The Swiss popular vote to end its half-decade experiment with allowing unlimited immigration from European Union countries (of which Switzerland is not a member) had multiple causes. One is that the EU has kept expanding eastward into low wage countries. On January 1, residents of Romania and Bulgaria became eligible to move to any EU country (and therefore Switzerland, too).
Romania and Bulgaria are home to a lot of poor people, most of them not particularly troublesome except from the usual impact of driving down wages and raising housing costs.
But some -- the Roma -- are unwelcome anywhere they go. If you were a Romanian official, wouldn't you want to put on a slideshow for your Gypsy residents (whose neighborhoods resemble Borat's hometown -- it was filmed in a Romanian Gypsy village) about the glories of life in gleaming Switzerland?
And now the E.U. is, under pressure from the U.S., gesturing toward letting in 45 million very low wage Ukrainians. The E.U. doesn't really want to do that, but Davos Man is angry and emotional right now, and is looking to pick a fight with Russia over Ukraine, so Washington and NATO might pressure the E.U. into doing something very stupid.
More generally, Switzerland is probably the most famously beautiful country in the world, so its residents aren't happy with the steadily rising population. Of course, in America, we know that Switzerland would look much better if it were transformed into the set from "Her" or "Elysium." If you don’t believe me, just ask Matthew Yglesias or Ed Glaeser. Admit it: unless you grew up in barn, all those cows are just creepy. And those peasants with pitchforks …
Many in America can't understand why the Swiss aren't as enthusiastic about importing their co-ethnics to better battle for ethnic domination within Switzerland as American minorities are said to be. For example, the largest number of non-Swiss in Switzerland are Italians, but the Italian-speaking canton voted strongly to crack down on immigration from Italy.
Here in the U.S., Marco Rubio and Luis Gutierrez are celebrated in the media for agitating for more Hispanic immigration. In 21st Century America, race/ethnic loyalty is held to trump ties of citizenship (unless the race is white and the ethnicity is pre-Ellis Island, in which case race/ethnic loyalty is unspeakable).
The Swiss, in contrast, put much value on what I call Citizenism. A Swiss Italian is expected to value the welfare of his fellow Swiss citizens more highly than his fellow Italian co-ethnics. And they do. In contrast to the U.S. where the federal government constantly absorbs powers allotted under the Constitution to the states, the Swiss keep much of government power at the level of the cantons, which are mostly monolingual.
This lowers the urge to wage Elect a New People campaigns. If Italian citizens pour into Italian-speaking Ticino the way Mexicans pour into California, it doesn't give Italian ethnic Swiss all that much more power nationally the way it it perceived as giving Hispanic ethnic (although non-Mexican) politicians such as Rubio more power.
But Swiss voters are highly nationalistic about a few important policies.
Moreover, Swiss voters understand the law of supply and demand well. More immigration from Italy into Italian-speaking Ticino drives down wages for Italian speakers and drives up land prices. Why is that good Swiss Italian citizens and their children?
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66 comments:
and more importantly the swiss governmental structure allows them to vote on national policies.
if americans had the same right to vote on immigration policies, we would probably have the same result.
Why not focus on why they have that right and we do not?
A Swiss Italian is expected to value the welfare of his fellow Swiss citizens more highly than his fellow Italian co-ethnics.
Actually the Swiss Italians are descended from the Lombards, so it's not really the case that they're more related to all Italians than they are to other Swiss.
Here in the U.S., Marco Rubio and Luis Gutierrez are celebrated in the media for agitating for more Hispanic immigration. In 21st Century America, race/ethnic loyalty is held to trump ties of citizenship (unless the race is white and the ethnicity is pre-Ellis Island, in which case race/ethnic loyalty is unspeakable).
Your obtuse Rube Goldberg-ish attempts to explain away things like this are getting ever more tedious.
The Swiss aren't generally any smarter about race, nation, or citizenship than any other European people. They have a local elite which doesn't have as much power over or hostility toward their indigenous people. Yet.
That whole Italians in Switzerland not wanting more Italians is interesting. It has always puzzled me that more immigrant don't think like this, when leave a sh!t hole like Haiti or Nigeria to a place like Sweden or Switzerland, does it never occur to the people leaving those countries that wanting more of their own countrymen to join them risks turning their new country into their original country ?
I am guessing some will say this is about low IQ, but I don't think it is this, because unless one has mental retardation IQ levels, this thought should be something that every adult can come up with.
I don't know anything about Switzerland, but I would guess that those in Ticino who voted to curb immigration did it because they wanted to stem the tide of Somalis, Afghans and Gypsies, not of Italians. Italians haven't been emigrating much for a while.
>more importantly the swiss governmental structure allows them to vote on national policies.if americans had the same right to vote on immigration policies, we would probably have the same result.<
No, our Supreme Court would overturn any vote that seems to conflict with corporate power. Under our system corporations not only are "persons" but also have more rights, privileges, and immunities than actual persons do.
In addition, it was ruled here that money (of any provenance, and however acquired) is speech, so naturally it's money that does the talking here, not the citizens. If you object to that, you are called - what else? - antidemocratic.
If all that's true then how did Switzerland get to be 27% immigrant in the first place (much higher than the US)?
If Western civilization survives the ongoing war against it then I think a lot of countries will be looking at adopting the Swiss system.
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"They have a local elite which doesn't have as much power over or hostility toward their indigenous people."
Their political system must have helped with that.
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."
Switzerland got to be 27% immigrant because most of the immigrants are educated (or educable) white Europeans.
It's interesting, though, how much they're being bashed for their xenophobia. If 27% is too low for the Swiss to complain about excessive immigration, when will it be OK? Will the press still be calling Swiss xenophobic when they complain that 60% are immigrants?
27% is frightfully high. If that's not too many immigrants, then there is no point at which we're allowed to complain. Wolfgang Schauble and other pro-EU politicians have taken to threatening the Swiss with economic catastrophe as a result of this vote. My guess is that such statements will come back to haunt them when the next elections come 'round. Europeans are growing increasingly tired of being told they have no right to secure their borders, and that they will be punished if they do.
Moreover, there is strength in numbers. The EU cannot afford to kick out every country that decides it wants to control it's borders - UK, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Hungary, etc.
If all that's true then how did Switzerland get to be 27% immigrant in the first place (much higher than the US)?
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They were lied to by the elite, as as we were in 1965. They were told that no more than 10K woudl come annually if the joined the EU "free movement" zone. Instead, it has been running at 80K annually.
"If all that's true then how did Switzerland get to be 27% immigrant in the first place (much higher than the US)?"
By not allowing immigrants to become citizens. In the US, many folks are immigrants for only a few short years before becoming citizens. Saudi Arabia also has many immigrants because they and their children never become citizens.
Even the Italians want to get away from the Italians - the Northern League wants federated regions, and has even advocated Northern independence. They would identify more with the Swiss than with Neapolitans or Sicilians. As for the indigenous Swiss, they're a pretty homogenous lot, no matter what language they speak.
The idea that Hispanics here will not profit from further Hispanic immigration is questionable, at best.
First, the Criollo elite (e.g. Rubio, Carlos Gutierrez, Tom Perez, Xochitl (isn't a white guy naming his daughter with an Aztec name cultural imperialism?) the DoJ Warrior Princess) will self-evidently profit from this.
But further, even though Hispanic citizens will lose jobs and wages in the short term, the permanent Democrat majority that would result from 30 million new third world immigrants would be able to just redistribute the money to themselves anyway.
...until it runs out, but hey, in the long term, we're all dead, amiright?
David quoted me and said...
>more importantly the swiss governmental structure allows them to vote on national policies.if americans had the same right to vote on immigration policies, we would probably have the same result.<
No, our Supreme Court would overturn any vote that seems to conflict with corporate power. Under our system corporations not only are "persons" but also have more rights, privileges, and immunities than actual persons do.
In addition, it was ruled here that money (of any provenance, and however acquired) is speech, so naturally it's money that does the talking here, not the citizens. If you object to that, you are called - what else? - antidemocratic.
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fine, but you would think that with all the thousands and thousands and millions of words being written about this swiss referendum that somewhere some american would write something like this: "Why don't we have something like that?". Or "I sure wish we americans could vote on immigration levels."
But no. Nowhere to be found. Except for little me. I will say something: I think congress should pass a law delegating the authority to control immigration to each individual state.
See how easy that was?
But no one else but me will say that.
What a statistical anomaly!
Tells you something about the nature of homo sapiens and how our thoughts are guided by the mainstream talking points.
Anon. wrote at 4:43 PM 2/10/2014 that "Actually the Swiss Italians are descended from the Lombards, so it's not really the case that they're more related to all Italians than they are to other Swiss."
Not only that - in Italy the people of the northern part of the country resent the immigrants from the impoverished Mezzogiorno, giving rise to regional political consciousness as manifested by the Lega Nord.
Much of northern Italy, outside of the historic Savoy domains, used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; the middle of the "boot" comprised the Papal states, and the south was the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that Garibaldi and Cavour united them under the rule of the house of Savoy. Sentiment in northern Italy is that poverty, corruption, and organized crime are the products of Naples and points south, and the northerners now wonder if the Risorgimento was entirely a good idea. Undoubtedly the Italian-speaking Swiss have an even stronger antipathy to the influx of Neapolitans, Calabrians and Sicilians.
On the other hand, Scottish nationalists propose increasing immigration after they receive independence.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444422/Prepare-the-border-posts-fears-over-SNP-immigration-policy
This should be fun.
I think there may be some confusion between immigrants and foreigners working in Switzerland. The below interactive map only shows "Ausländer". So, the banking centers have very high percentages and I know that a lot of this is reversible, professional and a lot is flag of convenience for rich people.
The interactive map shows almost 39.7% foreigners in Geneva, but its only a few miles on three sides to France. People actually do their grocery shopping in France because it is cheaper. There are 463,000 inhabitants of the Geneva canton, but there is the UN and Red Cross there, too. There are some sketchy Middle Eastern immigrant types there, but I was in Lucerne a couple of years ago and I could not believe the hundreds of unlocked bicycles parked outside the train station. It was unbelievable. You do not see that in the Romandie (French part). The French part has always been resistant to Swiss exceptionalism, and sometimes call the German-speaking part "Switzerland".
So, the French-speakers are tied in to France in a way that the German-speakers are not tied into Germany. The German-speakers want to distinguish themselves from Germans, for the obvious historical reasons. There has been some immigration from Germany lately, and I don't think the Swiss like it. Furthermore, the disputes over the banking sector is a big dispute with Germany because the prosecutors there bribe bank employees for lists of German citizens with accounts. Switzerland has taken to indicting the German tax collectors. With the banks, you have UBS & Credit Suisse who want to cave in to the US & EU on banking secrecy and the traditionalists who want to keep the old Swiss style.
So, I would not underestimate the impact of tensions with Germany/US/EU as part of the motivation for this.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/karte-zur-schweizer-volksinitiative-gegen-masseneinwanderung-a-952570.html
Actually the Swiss Italians are descended from the Lombards, so it's not really the case that they're more related to all Italians than they are to other Swiss.
Sounds unlikely - you have a source? As I recall, the various barbarian tribes that invaded Italy during the Dark Ages either (1) looted and left (Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns) or (2) stayed and lorded it over the native Italians (Ostrogoths and Lombards). I don't remember any ethnic cleansing and settlement, such as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes may have done.
Crawfurdmuir @ 18:12, good comment. There's something spiritually akin to the Mason-Dixon line in Italy, although I'd put its latitude at Rome rather than Naples.
My friend left a job in Ireland to work in (Geneva)Switzerland because she was young and wanted to see the world. She didn't like it one bit. The city was boring, the locals even more so("they didn't know how to get pissed") and they had lots of silly rules like no running the washing-machine after 11pm. She's back in Ireland now working part time behind a bar. She says life's too short to be bored.
She said the locals (french speakers I presume) had terrible things to say about the French.
I visited Vaud (the French-speaking Protestant canton that includes essentially the whole north shore of Lake Geneva) last summer for the first time in almost 20 years. It still feels demonstrably Swiss - the construction workers seemed mostly Swiss, for example. There were a lot of disreputable-looking black men hanging around all the larger urban centres, however. Hats off to the Swiss if they can figure out how to navigate the current political dispensation without transforming themselves into a sort of Brazil or America.
On the Lombards: I've read that the average Germanic tribe at the time of the Volkerwandurung was about 100k strong. As per McEvedy and Jones, Italy had 3.5 million people at the bottom of the Dark Ages, down from 7 million during the Roman peak. This implies that the impact of the invasions wasn't strong.
I know that Petrarch and Dante took it for granted that they and everyone around them were descended from ancient Romans. Before the spread of PC the English always claimed to primarily descend from Anglo-Saxon conquerors, not Celts. The technology to check these claims already exists. It would be fun to know.
The disturbing aspect of it is that migration there is largely white.
The Swiss who voted to reduce migration might plausibly repeat Farage's UKIP asshattery by moaning about Poles while embracing Blacks and Browns. The Swiss moan about French, Brits, Germans and Italians. So it's a degree worse than you might at first suspect. The Swiss ain't kicking out Kwame Mugabele and his stolen billions any time soon.
The Swiss military plays a huge role in maintaining national identity. Swiss men are drafted and have to do a stint in the military as a form of national service. After that, they have to participate in the US equivalent of the National Guard for the next 20 or so years. The cohesive force of extended military service does a great deal to bridge cultural and linguistic differences.
It is hard to believe, but the Swiss only enacted female sufferage in the late 60's/early 70's. They pretty much have been operating with a Starship Troopers approach to democracy for much of the 20th century.
Some Neocons in the US seem to have figured this out, and are pushing mandatory national service in the US. They may not be wrong. If we could have a Swiss-style referendum based veto of the laws enacted by USGOV, the plans of the politicians could be more effectively checked by populist and nationalist sentiment.
"She said the locals (french speakers I presume) had terrible things to say about the French."
I'm reading Rousseau's Confessions right now. He refers to "the French" as a foreign people throughout the book.
In the chapters set in Turin and Venice he calls the locals Italians, even though they were actually denizens of the Kingdom of Savoy and of the Republic of Venice respectively. But as a native of the French-speaking Genevan Republic, he never calls himself French. He says stuff like "the French are really good at making you feel" this or that, and it's clear that he's not talking about himself. "The French" were "they", not "us" to him.
A) Until they realize it cuts into their own welfare checks.
B) Until they have to pay for big government on their own, much like a recent college graduate learns about the world when daddy's not footing the bill.
Scotland won't vote for independence. All the polls show it losing by about 3-2. I wish they would. It would help them grow up fast, and it'd take a lot of Labour MPs out of Parliament.
"There's something spiritually akin to the Mason-Dixon line in Italy, although I'd put its latitude at Rome rather than Naples. "
The French equivalent is the line between Saint Melo, on the northwest coast of Brittany, and Geneva. It's been talked about since at least the 19th century. There is a map in Murray's Human Accomplishment that supports it. There were many more significant figures northeast of that line than southwest of it.
Did Rousseau identify as Swiss or Genevan or both?
Steve, he always called himself Genevan in his autobiography. Never Swiss or French.
OK, sorry, it's Saint-Malo, not Saint Melo.
Geneva was an independent city state until 1815, when it became part of Switzerland.
"might plausibly repeat Farage's UKIP asshattery by moaning about Poles while embracing Blacks and Browns."
Complaining about non-white immigration has effectively been fully criminalized - partly for real but largely through media imposed crimethink.
White immigration from the EU has allowed people to slip under the psychological gulag fence - so ty Poles.
"Scotland won't vote for independence. All the polls show it losing by about 3-2. I wish they would. It would help them grow up fast, and it'd take a lot of Labour MPs out of Parliament."
Yes, given that it is losing by an enormous margin and given that Quebec's independence referendums show that SWPL national movements tend to want all the privileges of self-government with none of the responsibilities, why are people taking this seriously?
But yes, separation (at least for a time) would probably be the best course for both nations. Unless, of course, they manage to screw things up enough to create Pakistan-on-the-Tweed before they wise up.
On the other hand, the Catalan independence referendum is on pace to pass by a massive margin. What happens when it does and Spain doesn't go along?
Whenever the Genevans got sick of Calvin he would become that Frenchman Calvin. Several centuries later Rush Limbaugh would mine that tactic with great effectiveness against the French looking john Kerry.
" Before the spread of PC the English always claimed to primarily descend from Anglo-Saxon conquerors, not Celts. The technology to check these claims already exists. It would be fun to know."
Ask and ye shall receive:
"[A] survey of British Y chromosomes shows that the Y chromosomes characteristic of Celtic speakers, far from having disappeared, are carried by a large portion of the male population of Britain. Nowhere does the indigenous population seem to have been wiped out, either by the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from Denmark and Northern Germany in the sixth and seventh centuries AD, or by the Danish and Norwegian Vikings who arrived in the ninth and tenth centuries."
Wade, Nicholas, "Before the Dawn", Penguin, 2006, p. 240
"On the Lombards: I've read that the average Germanic tribe at the time of the Volkerwandurung was about 100k strong. As per McEvedy and Jones, Italy had 3.5 million people at the bottom of the Dark Ages, down from 7 million during the Roman peak. This implies that the impact of the invasions wasn't strong."
One of the depressing things about the fall of Rome is that, basically, the Romans just rolled over. Per Strayer, Gaiseric ordered a census of his Vandals around 428 before crossing over the straights into North Africa. The final tally came to 80 thousand males, including old men and children. Moreover, the number *may* have also included woman as well. Bottom line, if the Romans could have been bothered to utilize and deploy their manpower against the Germans it would have been, in the immortal words of Cpl. Dwayne Hicks, "Game over, Man."
By the way, there are more Catholics than Protestants in Geneva these days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva
"substantial immigration from France and other predominantly Roman Catholic countries over the past century has changed Geneva's religious demography considerably, and twice as many Roman Catholics as Protestants lived in the city in 2000. The 2000 census documents that 66,491 or 37.4% were Roman Catholic, while 24,105 or 13.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church, and 8,698 (or about 4.89% of the population) were Muslim."
But, as I have heard there, the entire multi-culti apparatus of the city is a sham. If your family was not in Geneva before Louis XIV withdrew the Edict of Nantes in 1685, you're a nobody.
In the Canton of Vaud, home of Lausanne and the International Olympic Committee, the proportions are about even:
RĂ©partition en %
Eglise catholique romaine 31,1
Eglise évangéliste réformée
28,9
Autres communautés chrétiennes
5,6
Communauté juive
0,3
Communauté musulmane
4,3
Autre appartenance religieuse
1,0
Sans appartenance religieuse
25,7
Appartenance religieuse inconnue
3,0
http://www.scris.vd.ch/Default.aspx?DomId=138
Romania and Bulgaria are home to a lot of poor people, most of them not particularly troublesome except from the usual impact of driving down wages and raising housing costs.
On average, I would compare them to Turks, after you subtract the Roma, who are far worse. Not bad people, sure, and I've met quite a few brilliant Romanians, Bulgarians and Turks, but a huge influx is not going to improve Switzerland any more than a huge influx of Mexicans is going to improve the US.
A Swiss Italian is expected to value the welfare of his fellow Swiss citizens more highly than his fellow Italian co-ethnics.
A Swiss Italian does not consider a Sicilian or Pugliese to be a "co-ethnic", any more than a Pole thinks of a Russian as a "co-ethnic". For that matter, a Milanese or a Venetian does not consider a Sicilian or Pugliese to be their "co-ethnic". Part of Italy's disfunction is that it is deeply divided along ethnic lines.
Scotland will vote independence to keep that North Sea oil money and kick out the Pakistanis and Africans. Immigration rhetoric is about as believable as read my lips.
OT:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2014/the_liberal_failure_on_race/affirmative_action_it_s_time_for_liberals_to_admit_it_isn_t_working.html
The UK and France will become majority non-white nations by around year 2040 - no further in the future than the Iranian revolution was in the past.
Does Switzerland really want the entire population of the UK and France to be able to 'just walk in wen they feel like it'?
Every Swiss should spend 6 months living in Brixton or Hackney for educational purposes.
Also consider the way Sweden grants citizenship to the third world like confetti.
"OT:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2014/the_liberal_failure_on_race/affirmative_action_it_s_time_for_liberals_to_admit_it_isn_t_working.html"
Steve's take on that article would be interesting.
His argument against AA is wrong, but since it ties Nixon, the drug war, black incarceration and AA into one neat racist package, it seems like an idea that might shit policy.
Irishman wrote:
She said the locals (french speakers I presume) had terrible things to say about the French.
Sure. I’ve been several times to Geneva, and I interacted professionally and personally with local French-speaking Swiss people (I’m French).
To put it bluntly, the average French-speaking Swiss considers the French as losers. Of course, they’ll say this to you only if they think they can trust you. This is not only a remainder from the time, after WWII, when the Swiss were several times richer than the French, but also a consequence of the disorderly nature of contemporary French society, with its unruly Third World enclaves around every major city, which is unappealing to the Swiss.
In Geneva, you can’t see a single street sign in German, although Switzerland is 75% German-speaking. But clinging to the French language doesn’t mean feeling French, no more than clinging to the English language means feeling British if you’re American. Recently, the Swiss had military / police maneuvers about their worst nightmare: an invasion by "diverse" people coming from France following a collapse of French society.
If you look at Norway or Denmark's Y DNA you will see what looks like French, Irish and British colonization. 1/3 of the DNA looks like it is from western Europe. Either this was always a present factor or the Danes enslaved a huge number or there was a massive process of movement by Brits and French to Denmark and Norway.
" Whiskey said...
Scotland will vote independence to keep that North Sea oil money and kick out the Pakistanis and Africans. Immigration rhetoric is about as believable as read my lips.
2/10/14, 10:51 PM "
I hope, but our ruling elite in Edinburgh have their own Marxist agenda.
The question whether Italians are a single ethnicity, or multiple ones, is an unsolved one here in Italy. Different Italians feel differently. The feelings of national oneness are mostly due to government propaganda over the last one and half century, although they do draw on previously existing feelings of unity among the *intellectuals* of the Renaissance era, who already back then used a single language.
If you ask me, no, Italians aren't a single ethnicity but multiple ones; here is an illustration of the various pre-unification languages:
http://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy
Keep in mind that Italian population is concentrated at the "top" of it. So there's lots and lots of talk about the "South" of Italy, but the South has only 14 million people out of 60. Most Italians aren't southerners.
There are not one but 3 different mason-dixon lines. The first one is the Po river. The second one is the arm of Apennines that cuts northern Italy diagonally. The third one is the former northern border of the Kingdom of Naples.
Thus mainland Italy is divided in 4 ethnic and cultural regions, the first and most densely populated is the Celtic and Venetic right-wing homeland of the Northern League north of the Po, the second is the much more Romanized and immensely more statist and totalitarian-leaning (once Fascist now Communist) and culturally macho southern part of the Po valley; the third is the Etrurian and Latin Central Italy which goes from Florence to Rome and is the home of the Renaissance and the standard "Italian" language and culture; the fourth is the socially and economically more backward, clannish, Mafia-ridden Southern Italy including Naples and Sicily which is where all the Italian-Americans are from.
Within these regions there are further cultural subregions, such as the division between Tuscany and Lazio. Throughout the millennia people largely stayed in their place (no wanderlust) so people in a province descend largely from the people who lived in the same province millennia ago.
The influence of Germanic immigrants is very small. There's a problem with the ambiguity of the word "Lombard". Historically it referred to a Germanic tribe. However, the area they ruled took the name of "Lombardy" from them, and afterwards the locals became known as "Lombards". However, these "Lombards" are largely of Italo-Celtic ancestry, not Germanic. Because of the ambiguity of the word, the influence of Germanic tribes (themselves not necessarily what we'd call "German" today by the way) is sometimes exaggerated. There were never many of them and in fact they didn't leave much of a mark on the language of Lombardy, which is a Romance with Celtic elements rather than Germanic.
As for Dante and others, of course they weren't of Germanic blood, since they were Central Italians and not northern Italians and Germanic tribes didn't really get past the Po river. Like I said above there are multiple layers to Italy.
As for the Italian Swiss, they are "Lombards" in the second sense, that is, Latinized Celts who always lived in Italy (and geographically speaking still do) and were annexed by the Swiss, and they are about the same people as the ones who live in the region around Milan. However, they consider themselves fully Swiss in the citizenship sense.
On the other hand, Scottish nationalists propose increasing immigration after they receive independence
Pretend nationalists.
Most of these extra immigrants would end up crossing the border and going to England anyway.
>In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.<
And for years after making that little speech Welles had to suffer Swiss people informing him that cuckcoo clocks did not come from Switzerland but from the Black Forest area of Germany.
Did Caplan just admit a the basic premise to all this?
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/the_futility_of.html
My impression is that the desire to exclude a torrent of Muslims was the deciding factor in the vote (the anti side featured ads warning od a deluge of 1 million Muslims without the immigration ban).
Tribal vs civil behavior.
Tribal-my tribe> my race >my nation> my continent.
Civil-my lord >my nation > my compatriots > my race > my tribe.
Are you surprised tribal behavior mostly associated with underclass?
If you travel to Europe a lot, you will notice that Europeans are very nationalistic with strong contempt to their immediate national neighbors. The contempt and hatred are not less than racists in USA.
Odd enough, non-whites can be treated even better in France than Germans due French comtempt toward German.
"My impression is that the desire to exclude a torrent of Muslims was the deciding factor in the vote (the anti side featured ads warning od a deluge of 1 million Muslims without the immigration ban)."
When the margin of victory was less than 0.7%, *every* factor was the deciding one.
Open borders extremism is the equivalent of telling a bunch of people who inherited mansions that they have to share that mansion with everyone who wants to come live there, and in exchange, you have the right to go live in any one of their fine shacks or trailers. Why invest in maintaining and improving the mansion when you are now told it doesn't belong to you? And why do people who object so vociferously to taxing the value of their actual inherited mansions insist on taking away Westerners' figurative ones?
Scotland's Marxist, SNP ruling elite will stay in office for about 10 years - long enough to get Scotland into a massive debt crisis. Then they will have to either dismantle the welfare state or go running back into the arms of England - just as a debt crisis precipitated the union in 1707.
If Scotland exists the UK it will have to learn to sink or swim. Absent Scotland's 59 MPs, there would be 591 seats in commons, with 303 held by Conservatives. Two good reasons why it should go (and I say that as someone who is proudly part Scot (with the English part of me resenting what their leftism is inflicting on both countries)).
Tribal vs civil behavior.
Tribal-my tribe> my race >my nation> my continent.
Civil-my lord >my nation > my compatriots > my race > my tribe.
No, that's incorrect.
For "tribal" it's: tribe>nation>race
For "civil" it would simply be subordination to the dominant civil authority. And "civil" relations and civil authorities themselves tend to correspond to the tribal schema.
New Zealand has citizen initiated referenda, but the results are not binding. The government usually ignores them and now former PM Geoffrey Palmer is calling for them to be abolished as undemocratic. He's probably afraid NZ might end up as a failed state like Switzerland.
"the fourth is the socially and economically more backward, clannish, Mafia-ridden Southern Italy including Naples and Sicily which is where all the Italian-Americans are from."
Minor correction: More like 80% - 90% of them. In the U.S, northern and southern Italians often lived apart.
Even if they shared a neighborhood, it was segregated into northern and southern Italian sections. Italian Harlem was like this for many years.
They rarely intermarried, but when they did, it was often scandalous.
The Swiss (whether they are German, Italian or French) know they have a very good thing going for themselves. They want to keep it that way.
Why screw up a good thing with immigration? It ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!
">In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.<"
How many countries have produced the equivalent, in terms of changing the world for the better, of what was produced by this one Swiss guy?
"Leonhard Euler... pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy.
Euler is considered to be the pre-eminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest mathematicians to have ever lived."
Einstein was a naturalized Swiss citizen, having studied and worked there during his most groundbreaking years.
"New Zealand has citizen initiated referenda, but the results are not binding. The government usually ignores them and now former PM Geoffrey Palmer is calling for them to be abolished as undemocratic. He's probably afraid NZ might end up as a failed state like Switzerland."
There is a proposal in New Zealand to ditch the current flag, which bears the flag of Britain, the Union Jack, in the corner, and replace it with a black flag with a silver fern. The change has been endorsed by the prime minister.
Talk about a great way to try to banish from your people the memory that they are an offshoot of Britain. It would be horrible if people were to remember such a fact.
Yeah, but the Swiss also decide everything by referenda.
Unlike the U.S. Switzerland really is a democratic republic. So-called "representative democracy" is used sparingly.
Do you really think the U.S. would be inundated with Latin Americans and other Third Worlders if the American people actually voted on it?
Just Another Guy: "if the Romans could have been bothered to utilize and deploy their manpower against the Germans"
What are you talking about? The Germans were not (for the most part) invading, they were being *invited* in by the Romans, and largely *were* the Roman army by the 400s. Alaric was a Roman general!
Ihe Italian-speaking pop. of Switzerland is 4%. I do realize that Sailer -- the most clearly monolingual blogger to be found anywhere -- loves to shoot off his mouth on Switzerland and various other subjects where he possesses no expertise but an occasional small dose of facts or just data existing outside his own head wouldn't be a bad change around here.
Anonymous said...
"Ihe Italian-speaking pop. of Switzerland is 4%. I do realize that Sailer -- the most clearly monolingual blogger to be found anywhere -- loves to shoot off his mouth on Switzerland and various other subjects where he possesses no expertise but an occasional small dose of facts or just data existing outside his own head wouldn't be a bad change around here."
Your 4% number is wrong by any standard. But, hey - you're the expert.
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