I can see both sides of the heritage argument--especially given the fact that the WASP brahmins led us to this crisis, but I will save that for another day.
I will just note this irony: the same people who reject it with a white hot fury are also the ones who rend garments and wail over the deportation of illegals who have been here for 15 years.
Rootedness and connection to the nation only matters to the extent they want it to.
Also, on liberals who confuse the French and American revolutionary ideologies...
You know that famous Adams quote about "a Constitution made for a moral and religious people"? It wasn't a speech in Congress. Or at the Convention. It was a letter written to a militia commander in 1798. The date and context are important.
Adams is lamenting the failure of the French Revolution's ideals ("our Country remains untainted with the principles and manners... which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance") and contrasting them with his hopes for the nascent country of which he is President. Within a year of this letter, the aforementioned "principles and manners" having wrecked France, Napoleon will march on Paris.
The only commonality of 1776 and 1789 is Thomas Paine. But the Left (a label ironically derived from the seating arrangement in the French Revolutionary Parliament) has always conflated the two.
The poll graphic is hilarious. The only 2 things a majority of people DON'T think are important for being an American are "being white" and "being Christian". Yet both these likely the most common, bare-minimum criteria accepted at the founding of the country.
Pat Buchanan in the 90's: "A nation is borders, language, and culture." Lose any 1 of them and your country falls apart. The older I get, the smarter Pat appears to have been. Prophets always look like kooks, until they're proven right.
I think if you want civic nationalism actually to be workable, it needs to be done through the framework that a country like Singapore uses. That is, vigorous enforcement of a shared language, culture, and identity in public life. The best example is the state's enforcement of ethnic quotas in housing complexes. You are literally forced to live around people from different ethnic backgrounds and religions. I think Lee Kuan Yew saw the weakness of the American system, where immigrants form ethnic enclaves and only weakly assimilate. He wanted to force a melting pot rather than end up with a salad bowl. Yew was enough of a communitarian to understand the weakness of Ramaswamy's preferred system: that commitment to a broad set of constitutional principles is too thin to actually create the thick bonds needed to form a cohesive society. Singapore made that work on a small scale. However, in a massive country like the United States, creating a managerial state with this level of competence is extremely difficult.
Ultimately, Ramaswamy's argument is entirely self-serving. That is a fair assessment of his motives, given that he is clearly a highly ambitious and driven person who made important connections early on and quickly accrued wealth. He then engaged in obvious self-aggrandizement by running for president with no record and no hope of winning. He did this purely to boost his public profile and have a chance of being given a high-level political appointment in a Republican administration, without having to spend decades building the political or public career typically required to take on such a position. This is just a case where separating the argument's honesty and integrity from the person making it is difficult.
Another reason Singaporean-style multiculturalism would never work is that even liberals would object to people being told by the government who they're supposed to live alongside. When given the choice, liberals always choose to live among other Whites. They claim this isn't racially-motivated, but it doesn't matter - if diversity is that important of a value to them, they'll go out of their way to share living spaces with people of other cultures. By virtue of their choices, liberals make it clear that diversity is just window dressing.
Successful American-style multiculturalism depends on people voluntarily making the choice to live with those of different cultures, but this goes against biological imperatives.
Thoughts? The Dominican Republic infamously made ethnic Haitians prove they've been on their side of the border for at least 3 generations, or be deported.
What is a good cutoff if the Union goes tits up and we Balkanize, 2012? That might be exceptionally generous to the Hispanics, but cuts off most of the Somalis, Afghanis and Indians. If one was to go scorched Earth, 1970? Trying to guess'timate when assimilation ended even in the hyphenated sense.
Allegedly Xi and Putin had a conversation shortly after Ukraine war started where Xi said something like "things are happening that haven't occurred in 100+ years." I knew what he meant, but I thought to myself "in more ways than even he knows." Immigration and the dialog around it are another example.
This whole topic of Heritage Americans is an example. Can you imagine this topic coming up in the GWB admin? They famously told Tom Tancredo not to "darken their door" WRT his restrictionist politics. Now, an immigration moratorium is mainstream on the right and birthright citizenship is a legit topic for discussion. We're openly vilifying bad immigrant groups like Afghans, Somalis, and Haitians and discussing stripping citizenship.
It's like the environment in East Germany around 1989 when everyone finally realized that the guards weren't going to shoot.
Peter Zeihan, unpopular as he is, recently said the transition the U.S. is undergoing is comparable in history only to the decline of the USSR. I think he's not wrong about it. The post-1945, as well as the post-Cold War consensus, is quickly unraveling.
I can see both sides of the heritage argument--especially given the fact that the WASP brahmins led us to this crisis, but I will save that for another day.
I will just note this irony: the same people who reject it with a white hot fury are also the ones who rend garments and wail over the deportation of illegals who have been here for 15 years.
Rootedness and connection to the nation only matters to the extent they want it to.
Also, on liberals who confuse the French and American revolutionary ideologies...
You know that famous Adams quote about "a Constitution made for a moral and religious people"? It wasn't a speech in Congress. Or at the Convention. It was a letter written to a militia commander in 1798. The date and context are important.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
Adams is lamenting the failure of the French Revolution's ideals ("our Country remains untainted with the principles and manners... which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance") and contrasting them with his hopes for the nascent country of which he is President. Within a year of this letter, the aforementioned "principles and manners" having wrecked France, Napoleon will march on Paris.
The only commonality of 1776 and 1789 is Thomas Paine. But the Left (a label ironically derived from the seating arrangement in the French Revolutionary Parliament) has always conflated the two.
The poll graphic is hilarious. The only 2 things a majority of people DON'T think are important for being an American are "being white" and "being Christian". Yet both these likely the most common, bare-minimum criteria accepted at the founding of the country.
Pat Buchanan in the 90's: "A nation is borders, language, and culture." Lose any 1 of them and your country falls apart. The older I get, the smarter Pat appears to have been. Prophets always look like kooks, until they're proven right.
Pat Buchanan is considered a radical, but he's actually the moderate.
I think if you want civic nationalism actually to be workable, it needs to be done through the framework that a country like Singapore uses. That is, vigorous enforcement of a shared language, culture, and identity in public life. The best example is the state's enforcement of ethnic quotas in housing complexes. You are literally forced to live around people from different ethnic backgrounds and religions. I think Lee Kuan Yew saw the weakness of the American system, where immigrants form ethnic enclaves and only weakly assimilate. He wanted to force a melting pot rather than end up with a salad bowl. Yew was enough of a communitarian to understand the weakness of Ramaswamy's preferred system: that commitment to a broad set of constitutional principles is too thin to actually create the thick bonds needed to form a cohesive society. Singapore made that work on a small scale. However, in a massive country like the United States, creating a managerial state with this level of competence is extremely difficult.
Ultimately, Ramaswamy's argument is entirely self-serving. That is a fair assessment of his motives, given that he is clearly a highly ambitious and driven person who made important connections early on and quickly accrued wealth. He then engaged in obvious self-aggrandizement by running for president with no record and no hope of winning. He did this purely to boost his public profile and have a chance of being given a high-level political appointment in a Republican administration, without having to spend decades building the political or public career typically required to take on such a position. This is just a case where separating the argument's honesty and integrity from the person making it is difficult.
Another reason Singaporean-style multiculturalism would never work is that even liberals would object to people being told by the government who they're supposed to live alongside. When given the choice, liberals always choose to live among other Whites. They claim this isn't racially-motivated, but it doesn't matter - if diversity is that important of a value to them, they'll go out of their way to share living spaces with people of other cultures. By virtue of their choices, liberals make it clear that diversity is just window dressing.
Successful American-style multiculturalism depends on people voluntarily making the choice to live with those of different cultures, but this goes against biological imperatives.
Cool, I'm an A- on the Heritage scale.
Thoughts? The Dominican Republic infamously made ethnic Haitians prove they've been on their side of the border for at least 3 generations, or be deported.
What is a good cutoff if the Union goes tits up and we Balkanize, 2012? That might be exceptionally generous to the Hispanics, but cuts off most of the Somalis, Afghanis and Indians. If one was to go scorched Earth, 1970? Trying to guess'timate when assimilation ended even in the hyphenated sense.
Some Hispanics are European
Allegedly Xi and Putin had a conversation shortly after Ukraine war started where Xi said something like "things are happening that haven't occurred in 100+ years." I knew what he meant, but I thought to myself "in more ways than even he knows." Immigration and the dialog around it are another example.
This whole topic of Heritage Americans is an example. Can you imagine this topic coming up in the GWB admin? They famously told Tom Tancredo not to "darken their door" WRT his restrictionist politics. Now, an immigration moratorium is mainstream on the right and birthright citizenship is a legit topic for discussion. We're openly vilifying bad immigrant groups like Afghans, Somalis, and Haitians and discussing stripping citizenship.
It's like the environment in East Germany around 1989 when everyone finally realized that the guards weren't going to shoot.
Peter Zeihan, unpopular as he is, recently said the transition the U.S. is undergoing is comparable in history only to the decline of the USSR. I think he's not wrong about it. The post-1945, as well as the post-Cold War consensus, is quickly unraveling.