Intellectual Contortions
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Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, August 1991
Many of the problems brought on by America’s changing population are so serious that even the most resolutely mainstream scholars have begun to sniff around their edges. In the latest issue (Summer, 1991) of Foreign Affairs, one of the most influential periodicals in the country, there are two articles that gingerly raise the subjects of race and population. Both describe the realities that America faces, but then turn the intellectual equivalent of double-back-flip somersaults when it comes to policy recommendations.
The first article, “The Roots of American Power, “starts from the position that economic power is at the heart of any nation’s ability to influence world affairs. The author, Robert Hormats, notes that the American economy suffers from declining investment, quick-fix thinking, collapse of infrastructure, poor education, and an abandonment of the notion of individual responsibility. He further points out that of all the industrial nations, the United States has the largest number of racial minorities, and that the weight of their failure is a serious obstacle not only to economic progress but to social harmony.
The Dangers of Diversity
Mr. Hormats warns that ethnic diversity “could become a source of political friction, social fragmentation and economic disarray . . . ” For anyone who has actually set foot in Detroit (see cover story), Miami, or virtually any other American city, the warning comes a little late. Further on, Mr. Hormats admits as much when he asks, “Can an America whose cities are in some parts indistinguishable from Third World slums, and whose already large underclass continues to fall behind the rest of society, maintain the moral authority required for world leadership. . . ?” He also notes that “large numbers of blacks and other minorities fall outside the productive economy and [have] become alienated from mainstream society. “Clearly, the problems that ethnic diversity “could” bring are already upon us.
Do these problems have any implications for immigration policy, or for welfare programs that encourage the incompetent to have as many children as they like? Do they say anything at all about the desirability or even the possibility of a multi-racial society? Might they suggest inherent racial differences? Certainly not. “America has not done well at incorporating blacks and Hispanics into the work force or tapping their full productive potential,” writes Mr. Hormats. He suggests that we have only to reform our education system and introduce free child care in order for non-whites to become just like the rest of us.
Non-whites fail because “America has not done well.” If white society can only reform itself, non-whites will reach their “full productive potential.” For how long will academics and intellectuals recite these mantras while society decays around them?
The second article is “Population Change and National Security,” by Nicholas Eberstadt. It focuses on the effect that rapidly growing Third World populations will have on the industrial West. Between 1950 and 1985, the underdeveloped nations grew at nearly three times the rate of the developed nations, despite steady emigration from south to north. By the year 2025—just 35 years from now—the United States is expected to have a smaller population than Nigeria, and the aggregate population of all industrial nations (including Japan), will be smaller than the population of either India or Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mr. Eberstadt points out that these bloated, Third World countries will very likely be poor, fractious, hostile to the developed world, and increasingly demanding. He goes so far as to say that the new international environment will be “even more menacing to the security prospects of the Western alliance than was the Cold War. . . .”
What are we to do about this? End the foreign aid that only expands the rate of Third World population growth? Strengthen the security of our borders against the inevitable push of illegal immigration? Try to increase our own birth rates? No, none of these. Mr. Eberstadt offers only one solution: try to spread Western values to nations that still find them “fundamentally alien.”
Inconsistencies
But here, too, the author reveals his own inconsistencies. In a very interesting passage on the nature of demographics, he writes:
“Demography is the study of human numbers, but it is the human characteristics of those numbers that define world events. What is called a demographic problem may better be described as a moral and intellectual [emphasis added] problem that takes demographic form. Indeed, divorced from an understanding of the people behind the data, population studies can provide little insight. . . .”
It is unusual for a mainstream writer to acknowledge that populations are not equivalent. Perhaps Mr. Eberstadt even realizes that it is a moral and intellectual failing not to recognize that the successes of certain groups and the failures of others are not simply demographic curiosities but reflect the “people behind the data.”
When liberals and minority activists can find no explanation but “racism” for the disproportionate failure of non-whites, they are dressing up moral and intellectual problems to look like demography. When immigration activists argue that anyone from any place has full title to American citizenship they are doing the same thing.
Does Mr. Eberstadt—a man who understands that numbers mean nothing without an understanding of the “people behind the data,” really think that the West can spread its values to Third World nations that find those values “fundamentally alien”? The United States has been unable to spread Western values even to populations within its own borders. It will be a rare achievement to get Nepal and Nigeria to embrace what Harlem does not.
(Posted on August 1, 2008)
Comments
I really think the key issue is to look at how demographics are shaping up for the upcoming, school age generations. Based on statistics I have seen, for those children entering Elementary School for the first time, we have a situation where a tipping point is about to be reached within the next five or ten years - if not sooner - where there will no longer be a majority, white ethnic group in the United States.
In such a situation, where we are truly a nation of minorities, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the present double standard, with it being completely acceptable for non-white minorities to be about as racist as they want, and where so-called Hate crimes only apply when committed against them, while at the same time whites are supposed to be guilt ridden about our “evil ancestors,” where our history is only portrayed in a negative light, and where universities have special departments of Chicano Studies, Black Studies, Asian Studies, etc., but where at present White Studies is a total parody of what it should be, since it is only supposed to deracinate and make whites feel guilty about their skin color and past.
Believe me, it is just a matter of time before the new generation of whites I’m talking about will say “enough is enough” and begin to assert themselves to the point where white politicians will again have to start listening to them.
Posted by Paul Jones at 6:57 PM on August 1
Blacks often fail because many of them are total morons whose best laid plan for success pretty much involves finding a woman, old person, or child, punching them in the face way harder than is necessary, multiple times, causing permanent neurological damage, and then taking their money, all $20 of it.
Blacks, they’ll ruin your life for paltry sums of cash, and you’re supposed to feel sorry for them.
Posted by AvgDude at 7:36 PM on August 1
If only these authors could have seen the state of the country over 15 years after they wrote these articles. US schools already have a growing non-White majority, so the problems they envisioned have only grown much worse, overwhelming US education in general. A growing number of my old neighbors and colleagues have not only left states like California and Arizona (where I hail from), but have left the United States in general— usually settling in their ancestral lands or related Nordic countries, such as Denmark, Germany, Italy, Finland or Austria, learning the languages there and becoming members of their new societies (often those of their own ancestors). The USA itself is becoming a Third World outpost, not only in places like California, Florida and Arizona, but even in more “traditional” White states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Minnesota. So for many White families, the only future they can see for their kids is elsewhere, in countries with stricter immigration laws and a respect for the blood ties among their co-ethnics in Diasporas abroad.
Posted by Bering at 9:06 PM on August 1
A tour of Detroit, anyone?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T6WKMNmFsxM
Posted by at 11:09 PM on August 1
“Blacks, they’ll ruin your life for paltry sums of cash, and you’re supposed to feel sorry for them.”
This happened to a black lady I met who worked at a convenience store. Guy robbed the store. During the robbery, for no reason, he smashed her in the face with the gun.
Posted by at 12:28 AM on August 2
If only these authors could have seen the state of the country over 15 years after they wrote these articles. US schools already have a growing non-White majority, so the problems they envisioned have only grown much worse, overwhelming US education in general. A growing number of my old neighbors and colleagues have not only left states like California and Arizona (where I hail from), but have left the United States in general— usually settling in their ancestral lands or related Nordic countries, such as Denmark, Germany, Italy, Finland or Austria, learning the languages there and becoming members of their new societies (often those of their own ancestors). The USA itself is becoming a Third World outpost, not only in places like California, Florida and Arizona, but even in more “traditional” White states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Minnesota. So for many White families, the only future they can see for their kids is elsewhere, in countries with stricter immigration laws and a respect for the blood ties among their co-ethnics in Diasporas abroad.
Posted by Bering at 9:06 PM on August 1
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All this talk of safe havens for whites…haven’t you been reading what the “Nordic” countries are bringing in? Look, I have a close friend from a small town an hour away from Stockholm…in the sticks. They have Muslim Africans and Arabs running around terrorizing them.
I am telling you there is NO PLACE left.
If there is, PROVE IT.
Posted by at 4:05 AM on August 2
Lots of whites lament the deterioration & destruction brought on by 3ird world immigration to once proud majority white countries but remember, its whites bringing it on to themselves. Whites let it happen in spite of many decades of experience. It like a suicide gene in white people that makes most feel sorry for those who are destroying their own prosperous world. The White sympathetic mentality (you don’t see it among Asians) toward blacks in particular, encourage by Christian churches, is a slow terminal disease for which there seems to be no cure.
Posted by Helper at 12:01 PM on August 2
4:05 a.m.: No, all White countries are *not alike*, some are indeed far more resistant than others to inundation by the Third World! You mention problems with Sweden here, but notice that I didn’t mention Sweden myself— it’s notorious as one of the European countries (like the UK) utterly flooding itself with the Third World, and so like the UK and Australia, has become unattractive for Whites looking to raise kids. I’ve heard of one person (who had Swedish grandparents and spoke Swedish) who’s emigrated there, otherwise it’s not a desirable place to go.
On the other hand, countries such as Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, even (increasingly) Italy *are* more attractive places because their policies really are fundamentally different from, say, the UK, Sweden, USA or Australia: they have what’s called “jus sanguinis” policies recognizing ancestral blood ties, rather than the strictly open immigration “jus solis” laws in the USA. Their immigration policies are very strict, geared toward co-ethnics abroad— for example, the vast German and Nordic (Scandinavian, English, Dutch, Polish, Baltic) diaspora in North and South America and Australia. (Turks do not have citizenship and are being sent home, outside of a small remnant who are of White and Christian Greek/Balkan ancestry.) Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Germany, for example, are 97% White, and what immigration they do have is overwhelmingly from either Eastern Europe (old ties to the Austro-Hungarian/Prussian Empires) or North and South America (ethnic Nordics), with both skilled workers and blue-collar people welcome if they work hard and learn German (and Danish in Denmark). Interestingly, even the Netherlands, Belgium and France have been recently adopting the Denmark/Germany strict citizenship model and moving away from the UK/Sweden open borders model, though they still have problems.
The situations for different Western countries really do differ from each other, in part because in countries like Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and Germany, Whites are *indigenous* and with a history of fighting Turkish invasions, they’ve structured their laws to stay that way. Whereas, in the USA, Canada and Australia, Whites are not indigenous but settlers— and the mythos of “a nation of immigrants” has pushed them in the dangerous direction of open borders, and the dilution of their White populations. Ironically, the UK and Sweden (in which Whites are also indigenous) have also adopted the “nation of immigrants” model, to the point of their own self-destruction. But most of Europe, especially in the Central European corridor, is much more protective of its historic White population— perhaps because indigenous White societies for the most part are inherently more conscious of themselves than settler societies (as are their Diaspora abroad, which is why so many among the 100 million+ overseas Germans and Nordics are moving back into countries like Austria and Germany, or to Italy if they have ancestry there). The Dutch and French, for example, flirted with the UK/Swedish open-borders model (itself adopted from the USA/Canada/Australia), but in recent years have more firmly embraced the Denmark/Germany/Austria model. So there are major variations from country to country. And what this means is that, 20 years down the road, when many countries like Australia, the UK, USA and Sweden have become majority non-White, there will still be places with a strong White majority!
Posted by Bering at 3:53 PM on August 2
It is with sadness that I read Mr. Taylor’s fine article from 1991, for the mainstream pundits’ failure to grasp his fundamental insight, which is both seen and not seen by the authors he reviews, has only helped to lead to today’s Western crisis. That insight is that it is not numbers themselves, but the nature of what those numbers represents, i.e., the moral and intellectual character of the individuals they represent, which will determine whether or not, the fundamental values of Western society and Western man survive. The clear failure of all attempts at assimilation of third world populations to Western standards of value could not be clearer today. There were, however, clear to some as far back as 1991. Look at what has happened both in the West and the emerging third world during this period. The truth of Mr. Taylor’s insight could not be better verified and yet our elites still bury their heads in the egalitarian, ideological sands.
Today there is no longer any dispute regarding the reality of racial differences in intelligence and numerous other significant traits which are largely due to genetic factors. That is, there is no longer any serious dispute among objective scientists. Today’s many egalitarian apologist in scientist’s clothing are no better than those so- called “scientists” in the soviet union who rejected Darwinian evolutionary theory and preached the doctrine of the hereditability of acquired characteristics at the behest of the Party and its leader, Stalin. There are, in fact, many similarities between todays politically correct elites and Stalinism. Indeed, they differ in no significant way.
Posted by at 10:13 AM on August 3
It like a suicide gene in white people that makes most feel sorry for those who are destroying their own prosperous world.
You’ve hit it right on the head. Competitive altruism works in the unique environment where it evolved, but when you mix in populations that don’t practice it, competitive altruism becomes effectively suicidal.
Posted by HideouslyWhite at 1:50 PM on August 3
….it’s whites bringing it onto themeselves. —Helper
Thank you, for repeating a point I have made a thousand times and in as many places. No one, no one at all, feels sorry for fools. No one in the world.
Posted by Bobby at 10:13 PM on August 3
HideouslyWhite,
I think you are missing the point.
Rich white people are doing just fine. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_The-400-Richest-Americans_Rank.html
It’s only working-class and middle-class whites who are dying.
And that’s largely because we’ve been abandoned.
It has nothing to do with “competitive altruism.”
If any of the men on that list wanted the borders closed, it wouldn’t take very long before they got their wish.
Posted by Undomesticated at 11:18 PM on August 3
“Competitive altruism works in the unique environment where it evolved, but when you mix in populations that don’t practice it, competitive altruism becomes effectively suicidal.”
Posted by HideouslyWhite
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It’s reminiscent of something Machiavelli wrote. I can’t recall the exact words, but essentially he said that it’s very fine to be idealistic. But if you are concerned with doing good in a world where everyone else is evil, you will perish.
You can only be good, fair and honest where everyone else is following the same rules. This is why certain ethnic groups, like the Gypsies, effectively throw a wrench into the machinery and paralyze the system. They exploit the system and they will cheat in every way they can.
It’s like being in a test room where everyone else is cheating. In order to pass, you are forced to cheat too.
Posted by at 12:23 AM on August 4
“Blacks often fail because many of them are total morons whose best laid plan for success pretty much involves finding a woman, old person, or child, punching them in the face way harder than is necessary, multiple times, causing permanent neurological damage, and then taking their money, all $20 of it.”
I work with a black guy, a big strong guy. He won’t go near the black section of town. Last time he was there was about 12 years ago. He visited friends that night. He was walking down the street to his car when he was surrounded by 3 black guys with guns. The told him they would blow his head off if he resisted. He gave them $30.00 dollars and a cheap watch. We’v all got our mugging stories. When he talks about this he always says, “I could have been killed for $30.00.”
Posted by at 2:26 PM on August 4