Restoring the melting pot

Posted by Steve Edwards on March 09, 2006, 03:09 AM | #

“Millions of foreigners live here today with no expectation of ever becoming citizens.”

But why is it that millions of foreigners aggress against the possessions of Americans? Who allows them to do this? And why do “libertarians” such as John Ray defend this process of untrammelled government-sponsored aggression against private property (called “immigration”)?

Posted by Mark Richardson on March 09, 2006, 05:32 AM | #

Latin will never be a truly dead language, at least not as long as ‘E pluribus unum’ appears on our money.

Not only is Latin a dead language, but gone too are the Romans, their state and their culture. Rome declined after drawing in a multitude of people from around the empire.

What is the Latin for “Out of many, none”?

Posted by Steve Edwards on March 09, 2006, 05:46 AM | #

“Out of many, none”

That is the correct explanation for what’s going on.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 09, 2006, 06:49 AM | #

Ed Feulner is a libertarian of Hayekian persuasion, I believe.  His recommendations are, therefore, founded on the interests of Homo Economicus rather than the somewhat more rounded, not to say genetic, interests of Americans.

He really needs to make the point at the outset, though, that unless government at Federal and state level is willing to apply the law, no management issues such as retina scanning or ID cards will have any meaning.  At present, the craven politicians at both levels perceive their electoral interests to lie with the Hispanic vote.  They won’t do anything that might cede ground in this area to their opponents.  Electoral interest trumps law in America, and white majority interests are wholly forgotten.

Posted by onetwothree on March 09, 2006, 09:01 AM | #

E pluribus unum

Refers to the thirteen states becoming one republic. Was later subverted by Marxists, as everything is eventually.

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 09, 2006, 10:30 AM | #

The whole melting pot thing was a post 1945 Jew media contrivance anyway.  The melting pot “meme” was used to break-up white ethnic neigborhoods in the cities.

Read E. Michael Jones’ “The Slaughter of the Cities”,
http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/SlaughterReviews.html

Besides, I sure as hell don’t want to melt with Mestizo Brown Stubbies or Black Land Sharks, yes Germans and French maybe.

Posted by Steve Edwards on March 09, 2006, 11:15 AM | #

And the “melting pot” became the “salad bowl”. Then we were saddled with the phony “multiculturalism” versus “assimilation” debate. In practice there is not a lick of difference - both controlled “choices” invariably involve tax-theft and aggression against private property, and the politically motivated substitution of one ethny for another.

Posted by Steve Edwards on March 09, 2006, 11:17 AM | #

“E pluribus brazilianum”

LOL!

Posted by Mark Richardson on March 09, 2006, 04:24 PM | #

“E pluribus brazilianum”

Fred, excellent translation!

Posted by John Ray on March 10, 2006, 07:29 AM | #

Like most Australians, I favour controlled immigration and regard the American situation as an absurdity

Posted by Internationalist on March 10, 2006, 11:50 AM | #

Why do people here think nationality = ethnicity (common ancestry and culture)?

There are examples of nations like Britian that are multi-ethnic (Scottish and English). Another example is the USA. Italian-Americans are clearly an ethnicity, but not a nationality. So the USA is not multi-national, but multi-ethnic.

History has proven that multi-ethnic nations promote ethnicities and culture, not degrade them. (Celtic ethnicities throve under English rule, for example.) So why this ethnic nationalism?

Posted by Andrew on March 10, 2006, 06:04 PM | #

A melting pot is a very bad analogy:
A Foundry Furnace about to blow its cap is more of an appropriate Description. That is of course after someone had poured petrol on the coal fire instead of water and now it is out of control.

Posted by Mark Richardson on March 10, 2006, 06:39 PM | #

Internationalist, it’s true that there are multiethnic nations. Iraq is an example. Belgium is another. It’s generally not a happy arrangement, as each ethny will tend to want its own state to represent its own interests.

What is happening in the West today is not the creation of a larger national state out of several ethnies who remain intact within their own homelands.

Instead, it’s the breaking up of such homelands by the immigration of many diverse peoples. The chances of any deeper or stable form of nationhood arising from this situation are very slim.

Posted by Internationalist on March 10, 2006, 09:19 PM | #

It’s generally not a happy arrangement, as each ethny will tend to want its own state to represent its own interests.

You find out what nationality is EMPIRICALLY by observing how actual nations define themselves, and how nations developed. Nationalities developed when one nationality conquers others and subjugates them. So, this ‘ethnic nationalism’ will keep continuing until every ethnic group secedes from the nationality. ‘Re-organizing’ nationalities according to ethnic clusters will destroy them. Contrary to what ethnic nationalist think, ‘mixing’ of ethnics will not bastardize culture. Mixing of nationalities WILL bastardize culture. True art and culture cannot take place outside of national consciousness.

Posted by Mark Richardson on March 10, 2006, 10:29 PM | #

Internationalist, you seem to think that “nationality” exists separately to ethnicity.

But historically it hasn’t. The Japanese have a strong national consciousness because they have a relatively high level of ethnic homogeneity.

The Belgians and Canadians, on the other hand, are struggling to hold together their current national arrangements because they contain different ethnic homelands.

The Americans and Australians have a national consciousness which arose when they were more ethnically homogeneous (particularly Australia). To what extent will this national consciousness survive as the population becomes increasingly ethnically mixed?

Time will tell, but I doubt there will be much that survives.

Some evidence: a Senate committee and the Labor Party are already pushing to cede Australian sovereignty to a Pacific federation. When I have complained about this on various websites the idea of a Pacific federation has been greeted enthusiastically.

Once you accept that nationality is not linked to ethnicity, what is there to limit such radical regroupings of sovereignty and identity? People just argue “there is a policy advantage to this new structure” and this is held to end the matter.

(Note: some ethnicities are closely related and can be more readily assimilated to each other. If a million Anglo New Zealanders were to move to Australia it wouldn’t radically undermine the existing national identity. But this is not what is happening in Western countries: there is a mixing of all ethnicities, whether closely related or far distant.)

Posted by Internationalist on March 11, 2006, 03:16 AM | #

I think ‘national solidarity’ is eroded by globalization and consumer-culture, not really ethnic diversity.

Historically, many nations which were multi-ethnic worked very well. It depends on whether one ethnic is demographically dominant. As long as whites in USA maintain a majority over other ethnics, there need be no ‘ethnic nationalism’.

For example, the Soviet Union is a good example of one ethnic (Russians) dominating over others. There was good sense of comradeship, because socialism provides national solidarity. Another example was Britian, where English dominated over Celts. The scottish produced their best contributions to British culture under control of the English.

Ethnic nations like Germany and Japan had their cultures degraded by American capitalist decadence. Globalization does far more harm to national culture than ethnic plurality.

In contrast, ‘multi-ethnic’ Soviet Union produced some of the greatest art in the 20th century.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 11, 2006, 03:55 AM | #

Internationalist,

The tie of blood to soil must be singular.  Where two distinct peoples feel a historic or cultural tie to the same land - such as Serbs and Albanians who both covet Kosovo - ethnic rivalry, not solidarity - is inevitable.

In Britain, the English and Scots do not covet the same land but, in any case, the genetic differences between lowland Scots and, particularly, northern English are slight.  The distinction is weak enough for a relationship of mutual respect and tolerance to function.  Actually, I think many Scots would confess into their beer that their respect for the English was none too cordial, and they pretty much hated the big, confident, unruffled neighbour to the south.  But there we go.

Read JW Holliday’s superb pieces on the EGI, linked top left on the page.  Consider your own motives in reflecting on these issues.  What is your ethnicity?  Is it mixed?  Are you an anti-capitalist leftist who baulks at the notions of blood and soil?  If so, what do you see as your ultimate value?  How do you square it with you EGI (your genuine ultimate value).

Quickly on art ...  In the Soviet Union socialist realism destroyed the visual arts. In literature there was Solzhenitsyn - but hardly an advertisement for the system.  In music there was Shostakovich and, after 1936, Prokofiev.  An on-line biography of the latter comments as follows on the artistic effects of his return to Russia:-

The change in the process of composing music was stark. In Europe, a composer’s creative vision was tempered only by economic realities. If the public didn’t like your music, theater owners would not pay you to write new music. And unless you were supported by rich benefactors, you didn’t eat. At its worst, it was a competitive arena and a composer had to temper artistic integrity with an occassional dose of popular music. Fortunately, Paris, London, Chicago and the other centers of music in the West were very advanced in their musical tastes compared to the Soviet Union. For this reason, contemporary music generally flourished.

In the Soviet Union, the environment was completely different. From the beginning, the Soviet Union was centrally controlled—by party leaders in Moscow who dictated everything that was to be created, consumed or conceived. Artistic freedom was non-existent. Creativity was stifled by the whims of appointed party bureaucrats who created the official rules. Changes in Soviet leadership since the October Revolution only worsened the situation for artists and writers. In 1932 Stalin introduced his cultural policy of ‘Socialist Realism.’ A year later, the party bureaucrats had distilled this notion into guidelines for composers:-

“The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright and beautiful.This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man and must be embodied in musical images full of beauty and strength. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against folk-negating modernistic directions that are typical of the decay of contemporary bourgeois art, against subservience and servility towards modern burgeois culture.”

In practice, the results were stifling. New compositions out of step with ‘Socialist Realism’ were criticized and their composers publically ridiculed. Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev were to suffer far worse privations for stepping outside the boundaries of officially proscribed doctrine. By comparison, though, composers and musicians under the Soviet yoke fared far better than Soviet writers, artists and architects.

You will hear few complaints here of your condemnations of globalisation and consumer culture.  But they are destructive forces precisely to the cultural distinctiveness which enriches and gives meaning to the life of a people as well as, of course, to people’s lives.

Posted by Internationalist on March 11, 2006, 04:36 AM | #

Are you an anti-capitalist leftist who baulks at the notions of blood and soil?

Historically, the people who “balk at the notions of blood and soil” are laissez-faire ideologues, not ‘leftists’.

If so, what do you see as your ultimate value?  How do you square it with you EGI (your genuine ultimate value).

The operative issue is whether ethnic interests are satisfied in a multi-ethnic state, not whether they exist or not.

Also, there is no such thing as ‘ultimate’ value. Values are psychological and subjective. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important, just that those of us who have X value tend to promote it. I thought we were talking FACTS here, not religion. I stopped arguing about religion a long time ago.

In the Soviet Union socialist realism destroyed the visual arts.

Sure, I’m sure American ‘artists’ like Jackson Pollock were far superior. New polyphonic music occured, to the extent that it did at all, in the Soviet Union.

In any case, it is socially subjective (just like ethics). You generally like the art you grow up with. Those who prefer Soviet music to the western kind have an INTEREST in supporting it.

Cultural distinctiveness can only take place locally, in a national consciousness. Globalization destroys cultures by basdardizing them, destroying all true art (except for inferior forms). It also encourages bourgeois decadent activities e.g. faggotry, which should be punished by hard labor in an ideal world (e.g. the Soviet Union).

Posted by Guessedworker on March 11, 2006, 05:43 AM | #

Internationalist,

Read the articles I suggested, then you will understand better - otherwise you will be critiquing from a simple position of bias.

That said, certainly you are free to deny your evolved nature (at a cost), and insomuch as that is true your EGI can be taken as a choice.  But ... you are not “free” (because as a human being you are not able) to banish EGI from your psyche.  Furthermore, if you are, say, English (like me) I have an interest in your observing it, too.  It is a collective interest which precedes subjective values.

Salter is important.  Don’t slip into using dismissive terminology like “religion” before you have grasped the issue.

On art, I will happily dispute with you the worth of the avant garde and of modernity in general.  But how do you rank the artistic value so a profitable discussion can take place?  On the basis of public joy?  Aesthetic sublimity?  Intellectual chic?  Political fashion?  Some “ultimate value” has to be shared, no?  Or we will simply talk past eachother.

Posted by Internationalist on March 11, 2006, 09:00 AM | #

A side note:

OK, after reading some of the articles under ‘EGI’, I concede that ethnic endogamy maximizes genetic interests and is adaptive. Please correct me if I misread the intended thesis.

I think that there is no ‘objective standard’ for art. If you listen to a piece of music and like it, you are merely expressing your EMOTIONAL REACTION to the music, not a factual belief about the music itself. Beauty is in the faculty of the perceiver. I find laughable the quasi-religious notion of a ‘quality’ of beauty that is present in the object itself.

And by the way, I am not English or mix-ethnicity, so you can cede your suspicions.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 11, 2006, 09:38 AM | #

Internationalist,

Yes, that’s the thesis.

Of course there is nothing objective about art ordinarily, though some ancient sacred art may approach objectivity if the viewer approaches it with emptyness.  But you began with art in the USSR, where no such sublimities apply.  But from this review of Eisenstein’s masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin, one reads:-

Battleship Potemkin overcomes its ideological constraints and uses its abstract form to produce at least one scene of unquestionable power. Sergei Eisenstein’s own comparison of his style to a “kino-fist” is an apt one; the film assaults the viewer’s sensibilities with forceful melodrama and rhythmic editing. Many scenes are calculated to elicit specific responses and, in fact, succeed, but this creates a certain feeling of manipulation because of the film’s overt polemic.

Objectivity, though impossible, is the preoccupation of those who employ art.  This applies everywhere to art patrons, and most certainly to the wealthy rulers, churchmen and merchants of our High Art past.  Whether Western art slipped into its current self-indulgent and obsessive pursuit of obfuscation because it was cut adrift from these controls, thence to be funded and encouraged along the way by the liberal state, is a nice question.  How did David metamorphise in to Gilbert & George?