Fareed Zakaria, the Indian princeling (his father was the deputy leader of the ruling Congress Party in India), has enjoyed a glittering career in America. He reviews the diaries of American diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005), author of the "containment" strategy of the Cold War that successfully threaded the needle between WW3 and Soviet domination of Western Europe. He reviews in the NYT Kennan's newly published diaries.
As I've mentioned before from reading Kennan's late-in-life book Around the Cragged Hill (1994), Kennan was a Gloomy Gus, but exactly the kind of depressive realist an optimistic country like America needs to pay attention to.
Daniel Engerman wrote:
My one conversation with Kennan, who once was ambassador to Moscow, began with Russia and quickly turned to the depth of his conservatism. Asked what shaped his ideas about Russia, he recalled his professors at the University of Berlin in 1927. They had taught him about Realien, the givens of geography, climate and race that shaped nations and international relations. (The English "realities" doesn't suggest the word's resonance in 18th Century German philosophy.) Realien outlasted ephemera like ideology and even political systems--and should, he believed, be the basis of any foreign policy.
(By the way, Henry Kissinger is another follower of this German mindset. I'm rereading his memoirs and he makes relentlessly clear that he viewed each foreign statesman he dealt with as just a variation on the permanent themes of that country's national character. As illustration, here's Kissinger's foray into sportswriting previewing how national soccer teams would play in the 1986 World Cup based on their deep national traits: the Italians play like miserly Mediterranean peasants, the Germans play like the General Staff fought the Great War with lighting counterstrikes when the opponent overreaches -- such as when the Italians' eleventh uphill offensive against the Austro-Hungarians left them exhausted, German reinforcements in October 1917 suddenly swept down into the Italian plains in the attack described by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, etc.)
Kennan's views on immigration were hardly a secret in the past. I quoted his 1994 passage in VDARE in 2005:
"However one cuts it, the question is not whether there are limits to this country's ability to absorb immigration; the question is only where those limits lie, and how they should be determined and enforced—whether by rational decision at this end or by the ultimate achievement of some sort of a balance of misery between this country and the vast pools of poverty elsewhere that now confront it. The inability of any society to resist immigration … is a serious weakness, and possibly even a fatal one, in any national society." (p. 19) ...
But, you could actually say stuff like that in the past, before immigration ascended to an unquestionable sacred civil right that the rest of the world's population holds over the citizens of the United States (an ideological development of roughly the period when Carlos Slim bailed out the New York Times -- purely coincidental, I'm sure).
As a former student of Samuel Huntington, Zakaria likes Kennan's foreign policy but is shocked, shocked by Kennan's "racism" and proprietary British-American view of his country.
Writing on a flight to Los Angeles in 1978, Kennan thinks about how few white faces he will see when he lands and laments the decline of people “of British origin, from whose forefathers the constitutional structure and political ideals of the early America once emerged.” Instead, he predicts, Americans are destined to “melt into a vast polyglot mass, . . . one huge pool of indistinguishable mediocrity and drabness.”
The residents of the Los Angeles of 2014 take deep offense at Kennan's 1978 prediction, or at least they would if Kim Kardashian ever brings it to their attention via TMZ.
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He was so old school that even the halcyon days of the 1950s were dystopic:
"Seventeen years later, he surveyed his country — the booming, urbanizing America of the 1950s — with disgust: “I could leave it without a pang: the endless streams of cars, the bored, set faces behind the windshield, the chrome, the asphalt, the advertising, the television sets, the filling stations, the hot-dog stands, the barren business centers, the suburban brick boxes, the country clubs, the bars and grills, the empty activity.”"
First comment anonymous:
Kennan was writing with disgust about American culture way back in 1937 when he was only 33 years old. My kind of guy.
Sean S
'and laments the decline of people of British origin...'
Wikipedia says 'Keenan' is Irish, and BTW Keenan himself grew up in Milwaukee so I doubt he ever had experience living in an America where people of British origin were a majority even of Whites.
He reminds me of Gore Vidal, the fake olde Yankee aristocrat who also bemoaned the passing of an elite he pretended to belong to.
" Instead, he predicts, Americans are destined to “melt into a vast polyglot mass, . . . one huge pool of indistinguishable mediocrity and drabness.”
Wow, he even used the word drabness in this context. And correctly! If the Soviet Union ended up dominating Western Europe, there would be no third-world drabness now in Paris, Berlin, Rome, etc.
To the dear boy guy who's sure to show up: I swear that this is my first ever mention of the "dear boy" thing. You probably imagine that people are making fun of it because they disagree with you on things. Not true. They're doing it because it's funny. And not in the way you mean it.
George Kennan was a true genius, and lived to be 101 years old. What a life.
What I remember about his books is not just how spot-on accurate he is about nearly everything, but also his masterful prose style. It was like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald except about foreign policy.
He went to an Episcopalian military boarding school that still operates in a Wisconsin town about 20 minutes where I grew up. No surprise he was an old-fashioned WASPy snob who revered intelligence, sophistication, class, (probably fit right in at Princeton) but also had a sort of Midwestern prudence and forbearance.
If he was a "Gloomy Gus" then one can excuse him for it.
I don't remember who wrote it, but I once read someone who claimed that the big issue of world politics was not the cold war but the global south vs. the global north, and that was written when the cold war was still occurring. Kennan was clearly a cold war warrior, but his mentioning of the coming changes to America makes think that he was probably aware of this other issue as well. But since it was probably easier to talk about the dire threat of the USSR, as opposed to the un PC global south threat (I am assuming that even in the 1950's this was a risque subject matter), this is what Kennan had to focus on.
Everyone knows who won the cold war, but how many have wondered who is winning (or has already won) the global north vs. south conflict ? Many will dismiss Africa, Latin America, India etc. as basket cases and pose no real threat to Europe or America. But think about it, who is celebrated more today as a hero Churchill or Mandela ? Who is the current president of America, and would have more influence on him, Kennan or Zakaria ? Finally what does the future of Europe hold, one of ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism or one different ethnic factions vying for power ?
I used to like George Kennan. Then I read his diaries
I used to like George Kennan. Then I read his diaries
What I find intriguing about this Ukrainian fiasco is Germany. A couple journalists earlier today wondered why we haven't heard anything from Merkel. Then a few moments ago word got out that Merkel spoke to Putin and has agreed on a fact finding mission. Is it really that simple?
Does Germany have any obvious interest in slyly supporting Russia's aims in the Ukraine?
Though Zaki calls it 'racist', he didn't use nasty adjectives to demean Kennan--as a Jewish book reviewer might have done(and did with Gore Vidal).
Zak's reaction wasn't shock. In a way, I sense a reluctant respect for the last white man, a man with the courage and conviction to go against the grain.
Personally, Kennan's view of life is too reactionary for me. Without movies and such technology, would we have Twilight?
The last line about drabness can be seen in any office parking lot. For all of the chatter from the over-class about diversity, they unrelentingly drain the color out of everything. The result is a gray, formless nullity. In 1960 the office parking lot was full of crazy colors and shapes. Today it looks like something the East Germans dreamed up.
Kennen's views on the Homosexuality:
“pathological preoccupation with sex and violence, the weird efforts to claim for homosexuality the status of a proud, noble and promising way of life”
Seems that Kennen was no friend to the likes of Andrew Sullivan.
"I would expect to see ... desperate attempts at emigration [from South Africa] on the parts of whites."
uhh...
Kennan was a serial philanderer
What I find intriguing about this Ukrainian fiasco is Germany.
Indeed. German FM indirectly mocked Kerry for suggesting that Russia needs to be excluded from G8. A very telling development. It's almost like Germans remember something about Sudetland.
In 1960 the office parking lot was full of crazy colors and shapes.
Psychedelic gas-guzzling muscle cars expressing individuality of mono-ethnic white people all dressing the same.
Today it looks like something the East Germans dreamed up.
Drab colorless econo-boxes of diverse "vibrant" ethnoids all dressing the same....
"Kennen's views on the Homosexuality"
You shouldn't be held responsible for things you say after 90.
To be fair to Zak, Kennan's view would be denounced as 'racist' by even 90% of conservatives.
So, Zak was just using current standards of discourse. But instead of passing harsh judgment on Kennan, he quotes him a lot and allows Kennan to speak for himself. Though Zak may disagree with Kennan's view of America, I think he is somewhat empathetic to Kennan's true conservatism that longs for order, community, stability, organicism, continuity, and etc. (Surely he knows the mess India is from lack of such conservatism. Indian conservatism is messy to begin with, unlike Anglo conservatism.)
Zak likes a growing and changing America but finds a degree of integrity in Kennan who, whatever his faults, was a true conservative.
It's like Kael said she doesn't agree with the politics of THE LEOPARD but couldn't help but respect the last true aristocrat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90IxpYZjCOE
So I respect Zak's attempt to at least try to understand where Kennan was coming from and why he felt as he did. He wasn't just shouting racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, and using words like 'odious' and 'noxious' at every turn.
I think he was more respectful than the white protege(I forget his name)who turned on VS Naipaul.
Interesting to note the differences between Zakaria's review and the one in the SPECTATOR. E.g., note how the SPECTATOR review homes in on the familiar Leftist trope of eugenics:
"Though the word ‘eugenics’ does not appear once in John Lewis Gaddis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning authorised biography, this morbid interest in the ethics of reproduction seems to have been with Kennan for most of his life."
So, an interest in the health and fitness of future generations is "morbid." Of course, many of our most-esteemed opinion-makers seem to have no interest in the actual production of future generations. That seems to be another kind of labor that Americans will simply not do.
damn this guy is hardcore. it's 1978 and he's saying everything sucks and it's getting worse every year.
then again it's 2014 and i'm saying pretty much the same thing to myself. only tech is reliably getting better, everything else sucks and is getting worse every year. there are exceptions in a few fields but that is the general trend.
wonder if one day i will wake up and it's 2054 and i'm the lone old racist codger who doesn't agree that being a homosexual mexican muslim isn't just normal and the way things have always been. of course 50% tax rates and a police camera in your house are normal, they will tell me.
"Kennen's views on the Homosexuality"
sounds pretty accurate.
Wikipedia says 'Keenan' is Irish, and BTW Keenan himself grew up in Milwaukee so I doubt he ever had experience living in an America where people of British origin were a majority even of Whites.
His name was "Kennan", not "Keenan".
He reminds me of Gore Vidal, the fake olde Yankee aristocrat who also bemoaned the passing of an elite he pretended to belong to.
"Elite" has nothing to do with it. Most WASPs were middle class.
"They're doing it because it's funny. And not in the way you mean it."
Don't forget how he always goes MMMMMM in all caps.
Kissinger's foray into sportswriting previewing how national soccer teams would play in the 1986 World Cup based on their deep national traits: the Italians play like miserly Mediterranean peasants, the Germans play like the General Staff fought the Great War with lighting counterstrikes when the opponent overreaches -- such as when the Italians' eleventh uphill offensive against the Austro-Hungarians left them exhausted, German reinforcements in October 1917 suddenly swept down into the Italian plains in the attack described by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, etc.)
Confirmation bias leads you to say things which are twee.
meanwhile, as the vibrant slowly take over the US, the first generation of europeans who will grow up as outnumbered minorities in america are devolving into this culture:
selfie!
an utterly vapid chattering class incessantly staring at glowing rectangles in their palms. social scientists call them millenials but perhaps 'the kardashian generation' would be a more appropriate description.
i think the effect of these mobile devices is pretty profound. this is NOT just the usual "Oh, old people always say the younger generation is so much worse." face to face social interaction is being slowly phased out, useless attention whoring is being phased in. the need for a girlfriend is being phased out, porn is being phased in.
no, i think it's pretty reasonable to predict the latest generation will turn out to be worse than the previous generations. they will earn less money, they will have less children, they will own less property, they will waste most of their time playing with their phones, texting, checking their social media status, button mashing their way through video games, and watching porn.
i already see it with kids as young as 12. they sit down to eat and all pull out their phones. no talking, the entire meal proceeds in silence.
in 10 years, i wonder if a guy will even be able to call a woman and ask her out. or will that act of bravery, which all men can relate to, have been relegated long ago to some kind of social media interface. or eliminated all together. no dating please, i have porn and video games. i don't need a girlfriend, or children. certainly this is the way they do it in japan.
Kennan, in spite of the gifts God gave him, was vigorously and selfishly pro-abortion. Hence his views on demographic change are considered, by those more conservative than Kennan, to be buffoonishly inconsequential.
Kennan was a consummate wannabe elitist, with a strong emphasis on wannabe. His discussions of electoral politics drip with the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder, why-don't-they-recognize-my-genius condescension and feigned aristocratic detachment, which he clearly acquired AFTER Princeton (where he was reputedly ill at ease with the true elites of this country, as he had a modest origin). He thought that he was far better than his fellow Americans, elites or commoners.
Later in life, he also became a fellow traveler of the "anti-nuclear" movement (which was heavily penetrated by the Soviets) and quite the Luddite.
I took an entire course devoted to Kennan at an Ivy League university during my youth and read just about everything he ever wrote or uttered in public. Kennan was the kind of a man who was intellectually attractive with a superficial acquaintance, but the more one read of him, the attraction quickly turned to frustration and then eventually to deep dislike.
He is, of course, now the model of the stereotypical pretend-elite, pseudo-intellectual, "I am more European than American" type of posturing one sees among foreign service officers of a certain persuasion.
"It is quite realisitic to view Europe as composed of four distinct polities: Francia, Hispania, Russia, and Graecia/Romania."
Culturally I would distinguish Germanic, Latin, Slavic and Balkan Europes. The insular Celtic fringe deserves its own category on the grounds of its distinctiveness, but not on the grounds of its size. The former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria are linguistically Slavic, but civilizationally and to a large extent genetically Balkan. Of course Romania is Balkan in spite of being linguistically Latin. I'm tempted to put Hungary, Finland and Estonia in the Germanic camp. Languages are neither irrelevant nor decisive. Latvians and Lithuanians are culturally, though not linguistically, in Slavic Europe. Emotionally the French are a link between (or a hybrid of) the Latin and Germanic parts. The Czechs are a hybrid of the Germanic and Slavic parts.
One way to think of European complexity is to identify the ingredients of which everything on the continent is a mixture. Each ingredient reaches a peak somewhere. The Germanic ingredient peaks in Sweden and Norway. The Mediterranean one must be close to its peak in Sicily. Poland and the Ukraine are the most Slavic genetically, but the macho, open, impulsive element peaks in Russia and gradually fades towards the west, with impulsiveness reaching zero in Germany. There's definitely a commonality to Balkan countries, but I don't know the Balkans well enough to say where it peaks.
jody said...
damn this guy is hardcore. it's 1978 and he's saying everything sucks and it's getting worse every year.
The belief that everything is going to ratshit is IMO one of the temptations of conservatism, but sometimes it's true. The late 1970s really did suck. The economy was stagflating, tech/consumer goods were not getting better, Jimmy Carter and his malaise were depressing, and culture did not seem scintillating at the time (although a lot of it looks better in retrospect).
JWS said...
No surprise he was an old-fashioned WASPy snob who revered intelligence, sophistication, class, (probably fit right in at Princeton) but also had a sort of Midwestern prudence and forbearance. Kennan did not fit in at all at Princeton. He wasn't a part of the WASP elite and supposedly felt uncomfortable there.
In today's terms, he was one of these middle class standouts who deem themselves superior to the upper class folks because they are "more real" and grittier than the latter while simultaneously despising the lower class for its crudeness and stupidity.
It strikes me as so much status anxiety and insecurity than anything else.
From 49:30 Calomiris and Haber lay out the role of CRA in housing crisis.
http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2014/CalomirisHaberfragile.mp3http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2014/CalomirisHaberfragile.mp3
Steve, by the mid 1980's, any suggestion that the US could and should impose limits on immigration was called "racism" by the LAT. Surely you remember the paroxysm of vituperation that the LAT leveled against the GOP and George Deukmajian for backing Proposition 187 in the early 1990's?
As for real politik, of course that is the only practical solution for any nation. And I'd say further that while Switzerland can afford George Washington's dictum, with a fairly un-Washington emphasis on a strong national army; nations with extensive rivers and/or coastlines need massive navies and real politik alliances to fend off enemies who would use the sea or rivers as highways to their nations. And while you can be too weak (which always invites aggression) you can never be too strong.
Anonymous:"Wow, he even used the word drabness in this context. And correctly! If the Soviet Union ended up dominating Western Europe, there would be no third-world drabness now in Paris, Berlin, Rome, etc."
The Asiatic drabness that the Russians carry with them is scarcely preferable, dear boy. Especially when it comes with a thick coat of Stalinism.
Anonymous:"To the dear boy guy who's sure to show up: I swear that this is my first ever mention of the "dear boy" thing. You probably imagine that people are making fun of it because they disagree with you on things. Not true. They're doing it because it's funny. And not in the way you mean it."
You mean people are not laughing at me for my pansy-Tory, Oscar Wilde meets Wellington pose? Well, that's what I get for being overly subtle, I suppose.
McKrainians.
anony-mouse:"Wikipedia says 'Keenan' is Irish, and BTW Keenan himself grew up in Milwaukee so I doubt he ever had experience living in an America where people of British origin were a majority even of Whites."
Well, his name was "Kennen", not "Keenan," dear boy. Secondly, one must bear in mind that the Anglo-Protestant percentage was vastly higher then than it was in later, more benighted, times. Thirdly, one must also recall that that pre-60s America was still one that responded to the elite Anglo ethos.
Anonymous:"To be fair to Zak, Kennan's view would be denounced as 'racist' by even 90% of conservatives. "
Which merely goes to show what a wretched thing conservatism is nowadays.
You can take the Anglo out of his cottage but you cannot take the cottage out of the Anglo.
Despite all the great conquests and stuff, Anglos and Anglo-Americans still dream of returning home to that old cottage.
Jews don't have this cottage complex.
Bert:"Don't forget how he always goes MMMMMM in all caps."
Dear boy,if the size is too...intimidating, I could switch to lower case.Don't be afraid to speak up.
Anonymous:"You can take the Anglo out of his cottage but you cannot take the cottage out of the Anglo.
Despite all the great conquests and stuff, Anglos and Anglo-Americans still dream of returning home to that old cottage.
Jews don't have this cottage complex. "
Clever spin on the old "take the Jew out of the shtetl, can't take the shtetl out of the Jew," trope.
"an utterly vapid chattering class incessantly staring at glowing rectangles in their palms."
I'll say this for millennials, retarded as they are. They appreciated TWILIGHT whereas my moron generation was wild about Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High(only redeemed by Penn's immortal performance), and John Hughes movies.
I must say though, the most interesting movies about young people today are made by people my age. X-ers are making some very good movie about young people. So, a funny kind of cultural-shift is taking place. Since young people wanna see movies about themselves, a lot of movies about young people are set in today's world. And yet, many of the writers and directors are Xers like myself, and their cultural reference is the late 70s and 80s. So, it seems like they're taking their youth experiences in the 70s and 80s and applying them on today's kids(who grew up with very different influences).
Maybe this is why I like TWILIGHT. Though about young people today, people who made it--writers and directors--have a sensibility of the pre-internet age.
But same could be said of John Hughes. He was born in 1950, so he came of age in the late 60s and early 70s. And yet he made movies about youth of the 80s. But then Nicholas Ray was a middle aged guy when he made Rebel without a Cause, and Mike Nichols was close to 40 when he made the GRADUATE. So, most movies about young people today are imbued with sensibilities of adults who were young in another time.)
Since young people write songs about young people but older people make movies about younger people, maybe that explains why movies about young people tend to be somewhat wiser than songs about them...
but then, why were so many movies about young people in the 80s so damned stupid? was it because the boomers who made them came of age in the libertine late 60s and early 70s and lacked any kind of discipline?
Fascinating to see the negative reactions that Kennen seems to engender. Taken together, the negativity seems to boil down to:
1. Wounded ethnic amour-propre: Apparently many Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, etc. are simply deeply wounded in the center of their being by the merest suggestion that their presence in America might not have been an unalloyed good.
2. Class resentment: The stout middle class types who read this blog apparently don't like the notion that some people are better than they are.
Everything else is, in the Marxian phrase, epiphenomenal in character. Philosophical super-structure erected over a quivering base of wounded class pride and ethnic resentment.
Yes, Kennan was one of those old timey WASP bores, (Raymond Chandler was another) who in private conversation and in the secrecy of their diary bemoaned how immigration had changed America for the worse.
And who Cares? Kennan wasn't willing to raise a finger in public TO CHANGE THINGS. Didn't want to make a fuss; don't ya know. Besides most WASPs just want to make Money and watch Football. Let them do that, and they're happy to let others rule the world.
Anonymous @1:39PM and his Brit ancestors should know that spot on Kennan (or as any-mouse would have it, "Keenan") wrote the now noxious "we-are-a-nation-of-immigrants" in Cragged Hill. But not as an excuse to have more of it.
"Kennan did not fit in at all at Princeton. He wasn't a part of the WASP elite and supposedly felt uncomfortable there."
He was on the faculty at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 to 2005. That is a total of 49 years.
His wikipedia bio mentions he was unhappy as an undergraduate, but also says he was shy and introverted. Wikipedia may be a little off on this one (shocker) or at least oversimplifying, because he went back to his alma mater and worked there. And five decades just seems a little long to be at a place he was "unhappy and did not fit in," especially for someone who could have easily gotten a faculty position at any other university in the country, although Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein spent his last years, is a pretty decent gig.
His dad was a tax lawyer. His background was not East Coast elite upper-class WASP like say, the Boston Brahmin families. He was more like Midwestern upper-middle class WASP.
He strikes me as having a lot in common with novelist Tom Wolfe, another writer Steve frequently mentions: Prep-school jock with brains, monumental ambition, desire to be the best in their field, high-class conservatives who run in elite circles where their views are not welcome, politically incorrect realist.
I disagree when Steve writes: "But, you could actually say stuff like that in the past, before immigration ascended to an unquestionable sacred civil right that the rest of the world's population holds over the citizens of the United States (an ideological development of roughly the period when Carlos Slim bailed out the New York Times -- purely coincidental, I'm sure)."
I think this development, while it might have been centered in the Times, in the brains of its third-rate publisher to be more precise, predates Slim by quite a few years.
Anon:
Does Germany have any obvious interest in slyly supporting Russia's aims in the Ukraine?
Germany has been seeking a docile Ukranian colony since at least 1914. Splitting the country in half with Russia and creating a German economic colony in western Ukraine akin to Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland would amply fulfill this aim. And this time, the Ukranians would even be foolishly grateful for this new master for "freeing" it from Russia.
re: one of the commenters above writes: "it will never be possible for those who are not NW Europeans to become Anglos and come to adopt an English temperment and outlook."
I think this is quite mistaken. It can happen, it just takes time -- several generations probably, and a good deal of outbreeding such as hbd*chick writes about.
America's problem is not that we are irredeemably by our post-1965 immigration, as naive as it was: the problem is that we don't stop it now and until we can assimilate and integrate the 40 to 50 million foreign born who are already here.
We need to keep our heads -- or, rather, regain them.
re Kennan, a commenter writes: "he was an old-fashioned WASPy snob who revered intelligence, sophistication, class, (probably fit right in at Princeton)"
Wrong, I think. At least based on my limited knowledge Kennan was an outsider who was taken "in" so to speak by the Wasps whom he idolized and then came to represent. I am sure there are other examples of similar things in history
Anonymous:"And who Cares? Kennan wasn't willing to raise a finger in public TO CHANGE THINGS. Didn't want to make a fuss; don't ya know."
One rather doubts that anyone would have listened.
Anonymous:" Besides most WASPs just want to make Money and watch Football. Let them do that, and they're happy to let others rule the world."
MMMM, Churchill, Thomas Jefferson (truly one of the great empire builders), Clive, Cromwell, Polk, Pitt the Elder, etc, would be inclined to disagree, dear boy.
Luke Lea:"re: one of the commenters above writes: "it will never be possible for those who are not NW Europeans to become Anglos and come to adopt an English temperment and outlook."
I think this is quite mistaken. It can happen, it just takes time -- several generations probably, and a good deal of outbreeding such as hbd*chick writes about."
I quite agree. But it is an arduous process. And some breeds ate more intractable than others. The Catholic Irish, for example, dearly nurse their grudges.
I don't understand why people would sh*t on the WASP elite. Did it ver occur to Kennan to be grateful that the true upper classes extended him the honor of joining Princeton to begin with?
Has anyone actually examined this phenomenon of the upper crust throwing open its institutions? It seems very magnanimous.
Fareed, the guy with the huge head and tiny body......
The Catholic Irish, for example, dearly nurse their grudges.
Like the Jews, or Armenians? Or, for that matter, Western Ukrainians?
Don't forget how he always goes MMMMMM in all caps.
Didn't he formerly use the name "syon"?
It's true that the descendants of northwest European stock are a smaller percentage of the total population of the United States at present than they were at mid-20th century. Much smaller. But in terms of absolute numbers they are greater in number than they were than. Which means what exactly? I don't know. But it doesn't mean that the United States MUST devolve into Brazil-north. One possible scenario could be that as the elephantiasis of the state (which is not in the American tradition) ends in economic collapse, that collapse could usher in a rethinking of the state/nation equation, more in line with the Founders' vision. Given the extreme passivity of the Hispanic population vis-a-vis the public sphere the rethinking and realignment would essentially be carried out by the very stock Kennan prized so highly. All I'm suggesting is that it isn't a given that the United States must devolve simply because its northwest European descended population - still huge in number - is smaller in relative terms.
And while you can be too weak (which always invites aggression) you can never be too strong.
No, you can be too strong when it comes to a national army. That is why our Founders, and even guys like Adam Smith, did not want armies. If they army is too strong it becomes a domestic threat. The United States should have the best Navy and Air Force money can buy. But the Army should be smaller and it should include border security as its primary function. Isn't that the primary function of every army around the world?
Anglo… --too many commenters above
Would you kind gentlemen be so sporting as to choose a less insulting epithet for my dear late father's people? Say, "gringo", or perhaps "ofay"…
Anonymous @ 3/2/14, 4:05 PM said...
"In today's terms, he was one of these middle class standouts who deem themselves superior to the upper class folks because they are 'more real' and grittier than the latter while simultaneously despising the lower class for its crudeness and stupidity."
"It strikes me as so much status anxiety and insecurity than anything else."
----------------------------------
That also sounds like a perfect description of Half Sigma a.k.a. Lion of the Blogosphere.
" Kissinger's foray into sportswriting previewing how national soccer teams would play in the 1986 World Cup based on their deep national traits: the Italians play like miserly Mediterranean peasants, the Germans play like the General Staff fought the Great War with lighting counterstrikes when the opponent overreaches -- such as when the Italians' eleventh uphill offensive against the Austro-Hungarians left them exhausted, German reinforcements in October 1917 suddenly swept down into the Italian plains in the attack described by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, etc.)"
He sounds like a caricature. Would that he had only stuck with sportswriting.
Does whether he's English or Irish matter? This was never just an English country. We've always had Dutch, German, etc. Irish-Americans have been here for a long time. Irish, along with Italians and Jews are now the most important Americans, because the WASP establishment was unable to keep America America. There are NO Protestants on the Supreme Court, and the President who assured that, the one with the Muslim name, was re-elected.
If there is a chance of America being saved, it will not be by the WASPs. It will be by the Catholics and/or Jews. They are now the important ones. I understand this deeply being half Catholic and half Jewish, because although my ancestors were poor and came here relatively recently, I'm told everyday that me and my family are what is wrong with this country. That my parents need to die off so the diverse coalition can reign. I know my fellow Catholics and Jews have had a mixed record in the US, but we're here and our votes (Catholic) and money (Jewish) are now what matter.
I inherited Jewish brains and Catholic aggressiveness. I don't want my (future) kids to grow up in Brazil or South Africa. And at some point, I plan on doing something about it. My parents live in a swing district, in a swing state, where I plan on running for Congress sometime in the next two cycles. If I get there, I plan on bringing the Sailer strategy to Congress. Our message doesn't get out well because our messengers, while well-meaning, are not verbally adept and charismatic. I am. Stay tuned.
There are NO Protestants on the Supreme Court… --Jeff
There are few sane Protestants left in this country. Protestantism was never a united movement, but now it has bifurcated into two hostile extreme camps, one preaching creationism and the other performing gay "weddings".
Catholicism is now the middle-of-the-road common-sense Christianity in America by default. (Or would be, if American Catholics weren't themselves more protestant than Luther or Calvin.)
This is similar to the Revolution and the Clvil War, when Anglo-Saxons were at each others' throats, and Germans, Dutch and other minorities occupied the center.
Good luck on your campaign!
anony-mouse said...
'and laments the decline of people of British origin...'
Wikipedia says 'Keenan' is Irish, and BTW Keenan himself grew up in Milwaukee so I doubt he ever had experience living in an America where people of British origin were a majority even of Whites.
"The Kennans were people from Dumfries in Scotland. James Kennan translated himself to America around 1720, and married a New England girl." (George Kennan: A Study of Character)
Kennan's mother's father was born in Scotland. It looks to me like the remainder of his ancestry on both sides can be traced back to colonial New England, and this 3/4 of his ancestry was likely overwhelmingly English. The Scottish or Scotch-Irish via his Kennan ancestor would amount to something like 1/64 of his ancestry.
Wikipedia says 'Keenan' is Irish
That's some high quality research the ADL is paying for, right there.
Good luck, Jeff!
and this time, the Ukranians would even be foolishly grateful for this new master for "freeing" it from Russia.
Why foolish? Do you think the Poles, the Latvians, or the Lithuanians are unhappy with that bargain? The Romanians? Hardly. Not a single country that has exchanged the Russian empire for the bureaucratic EU empire wants to go back. Putin knows this very well. For all the EU's faults, it provides a far better life for the average person than Russian rule. I keep seeing this Paleo (and far Left) trope that Ukrainians are naive morons who will never achieve Polish levels of prosperity but just turn themselves "a reservoir of cheap labor" for German capitalists like Romania. To which I say, so what? Do you know how many Ukrainians would give their right testicle to just live in Bucharest these days? Romania actually has economic growth and optimism about the future.
Russia alone fought a lonely war for centuries to push back the Turkish...
Any claim that the Russians fought the Ottomans alone is nonsense. Do the names Don John, Jan Sobieski, and Nikola Subic Zrinski mean nothing to you, simply because none of them were Russian? At the very least, give some props to the Mongols, who of any single people probably deserve the most credit for creating the "sick man of Europe", which is how the Russian government viewed the Ottomans at the time of the Crimean War. Therefore, trying to compare that conflict to something like Sziget is not going to get you far with anyone who bothers to check.
"The Ukrainians" is not a concept that aids understanding, as current events are demonstrating convincingly.
The late 1970s really did suck.
I was born in 1977 so I can't comment on the basis of personal experiences, but I do wonder if times really were as bad as they so often seem to be remembered by those on the cultural right.
I look at the 70s as a time when the realization was setting in that the promises of the civil rights movement were not going to be fulfilled. Since the changes inaugurated by civil rights could not easily be reversed it became difficult to look to the country's past as a guide to help navigate the future. Things from now on were going to be decidedly different.
The horrors of stagflation, imo, were massively overrated. Principally this is because economists' self-assurance that they had cracked the workings of economies suffered a staggering blow. Nevertheless, the inflation experienced in those days very much contributed to the sense that times were changing for the worse.
The 1980s turned this around. A combination of the rapid spread of personal computers, video games, VCRs and camcorders and the willingness to face down the USSR abroad and fight back against crime at home made for an attitude of optimism in comparison to the preceding decade.
And yet, despite such promising developments, the general culture continued to degenerate. Cultural trends of the 80s may not have been markedly worse than anything seen in the 70s, but they cannot be regarded as improvement. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the only reason to think well of 80s culture was that cultural marxists hadn't yet achieved the all but total cultural control they had by the mid-90s.
Jeff, best of luck. My guess is that far more people realize that anti-whitism is a mug's game than "WNs" (broadly speaking) are willing to recognize - and that goes for both whites and non-whites alike (but not really for blacks). It's a market begging for the right political entrepreneur.
My favorite Fareed Zakaria momement was him telling Sean Hannity to his face that he's (Fareed) a better American than Hannity because he chose to become American, while Hannity was merely born as one. Hannity just sat there smiling stupidly, probably wanting to hit back, I guess, but realizing there was no way to do so without repudiating his publicly professed beliefs (and so jeopardizing his employment).
jody said...
>an utterly vapid chattering class incessantly staring at glowing rectangles in their palms.
**chattering classes** are review and critique producers (such as Fareed Zakaria) and not selfie producing teenage girls. Though I'd concede that **chattering classes** are juvenile and vapid.
At the very least, give some props to the Mongols, who of any single people probably deserve the most credit for creating the "sick man of Europe"
Whatever victories Tamerlane had over the Turks was not the beginning of the end for the Ottomans because the very clearly continued to expand long after he was gone.
"Germany has been seeking a docile Ukranian colony since at least 1914. Splitting the country in half with Russia and creating a German economic colony in western Ukraine akin to Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland would amply fulfill this aim. And this time, the Ukranians would even be foolishly grateful for this new master for "freeing" it from Russia."
Adding to Peter the Shark's comment above, I can say the Czechs were also quite happy with the bargain. In fact, so happy that they've been recently trying to degrade their currency after catching up too much with the western Europe.
Of course, much of the rest of the world is also playing this game. The Euro currency is in large part a story of how Germany was able to play the game itself - giving up its strong currency in exchange for near full employment. Poland, the Czechs, Slovaks, etc have also benefited from the Euro because they are so closely tied into the German economy (even though the Czechs and Poles are not on the Euro).
With respect to the Ukraine, it would only make sense to partition the country into east and west. The east would be able to keep its heavy industry and integrate into the growing Russian economy, and the west would become a new low cost destination for western industry. Culturally, both sides would also feel more at home. I really don't see why the territorial integrity of a 23-year old country is such a sacred thing, especially when many of its own citizens don't respect it either.
Of course a Ukrainian split would leave Greece, Spain, etc, in even more pain than now, so I also don't see how being involved in this Ukrainian brouhaha is in way, shape, or form beneficial to most of the EU. The Germans, Czechs, Poles, etc who would take the lead in economic expansion there would benefit greatly, while the Greeks, Spanish, Italians, etc would find it even harder to attract industrial investment.
Jeff, good luck in congress! Also, we got your IP. Regards.
"There are NO Protestants on the Supreme Court, and the President who assured that, the one with the Muslim name, was re-elected."
More a manifestation of anti-abortion politics than anything else. Most reliably anti-abortion Protestants are morons, products of left-side of the Bell Curve schools like Bob Jones University. In contrast, there are smart Catholics who are anti-abortion and who have gone to good unis.
Per capita GDP in Poland $21,000 in 2013. Per capita GDP in Ukraine $7,000. Explains a lot.
"I inherited Jewish brains and Catholic aggressiveness."
Could be other way around.
JWS said...
He was on the faculty at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 to 2005. That is a total of 49 years.
His wikipedia bio mentions he was unhappy as an undergraduate, but also says he was shy and introverted. Wikipedia may be a little off on this one (shocker) or at least oversimplifying, because he went back to his alma mater and worked there. And five decades just seems a little long to be at a place he was "unhappy and did not fit in," especially for someone who could have easily gotten a faculty position at any other university in the country, although Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein spent his last years, is a pretty decent gig.
The Institute for Advanced Study is located in Princeton, NJ, but is not a part of Princeton University. And, unlike WASP-founded Princeton, the Institute was founded by Abraham Flexner and Louis and Caroline Bamberger, and was home to the likes of Noam Chomsky and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
His dad was a tax lawyer. His background was not East Coast elite upper-class WASP like say, the Boston Brahmin families. He was more like Midwestern upper-middle class WASP.
Emphasis on "middle." He wanted to attend law school but found it too expensive, so tested for the Foreign Service instead.
As I wrote before, his writings drip with a sense of superiority toward the lower class and feigned condescension toward his social and economic betters.
Kennan fancied himself a Platonic wise man in the European mold (a Western version of a Mandarin) and advocated a governing structure in which such a man as he would have influence, without, of course, any (electoral) accountability.
In other words, he was a middle class snob with a chip on his shoulder toward the upper class.
Finally, he was never quite the intellectual he fancied himself. He had no noteworthy academic achievement or acclaim. In the policy realm, he was a failure as ambassador to both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and a failure as the director of policy planning at the State. It was his successor Paul Nitze who authored the eventual anti-Soviet strategy in the form of NSC-68 (Nitze, unlike, Kennan, was an actual WASP elite despite his German, rather than English, origin). Nitze was far clearer-eyed about the Soviet Union and its incremental worldwide revolutionary strategy unlike the so-called realist Kennan.
As he aged, Kennan became progressively naive about the Soviet Union and ultimately became a fellow traveler of the nuclear disarmament movement (which was heavily infested with Soviet agents). Much of his fame and lionization derive from being at the right place at the right time during and immediately after World War II and from the fact that the U.S. lacked qualified and trustworthy experts on Russia during that time.
Its unlikely that people with a heritage from outside Francia could ever come to a workable understanding of the Anglo outlook, since they do not share the same cultural heritage.
My wife, who comes from an upper class Mayflower-descended family (with some German and Swedish ancestry as well) would find your emphatic statement amusing. Her family, though illustrious historically, is so far from "the English temperament" that it's almost comical.
Meanwhile I am an admirer of Edmund Burke, and I was born and partly raised in Northeast Asia. I introduced Burkean conservatism and orthodox Christianity to my wife. And, yes, I too am an opponent of mass immigration, including that from Asia.
Whatever victories Tamerlane had over the Turks was not the beginning of the end for the Ottomans because the very clearly continued to expand long after he was gone.
So what? No one is saying that the Mongols singlehandedly took down the Ottomans, but of all the countries prattling to everyone around of them "remember that we’re the ones who saved you from the Turks" - the loony comment about poor Russia fighting all alone is a characteristic example – it was the Mongols who first and foremost showed the rest of the world how it could be done. The fact that the Turks then turned their focus on (and made headway into) softer targets, including the Balkans and other parts of Europe still recovering from the Black Plague, does not invalidate the Mongols’ contributions.
"Would you kind gentlemen be so sporting as to choose a less insulting epithet for my dear late father's people? Say, "gringo", or perhaps "ofay"…"
Anglo is fine. Short for Anglo-Saxon for those who are that but wider for the non A-S people who evolved into that whole NW Euro thing inside America.
.
"Does Germany have any obvious interest in slyly supporting Russia's aims in the Ukraine?"
Yes. Neocon permanent revolution is bad for business.
Kennan was spot on.
America is going to spin apart, more violently and dangerously than Ukraine.
Detroit on a good day is more dangerous than Northern Ireland ever was.
Any claim that the Russians fought the Ottomans alone is nonsense. Do the names Don John, Jan Sobieski, and Nikola Subic Zrinski mean nothing to you, simply because none of them were Russian?
The Brits and the French routinely allied with the Ottomans against Russia. The logic was similar to that of Mackinder's "world-island" idea, with the Brits especially tending to ally with the weaker Continental power against the stronger ones.
"Anonymous:"You can take the Anglo out of his cottage but you cannot take the cottage out of the Anglo.
Despite all the great conquests and stuff, Anglos and Anglo-Americans still dream of returning home to that old cottage."
Something like this was said on some British drama from the 90s, I think. Except that it wasn't a cottage. It was a large estate sort of affair. I guess it depends on the class of the person doing the dreaming.
"The Catholic Irish, for example, dearly nurse their grudges.
Like the Jews, or Armenians? Or, for that matter, Western Ukrainians?"
Irish Catholic grievance nursing is much over-stated. I say this an agrieved Irish Catholic. Most of the ones I grew up with were dead keen on the Queen and watched Charles & Diana's wedding rather than get to work on time that fateful morn in June 81.
Grievance nursing only thrives when there is genuine suffering still going on; or--this is more common in the United States--when it gets them more stuff. The Irish don't get more stuff going on about the past. The groups that do get more stuff from that exercise are well known.
Did anyone here ever read Peter Schrag's 1971 book The Decline of the Wasp?
Yeah, but in fairness to Kim Kardashian, she's never pretended to be an intellectual.
Unlike plagiarist and all round bullsh*t artist Fareed Zakaria.
As for Kennan, R.I.P.
"I was born in 1977 so I can't comment on the basis of personal experiences, but I do wonder if times really were as bad as they so often seem to be remembered by those on the cultural right."
77 was cool with Star Wars, Close Encounters, Saturday Night Fever. Great stuff for a 9/10 yr old. I remember seeing Annie Hall back then but didn't get any of the reference-laden jokes. The only joke I got was 'spider the size of a buick'. But then maybe, it was an allusion to the spider in Bergman's THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, so maybe I didn't get that one either as I didn't know who Bergman was. (Was it an allusion to Kafka? Spider in the bathroom of a shikse?)
"Cultural trends of the 80s may not have been markedly worse than anything seen in the 70s, but they cannot be regarded as improvement."
But all said and done, I love the 80s... though I didn't like it when it was happening.
It was still before PC went wild, before all this gayish SWPL took over the culture.
Sorry to be so tardy on this perennial topic:
"1. Wounded ethnic amour-propre: Apparently many Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, etc. are simply deeply wounded in the center of their being by the merest suggestion that their presence in America might not have been an unalloyed good."
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
near bottom
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=26188478&postID=2489087754197860379
WASPs rule! I wrote in a recent post that I was getting the sense that Americans with Protestant European backgrounds were the best behaved. So I decided to sum all my prior post numbers that dealt with ethnicity and moral behavior to assess this idea systematically. I followed the simple strategy of assigning a rank for each behavior for each of the 8 ethnic groups with sufficiently large sample sizes. Jews were often ignored in previous posts since one must turn to the religion rather than the ethnicity variable to get estimates, but I wanted to include them, so I calculated numbers and then ranks for them.
I included all variables that I have posted on--here's a list of them: okay to cheat on taxes; drinks too much; ethnocentric; dirty house; frequents prostitutes; promiscuous men over 30; feel that infidelity is not wrong; gay; lesbian; husbands and wives who cheat; fathers divorcing mom; women arrested; and promiscuity for men and women and under. I realized that I had not posted on drug abuse so I added that to the rest. I ranked group so high numbers indicate more bad behavior, then I simply summed the 16 rankings for each ethnic group. Here are the totals:
Bad Behavior Index
Blacks 106
Mexicans 85
American Indians 85
Italians 70
Irish 67
Jews 64
Germans 56
English/Welsh 47
My hunch was correct. This pattern coincides with that feeling that goes way back among nativists that the moral quality of the country was slipping with the mass immigration from Catholic, southern and eastern European countries, and more recently in concern over immigration from Mexico.
Posted by Ron Guhname
Robert Hume
Silver said...
"My favorite Fareed Zakaria momement was him telling Sean Hannity to his face that he's (Fareed) a better American than Hannity because he chose to become American, while Hannity was merely born as one. Hannity just sat there smiling stupidly..."
Which demonstrates just how stupid Hannity is. I'd have replied,
"Look, if I was born in some Third World Sh*thole, I'd want to immigrate to the US, too. What happened -- did Canada and Australia turn you down? Because as your presence demonstrates, we take anyone."
"Blacks 106
Mexicans 85
American Indians 85
Italians 70
Irish 67
Jews 64
Germans 56
English/Welsh 47
My hunch was correct. This pattern coincides with that feeling that goes way back among nativists that the moral quality of the country was slipping with the mass immigration from Catholic, southern and eastern European countries, and more recently in concern over immigration from Mexico.
Posted by Ron Guhname "
Just think what kind of country the US would be if the Anglos didn't bring in slaves and didn't allow the Great Wave of immigration.
They really blew it.
This is a message for the would-be anti-Catholic humorist at 6.16 AM = Newton had fourteen, fifteen or sixteen great-great-grandparents of Catholic heritage, and he is considered a better physicist than any one from any other ethnic group. (very distant seconds, Einstein and Aristotle). Shakespeare had four Catholic grandparents, and two Catholic parents, and he was a better writer than any one from any other ethnic group in these post-messianic times, except maybe Dante and Cervantes (both Catholic, with some genetic Jewish admixture in Miguel's background, I suppose, and of course the three of them liberally copied hundreds of ancient Hebrew word combinations). Having covered mathematical and verbal summits, I will now turn to visual arts. Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Velazquez (all Catholic, with some Jewish admixture) are so good that no sane artist has claimed to be better than them in the last several hundred years (it is less easy to get away with bragging in the visual arts than in the other arts, so there are no equivalents to the Shakespeare-deriding Tolstoys and Shaws among decent visual artists). Oh, and there is Palestrina, Mozart and Chopin, not to mention the most celebrated musicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anyway - Thanks for reading, while I am sure I have not made you more witty and sarcastic, hopefully you, having been given a reason not to indulge in stupid allusions to alleged Catholic intellectual deficiencies in the future, are now less ignorant than you were before reading this comment.
Find it of interest that Americans when talking about ethnic background usually talk , both personally and officially , of English , Scottish, Welsh and Irish ( and Scots-Irish and Irish Catholic , maybe Anglo Irish , Highland Scots , Lowland Scots etc etc ) whereas in Australia they just bundle together all people who give their ancestry as deriving from Britain and Ireland (the majority of Australians ) as "Anglo-Celt" .
I'm aware that the settlement patterns of America and Australia have been quite different which may account for such nomenclature but note that ancestries from other countries such as Germany are not broken up in such a way
Must say I prefer the Australian approach which emphasizes the much greater commonality rather than ( all things considered ) the relatively small differences between what the DNA analysis tells us is fundamentally the same tribe
It was still before PC went wild, before all this gayish SWPL took over the culture.
I had a wonderful childhood so I look back on the 80s very fondly. Of course, a child's perception is very different to an adult's. The impression I have of the era as an adult is that it was the last Great White Decade. A white couldn't be openly "racist," but provided he cloaked it in terms of "western civilization" he could express pride in his country and his culture without fear or shame. That began to rapidly change in the 1990s to the point where today the only permissible white identity is that of flamboyant racial self-abnegator.
I am fiercely determined to do what I can to right this pathetic state of affairs, both because I favor the chain of political consequences I foresee as being triggered by a revitalization of white identity, and because, dammit, it's the right thing to do. Decades from now when, God willing, I'm an old man someone may ask me, "Silver, when the white race was on its last legs, what did you do?" And I will be able to tell him, "I did the right thing."
whereas in Australia they just bundle together all people who give their ancestry as deriving from Britain and Ireland (the majority of Australians ) as "Anglo-Celt" .
Even Anglo-Celtic is somewhat fabricated. Anyone (both white and non-white) roughly 35 or older would regard it as fairly standard to refer to people of British and Irish descent as simply "Australian" (ie as a racial identifier), even if they are aware that doing so is exclusive and "racist." Among the younger generations of whites I commonly hear people describing their backgrounds as "English" or "English and [whatever]" rather than as "Australian" or "Australian and [..]" as was done when I in high school.
Just think what kind of country the US would be if the Anglos didn't bring in slaves and didn't allow the Great Wave of immigration.
I'm sure it'd have been quite the country. The really interesting thought experiment is to imagine no slavery, no great waves and a continuation of the sorts of eugenic policies emerging early in the 20th century. Now, although such a country would have had no place for a butthurt ethnic grievance-monger with wounded amour-propre like me, that would have been a real sight to see.
The Brits and the French routinely allied with the Ottomans against Russia....
Since that, too, did not happen to Russia alone, you are in fact reinforcing the point I already made.
I do not wish to demean Russia or Russians, but there are apparently some Russophiles on these threads who seriously need to get over themselves.
"Just think what kind of country the US would be if the Anglos didn't bring in slaves and didn't allow the Great Wave of immigration."
Canada.
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