burkeboi
8d ago
What is the meaning of life in at most 3 sentences?
My (provisional) answer: Do right by your family and friends. Enjoy your life. Leave the world better as a result of your existence.
burkeboi
11d ago
Your conception of US "civic nationalism" isn't very historical given that it practiced what you describe as "White Nationalism" for 150 years. In practice, people from different communities were expected to assimilate and intermarry and that's exactly why non-whites were not allowed to immigrate - read the decision in US vs Bhagat Singh Thind:
That case is more evidence of 'the US is a civic nation that Indians can't assimilate into' than 'the US is a nation of white people or a subset thereof.' By then, you had the 14th Amendment giving blacks citizenship, the 1917 granting of Puerto Ricans citizenship, and the 1920s granting of Amerindians citizenship. I agree with you that the US of the time was White Supremacist and that it was part of the US legal architecture at the time. You also did have a minority of Americans, such as the Know Nothings, arguing for an explicitly ethnic conception of the US.
What I'm arguing is kind of a finer point; the bulk of Americans did not say "We are a nation of a specific ethnicity/ethnos that people assimilate into.". The bulk of Americans then said instead "We are a nation of different peoples tied together by common civic rules and a common civic culture. Non-whites are to a greater or lesser extent incapable of fulfilling the duties of citizenship." While in practice those identities are quite similar in many aspects, they are conceptually different and those differences do have practical effects.
Most white nationalists argue for the first identity, which is ahistorical. For white nationalists who argue for the second identity, they are arguing for a historic identity. The argument there is a factual question of if x/y/z group is unable/unwilling to assimilate.
I was just arguing with people who advocated for a constructed nation of "Reds" which would presumably exclude one's liberal family members. How is that any less impracticable?
I can't speak for their arguments, but I have my own viewpoint on this. I think a sort of "Red Tribe" nationalism is not workable. Red Tribe is a pretty heterogenous coalition of people. There are various groups of Christians, rural groups, working class groups, and other groups. There are also groups like Conservative Blue Tribers and Hispanic Evangelicals who are non-central cases. They are bound together in agreement on certain baseline values, but it is neither desirable or practical to try and separate those groups from other groups in the US at the moment. At the same time, the Right should practice patronage for the groups that support and ignore the groups that don't; not act as stewards of the entire nation.
One thing I think may elucidate my viewpoint is to contrast what I'm saying above with the mid/late 20th century US right. From the Civil War to the Great Depression, a reasonable oversimplification of US politics would be that Republicans were the party of Yankees who wanted to turn all of the US into Yankee-stan, economic policies included, and the Democrats where the party of all the different groups who did not want that. There was a national identity and patriotism, but the Republicans never got the unified and uniform national culture they wanted. With the New Deal, WW2, the Television, and national economic and cultural integration you really had a strong, semi-uniform national identity for the first time in the mid 20th century.
As a result of the semi-uniform national identity and preexisting trends, the Republicans in the mid to late 20th century changed their self image to desiring to be the party of the American mainstream/middle class. They considered themselves stewards of the nation in general. Patronage still existed, but the Republicans even as they became the explicitly right wing party in the 80s still viewed themselves as the party of the whole country. The cultural consensus, if it ever existed in reality, that Republicans viewed themselves as the representatives of no longer exists. As a result, they should simply be an interest party of their constituents and cooperate only on mutually beneficial policies.
Doesn't this argue against including Asians as "on the team" with white people considering its advocates were happy to spread slander about white Americans but draw the line at black Americans? Clearly they are more aware of their racial position in American society than you are.
The reason I mentioned this is that it is a case of Asians putting the interests/cultural values of Blue Tribe over their own 'racial interests'. If Asians were maximally ethnocentric, they would not have stopped pushing Stop Asian Hate once the focus got on black criminals. That they stopped shows that blue-tribe Asians value blue-tribe norms over personal ethnocentrism. If you look at how they vote and act, red-tribe Hispanics either value red-tribe norms over being Hispanic or view it as no conflict.
People in Latin America don't seem to think the way that I do and probably agree with you about civic nationalism but it's pretty clear that the more ethnically European parts of Latin America are more agreeable to people of European descent and this is generally more important than the partisan orientation of the government. This is basically what I'm arguing. No matter how nice your Asian coworkers are (and they generally are), at scale they reproduce an Asian culture in the places they live. This is true of Asians, American whites, Russians, Indians, Mexicans, and so on, and that is what binds whites in America together whether they like it or not.
You listed American whites and Russians as peoples that create separate cultures when they congregate. What do you consider to be the descent that people should rally around? How much of that inheritance is genetic vs. cultural? Since you separated the above two, it seems we are talking in terms more granular than the big three races. My particular issue is that I don't think European descent is a good dividing line for 'makes a good neighbor' and 'want to share a body politic' with.
burkeboi
11d ago
Sure, in practice I think very few people are going to make that kind of distinction in their personal lives based purely on race. I certainly don't.
Agreed.
But the societies and neighborhoods we live in express of the character of the people who live in them, and that does depend on race and ethnicity.
I think this statement is true, but the dispute is over what heritage matters and how much. I think the way the US classifies race, which from my understanding is similar to the rest of the Anglosphere, in particular is not really that determinative of neighborhood character in most cases. To give an example: a fully Charedim neighborhood is more different than a normie white suburb than a normie white suburb is from a normie Texas suburb, which is often only plurality non-hispanic white.
East Asian and Hispanic neighborhoods are worse to live in and other white people agree with me whether or not they will admit it because they move away from them to live around other whites!
In the US that's not necessarily the case. Gentrification generally is mostly white upper middle class and middle class people moving into Hispanic neighborhoods. Same with historic East Asian neighborhoods. In the US it's really only black neighborhoods that tend to be dysfunctional enough to preclude gentrification. Many neighborhoods, especially in California, have actually gone through the process of blacks -> illegal immigrants (hispanics) move in -> the neighborhood becomes mostly hispanic -> the neighborhood is now nice enough for middle class people to move into.
This alone should be reason enough to care about the ancestry of the people in your society.
I agree with this, but your argument is more particular than this general statement: your argument is that different groups of western whites are fundamentally bound to each other due to shared heritage and that both normatively and positively binds them more closely to each other than to any other group. That is the part I, and it seems many others here, are disputing.
The reason why I mentioned the Hispanic church goer and the Asian coworker is that in terms of daily lives, those two have far more in common with their white counterparts than their white counterparts have with each other. In many cases, they are literally family to each other and often have offspring with each other. They all are part of shared communities, and typically follow their communities norms even when it conflicts with their 'racial interest'. Witness how 'Stop Asian Hate' hit a brick wall once people started noticing most of the assailants were black. I think these communities are the real fundamental bedrock of most people's identities and morals rather than their race.
(The following is for the US case. Different nations have different histories and situations, so it may not apply to other nations.)
Probably the biggest reason why White Nationalism is not viable, at least in the short to medium term, is that it asks whites to basically jettison their lived experience and say that their in-group is not the people who they actually live with and form a real community with, but instead people who they share a census category with. This is a romantic nationalist project, and like all of those projects people are going to ask 'Why should I practically identify with this constructed nation?" This is especially the case when that constructed nation excludes members of a person's community and often own family too.
'White Nationalism' is a newly constructed 'nation' as well; historically the US combined civic nationalism with the belief that certain races and ethnicities were incapable/unwilling of fulfilling the duties of citizenship. Americans viewed themselves as a confederation of different states, ethnicities, sections, and religions bound together by a common civic state and culture; they never viewed themselves as a singular and uniform, or made to be uniform, people. You can contrast this with many European national states, who did envision and enforce a uniform culture on their nations. The viewpoint that America is a civic nationalist state where not all cultures can fulfill the duties of citizenship is still alive today. It's currently the dominant view, at least in terms of popular vote, on the right. There are disputes over which cultures don't/can't integrate, but that viewpoint is within the Overton Window of the US right wing. Similarly, most of the other moderate demands a white nationalist would have, like strong policing and/or an end to anti-white racial discrimination, are already within the Overton Window of the US right wing. There is no real policy incentive for someone to adopt white nationalism vs. a conservative US civic nationalism.
Summing it up:
- White Nationalism is a new ideology and not the historic US form of nationalism. Adopting it is adopting a new ideology. It's not conservative.
- Much like historic European nationalisms, it requires the lived in communities that people live in to be split up for the sake of an abstraction.
- That abstraction doesn't really promise any policy benefits over conservative forms of US Civic Nationalism, and has a lot of downsides.
- In practice, White Nationalism makes enemies right wingers don't need to make to achieve policy goals right wingers already advocate for by advocating right wingers ally with people who don't like them and want no part in this project.
burkeboi
11d ago
he suffers autistic burnout during the coronavirus pandemic
My culture is not a costume, Dr. Arday.
burkeboi
11d ago
He has an older sister named Mandi Gosling. That’s the closest you get to a pure gender swap.
burkeboi
11d ago
What you are describing above was Bolivar’s “War to the Death”. That was a policy of the failed second Venezuelan republic, which principally failed since they were unable to get the mixed race Venezuelans on their side and winded up getting overrun by murder cowboys. The mestizos and pardos figured criollo rule would be more intrusive that distant peninsular rule.
The third republic, the one that succeeded in securing independence from Spain, avoided earlier atrocities and intentionally tried to get all the inhabitants of Venezuela, including peninsulares, on their side. They intentionally flipped the support of pardos and mestizos and made racial equality a part of their platform.
Ultimately, the lesson of Venezuela, and you have similar stories in the rest of LATAM, is that your friends are those who act as your friends and your enemies are those who act as your enemies. Alliances shift even if immutable characteristics don’t.
I think the core issue with White Nationalism is that it doesn’t map on the lived experience friend/enemy distinction of most people. For a white red triber, the Latino who goes to his church and is his coworker is practically far more his brother than a white blue triber sneering at him. The same is true vice versa for the white blue triber and his East colleague. While immigrant groups differ, Somalis are not Mexicans, it seems one should determine friend/enemy based on the actions of the person, not the race.
burkeboi
11d ago
Originally in the US, chain migration was seen as a backdoor way to privilege the relatives of already existing Americans and minimize ethnic change. More right wing Americans backed it while more left wing ones preferred a more skills based system. The hope was that you would have a few, high quality, people come in from the third world but most immigrants would be relatives of then Americans. That was the theory behind Hart Cellar.
That didn’t happen. It turns out once a country gets rich enough, and it doesn’t have to be equally rich, it just stops sending many immigrants. Few immigrants have come from Europe, but tons of people come from the third world.
burkeboi
13d ago
Is “White” really an important social division in Britain? It was useful in the colonization of the Americas since it was contrasted against Native Americans and Africans, but once the legal and practical realities of the colonization era ended racial identities tend to collapse with it. In almost all of modern Latin America you have a mestizaje identity that includes whites and your various mixed race people integrated with the national culture contrasted with small native and occasionally African diaspora subcultures as recognized minorities. You are even seeing this delayed process happening in the US right now.
If the right populists get their way, I can see Western European nations potentially going the way of a titular “mestizaje” ethnicity plus a few minority subcultures.
burkeboi
15d ago
Two things to note:
- Most of the real terrible African nations often haven’t had censuses in decades. We can guess but don’t know too much about their populations.
- to make the situation grimmer, the high human capital Nigerians, either in the country or outside, have close to or below replacement fertility rates. It’s the ones without an economic place in the modern economy that reproduce like crazy. This pattern is common in Africa, and was the case in LatAm in the later half of the 20th century. My Nigerian associates, who are upper class, are staunch supporters of already existing contraceptive NGOs as a result.
Would AGI, or ASI, affect the morality of human slavery? A common objection to slavery is that while there are many humans fit to be slaves/unfit to be free, see gent zombies, no humans are fit to be masters since basically all humans inevitably abuse such authority.
A sufficiently aligned AGI or ASI solves that problem. It’s aligned, so it follows the morals given to it. Assuming we can align AGI or ASI, would slavery to it be moral for certain subclasses of humans?
EDIT: Fent Zombies, not gent zombies.
burkeboi
16d ago
It was a well made, patriotic film that didn’t race swap or hide Fr*nch savagery.
burkeboi
18d ago
The last Spanish election was a nail biter. This seems to be a pretty bold move by a government that is not that secure necessarily.
Another thing to point out is that Spain has an East Asian TFR now. On the flip side, they can get practically infinity immigrants from Latin America dependent solely on how many they want to let in. Letting in MENA immigrants just seems like a terrible idea given they haven’t gone through their source of more culturally compatible immigrants yet.
burkeboi
18d ago
The notion that the bloodline-denominated collective is an end in itself and the individual is a means to that end.
I agree that putting the Volk as the only thing worthy of moral consideration, with all other rights subordinate to it, is a core ideological feature that made Nazism, and fascism in general, so harmful.
At the same time, I think the issue is when you decide a group, or concept, is the only thing that matters morally and no other rights are important rather than whatever group or concept in particular you elevate. The communists killed millions for the revolution and utopia. In pre-modern eras, millions were butchered for king and/or faith. The crime is in discarding individual rights, not in the object you decide is the only important thing in the world.
The notion that whether or how much a Life Matters is dependant on bloodlines. (When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?)
Is there a limit to this principle? Can families morally have ingroup preference? What about a community the size of dunbar’s number? Is the limit more about how much preference you can give someone vs the reason for the preference?
While equality of people is a good, it is a good that has to be balanced against the fact that any individual human has people they care about and people they don’t and our social lives, and really civilization as a whole, are built on this distinction.
The notion that the property rights of rich people are more important than the personal rights of the smallfolk.
I think this is more the crime of the Confederates and isn’t really the core objection to Nazi Germany. I think the principle of equality under the law naturally leads to people saying rich and poor deserve the same rights. All societies have had both positive and negative rights, and you can’t clearly separate the two in practice. Which rights different people have is a constant negotiation. While I think slavery is a clear violation of equality under the law, and the civil war is an example of the problems it caused, I don’t think you can just from the specific case of slavery to a modern rich vs poor issue.
burkeboi
18d ago
I think it’s really necessary to look at the MoS when evaluating soldiers. I personally know guys in the military who would only face physical danger in a black swan scenario. I also know special forces soldiers who face double digit percent risks of death and/or disfigurement. I think we need to look more at MoS than just “is he a veteran” to determine both the danger the soldier was in and the esteem we should give his service.
burkeboi
19d ago
The attitudes that lead to the historical horrors are still very much with us.
What do you think the attitudes are that lead to these horrors? Do you believe how we currently teach these events inoculates students against these attitudes?
I think those two questions are what make the historiography of human cruelty controversial. Different people can look at the same event, and have completely different opinions on it.
An example of this would be the Holocaust. Just looking at Jews in particular, here were/are four responses/interpretations to it:
- This was a failure of insufficient small L liberalism. We must promote liberalism globally to avoid tragedies like this in the future.
- Capitalism and imperialism naturally leads to war and genocide. We need global Marxist revolution to prevent this.
- Jews need to be armed and have a state of their own, so they are too tough to victimize ever again.
- Hitler is a new Nebuchadnezzar, sent by God to punish us for our apostasy.
There are more interpretations, especially once you get interpretations beyond just Jews. If you teach a particular interpretation, it’s quite possible that instead of reducing the chance of a new atrocity, you either do nothing or maybe even increase the chance.
burkeboi
19d ago
What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.
If you increase the danger, wouldn’t that just make the private sector more attractive for potential recruits? If you want better recruits, it seems you either have to make the private sector worse, increase actual/social compensation for the military, or use coercion/the draft.
There is also the issue that “better” is different for different jobs. Most PMC would make terrible door kickers.
burkeboi
19d ago
For conservatives, the argument that they were all just evil was convenient and would prove to have wider applications. The idea of being empathetic to the circumstances of a criminal's upbringing would become a punchline.
I don’t really recall that being the dominant conservative viewpoint, at least where I grew up. Explaining Nazism isn’t really that big an issue for classical conservatism: humans are prone to cruelty, and civilization barely holds those impulses in check until it doesn’t. While the specifics differ, Germans went Nazi for the same reasons Russians went Stalinist for the same reason Comanches smashed babies against rocks: humans are inclined to cruelty, and organize in ways to facilitate organized cruelty.
The bigger argument is if conservatism, or any particular ideology, has a good track record of restraining those impulses. That’s a far bigger and honestly unresolved argument.
burkeboi
25d ago
When people argue for immigration restrictionism to Israel, they often specifically speak of Palestinians and/or hypothetical Muslim immigrants who are directly hostile to Israel. Why not third parties? Indians would love higher wages. The worst parts of Latin America have tons of people who want that too. Christian parts of Africa as well. If we do believe that good systems can produce productive people, which to a greater or lesser extent is a/the core belief of most moderate immigration supporters, than all of those people coming into Israel will quickly be value adds. If you have 30 million Israelis, the Palestinians just aren't a problem. At that point, you can likely start including them in the fold as well. Unless you think people named Juan, Mobutu, or Ramesh are inherently alien to your polity, this honestly could be a long term plan.
To speak plainly: I can see how even under standard liberalism, you can justify keeping Palestinians and certain openly hostile citizens of certain Middle Eastern states out of Israel. To have a conception of Israel that excludes the possibility of third parties like Latinos and Christian Africans coming and assimilating, at a greater or lesser rate, is exclusionary to the point that is outside the Overton Window of the left hand side of any western polity. Israel is considered a western polity, and liberal zionists certainly argue that it is, and them not being held to the standards of other western polities is what is causing the left to rapidly sour on them. Most modern leftists don't think that modern Jews get to claim an exception to the 'no ethnostates' rule.
burkeboi
25d ago
Bespoke: Destroying the ethnostate of Israel so Indians and Filipinos can settle in Israel and marginally increase global GDP.
burkeboi
25d ago
There does seem to be a general trend that whenever you elevate a single aspect of a culture or a single ideology to define an entire society, that society breaks down. To give an example, if you look at most historic western countries post 1776/1789, they tended to function on a mix of liberalism, local denominations of christianity, nationalism (which was historically tied to liberalism), regionalism, and tons of other local values and traditions. It's the same everywhere; all societies inherit tons of different values that are in negotiation with each other. When you try and elevate a singular value system to dominate all the others or erase all the others, that's when you have problems.
Sometimes it can be clearly disastrous, like in the case of Communism or Nazism, but other times the damage is more insidious. "Hypocrisy" often is not just someone lying for self interest; it's often a thoughtful and useful compromise between two or more values both of which are important.
burkeboi
1mo ago
If you would only convert to the true church, you would understand that all of culture that is actively worth is propagated not by heritage, language, or skin color, but by priests, monks, and sisters.
That seems contradicted by the behavior and beliefs of roughly 100% of Catholics historically, though. While one can argue for more or less immigration on prudential grounds, all non-church institutions and culture not being worth preserving doesn't seem to be a common viewpoint. What do you base it on? I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but that posture seems more akin to radical protestantism than Catholicism or Orthodoxy I'm familiar with.
burkeboi
1mo ago
"40 years ago, our great state recognized the intrinsic liberty of at-will employment, and the need to free workers of mandatory union dues. We became a right to work state. Today, I propose we take the next step in the advancement of human liberty; I propose we become a right to fuck state."
If you wish to stop cases like Arday, I don’t think you really need HBD. You just need the following two principles:
Ultimately, if you look at the system the real dividing line is “Is your group and client of the identitarian left and if so how much.” This all boils down to institutionally breaking the identitarian left; arguing only works insofar as it convinces non-identitarians to join the cause.
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