One of the greatest services that Pat Buchanan performed for America in his discussions about immigration was to emphasize the place of culture in that conversation. While talk about the subject generally tends to revolve around questions of legality versus illegality, crime, and its impact on wages and jobs–and these are all important matters, mind you–discussing the impact immigration has on America’s culture has found much less of a place at the table.
The reader may find himself asking, “Why are you talking about culture again? How come you’re always harping on that subject?” The answer is because culture is important. Culture is, in fact, more important for the long-term direction of a nation than are its electoral politics, its economic choices, or its foreign policies. Different types of governments, economic booms and busts may all come and go, but the culture of a nation will set the tone for how the nation responds to and weathers these things.
I’ve discussed before how inseparable a culture is from the people who bear it. When large numbers of people live together in community, they develop unique cultures that are then perpetuated for generations upon generations. Culture is among the most persistent of factors in the human experience. The culture of a people is usually only changed by either eradicating that people (the least desirable means) or by putting into place active, vigourous, systematic efforts at loosing them from their former culture and embedding them into a new culture (assimilation).
By all rights, talk about culture should impact the American national discussion on immigration. It doesn’t, but it should. The reason for this is because we are currently in a situation where, rather than assimilating foreigners to our own culture and mores as formerly happened, we are instead seeing our traditional Anglo-Saxon culture being weakened and undermined by millions of unassimilated foreign entrants, largely from Latin America. These immigrants have reached a critical mass of numbers such that they are forming large pockets of Latin American (primarily Mexican) culture on our own soil. This is not at all surprising. Whenever a nation pursues a policy of accepting massive numbers of immigrants while refusing to require them to assimilate themselves to our folkways and culture, you will see what we’re seeing take place today.
Cultures as holistic, all-encompassing entities cannot exist in the same place at the same time. One will always come to dominate the other for any number of good or bad reasons. What we’re seeing throughout the American Southwest, as well as in inner cities (and not so inner cities) all across the country, is the Mexification of large swathes of American geography. Because post-1965 America has pointedly refused to require assimilation, we’re finding that in areas where the majority becomes Mexican, the culture becomes Mexican as well.
This is not a good thing. My firm belief is that all cultures are not equal. Intrinsically speaking, some cultures are better than others, for objective and quantifiable reasons. Cultural equalitarianism is simply not an intellectually valid belief. This being said, I will then apply it by saying that I believe America’s Anglo-Saxon derived culture is better than the various Latin American cultures we see entering our land. This is not to say, obviously, that Latin Americans themselves are bad people. The problem is not the people themselves, but the cultures that they carry with them.
An honest assessment suggests that Latin American cultures contain a disturbing number of pathologies that make them incompatible with tradition American Anglo-Saxon culture. They tend to encourage a subservient, even obsequious, attitude towards government, with its caudillos and jefes, that makes Latin Americans more naturally socialistic. Latin American cultures tend to reject the right of self-defence, thus making them more likely to disarm their populations. They have a much higher tolerance for corruption, both political and private, than do Northern European-derived cultures. Latin American cultures tend to be low trust cultures. They tend to place less value on education, scholarship, and innovation. They tend to be more socially stratified and have less tolerance for individuals who seek to better their social and economic statuses. Because there is little cultural tradition of consensual self-government and orderly transfer of governmental power, much of the history of Latin America (as well as a lot of what we still see today) involves a cycle of revolution followed by dictatorship followed by revolution followed by dictatorship…
What I’m describing above goes more deeply into what “culture” actually is than does the rather superficial sense that most people have, meaning things like “ethnic foods, ethnic clothing, and musical styles” that they can gawk at when visiting an ethnic restaurant. “Culture” encompasses the way a group of people tend to thinking, feel, and act about…everything. It defines their responses, how they interpret social and interpersonal stimuli from the world around them. The superficial view of “food and music” as culture is merely the tip of a deep, deep iceberg (see below).
If we continue to see Latin American cultures displace American culture in increasingly large regions of our own country, we’re eventually going to see the United States become Latin American in culture. And that means that all the cultural attributes that made America what she historically was, and the successes that those attributes brought, will no longer be there to sustain continued American success as a polity.
What happens when America finishes becoming the sort of low trust society like we see across Latin America? What about when we become as corrupt as is typically seen south of the border? Will investors want to park their money here, knowing that an American caudillo might well nationalise their assets to curry favour with an increasingly socialistic population? What happens to America’s research and development culture when the value we place on education reaches Latin American levels? How many Nobel laureates in the sciences has Latin America had? The answer: from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, they’ve had a total of six, the same number as Belgium alone. As I’ve pointed out before, we can’t expect our Constitution–uniquely English in derivation as it is–to survive long in a non-Anglo-Saxon cultural setting.
Simply put, if Mexican society is so bad that it has already run off a full quarter of its own population, why on earth would we want to transplant the same thing here on our side of the border?
This is why the American people need to get serious about regaining control of our immigration apparatus back from the current gaggle of globalists, internationalists, and chamber of commerce-style plutocrats who currently use it to provide for themselves a virtually limitless supply of cheap labour to be used to both save them money and destroy traditional America. What to do about the immigrants from south of our border? Plainly, we must send home the vast majority who bring no special skills or knowledge to our society while working assiduously to assimilate and fold into our own culture those who do bring to the table skills or talents we are interested in, and who are allowed to remain here. We really do need to make America America again, by studiously preserving our own unique (and successful) culture as a gift to our posterity.
I feel you are essentially avoiding the crux of the cultural argument, genes and religion. Now, I break with the alt-right crowd on a number of issues, abortion, might makes right morality, religion and aesthetic, but I feel that their specific argument in regard to racial/ethnic differences as they effect social order are valid. I, for my part, would add foundational religion to that list as I find credence in Carl Schmitt’s observation, “Political concepts are just secularized theological concepts.” Religion is not part of culture, but Culture a function of religion. The importance of Foundational Religion > Culture per say.
When you write that, “The problem is not the people themselves, but the cultures that they carry with them.” that is, to my thinking, a bit disingenuous. The newcomers may mimic the host culture, but they cannot essentially generate it as the founding stock, working under the precepts Foundational Religion, can. Mimicry is fine, but fundamental cultural generation and continuity can only result from a consistent gene pool and a consistent religious outlook.
Only if that gene pool exhibits longer time preferences, empathy, and capacity for intelligence and co-operation.
Also, only if it’s the right kind of religion. Religion is part of culture, because it sets a common behavioral standard that has a very long tail effect.
There is nothing left to preserve. We have abandoned the God of our fathers and are rightly judged for our sins. When we return to the Lord Jesus Christ in our families and local communities, we can then begin to see restoration of some form.
Hi Phileas,
I think you might be getting back to the old chicken-and-egg argument re: culture and genes. Do our genes define our culture, or does our culture direct what our genes will be?
I tend toward the latter – Because nations formed long ago (remember, I define a “nation” as an organic group bound together by customs and mores, not as a political unit, per se), they will tend to carry with them and perpetuate a genetic legacy derived from the founders of the nation.
However, there is nothing that is necessarily intrinsic about any particular set of genes that would lead to any particular set of cultural mores. Being white did not necessarily guarantee that Europe would turn out the way it did.
Granted, genes must play a large role in developing high culture. I personally believe that any group which does not have an average mean IQ of at least 99-100 will be unable to build a genuinely high civilisation. In the 95-98 range, you have groups that can maintain (but not expand or build) such a civilisation, they can sort of run on autopilot for quite a while until they slowly wind down. Below 95, and you will have societies which increasingly demonstrate basket-case traits the lower the average IQ goes. So yes, there’s a solid, genetic reason why Europe was Europe and Africa was Africa.
However, simple genes or IQ can’t be the sole arbiter. After all, the East Asians are smarter than we are, on average. IIRC, Hong Kong has a mean IQ of 107, which is practically a half sigma above our own. But while east Asia developed decently civilized regions – China, Japan, Korea – and were more so than most of the rest of the world (Africa, the Americas and Australia before the white man came, SE Asia, etc.), we still managed to ace them with respect to developing truly high civilisation. There had to be more than just genes involved.
The answer is culture (which religion is a part of). For whatever reasons (which I’m lazy and won’t explore here), Europe developed cultural traits which enabled us to develop science, philosophy, to utilise technology in a proactive manner, to create the social underpinnings that would support consensual, and in many cases, self-governing societies.
Now, I do believe that individuals (and keep in mind, I’m talking about smallish numbers here, not mass immigration or migration) can leave their former culture and successfully integrate into a new one. It means sacrifice all that they were and knew before, but it can be done. In many cases, children from one culture who are raised in another can assimilate very successfully into their host culture. I think of, as an example, a Baptist missionary I know who is on the field in India. Now, he was born in India (which is the only reason he can even get into that otherwise closed field), but was adopted by a white Christian family in Wisconsin when he was an infant. He is thoroughly America in culture, as much as myself or any other. In this case, his genes did not predestine him to “Indianness,” but instead, white American culture was successfully passed on to him.
In short, just as I’d say there’s no magic soil, I also don’t believe that there is magic DNA. “Nations” are a complex interplay of culture, religion, geography, genetics, and other factors.
Hi SK,
Agreed. To preserve the West requires repentance and turning back to God. But this doesn’t mean we can’t take some steps to try to stanch the bleed in the meantime.
BTW, I was up on my roof cleaning out the gutters last Saturday – good bourgeosie homeownership stuff – and got to thinking about Switzerland (because of the bourgeosie stuff, not the gutters). Switzerland seems to me to be the epitome of good, solid, middle class values. It’s clean, orderly, technologically competent, and full of the most exemplary white people you can find just about anywhere in the world.
I agree with Phileas Frogg, up to a point: Latin/Asian/African cultures cannot assimilate because culture is a result of the genetics/race of a people. We are a nation founded by Western and Northern European/Scandinavian peoples. Our culture reflects that. When we demand that other races assimilate to our culture, we are essentially asking them to be what they can never genetically be. It is no wonder they are angry and hate us; we are in essence saying that they are not us, which is true.
I used to believe that religion was independent of race but now I realize that is not true. Cultures adopt religion because it reflects the values and understanding of the people. That is why when Christianity is taken to Africa or Latin countries it becomes laden with superstition and is not Christianity at all. Different races will experience God in different ways because each is only capable of understanding God within the limits of their intelligence, which is a product of their genetics. Is it any wonder that the Middle East is Islamic? Their religion fits who they are as a people, genetically speaking.