My new column in Taki's is a rather ambitious attempt to pull together a number of themes raised over the last week.
Additional topics brought to bear on this thesis include Macaulay, Tolstoy, Oblivion, and Untouchables. Read the whole thing there.
Over the last few days, as I watched both the homicidal antics of the Boston Bomb Brothers and the characteristically competent Tom Cruise science-fiction movie Oblivion, I was reminded that one of the least expected developments of my lifetime has been how the vast majority of the world’s population is no longer expected or even encouraged to be liberal. At least they are not asked to be “liberal” in the mid-1960s Star Trek sense, meaning obeying a universalist ethic that values all individuals equally.
Instead, the world’s six billion or so nonwhites are now told to be as conservative as possible. I’m using “conservative” in the sense of being naturally ethnocentric, of having loyalties emanating in a concentric pattern, radiating outward from self and nuclear family to extended family, clan, tribe, nation, religion, or race.
... Consider the immense marketing campaign for amnesty that was proceeding so smoothly until those Chechen immigrants started acting so Checheny. Almost the entire Establishment has been inciting racialism among Mexican-American voters. The press has been demanding that Mexicans get angry if any American dares stand up for laws against illegal immigration. Why? Because keeping Mexican nationals out of America is an insult to their race.
The notion that a Republican politician could stand up and ask Mexican-American voters to demonstrate their loyalty to America by voting against illegal immigration because it is, on the whole, bad for their fellow American citizens is simply unthinkable today. Asking Mexicans to think in sophisticated legal terms such as “citizen” instead of crude biological terms such as “race” has become too advanced for today’s advanced thinkers.
The Tsarnaev Brothers lived in the absolute heart of liberal intellectual America—in Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than two miles from both Harvard and MIT. Therefore, you can be confident that they were never instructed that they owe anything to the country that let them in.
Additional topics brought to bear on this thesis include Macaulay, Tolstoy, Oblivion, and Untouchables. Read the whole thing there.
Posts
29 comments:
Why write about Tolstoy's The Cossacks, which is about, well, Cossacks, when he actually wrote a novel about Chechens, Hadji Murad?
Because Tolstoy put a long passage in The Cossacks of ethnographic description of traits the Cossacks picked up from the Chechens that is quite close to Macaulay's description from 8 years earlier of his Scottish Highlander ancestors.
I didn't see similar scene-setting in Tolstoy's Hadji Murat, where he goes right into the action.
I like how you worked the Mexicans into it. Good job.
Wow. You discuss almost every ethnic group on Earth. Except the one that dictates the media narrative.
Great Cossack movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1rEh0b7zLY
Newer version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFOQy2hztWI
Thus, in the 21st century, practically nobody thinks that there is anything wrong with blacks voting almost universally for Barack Obama because he’s black.
I don't think anyone in the US media in the 1960s thought that it was wrong for blacks to only want to vote for blacks. Blacks in northern cities sent black representatives to Congress. What Steve probably really means is that in his 1960s childhood HE believed that universalism was meant for everyone, but that as an adult he learned that this wasn't true. I suspect that in the 1960s perceptive adults would have already known that it wasn't true.
"Over time, however, the essence of modern liberalism has decayed from universalism and fair play to priding oneself on one’s “leapfrogging loyalties”
Leapfrogging has been going on for a long time. Abolitionists leapfrogged. At least for some the Civil War WAS about slavery, and they were willing to kill fellow whites over it. Earlier examples could probably be dug up.
The notion that a Republican politician could stand up and ask Mexican-American voters to demonstrate their loyalty to America by voting against illegal immigration...
And how exactly would they vote against illegal immigration? Voting Republican? N-word puh-leeeez.
You are making the same error that Robert Frank makes in “What’s the matter with Kansas”. He makes the crazy statement that working class whites are voting against their economic interests by voting Republican. This is implies that there is a vote in the two party system that is in their economic interests. That is ridiculous of course; the Democrats support the exact same neo-Liberal Globalization policies that the Republicans push so hard.
And so it is with immigration, as you well know. Sure there may be an individual or two in the Republican Party that is allowed to voice anti-immigration rhetoric; just as a Democrat or two are allowed to rail against NAFTA and outsourcing. This is just enough to keep hope alive among the brain dead partisans and to keep them on the two-party reservation. But rest assured, there is no vote possible within the two party system against immigration or for working class economic interests – which are kind of the same thing, actually.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=187245274759008&set=a.110795509070652.20220.110788909071312&type=1&theater
Rotfl
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/french-gay-marriage-water-cannon-police-legions
Sick West.
The French Way. More Muslim immigrants and 'gay marriage'.
Something has to give.
When the West has rotted to this extent, I prefer Muslims.
The French Way. More Muslim immigrants and 'gay marriage'.
there is huge resistance to gay marriage in france- which is being ignored (no suprise) by MSM
Steve, you're on fire. (In the good way, not in the "ANC necklace party" way.)
The Tolstoy quote on the Cossacks intermingling with the Chechens is wonderful. (I haven't read Hadji Murad, YET.) At the risk of belaboring the obvious, though, this wasn't the first time the Cossacks intermingled with crazy Muslim hillbillies.
The very word Cossack is derived from the Turkic (not Turkish but Turkic) word "kazak" for, depending on your mood and inclination, free man, wayfarer, bandit, robber. (Categories tend to blur together sometimes.)
The original "Cossacks" were runaway serfs, noblemen in a pinch, or anyone else who had reason to move to less civilized, less legally rigorous climes, and they were heavily influenced by the remnants of the Golden Horde in the form of the Crimean Khanate.
If you look at Repin's Cossacks (Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire) you'll see a lot of that influence: the svitzas (sheepskin coats), the sabers, the forelock tuft (a very "Central Asian pastoral nomad" thing).
Repin's Cossacks
The Cossacks were, of course, incorporated into the state apparatus later on, and used as an instrument of state policy to help pacify/subdue/conquer the Caucasus. That's about the time when you start to see Cossacks rocking the long full beard.
Just like the Chechens.
Check out this recent video. The Cossack shashka is a lineal descendant of the Adzhik long knife used to prune grape vines. Shamil Basayev himself couldn't impugn that beard. The robe/gown thing? (I'd just call it a khalat and am never sure how best to translate it into Gringo.) Straight outta the Caucasus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSXEicQCS5U&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Am I the only one who thinks the comment threads at Taki's sound jejune and uneducated compared to most of those here?
That someone is still writing about Liltle "7 Failing Grades In 3 Semesters at a Tier 57 School" Brother as a "star student" shows a basic lack of attention.
Steve, Macauley’s Highlanders are more renowned because he put them to pen, but clan violence was more or less a Scottish thing. For example, the Armstrongs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Armstrong), a lowland/border clan (and rather prominent name in my direct lineage), were born of rather noble origins, but quickly descended to being cross-border (with England) cattle rustlers, thieves and general ne’er-do-wells. They became rather well-known for their lawlessness and mercenary attitude (sometimes hiring themselves out to English lords against Scottish lords and vice versa). They became so thorny and unmanageable that King James V deliberately set a trap for the reigning head clan leader in 1530, tricking him and 50 of his kin/followers into a meeting where they were seized and hanged. After that, a general diaspora began with many Armstrongs migrating to Northern Ireland and some on to America. Ironically, it was an Armstrong who achieved the ultimate success in technological civilization in 1969 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11). From outlaws to Astronauts in 400 years; I guess that’s not TOO bad…
Captain Tripps
"When the West has rotted to this extent, I prefer Muslims."
Endless divide and rule. You just can't stop yourselves.
What the West needs is a revival of an adaptive form of Christianity that is secular/genetic in foundation (if not on the surface) and which can protect against memetic poisoning (like Islam does) while still allowing adaptation to a changed environment (which Islam doesn't).
"The young Winston Churchill’s only success at Harrow was winning a prize for memorizing 1,200 of Macaulay’s lines."
He also won the Public Schools Fencing Championship.
"The Adjutant had been shot. Four of his soldiers were carrying him. He was a heavy man, and they all clutched at him. Out from the edge of the houses rushed half a dozen Pathan swordsman. The bearers of the poor Adjutant let him fall and fled at their approach. The leading tribesman rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed it three or four times with his sword.
I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well sharpened. After all, I had won the Public Schools fencing medal. I resolved on personal combat a l'arme blanche. The savage saw me coming. I was not more than twenty yards away. He picked up a big stone and hurled it at me with his left hand, and then awaited me, brandishing his sword. There were others waiting not far behind him. I changed my mind about the cold steel."
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2004/12/churchill-on-frontier-mamund-valley-ii.html
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2004/12/churchill-on-frontier-mamund-valley.html
"Am I the only one who thinks the comment threads at Taki's sound jejune and uneducated compared to most of those here?"
I's been banned from commenting there and at at right, and I cant be the only one.
Good article, but you should have mentioned that apparently Tamerlan lazed about while his wife worked lengthy shifts to support him. How did he get an American girl to do that?
Anglo-American culture:
Conscience turned into cancer.
Result. Rise of the explosive 'ethnics'.
Anonymous:"Leapfrogging has been going on for a long time. Abolitionists leapfrogged. At least for some the Civil War WAS about slavery,"
The Civil War was about slavery for everybody; the South only started using obfuscating rhetoric after the war was lost and they needed some kind of cover. Before that, they were much more up-front (cf Confederate VP Alexander H. Stephens speeches).
Anonymous:"and they were willing to kill fellow whites over it."
The Southern slave owners were also quite willing to kill over it...
The real issue isn't universalism vs 'conservatism' but mono-universalism vs multi-universalism.
Universalism in human affairs, as we know, is impossible in its pure form. In science, the law of gravity applies to every corner of the earth, so we can speak of universal truths in science and math. But all peoples are part of a culture and history, so real universality of values and identity is impossible. Christianity is a universal religion, but it grew out of Jewish roots and has its unique traditions and history. Buddhism is universal, but it grew out of Hinduism.
Greek philosophy have universal value, but they were written in Greek, and its full nuances only come across in the original language. Islam is a universalist, but it has to be read in Arabic to convey the real flavor.
The Declaration of Independence is universalist in many ways, but it was written in English(not in Esperanto, which had yet to be invented and is still rejected) by Anglo-Americans. And American history, even as its deeds and achievements had universalist import, told a unique story of a bunch of people mostly of Northern European descent in its foundational and formative stages.
Also, Anglo-Americans imposed their vision of universality on other groups: Irish, American Indians, Germans, French-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and etc. Thus, it wasn't pure universalism but a kind of mono-universalism, or universalism as developed and shaped by the Anglo-American perspective, direction, values, outlooks, biases, and etc.
And up to the 1960s, one can say this kind of 'mono-universal' Americanism was imposed on all groups and accepted by most groups, even Negroes. Cassius Clay was proud to represent America in Rome despite the problems of segregation in America. And American Indian kids used to cheer for the cowboys in Westerns though pale face was killing the red face. And even though US sent Japanese-Amers into camps and bombed the hell out of Japan, most J-Amers felt a need to prove their solidarity with America. Perhaps, this wasn't always fair--and I myself find Indians rooting for pale face rather uncle tom-ish and pathetic--, but the positive outcome was a united sense of Americanism.
But Anglo-American mono-universalism has gone away. America is no longer seen as primarily an Anglo-American creation. Indeed, most of what Anglo-Americans did in the past is now seen as 'racist', 'sexist', and evil and blah blah. Every group, even newcomers, are encouraged to bitterly complain about discrimination against their ancestors. So, even recent Chinese immigrants who reaped so much benefits from coming to America bitch and whine about what happened to Chinese in the 19th century. Even new African immigrants bitch about slavery. Take Obama. He has no American black blood in his veins but only African blood(from his pa), but he talks like his ancestors were American slaves or at Selma.
But then, Anglo-Americans once played the same game. Though Anglo-Americanism was open to all in the development of a new American identity for diverse groups, Anglo-Americans were always 'more equal than others' in the past: certainly more than blacks, Indians, yellows, and etc.
Even so, there's no doubt that Anglo-Americanism is the crucial link among all Americans for even much of Afro-mono-universalism took its values from Anglo-Americanism. After all, blacks learned that slavery is wrong from Anglos. If blacks in America had maintained Afro-centrism, they never would have thought slavery was wrong as Africa practiced slavery since the dawn of time and was forced to end it only by white imperialists. Also, democratic values that negroes struggled for came from the Anglo-American experience of political development. And even Latin America eventually came to adopting, more or less, the Anglo-American democratic model.
It's tricky with Jews. If Jews were huge in number, perhaps they might have tried to replace Anglo-American mono-universalism with Jewish mono-universalism, i.e. make us identify with Jewish history, values, and etc. as the essence of America, and there is some of that in American culture as so many of us have been influenced/affected by people like woody Allen, Seinfeld, Spielberg, Norman Mailer, Pauline Kael, Saul Bellow, Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Stanley Kubrick, and etc. But as Jews are only 2% of the American population, it would be presumptuous for Jews to say Jewish version of mono-universalism is the right one for all of us--as Anglo-Americans had once said of their kind in the past. Anglo-Americans had the numbers as well the power to make that claim. Jews have the power but not the numbers. And Jews don't want too much attention paid to Jewish power as it might lead to criticism and resentment of Jewish power.
If a certain kind of Jewish mono-universalism exists in America, it is in the shift from Americanism as victorology to Americanism as victimology. Until the 1960s, the main thrust of Americanism was 'we great Americans won and deserve to win'. Since then, it's been 'we white folks won by oppressing other races'. So, the new pride comes not from victory but from victim-hood. Thus, the new universalism requires whites to feel guilty as victors and non-whites to feel pride as victims. If this had been done with some moderation, it would have been okay: whites fessing for past abuses and non-whites accepting apology and letting bygones be bygones, and etc. But things got radicalized because a lot of Jews are radical by nature.
Also, if the new universalism is based on victimology, Jews need some oppressive group to attack, denounce, and vilify. If Jews want all Americans to see them as the ideal mavericks and rebels against the oppressive order, Jews need something to rebel against. When Wasps had the power, Jews could play 'pin the tail on the honkey'. But with wasp power gone away and with Jewish power having taken over the nation, Jews have a tougher time propping up their own brand of victimological universalism. So, they fan the flames of KKK-sightings and making/funding stuff like MADMEN, LINCOLN, DJANGO, and etc that conveys the cultural image of 'evil racist privileged white folks'. Rick Sanchez can't say there are lots of Jews in the media today, but Jews make stuff like MADMEN to show how nasty and privileged whites were in the past, but since the show is popular today, many people thinks things are still like that--or things are so much better today because the evil white males of the past finally got their comeuppance. And there's that movie HEP.
Anglo-Americanism was problematic. In one way, it was the perfect Americanism. Since Anglos tended to be rather dry and bland, the foundation of Americanism wasn't odorific. Some cultures are very peculiar and strong--even repulsive--in their habits, foods, dress, rituals, manners, attitudes, language. If Chinese had founded America first, it would have been more difficult for new arrivals to adapt to Chineseness. If America had been founded by Chechens, the founding fathers would have been throat-slitting goat herders kidnapping one another's wives and daughters. If America had been founded by some Nigerian tribe, the founders would have been shaking their butts and beating on bongo drums and acting crazy.
French were universalists too but less successful than Anglos cuz French culture is not bland. It's very saucy and spicy, very stylish. You must become a Frenchman not only in values but manners and eat snails and stinky cheese. This is why French immigrants assimilate more to American pop culture than to French national culture. They do learn French but to sing American pop music.
Anglo-Britain was harder to assimilate into than Anglo-America cuz of its strict manners and class systems and hoity toity stuff that took some effort to master. But Anglo-Americanism was more easygoing. Even Al Pacino easily became an Anglo-American in REVOLUTION.
But the downside of Anglo-Americanism is that nature abhors a vacuum. The blandness of Anglo-Americanism was bound to make all sorts of diverse Americans seek stronger, spicier, and saucier stuff. So, ethnic Americans, especially Italians stuck to their Italianness. It was just more fun and colorful to be a guinea than fully become Anglo-American like the the Singleman family in THE GRADUATE.
The Singleman family at 2:08 in this clip:
http://youtu.be/rQK_ggxbO44?t=2m8s
Jews felt the same way. Jewish girls wanted to be Jewishy than boringly waspy. And even waspy girls got into act. They didn't wanna seem bland, so they took to shaking their butts to negro music, eating raw fish, ordering Pizza, and celebrating 'diversity',and talking like Jewish girls.
To be sure, there used to be some strong stuff in Anglo-Americanism: the inspirational stories of colorful characters such as Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickock, General Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and etc. And the stories of tough pioneering men and women. But all that stuff got tagged with 'imperialism', 'genocide', and 'white privilege'. So, Anglo-Americanism had to drop everything that gave it flavor and salt. It had to be blanded out to make it safe. But once it's been blanded out, no one wanted to be a part of it since it was so 'boring'.
So, maybe it's time for white Americans to Chechenize themselves or something. I'm for the new mono-universalism of Americhecheism.
I wonder if you're assuming too much to just automatically think that all teachers in Cambridge are illiberal multi-culturalists through-and-through, although that might largely be the case. It's quite possible that, especially in high school, one or both of the brothers had a genuine liberal as a civics teacher who taught not only rights but duties, not only ethnic attatchment but also American patriotism, and so on. But then, perhaps even if one or both of them had such a teacher, that might not have been enough to overcome their Chechnyist attitudes.
"Over time, however, the essence of modern liberalism has decayed from universalism and fair play to priding oneself on one’s “leapfrogging loyalties” in siding with The Other rather than those annoying fellow citizens to whom you feel morally superior. Cinematic examples include the Marine who joins the noble blue space Indians in Avatar and the Boer bureaucrat who helps the feckless flying saucer refugees in District 9."
In the case of those two movies, it is leap-frogging in order to be fair. After all, the Navis and space saucer folks are oppressed or being eradicated.
Playing fair isn't about 'my side, right or wrong.'
So, when your side is wrong, 'leapfrogging' isn't a bad thing.
Japanese who denounced Japan's invasion of China were making good sense.
And Buchanan defended the Muslim world from US globalist-Zionist designs because he felt crazy US policy was not only bad for America but causing undue harm over there.
The problem of leapfrogging comes into play when it turns into 'the other side, right or wrong', which is dumber than 'my side, right or wrong', which is at least for one's own survival.
And there is this madness among white libs and even white cons(esp in relation to Zionists) when it comes to Jews, blacks, and gays.
Whites side with them EVEN WHEN they're wrong.
I haven't seen DISTRICT 9, but shouldn't space aliens represent whites since they are the outside arrivals who came to Africa from another world?
Story of imperialism has been foreigners arriving to gain control over natives in places like India and Africa, but the aliens are the victims in D9? Hmm.
Sounds like a confused movie. I wonder if it was intentional, as if to slyly suggest that Boers are now like the marginalized space aliens.
Post a Comment