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Inspired by the ongoing debate here and on twitter, a tale of two countries.
Ideastan produces the vast majority of the world's arts, culture, and scientific output. All countries of the world adopt their ways of thinking, their form of government, their philosophy, their fashion, etc. Total cultural victory, complete dominance forever. The people of Ideastan also allow lots of immigration - so much immigration that after a thousand years, there's nobody left who could reasonably be said to look like an Ideastani, and tracing your genetic lineage back to a Founding Stock Ideastani is very difficult. The immigrants all totally adopt Ideastani culture, too.
Bloodtopia follows Ideastan's culture, science, fashion, etc. But they never allow any immigration, and they don't frequently mate with anybody who isn't also a Bloodtopian. Sometimes their society goes through really damaging long-term trends based on fertility shocks - huge population growth, then decline. After a thousand years, the people of Bloodtopia can all trace their lineage back exactly to people from a thousand years before. There is a long unbroken chain where everybody agrees, these people are Bloodtopians, these other people are not, and never the twain do mix, to any appreciable degree. Bloodtopians all pass their genes on to at least one child, for the most part, so it's rare for any Bloodtopian family line to go totally extinct.
Which one of these societies is more successful?
Which one of these socieities would you rather be a part of?
While continuing nations exist the first scenario doesn't really capture the intended comparison. USA became a superpower while it had an immigration moratorium and with more homogeneous demographics, although certainly not entirely homogeneous when considering even 20th century migration and some preexisting diversity. So when looking at the time that USA first became a superpower, this wasn't a country that became great by inviting the rest of the world but one that was settled by a particular people and of mainly migrants of similar heritage. Before USA, European countries dominated much of the world for a while while demographically their countries were of course made of Europeans. This idea that success necessitates opening one's borders to the world is not accurate. Even economically the results from such policies by Canada and the UK have been highly unimpressive.
You are also neglecting foreign nationalists oppressing the replaced population, or mass migration as a means of not only replacement against a group targeted deliberately for that, but also used by oligarchs who deliberately want to promote a race to the bottom on wages and employee standards for their own benefit. A nation taken over by foreign groups is not really a case of an Ideastan forming, but the experience is of a more destructive nature. The pretense of what is happening being just Ideastan is rather convenient cover for what is really happening.
I would rather my nation to survive and prosper and us not to be screwed over by foreigners out to destroy us, oppress us and make us second class citizens and take over along with local collaborators and locals who are actually perversely motivated by a weirdo foreign nationalism that they identify with. And any oligarchs who want a race to the bottom in wages and work hours at expense of native labor. So I pick the second even with this hypothetical. But even more so when considering the broader implications that come along with either scenarios and what the hypotheticals represent.
While the scenarios are rigged even then I would say:
To influence the world while losing and selling out our soul is a losing Faustian bargain with the devil. And I would rather not make such a deal.
I don't think that is true at all. The USA has never been "homogeneous". Ironically, given much of the rhetoric here, the USA is kind of unique in having been founded as an "ideastan". Anglo, Dutch, French, and Spanish colonials choosing to forsake thier national identities in favor of identifying as colonists.
What French colonials chose to forsake their identity to become American? The Cajuns were willing to be ruled by America(not that we voted for it- Thomas Jefferson bought sovereignty over the land, with cash), but took a surprisingly long time to identify as Americans. There were French scattered on the Mississippi, who likewise did not vote to join America and took generations to assimilate. And the French population of New England were not there voluntarily in the early days, shifting eventually to be economic migrants who identified more with Quebec than New England until after they’d assimilated in the way of economic migrants.
There were some Spanish colonials who chose to join the US, but not many- the annexation of the southwest was largely by conquest, not self determination, and Texas’s Anglo population voted proportionally more for annexation than tejanos(to say nothing of the large number of tejanos who lived in disputed territories which were, once again, conquered).
The Dutch and anglos it seems did choose to become American, albeit I understand the former case had largely assimilated to be anglos first and later chose Americanism.
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