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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.
Except that for most of that time, the vast majority of immigrants were white Western Europeans who were practicing Christians and Protestant Christians at that. Furthermore, the levers of power were reserved for those White Western European Protestants and Western European values, culture, and fashions were the ones enforced socially. Kids read the Western canon.
I don’t think I could consider a civilization founded by Anglo Saxons welcoming Dutch, German, Swedes and Scots immigrants is very much of a melting pot. The founding stock are germanoceltic, and the immigrants are germanoceltic. The current generation is much more diverse than that. We now import Hindus from India, Muslims from MENA, Buddhists from Asia, and Africans. The cultural differences between an Englishman and a Dutchman are tiny compared to the differences between an Englishman and a Pakistani Muslim. And worse, the influx of non-WEIRD immigrants means that transmission or enforcement of western culture and norms is now bigotry. In fact one proves bonifides by publicly disavowing and deconstruction and rejection of the white western culture of the country.
You know blacks make up a huge part of America’s founding stock, right? Like African Americans are not recent immigrants.
A whole bunch of Spanish and Natives too but don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative. 😉
Out of the eight(Dutch, French Canadian, borderer, puritan, Quaker, black, cavalier, native) major groups in the thirteen colonies, blacks were the plurality by far.
For some reason, this fact doesn’t get brought up in ‘founding stock’ discussion.
If you are going to separate out the whites out like that, it is only fair to split the blacks up into their respective ethnolinguistic groups too. In reality, most of of the whites underwent their own ethnogenesis the same way the blacks did.
The colonials themselves would have seen the whites as separate and the blacks as identical and interchangeable.
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I know right? It's almost as if there is an agenda being pushed.
I mean, not to be unpleasant, but we’re talking slaves here, right? Definitionally not really responsible for America’s founding or culture.
People make arguments about Rome but that was a very different case.
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