them by. It wouldn’t occur to them that there exists, right now, an alternative to the give and take of liberal democracy, and it isn’t pretty.
For most of human history we gave our loyalty to closed-off, warring tribes, and Steven Pinker can tell you, with charts and graphs, why violence has declined since the defeat of tribes and clans. It’s not because we ceased to feel any ties of loyalty at all, and became calculating machines.
The world is still waiting for the greant Handle-Levin debate.
The big trouble with any effort to support Nationalism for the U.S. is that the content of the “traditional national character” has been denigrated by high status elites for generations and is now a point of serious dispute. That is, it’s not just that we have “cosmopolitcan” anti-nationalists to contend with, but that even if we didn’t, any contemporary attempt at formulating or articulating a particular conception of American Nationalism would be too controversial to accomplish its fundamental purposes in encouraging internal solidarity, fraternity, cohesion, and harmonious relations.
As for the “those with whom we disagree in our society are not our enemies …” line, perhaps the most charitable interpretation / best defense of it would be to say that, regardless of its lack of factual basis, it remains the proper perspective and attitude to carry oneself through these contentious times in the manner of an honorable gentleman with stoic equanimity and magnanimity with an unblemished reputation for integrity and fairness in judgment, regardless of whether it helps or hurts his own team. A kind of constant exercise in building character.
Which, believe me, I totally get.
And maybe you really have to believe a false thing is true as a noble lie in order to really conform one’s demeanor and mindset in that way, or at least you have to pay lip service to it to support the perception of a social consensus which helps your peers do the same thing, which would be best for everyone.
But still, just between us, it’s not actually a true statement in the sense of mapping accurately to reality, which, alas, is uglier than childish kumbaya fairy tales.
Furthermore, the trouble is that the failure mode of taking that perspective too seriously is to disable one’s alert and defense systems when the context shifts out of one’s favor and it’s time to recognize enemies for what they are and fight for mere survival. Also, one improperly shifts focus to attacking those who do fight in that way, because that kind of fighting is inescapably nasty and dirty. Alas, there’s far too much of exactly that failure mode going around.
That is, it’s not just that we have “cosmopolitcan” anti-nationalists to contend with, but that even if we didn’t, any contemporary attempt at formulating or articulating a particular conception of American Nationalism would be too controversial to accomplish its fundamental purposes in encouraging internal solidarity, fraternity, cohesion, and harmonious relations.
I disagree. I think it’s entirely possible to formulate a concept of American national identity, which is actually conducive to solidarity, etc. It just wouldn’t be the *same* concept of American identity that American whites have traditional considered *their* identity. It would be an identity based on shared values rather than based on ethnicity or culture.
I do think this is where the battle is being fought, not on whether there’s a shared national identity, but on what the content of that identity is. IMO, conservatives are losing this battle, primarily because they continue to insist on tying America’s shared values to white ethnic identity. By tying America’s libertarian values to whiteness, they essentially allow the left to define American identity in the way they prefer – racially inclusive but also socialist – emphasizing “we the people” over “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, and arguing that free markets are inextricably linked to white supremacy. If conservatives want to make “life “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” a central part of American national identity in the future, they need to stop claiming that non-whites are somehow culturally incapable of sharing that value. That argument plays directly into the hands of the Marxist playbook – that you can’t have free markets without white dominance.
Most people, even most white people, if given a choice between “racism and free markets” and “racial equality plus socialism”, are going to pick “racial equality plus socialism”. If anything “racial equality plus socialism” is probably more conducive to “solidarity, fraternity, cohesion, and harmonious relations” than the other option. But I still think “free markets and racial equality” would be superior to both.
Most people don’t care about politics. They’re conservative in that sense of not wanting anything to do with the government. There are all these hundreds of millions of Americans out there who call themselves “conservative” when they’re pushed by an opinion pollster into coming up with a description of their non-existent politics, and it’s all these hundreds of millions of people you’re talking about every time you say that conservatives “continue to insist on tying America’s shared values to white ethnic identity.” That’s not true. The mentally ill on campus think like that, in terms of “identity” and “white supremacy.” Normal people don’t. This “American identity that American whites have” is an obsession, not of all the normal people who aren’t on Twitter and don’t read the news, but of a small cohort of the mentally disturbed who insert “white” and “black” into everything they say. These race-obsessed people believe there is something they call “whiteness” and so they get degrees in “whiteness studies.” They divide the world into “whites” and “non-whites.” They aren’t interested in finding out what all those conservatives out there actually believe.
Conservatives in the age of Trump continually repeat the argument that non-whites people’s cultures are not supportive of America Western liberal democratic traditions – that they are too socialist or too authoritarian. This is a common argument against hispanic immigration – that they are going to come here and bring their bad socialist culture with them and alter America’s fundamental culture. They also repeat the argument that if America becomes “majority minority” the same thing will happen – i.e. even non-whites born in the US are not sufficiently assimilated, and that if America does not remain majority white it will lose touch with the values enshrined in the constitution. I’m not making this up, these exact arguments have been made repeatedly on this very blog. Some even argue that culture is genetic.
IMO, conservatives are losing this battle, primarily because they continue to insist on tying America’s shared values to white ethnic identity.
This seems to be a foundation of your argument. But I just don’t see it. On the other hand, my wife says I don’t get out enough. Could you elaborate? Who does this? How is it done?
All sorts of conservative commenters, constantly, on this and many other right-leaning blogs and forums.
It’s inherent in the oft-repeated argument that we should oppose Hispanic immigration because Hispanics are going to bring their illiberal social or authoritarian political culture with them. It’s inherent in the claim that California has become a ‘one-party state’ largely due to Hispanic immigration.
If somebody says,
1. I believe in (X,Y,Z).
2. People in country A believe in (not X, not Y, not Z).
3. I do not want people from country A immigrating here.
THAT IS NOT RACIST.
If it is accompanied by “genetics forces them to believe (not X, not Y, not Z)” then it is racist. But if it is simply realizing that cultural change takes time, or perhaps fearing that immigrants from group A will be encouraged to not adopt (X,Y,Z), then it is not racist. People can easily believe the latter two without thinking that (X,Y,Z) is “intrinsically connected” to the dominant ethnic group.
Roger,
Then people just apply the logic that “these groups that immigrated in the past (usually non-WASP whites) also had cultural differences with America and significant difficulties assimilating. Since they eventually assimilated, it should be obvious that all groups will eventually assimilate. Foreign born % was very high for 75 years before 1924 and it worked out in the long run. Considering the immense gains that people coming here from the third world receive, how you possibly argue that transitory assimilation issues outweigh that.
No, I’m afraid you need the genes to make a decent argument. Otherwise its all “why is this any different than the Irish” to which you have no good answer. The geneticists can give the answer that this time is different because the genes of the immigrants are different. You can give none, which is why you’ve been losing on the immigration question for decades now.
asdf said,
Uh huh, that is exactly what the geneticists are saying.
Then people just apply the logic that “these groups that immigrated in the past (usually non-WASP whites) also had cultural differences with America and significant difficulties assimilating. Since they eventually assimilated, it should be obvious that all groups will eventually assimilate
That can be addressed by claiming that there was a clear message to assimilate, but messages to assimilate are now considered discrimination. There were not bilingual English-Polish classes. Government documents like ballets were in English, and not translated by the government into Polish.
While messages to assimilate are certainly important, whose to say what they were.
“No Irish Need Apply” might just as easily repulse someone (I can only trust fellow Irish) as assimilate them (I need to act less Irish to join mainstream society). And in fact immigrants tended to interpret those signals both ways.
Language is the same. There was a huge crackdown on the German language in WW1. Did that help assimilate or repulse German Americans?
I’m probably in the same camp as you on the importance of assimilation, and would promote more of it if possible (especially on the issue of language).
But it’s far from clear to me that even if we developed the perfect mixture of cultural messages to promote maximum possible assimilation that it would cause say whites and browns to merge in behavior in the way WASPs and Germans did.
In general I’d say that there is assimilation going on, lots of it, but that in general low IQ immigrants are assimilating into a underclass American culture. That’s why crime, divorce, etc increase amongst second generation Hispanics. They end up acting exactly like you would predict given their average IQs. Assimilation actually removes some of their noble peasant values.
There is a underclass problem in America, and increasing the size of the population genetically prone towards it is actually making it harder to reform.
If somebody says,
1. I believe in (X,Y,Z).
2. People in country A believe in (not X, not Y, not Z).
3. I do not want people from country A immigrating here.
THAT IS NOT RACIST.
Actually it kind of is. Because “People” is a collective term. Just because *some*, or even *most* people from country A believe (not X, not Y, not Z), doesn’t mean everyone immigrating from country A to the US believes that. If you want to be not racist, you evaluate people as individuals, not on the basis of what most people from their country think.
Hazel, In law school there’s an expression, “Don’t fight the hypothetical.” In my hypothetical, every person in country A believes (not X, not Y, not Z). So my question was, is it racism to not want people who believe (not X, not Y, nor Z) to immigrate to my country?
You, of course, bring up the more realistic case, so another question. What if you honestly and honorably believe that people in country A are more likely to believe (not X, not Y, not Z) than people in your country and thus that random immigration from country A will make your country less favorable to (X,Y,Z). Is it racism to oppose immigration from country A?
Seems more that conservatives want everyone to ‘act white’ in the same way that ghetto blacks define it: Go to school, get a job, marry your kids’ mother, don’t steal, ect. The is nothing intrinsically ‘white’ about any of it. Seems racist to me to define not being anti-social as being white.
Exactly. I think that non-whites are totally capable of adopting America’s libertarian individualist values. I don’t see those values as intrinsically attached to white or European heritage, and hence I don’t see immigration by non-whites as a threat to America’s national identity. Conservatives keep saying that if we let non-whites immigirate we’re going to lose our values – which to me implies that they think those values are intrinsically connected to “whiteness”.
“Conservatives keep saying that if we let non-whites immigrate” – this is where the strawman comes in. How many times do you need to see conservatives defend immigrants from Africa, comparing them to African Americans to believe this is not a black/white thing? It’s a culture thing and they come over and typically do very well for themselves. No one has an issue with that.
TMC:
Which conservatives do you know of that favor increasing immigration from Africa? Trump specifically referred to the continent as “sh*thole countries”.
“increasing immigration ” isn’t what we are discussing. If there were some better requirements on the quality of immigrants from any country, a lot of conservatives would have no problem with increased immigration.
I strongly doubt you’ll ever see the majority of conservatives, certainly not Trump’s base, support more immigration from Africa. No matter what immigration system we have. They’ll find a reason to be against it.
No doubt there are some Trump supporters for whom that is true. But how many people are you talking about when you refer to Trump’s “base’? 5% of those who voted for him? 10% 20% 50%
Anything more than about 15% seems wrong to me. If you believe it is more than that, I would suggest you have a hate problem.
I think you pretty much consistently misstate conservative conceptions if national identity (certainly nothing like what the National Review’s conception of it is, for example). If you persist in insisting that it’s all about white nationalism, then you can’t really object when conservatives claim that the core of progressive ideology is anti-white racial revanchism. You could accuse them of selectively picking who they make their representatives of ‘the Left’ but you’d be guilty of the same thing.
In any case, if you really believe half the country is irredeemable racist, then that clearly means we can’t have an agreed upon national identity, right? And we should stop trying to force one. I find it odd that you of all people would even favor such national cohesion. It’s clearly at odds with liberal individualism. Perhaps you believe nationalism would be useful in the perennial crusade against racism, which I think is both doubtful as well as dangerous. Trying to rally a nation to marginalize a group – even an ideological group – tends to go further than originally intended. Maybe today people who use the n-word in public get ostracized; tomorrow it’s anyone who doesn’t have any black close friends; in 20 years, anyone who calls his spouse his ‘wife instead of his ‘partner.’ Of course imo even today would say we’re already well past the point where the criteria for social shaming is reasonable.
I feel odd that the position of ‘just leave people to their own devices and stop fixating on who you want to punish’ would be such the position, but here we are I guess.
Actually my own position on immigration/race is more in line with that of George W. Bush, who made a rather famous speech last year obliquely criticizing Trump’s policies.
“Our identity as a nation, unlike other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. … This means that people from every race, religion, ethnicity can be full and equally American,”
“It means that bigotry and white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed.”
Bush is the kind of conservative that I support – but he’s not the kind of conservative that exists *today*, because Trump changed that. Or, you could argue Trump isn’t a true conservative, and then I’d be fine with that. Maybe I should say the position of “Trump conservatives”? Point is that the *current* position of the Republican party, officially, as defined by the elected leader of the party, ties American national identity to white ethnicity. Sorry, but true. If conservatives disagree with that, they should say so.
It’s not half the country, either, just enough of the core of the Republican party that they were able to nominate Trump in the last election. A powerful block of a party that earned slightly less than 50% of the 60% of the population that voted. So maybe 15-20% of the general population.
That would be my position. Protectionist is a more accurate description. He has alienated libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and social conservatives but he won over many more protectionists who previously voted Democrat or didn’t vote at all.
RAD, yeah, I sort of agree. Thing is that in spite of that it does seem that the rank and file conservative Republican has fallen into line and even changed their minds on trade in order to get behind him. I sort of knew this would happen if he won the election. Nevertheless, what does conservatism mean today? I’m not sure if social cons, fiscal cons, and even many libertarians haven’t “adjusted” themselves to the new reality, in a way that shifts the definition of conservatism in a more nationalist Trumpian direction.
What does conservatism mean today? Belief in the importance of personal responsibility maybe? Family and God seem to be a popular themes over the last week with Levin, Hazony, and DeMuth. George Will seems to focus on the American founding documents which doesn’t help define conservatives living the rest of the Anglosphere which I think have more similarities than differences.
I dunno. It is uncomfortable trying to define a team that I respect but I don’t identify with.
“I disagree. I think it’s entirely possible to formulate a concept of American national identity, which is actually conducive to solidarity, etc.”
That doesn’t answer my point at all.
First of all, there is no “Nationalism” unless your constellation of principles can justify drawing the starkest of distinctions in treatment and outcome between citizens and aliens. Which ‘value’ lets you get away with that?
I would encourage you to reflect a little more deeply on how “commitment to values” can be compatible with anything that can fairly be called “Nationalism” if those values are Univeralist in nature instead of Particularist. Otherwise, one ends up straight away at one-worldism, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism, and it’s just a matter of inertia, political expediency, and time before nationalist distinctions and exclusions are wiped away.
Which is fine if that’s what you’re into, but again, try to explain how those kinds of values justify treating people radically differently based on which geographic jurisdiction entity issues their passports, and on the accident of circumstances birth?
Secondly, the question was not whether such a values-based, national-solidarity scheme is possible, obviously it is, and has a huge space of possibilities, as evidenced by the wide variety of historical examples, whether based on materialistic bonds or metaphysical constructs.
The question was whether – in the contemporary American context – any particular proposal or approach would be widely accepted and adopted as so popular and perceived as so indubitably legitimate that is formed a solid social consensus that was generally uncontroverted in any threatening or disruptive manner.
And the answer is obviously no. All the possibles are currently impossible and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the theoretically ‘best’ dog food in the world if the dogs won’t eat it. Of course, if you’re strong and ruthless enough, you can always make them eat it by shoving it down their throats like force-feeding geese for foie gras.
The question was whether – in the contemporary American context – any particular proposal or approach would be widely accepted and adopted as so popular and perceived as so indubitably legitimate that is formed a solid social consensus that was generally uncontroverted in any threatening or disruptive manner.
Well, actually I do believe that a values based national identity is *already* widely accepted and has been for a long time. It is only the recent election of Trump and the resurgence (from near total marginalization) of white nationalism that there is any threat to the consensus that America is in fact a nation based on values not blood or soil. It hasn’t been socially acceptable to say that America was a white country for close to probably 60 years.
When politics is powerful enough to turn citizens against each other, how could anyone expect anything but animosity? Without a radical devolution of power towards individuals and away from politicians, I think we can only expect more of the same.
This romantic notion of nationalism will not work and will not happen in this continent-wide country of 325 million people.
The worse part of the morning is waking sober. One does ones ablutions, expresses appreciation for the day the gods have given, succumbs to optimism and hope.
Then one reads the papers.
Bill Evers writes in the WSJ of some “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” concocted in the stygian bowels of California bureaucracy.
And comes across Mark Glennon’s Wirepoint article “Viva Maduro! The Chicago Teachers Union’s Solidarity Trip To Venezuela.”
And reads of the crucifix of public pension promises.
And one thinks of Levin.
One wonders whether love of such as these be craven surrender.
And is reminded of Dante’s Semiramis who “gave suck to Ninus” and:
“… empress over lands of many tongues.
To sexual vice so wholly was she given,
that lust she rendered lawful in her laws,
thus to remove the blame she had incurred.”
To set aside the sword of political righteousness with sophistry is to be caught in a dilemna, impotent like poor Othello, discharged and chaste, unwilling to bed Desdemona. Therein madness.
Bed the wench already and let fur fly if it will.
Or, forsaking all metaphor, we may forego impugning those amond us who would simply turn their back on the whole festering festival of theatrics.
We may ask ourselves, might we do well to urn back from politics, and find instead physical salvation in the arms of a warm-blooded woman? There are many forms of exit, and so far as I can tell the most pleasing and honest of all is to be found in the adoration of a good woman. Some may hold out for a Beatrice, but one would do well to not allow such aspirations to thwart one’s fulfillment. Chaucer is right: “And what is better than wisedoom? Womman. And what is bettre than a good womman? Nothyng.” May the gods afford us all such a small place as we may escape the political tides and embrace the simple joys of life itself. And if they do not, may a plane ticket take us to where they will.
Nationalism = Loving your country because you were born in it. Characterized by feelings of superiority over other countries.
Patriotism = loving your country because of its character, values, and your contributions to it. Does not view the world as zero sum, rather patriots seek to shape the country according to ideals.
Nationalism = Loving your country because it’s *your country*, similar to the way you love your family because its yours. You may think your country or family are better than others in some specific way, but “superiority” isn’t the point.
Let’s repurpose the phrases using the family metaphor as you suggest. A family would be said to be patriotic if they were proud of the fact that each child was successful in school, and grew up to have high status jobs. Their feelings of patriotism toward their family stem from the fact that as a family unit, they have been successful due to the decisions and environment of the family. In times of struggle, the patriotic family turns inward, bracing each other for support and maneuvers within the community in a tentative optimism sort of way, focusing on improving their station not at the expense of others.
The nationalist family looks to gain leverage over other families due to a presupposition of superiority, or conversely, that they are destined to be superior if only the other families would get out of the way. Success is a zero sum game, where success in inevitable by virtue of the fact they belong to one family and not another. During times of stress, the nationalist family turns outward to project their grievances on the outside community, lashes out, and eventually turns on itself.
People love their kids whether they get high status jobs or not (or whatever else). They love their kids because they were born into the family, regardless of their character, values, or contributions. We all hope, of course, to raise kids with good character, values, and who can contribute. But whose to say they will. People make mistakes. Sometimes they lose the genetic lottery. Sometimes they are victim of circumstance. We don’t stop loving them, nor turn them in for a better family member.
Family love isn’t contingent. In fact this what makes that kind of love so special.
When Bill Kristol talks about how if current Americans don’t behave how he wants, why not replace them with new Americans, it sounds like someone saying that if you don’t like how your son/daughter turned out just throw them away and get a new one.
That’s basically how I read Bryan Caplan’s talk on wanting to destroy solidarity as well. That all love of another is nakedly contingent and utilitarian.
People sometimes disown family members, but you need a pretty good reason (my friend eventually disowned his father because he was physically abusive). Something like Bill Kristol complaining that people didn’t want to do his landscaping for slave wages is like throwing your kid out on the street because he brought home a B on his report card.
As to zero sum, some things in life are zero sum and we tend to want our kids and not some other persons kids to get them. We agree to some “fair” rules of the game as a pragmatic compromise to protect ourselves by agreeing to protect others.
I view solidarity as adjacent to both nationalism and patriotism. Rather, I think nationalists and patriots exhibit solidarity in different ways which have opposed consequences.
Patriots, in my opinion, exhibit solidarity toward those who share similar national “values” as well as those who disagree but rather act in good faith during the disagreement. Nationalists tend to exhibit solidarity toward their countrymen with less tolerance for internal division. As in, their solidarity exists insofar as countrymen are viewed similarly from outside country’s perspective.
Ultimately I feel some blend of patriotism, and a sort of “unconditional love” nationalism may be healthiest for this country, but I would prefer the nationalism in a smaller dose.
Quite honestly, that sounds like an attempt at redefinition of both terms in an attempt to put a negative/positive spin on them. In the majority of cases, I think we can think of nationalism and patriotism as synonymous.
There are certain edge cases where the differences stand out. The largest edge case, in my opinion, is from the original notion of a “nation” that is independent of the “nation-state” or country. We have Serbian Nationalism, Croatian Nationalism, Kurdish Nationalism, and Quebec Nationalism that fits this edge case definition. I think it is the desire for self-determination that drives this sentiment more than supremacist ideology.
Patriotism can also be synonymous with bravery. I think this sense of duty and service is another edge case that differentiates patriotism from nationalism.
I’m not trying to hide anything behind the terms, I openly admit I think that patriotism is morally superior to nationalism, and moreover I think it’s really important to make a distinction between the two. I may have tried to shoehorn the family metaphor in, but articulating the moral underpinnings to such broad concepts is difficult.
That said, these are my somewhat idiosynchratic definitions probably taken from who knows where, but I generally stand by them.
I never claimed you were trying to hide anything. I don’t think the negative/positive spin is accurate or helpful.
I’d prefer to keep the terms neutral as they were originally rather than advance a derogatory slant. I think we lose something if we can’t use the term nation to describe Kurdish self-determination. It is an important concept.
I disagree; I don’t think there’s really anything moral about either. If you like your country’s character, whatever that means, that’s fine, but that’s not a virtue, nor it’s absence a vice. Just a difference in subjective feelings. Part of the reason I think the family metaphor is dangerous is that there are arguments for familial obligation (particularly parental obligation toward one’s children) that don’t apply to nations. Patriotism is not only not a moral duty, it’s not a virtue either. But then I’m firmly in the Milton Friedman camp that my country and I owe each other nothing.
If taken seriously, such a country would stop to function entirely.
I agree one can find oneself in a situation where allegiance to a country is misguided, and such is my feeling about much of the USA at present. But I don’t think the outcome of such a disposition will be AnCap utopia.
Very curious to know when the golden age of social peace was, in terms of specific years. I suspect that whatever the year is, there was actually *more* social unrest than we have today.
I’m inclined to think that nationalism tends towards authoritarianism for the same reasons as socialism. It’s based upon the idea that people have prior obligations to a larger collective entity, the state or the nation, that not contributing to the goals of that collective entity is in some way lacking in social feeling or fellowship. With nationalism those goals are usually manifested most often in militarism, since winning wars is one of the primary ways a nation shows it’s “greatness”. Consequently, joining the military and supporting the war effort is considered a patriotic duty in nationalistic societies. Criticism of a war is “defeatist” an so on, as we’ve seen in the past.
More recently the right has often criticized leftist suppression of dissent on college campuses as “totalitarian”, but I fail to see how claiming that someone is somehow lacking if sympathy for his fellow countrymen or otherwise deficient in human feeling because he doesn’t support nationalistic goals or fall in line with them is any less so. “Thou shalt purchase goods made in America” is no less onerous a demand than “Thou shalt admit black people to Harvard.”
RobertB,
You should get Yuval’s last book (I’m reading it now) — “The Fractured Republic.” He basically considers the Post WWII era through the 50s as the golden age of social peace.
Handle,
As one of your biggest fans (and someone who respects Yuval a lot) I’d pay to see that debate! I also think Hazel is way too sanguine (perhaps like our host?) that it is easy ” to formulate a concept of American national identity, which is actually conducive to solidarity, etc.” without any consideration of ethnicity. In theory and in practice, I agree with Hazel that it is true that a person from China or Chile or the Congo could immigrate to America and adopt our identity and become a wonderful American citizen. In reality, Pat Buchanan’s famous quote still holds true and there are deep reasons why this is true:
“Let me go back to what George said. Illegal immigration is a problem and ought to be stopped. Now, how about legal immigration, on where folks come from? George, it is a legitimate issue to sit down and debate. I think God made all people good, but if we had to take a million immigrants in, say, Zulus, next year or Englishmen and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia? There is nothing wrong with us sitting down and arguing that issue, that we are a European country…”
I find it ironic that the same Europeans that required the hack known as Westphalian Sovereignty to keep from killing one another are now considered a single harmonious culture in the immigrant dominated anglo colonies.
I think emphasis on being European is wrong; otherwise there’s a point (Is rather a million Japanese or Koreans migrate here than a million Italians or French to be honest; and I think we may even more easily assimilate the former). But I don’t think this is of much practical relevance. Over six generations Zulus assimilate just the same.
To make the point more comprehensible to the more progressive readers: I’d ask what should be done if the country had, in the 1930s, been faced with a massive influx of millions of German Nazis into the US. They could effectively turn whole cities into bastions of Naziism. Would one automatically assume someone who says, ‘maybe we should reconsider the open door’ a bigot indulging anti-German sentiment? Now, certainly some people would (and did) use such fears as cover for anti-German sentiment (more during WW1 though), but one response is not merely a cover for the other.
Today of course I don’t think there’s such an analogous threat of that magnitude. Which is why this strikes me as more of a speculative academic discussion rather than a practical one.
Well, frankly, this is a silly argument, because immigrants do come here, one at a time, individually, not in million-zulu chunks. This is a classic strawman.
The conservative argument is that present levels of immigration are threatening our national identity – levels that amount to 14.4% of the total population (immigrants from all countries cumulative), annually < 1% of the total US population. As much as people would like to frame this as an argument against "open borders", there is really no chance that we're going to have that happen in our lifetime.
I don't think many people would argue that <1% annual immigration by itself threatens national identity. They might argue that cumulative totals of immigrants and their descendents could change the ethnic makeup, but so say that threatens our national identity, requires one to claim that second generation descendents of immigrants, people born in the US, fully US citizens from birth are a threat to the American identity. I.e. that an American born ethnic Chinese person is somehow not really an American. There’s no other way you can get there. 14.4% total foreign born population is not a threat to identity, you don’t get close unless you count non-white American citizens as not-really-Americans.
How would you answer what sort of knowledgeable says above?
“That can be addressed by claiming that there was a clear message to assimilate, but messages to assimilate are now considered discrimination. There were not bilingual English-Polish classes. Government documents like ballets were in English, and not translated by the government into Polish.”
I don’t think there are really any strong signals not to assimilate. Having documents written in Polish doesn’t mean you don’t have to learn English – it’s a legal necessity to have people understand what they are signing. Nevermind matters of efficiency – do you want civil servants to have to personally translate to polish every time they deal with a Polish immigrant?
Also, bilingual classes are needed so that Spanish speaking kids can learn math (for instance) while they are also learning English. Demanding they do math in English when they don’t speak it (yet) is cruel and unfair. You’re setting them up to be behind in math. It’s hard NOT to learn in English in a society that overwhelmingly speaks English. But if there are kids that don’t speak English, don’t ruin their education by forcing them to attend schools where they can’t understand what the teacher is saying!
Hazel, you must not hang with the same sorts of people I do. Among them, the expression “melting pot” is considered offensive. Much of America is not considered worth “assimilating” to and yes, “messages to assimilate are now considered discrimination.”
There really does not seem to be “a clear message to assimilate” today.
More a muffled message.
Hazel wrote in part:
Well, frankly, this is a silly argument, because immigrants do come here, one at a time, individually, not in million-zulu chunks. This is a classic strawman.
Immediately I thought of this:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/calling-it-chain-migration-insults-somalis-who-jetted-to-winnipeg-in-chains/
It’s Steve Sailer, so of course he’s sarcastic and sounds racist even though maybe he’s not, and it’s Unz, so often his commenters have opinions that exceed their knowledge of the topic.
= – = – = – =
Chain migration is nothing new. The East coast of the U.S. had tenements full of Italians from the same village in Southern Italy.
Sometimes there’s a reaction against it. Here’s a West African example. Nigerians and Ghanaians have been moving back and forth between the two countries for trade and business. Often one country has a better economy than the other. Ghana hit bottom during Nigeria’s oil boom, for example. Probably ca. 1980.
In _Strangers and traders_ , by Jeremy Eades, there’s a good treatment of the particular migration stream from Northern Yorubaland (Nigeria) to Northern Ghana around Tamale. At one point Ghana expelled a whole bunch of the immigrants, essentially with two weeks notice. No, it wasn’t fair. My point is that there can be an over-reaction. On the grounds of tit-for-tat, Nigeria later reciprocated some years later. Highly unfair, and perhaps inefficient, too. But such things are in the historical record.
It seems to me that the average tax paying Canadian is justified in asking how current Canadians benefit from chain migration from a place like Somalia. It’s an empirical question.
My guess is that once there are a lot of need-based programs, a lot of things change. The old “sink or swim” economy of the USA 100 years ago placed the burden of migration more on the families themselves and their religious congregations. Some migration streams had large percentages of returnees–to the Balkans, for example.
If Canada faces a net cost, one can also ask why give the benefit to that extended family in particular. If you can calculate a net cost to Canada (if there is one) you can ask “Ok–is that the best way to spend the money to help Somalis in particular? Or did the generosity provide a windfall to one particular extended family?”
Hazel wrote this sentence:
“Well, frankly, this is a silly argument, because immigrants do come here, one at a time, individually, not in million-zulu chunks. This is a classic strawman.”
The rest of that post above was written by me. I forgot to de-italicize. The edit function still is lacking…
Canadians benefit because population growth helps a modern economy with low population density. The question with a war-torn region is the refugee vs. immigrant question. The refugee numbers in Canada have been molded by the number of willing sponsors after the learning experience in the 70’s with Cambodian/Vietnamese boat people.
If you followed up on why these Somali’s chose Winnipeg it was probably because a local Mennonite church sponsored them.
Successful immigration entails community support, often through family members or a diaspora but also through church organizations that have no affiliation with the refugees.
Those are reasonable points and I might agree with you. I think we’re still in the realm of theory, such as “theoretically speaking, this is good for Canada and Winnipeg.” God bless the congregations who do refugee outreach. I hope what they are doing is wise and kind.
There are a lot of comments provoked by this particular day’s initial post. “Dogs bark but the caravan rolls on.”
Thanks for your reply. My overall opinion on some immigration phenomena varies wildly from the day to day. I really do think that we need more hard data. General theoretical claims and sentimentalism are not enough.
Charles, empirical data is great but it is difficult to tease out causative factors in the social sciences. I think we have to let some experiments play out with carefully designed feedback loops and data collection, especially when outcomes have generation granularity time-scales while humanitarian crises happen quickly.
Look at Refugees in Canada statistics. I’m sure these reports are based on data publicly available from Statistics Canada.
These experiments have played out over almost 50 years now. The only theoretical speculation is that “this time is different” based on regional assumptions.
Hazel,
“They might argue that cumulative totals of immigrants and their descendents [sic] could change the ethnic makeup, but so say that threatens our national identity, requires one to claim that second generation descendents [sic] of immigrants, people born in the US, fully US citizens from birth are a threat to the American identity. I.e. that an American born ethnic Chinese person is somehow not really an American.”
Not afraid to bite that bullet — of course this is exactly what this conservative is arguing. Specifically, the current levels of Hispanic immigration PLUS the second (and third!) generations, which are not doing a good job of assimilating (check out unwed birth levels, employment, schooling, etc. compared to white natives.) Asian immigration is a different story — smaller numbers seem to have helped work assimilation magic. I love my Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese neighbors!
What about unwed births makes someone not an American? And why are native whites the only representatives of what “American” means?