A major article by me on "Citizenism"

in the brand new American Conservative of Feb. 13th (subscribe here). In the past, I've defended "citizenism" from the attacks of the white nationalists, but haven't had a chance until now to go on the offensive with it against neoconservative "propositionism" and liberal "anti-discriminationism." Here's an excerpt from this long article:

More than most peoples, Americans are idealists. This is both one of America's glories and curses, because it makes us particularly vulnerable to manipulation by self-interested word-spinners. Nowhere is this more evident than in the immigration debate, where the restrictionists have most of the facts and logic on their side, but the beneficiaries of the current system of malign neglect of the laws have succeeded in blocking reform largely by defining themselves as the holders of the ethical and intellectual high ground.

If you want to win at American politics, you need a moral theory. Fortunately, there is a concept that is both more practical and more attractive to Americans' idealism than either liberal "multiculturalism" or neoconservative "propositionism." I call it "citizenism" because it affirms that true patriots and idealists are willing to make sacrifices for the overall good of their fellow American citizens, rather than for the advantage of either the six billion non-citizens or of the special interests within our country. The notion is sensible, its appeal broad. Yet, it has seldom been explicitly articulated...

How do they keep winning? The articulate and affluent who profit from illegal immigration look down their noses at anyone who wants to reduce it. They don't debate dissenters, they dismiss them. Their most effective ploy has been to insinuate that only shallow people think deeply about immigration. The more profound sort of intellect, the fashionable imply, displays an insouciant heedlessness about the long-term impact of immigration.

Yet, the well-educated and well-to-do aren't expected to subject their own children to the often unpleasant realities of living among the "diverse." They carefully search out homes removed by distance or doormen from concentrations of illegal aliens (although, ideally, not so far that the immigrants can't come and clean their houses tax-free). As our Ascendancy of the Sensitive sees it, that their views are utterly contradicted by how they order their daily lives is proof not of their hypocrisy but of how elevated their thinking is.

This doesn't mean that the white elites view minorities as their equals. Far from it. Instead, they can't conceive of them as competition: Nobody from Chiapas is going to take my job. Status competition in the upper reaches of American life still largely consists of whites trying to claw their way to the top over other whites, who, as examples, make up 99 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs and 94 percent of the Hollywood screenwriters.

That's why the media treats the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar jobs to English-speaking high IQ Indians as a respectable cause for alarm, but not the insourcing of tens of millions of immigrants to perform blue collar and servile jobs.

Of course, our elites aren't against being personally selected themselves for higher status positions. Indeed, they compete fiercely to have their children admitted to the most exclusive schools. In the bestselling novel The Nanny Diaries, the wealthy Manhattan mother hires a developmental consultant to evaluate Nanny's prepping of four-year-old Grayer for the grueling pre-school application process. The expert grills the servant with questions such as: "How many bilingual meals are you serving him a week? ... And you are attending the Guggenheim on what basis?" Shocked to learn that Nanny is letting little Grayer do the kinds of things four-year-olds like to do, the consultant concludes, "I have to question whether you're leveraging your assets to escalate Grayer's performance."

What is left out of the novel might be even funnier: All toddlers aiming for prestigious private nursery schools in New York City must take the 60-75 minute Wechsler IQ test administered by the Educational Records Bureau for $375. Yet, their private obsession with their children's IQ hasn't stopped the Manhattan media mafia, ever since the Bell Curve brouhaha, from publicly denouncing IQ testing as a racist and discredited concept.

The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white folks for two contradictory reasons. First, he constantly proclaims his belief in human equality, but they don't. Second, he has a high IQ, but they don't.

This anti-discrimination ideology doesn't mean liberals refrain from discriminating among people in private, which would be impossible. Instead, it simply implies that to discuss in public how the choices among individuals should be made and what their consequences might be would be in the worst possible taste.

Decisions over what Lenin aptly described as the key questions of "Who? Whom?" continue to be made, of course, but by special interests in private.

To read the rest, get the magazine.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer