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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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This seems like it touches upon the same topics as all the secession/independence debates do - who is obliged to get out of the way? Do the people who want nothing to do with the secessionist project have the right to a state of their own, and who has the obligation to get out of the way for that? The idea that any group of people can consensually obtain their own clay on which they only answer to themselves is appealing enough to me in theory, but the practice of it runs into insurmountable problems. Any such group seldom already controls a contiguous piece of land, and fair division algorithms (forgetting for a moment about their asymptotic complexity) only work if the subdivision valuations are independent (so you don't have preferences like "I want parcel A iff I can have parcel B"), which is basically never the case for land.

In concrete terms, you can't build a viable country by aggregating the land held by all ethnonationalists in Europe - so either there is no ethnostate, or someone will have to move, or someone will have to forfeit their freedom of association. All to often, secessionists just wind up arbitrarily privileging their cause - their enemies should get out of the way of their clubhouse state, but they shouldn't have to get out of the way of the enemy enclave stuck in the clubhouse. (See e.g. North Kosovo) This is also what I wind up hearing when these people talk about "white racial solidarity" (as opposed to a more narrowly writ "solidarity among white nationalists") - it sounds suspiciously like a demand that I should have solidarity with them, and join their ethnostate against my will.

Also,

An Irishman can become an American, but a Nigerian simply can’t.

I'm not sure what the working definition of "American" is here; Black Africans have been part of the continent's population since before anything resembling the author's presumable definition of "American" emerged. If he means "White American", then sure, but then the statement is so tautological as to say nothing ("my favoured grouping is defined in such a way that Nigerians can never join").

I'm not sure what the working definition of "American" is here;

Probably, the colonists of the 13 colonies which founded the United States of America, and their descendants. You know, the same thing they meant when they founded the country, and what they literally enshrined in the founding document.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I respect this argument, but it also means that America has been dead for 150 years by now.

1861 + 150 = 2011, the math checks out.