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Immigration Hard-Liners Can (and do!) Appreciate Diversity and Foreign Countries

Did you know that a Presidential candidate surprised everyone by going to Mexico and wishing their people well? Not only that, he came back to our country and gave a speech that did not pander to Mexican immigrants, but rather laid out in clear and concise terms that coming into the United States illegally is something that will not be tolerated in a future administration headed by this candidate and that the United States has a duty to his current citizens first and foremost and needs to design immigration policy with their needs in mind.

Now, whether Donald Trump, the candidate in question, follows through on these promises if he were to become President; I do think two important points should be made and this is a great time to make them. I am not the first to note the first point, but it bears repeating again and again – a hard line stance on immigration does not mean you bear any ill will toward individual immigrants and/or the countries they hail from. As Steve Sailer recently put it:

Via Frontpage Magazine, here is the opening from Trump’s August 31st immigration speech in Phoenix:
I’ve just landed having returned from a very important and special meeting with the President of Mexico, a man I like and respect very much. And a man who truly loves his country, Mexico.

And, by the way, just like I am a man who loves my country, the United States.

We agree on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns, and people across our border, and to put the cartels out of business.

We also discussed the great contributions of Mexican-American citizens to our two countries, my love for the people of Mexico, and the leadership and friendship between Mexico and the United States. It was a thoughtful and substantive conversation and it will go on for awhile. And, in the end we’re all going to win. Both countries, we’re all going to win.

Trump’s Mexico trip was a huge PR triumph simply because the Establishment’s theory that Immigration Restriction = Hate is so low-brow, childish, and hate-driven. Simply by wishing Mexicans in Mexico well, Trump exposed the stupidity of the elite view.

Mark Krikorian, National Review’s immigration expert, echoed Sailer’s point in a blog post from today:

But perhaps the most encouraging part (other than the long-overdue critique of legal immigration) was the end to Mexico-bashing. Both in his successful visit with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto earlier in the day and in the prefatory comments of the Phoenix speech, Trump stressed that being pro-America doesn’t mean you’re anti-Mexico. You couldn’t really see it on TV, but Sessions and Giuliani were even wearing “Make Mexico Great Again Also” hats.

This is important for two reasons. Morally, it’s just the right thing to do. A true patriot loves his country without hating anyone else’s; even Japan and Germany, against which we fought a pitiless war, were not sown with salt after our victory, but rebuilt and befriended. It is especially important that a nationalist campaign stress this point, so as to lead its supporters away from the temptation of chauvinism.

The second reason is specific to our neighbor to the south. Mexico is the most important country in the world to us, after Canada. Nothing that happens in Ukraine or Syria or Burma or Swaziland is remotely as important to us as what happens in Mexico. As Trump said at the Mexico City press conference, “A strong, prosperous, and vibrant Mexico is in the best interest of the United States.” I would go further; the continued development of Mexico into a first-world industrial democracy should be one of the top two goals of U.S. foreign policy, second only to the avoidance of nuclear war.

My second point, which is related to the first point, is that I think a world with strong borders and individually flourishing countries is a world that cultivates and nourishes diversity of human populations better than the opposite (chaotic borders and multi-ethnic empires.) For example, a strong Japan that guards its borders and restricts immigration will be a unique Japan – if you value Japanese culture, heritage and history then why would you want to see Japan overrun with foreigners, changing the essence of what Japan is (rather than Japan changing over time organically, like any culture changes.) Likewise, why are the Kurdish people viewed so tragically in the West? Because they have not had a country of their own, they’ve been at the mercy of others to protect them (or worse, do them great harm) and have suffered indignities over the years just to try and preserve their culture and history (e.g. fighting the Turkish state to teach their children in school using their own language.) The Kurds with their own borders are a people who can control their own destiny and protect their own heritage – and suddenly outsiders can come visit (or not, if rugged mountains aren’t your thing) and enjoy Kurdish culture in the same way they would visit Poland or Portugal or Peru – to enjoy the culture, the history, and the sites of those respective countries.

One closing comment on these two points – is America somehow immune from this need for borders because the American idea embraces racial/ethnic groups from around the world? I would say no – I have discussed in the past that while I think it is true that we are exceptional in many respects from other countries because immigrants from around the world have come here, assimilated, and become quintessential Americans (in greater numbers than most countries); I also think we owe a debt to our Anglo ancestors who settled this country and for the most part were the ones who created our institutions and unique (for the time) system of government. Assimilation and integration into our ways of life matter and I think we cannot ignore the challenges or difficulties of assimilating people that come from cultures that are significantly different from England or more broadly, Western Europe. As Pat Buchanan so memorably said many years ago:

“If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?”

Comments (89)

world with strong borders
But why the world did not always had strong borders? i) Lack of strong central authorities that would maintain strong borders. Thus, to have strong borders you need strong central govts with perhaps concomitant loss in subsidiarity. ii) Solidarity across the borders.Isn't it desirable? Europe had mixed populations all over save in British isles. It took two world wars to produce unmixed populations. But again natural solidarity of the Europeans has led to population mixing. You have Polish populations in England, Romanians in Germany and so on. Is it bad?
world that cultivates and nourishes diversity of human populations
Austrian Empire, Russian Empire. British India.

Bedarz,

I think the answer to your first question is actually simpler -- technology was such that most people didn't travel very far. So where you were born and raised was where you lived. A medieval German peasant didn't have to worry about borders or protecting his culture from neighboring French or Polish kingdoms (minus the occasional barbarian invasion from time to time.)

As for solidarity across borders -- again, I welcome cooperation, trade, and friendship with our neighbors and allies across the globe -- that doesn't mean they should all be allowed to come live in our country! I'm not sure what you mean about Europe having mixed populations -- that's not what the historical and/or current genetic evidence suggests. Yes, there were empires as you point out, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a Serbia within the Austrian Empire that was made up (mostly) of Serbs who actually yearned to be free of the Austrian yoke (hello Franz Ferdinand!) And your other examples of Empires (British and Russian) are similar -- the British didn't erase the distinctive identity of India when they took control (although they did bequeath to India many excellent British customs), rather they controlled the Indian country using their own people and Indian subjects. Russia did much the same with their land-locked empire. There was always a Kazakhstan and Kazak people, whether it was occupied by Russia or not.

The premise of this post is certainly true.

There is a somewhat more uncomfortable corollary that I'm sure Jeff has witnessed: It is that a (at least nominal) appreciation of cultural diversity and foreign countries is compatible with an enormous amount of hostility toward foreigners if any of them make the slightest attempt to come to one's own country, *and sometimes even* hostility toward their distant descendants together with the absurd proposal that these descendants should "go back" to a country with which, in fact, they have no cultural ties whatsoever.

We've both seen it. It's this, "I'll appreciate you and your kind of people as long as you stay far, far away from me and my kind of people."

In those types of racialist groups, such "appreciation" is, in my opinion, a rather transparent and almost childish pretense.

Lydia,

You are quite right, especially when you say that for some folks, "appreciation of cultural diversity and foreign countries is compatible with an enormous amount of hostility toward foreigners if any of them make the slightest attempt to come to one's own country, *and sometimes even* hostility toward their distant descendants together with the absurd proposal that these descendants should "go back" to a country with which, in fact, they have no cultural ties whatsoever."

First, as you suggest, I wonder if these people really do appreciate cultural diversity and/or foreign cultures with such an attitude. But second, let me just state for the record that it is absurd and crazy to demand a well-assimilated third generation Japanese-American go back to "their country." I'm sorry, but their country is the United States and they are my fellow citizens and they have more in common with me and my family than anyone back in Japan. The fact remains that we are a country of certain ideals and do have a naturalization process and I think that we are pretty good at assimilating non-Anglo foreigners in manageable numbers. I also think, as I said in the original post, that we'll always have an easier time with certain foreign people than others given cultural compatibilities. But that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't take in immigrants from around the globe as long as they are screened and can contribute to the country's common good and posterity.

Bedarz, the root question is this, I think: do "a people" have a moral right to keep their culture intact and functioning, even in the face of pressure from outsiders who are not members of "this people" to alter it for their (the outsiders) benefit?

According to Pope Benedict XVI (and many others, of course) there is a simple answer: Yes.

Of course there are nuances, limitations, and qualifiers.

The critical observation is that the MERE PRESENCE of outsiders with different cultures creates tension on the culture and pressure toward change.

The implication of this observation with the moral right is that a people also have a moral right to limit the effect of outsiders to create "inside" pressure to change by limiting how many outsiders are allowed to live in and amongst them, either as visitors or migrants. Whether this people is a huge nation or a small, Russia or Armenia (or Jeff's example of Kurds), will help determine the extent to which the activity of keeping outsiders impact within limits is a primarily a remote / central government role, or a more local one. A city-state like Monaco (or, much larger, Liechtenstein) doesn't need a large, distant, subsidiarity-eating central government to attend to its need to remain "its own self". For a large nation, ANY purpose that must run across the entire nation and be handled with near-uniformity must necessarily be handled by the large national government, and by definition that government must be distinct from the local government. To say that this is a "loss" in subsidiarity requires saying, (without reason) that serving this purpose ought to be handled at a lower / local level, for the definition of subsidiarity includes within it the notion of "as needed to achieve the due governmental purpose".

Please note that nothing about the observation above says that the presence of outsiders is BAD. Tension on your culture is tension: it can be for good or for bad, depending on many particulars. Tension on your muscles is an opportunity to strengthen your muscles - unless the force exceeds your capacity and it rips a muscle. Tension can be used for growth, it can create damage. Small amounts of tension are usually unavoidable, but large amounts are often due to factors that are avoidable - if you have a right to enact rules that limit the presence of the outsiders that present the most common pathway for those tensions.

However, I have come to believe, tentatively, that the US made a series of enormous errors in constructing its system of immigration / citizenship. In order to support subsidiarity, it ought to be a truism that citizenship "in" the US occurs precisely through (and is constituted of) the citizenship "of" a state (or territory or possession). Even if the US via constitutional rules mandated certain norms applicable to all states about minimum rules for citizenship, each state should be its own entity for citizenship, and it ought to be a MUCH bigger deal in ceasing to be a citizen of state X to be a citizen of state Y. Ceasing to be a member of state X should require, at a minimum, actual and direct notice to the state, (along with notice to that state of intention to become a citizen of the new state). It ought to be legally impossible, for example, to marry in a state that is NOT the state of citizenship of either party, without jumping through a bunch of hoops (such as, for example, establishing that you have met ALL of the requirements of being married in the state of citizenship, so that the conferral of marriage (the ceremony) actually occurs under the auspices of BOTH states, not just the state of the ceremony.) The existing structure makes it so that there is nothing real about any "citizen of the state of Virginia" that would be distinct from "citizen of the US and resident in the state of Virginia." I think this is subsidiarity-defeating.

Who is it being told to "go back"? Are Mexicans claiming immigrants should return to Mexico? Or are we talking about a reconquista?

Mark, what I have in mind are right-wing racialists who are implying that those of this or that ethnic heritage in the U.S. should "go back" to the country of origin of their ancestors. Or that this would be better or that advocating it is the only way to uphold our own heritage, or something to that effect.

Well that's a fringe thing if ever there was. I've lived most of my adult life in the Southwest, some of that in deep South TX and worked in Mexico for 5 years and traveled across the country extensively. I've never heard it mentioned except as a joke. It lives in leftist academic departments, fiction writers, and foreign agitators. There was the Zimmermann Telegram and then a certain Russian satellite went to the well again recently.

But Tony, the understanding of subsidiarity you're advancing doesn't conform to human nature. I can't think of any global instances through time where this would have been a popular idea. So someone would have to impose it by force. Sometimes rivalries or hatreds are such that people don't want to cross borders though. Lacking that, people want to see or experience the unique things a given region or nation has to offer.

But I think originally immigration was governed by the states, to the extent that it was at all. I could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

But I think originally immigration was governed by the states, to the extent that it was at all. I could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

Not really. Article I, section 8, clause 4, "The Congress shall have power...to establish a uniform rule of naturalization..."

Well federal law trumps state law on the matter. Even the Declaration listed Britain's restrictions on immigration to the Colonies as one of their grievances. But that doesn't change the fact that it most cases back in the day it was a local matter.

Here's the late justice Scalia: "In light of the predominance of federal immigration restrictions in modern times, it is easy to lose sight of the States' traditional role in regulating immigration — and to overlook their sovereign prerogative to do so."

I've gone and read that opinion, and a lot depends on one's use of the term "immigration." What Scalia is getting at is that states can keep non-citizen aliens out of their own territories as desired. However, he realizes that if someone can get into a different state and become a citizen through the naturalization process set up by the federal govt., the privileges and immunities clause kicks in. He even goes so far as to say that if Congress expressly says that certain people must be admitted, the states have to acquiesce. The case before the court was one in which Congress hadn't said that, but the court (because the federal government wanted it to do so) was reading in such a meaning into the federal law. This latter point (about explicit statement in federal law) may be a concession on Scalia's part to something that has developed since "back in the day," but in any event, it was always possible for the federal government to have lax citizenship standards and for states to be forced, indirectly, to go along with them. It just wasn't de facto as much of an issue. And certainly I would agree that if a state shared a _border_ with another country they had full sovereignty to police that border and not allow immigration over it willy nilly.

Mark:

But I think originally immigration was governed by the states, to the extent that it was at all. I could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

Lydia:

Not really. Article I, section 8, clause 4, "The Congress shall have power...to establish a uniform rule of naturalization..."

To go back even farther: in the colonies, in the early years of each colony there were few formal "immigration laws" as such - they were immigrants themselves - but they exercised a certain 'power' to control matters by driving out unwanted sorts. Later, (as I understand it) each colony had officials who registered the formal status of newcomers becoming citizens (and / or subjects) of the colony (or commonwealth, or whatever). While eventually all the colonies were operating under British standards, their pursuit of these certainly varied in effect, based on extremely varied histories. And certainly, from the date of the Declaration to the first acts of the new constitutional United States, they operated in the nature of free and independent sovereign states with their own rules of citizenship.

To be clear, I am not claiming that we have bungled up what the Constitution said. My thesis is that in drafting the Constitution, we (the Founders) made a bit of a mistake. To some extent. (This should not be surprising: the idea of subsidiarity had never been formally stated, it did not even have a name at the time. They were inventing it on the spot, and not primarily in theoretical terms, but as the happenstance implication of hammering out a series of compromises between US powers and state powers, culminating in such things as "the Great Compromise" of 2 houses of Congress rooted in a different KIND of "representing" the states. If they made a few mistakes, we should not be morally revolted at the idea, as we would at the notion that "Christ was wrong in some places").

I suppose that it is rather necessary for a nation-state of the sort that was being founded in 1787-9 to have some uniformity of rules for this. You have to have minimum standards under which to operate, for instance: how can you tell what is "visiting" vs "immigration" vs an "invasion"? The federal gov't is responsible for repelling invasions, and it has to be able to say what is an invasion. It has to be able to "secure the borders", and this implies the capacity to run a border system to some degree.

On the other hand, it is not necessary for said nation-state to have complete uniformity of rules. We have an interstate system of roads, but each state runs its own licensing and traffic rules. All of the states manage to run their driving laws with a certain degree of consistency, WITHOUT there being a federal system of traffic laws. I submit that it would be also possible to have a federal / state mesh with uniformity for what constitutes allowable vs not-allowable entry, without having uniformity of rules for what constitutes "citizen of Montana" or "citizen of North Dakota" in _every_ respect. It is possible, for example, to have federal naturalization law that says things like "state law cannot delay granting 'naturalization' citizenship beyond 15 years assuming all other conditions X, Y, and Z are met", even if Montana requires 15 years and Maine requires 10. It is possible to have Montana state laws that specify how to become a Montana citizen if you had previously been a Nebraskan citizen, such that (a) under federal law, Montana cannot deny residency to the Nebraskan, but (b) can require said residency for X period "not to exceed 12 months" as per another federal law (assuming appropriate other conditions are met) before he satisfies the requirements of being a "citizen of Montana". Before completing that, he would be a "citizen of Nebraska resident in Montana."

The reality we have now makes a (mild) mockery of subsidiarity. If federal law can completely control every and all aspects of "who is a citizen of Ohio", then Ohio has no control over it, and as a result there is an evanescent sort of reality to being an Ohioan - or to there being Ohio. Which is just what we see in so many people so rootless that they have trouble managing to even SAY what state they are citizens of, much less able to evoking any actual sentiment for the state as such. (Just as we see uber-liberals who repudiate the notion of being "citizens of X country" in contradistinction to belonging to another country, preferring to be "citizens of the world".) Such is a picture of failing subsidiarity, failing statehood. It points to a future (not very far distant) where the states will be formally just physical locations within the US, exercising nothing but powers and offices "granted" to them by the US government.

Not sure I fully agree with you, Tony. Generally (and I'm inclined to think rightly) the privileges and immunities clause is taken to mean, at a minimum, freedom of travel across state lines. State borders aren't supposed to be the same as country borders, so that I can be required to have (say) a visa to drive from Michigan to Indiana.

If Indiana and Michigan had different rules of citizenship, it's difficult to say why Montana should let someone in even if he is a citizen of the U.S.

Not to mention the importance of some standardization for voting for federal offices.

But that's just it: travel across state lines within the country ISN'T a matter of citizenship: you don't have to become a citizen of Michigan to pass over from Indiana. As I suggested, minimum federal rules are perfectly adequate for that: laws that demand citizens of one state can travel to any other state.

If Indiana and Michigan had different rules of citizenship, it's difficult to say why Montana should let someone in even if he is a citizen of the U.S.

Precisely because, as being a citizen of Indiana, he is a citizen of the US and (by federal law) allowed to travel to any state. Which I am saying is perfectly reasonable (and wouldn't be affected by my suggested change). What I would change is neither permission to travel, nor permission to try to establish new residency, but origination of identity as citizens, grounding first in state, and implied in that, that states have rights to express their own standards (within limits) on how to finalize becoming a citizen of the state when a citizen of another state. If (as subsidiarity implies) citizen flows upwards from the state to the federal, then the "privileges and immunities" applicable to being a citizen of the US arise through citizenship in a state. Those privileges will apply everywhere you are a citizen of the US - which is throughout the US - even when you travel out of your state. But not all of the implications of becoming a citizen of a NEW state, from having been a citizen of your old state, are simply "privileges and immunities of US citizenship", (as state privileges are not), and should thus be at least in part regulated by state rules - within limits.

Not to mention the importance of some standardization for voting for federal offices.

Interesting that you should mention that. Examine that for a minute. We didn't even HAVE a standardized federal voting age before 1970. We went 180 years allowing states to differ in voting age even for federal elections, and no great evil came of it. The push for it came in the 1960s, almost completely tied to student activism, wishing to have more college students able to vote the liberal ticket (because almost all colleges are breeding grounds for liberalism). It has been, almost uniformly, a disaster for the cause of GOOD voting - i.e. people who vote for good, sound reasons (whether for or against my preferred policies).

It seems to me almost a truism that in different places different local conditions will affect maturation, (especially before the age of TV), and this would naturally affect the age at which a person is plausibly capable of being a good voter. Farm life vs. city life, just as an example, and independency (getting a job and your own place) vs dependency (remaining in school) will greatly affect the time of maturation. It would be silly to suggest that it is wrong to allow these to result in variation in voting age.

I am not trying to say this is point of view is definitively mandated by conservatism, I am suggesting it as more fitted to subsidiarity than our current practice.

He even goes so far as to say that if Congress expressly says that certain people must be admitted, the states have to acquiesce.

I already volunteered that it was received and correct understanding and it was ruled on officially in 1875 of course. I'll admit to using the phrase "was governed" ambiguously. I only intended to be referring to practice.

I've gone and read that opinion, and a lot depends on one's use of the term "immigration." What Scalia is getting at is that states can keep non-citizen aliens out of their own territories as desired.

I don't think parsing Scalia's decision is necessary or even helpful here since I think he's expressing a pretty modest general statement that rests on verifiable historical details. Moreover, in the context of the question as I see it, it isn't just the definition of "immigration" that could be clarified. The same can be said of "citizen". Additionally, you mentioned keeping out "non-citizen aliens" but perhaps you meant "non-resident aliens".

Before the Immigration Act of 1891 federal acts were mostly about naturalization and labor. It wasn’t until 1940's Alien Registration Act.that foreign nationals were even required to register.

It seems to me we don't disagree on much of anything, but if you want to argue over the semantics of what is meant by not being "de facto as much of an issue", that would make one of us. :)

On subsidiarity, I think the problem isn't standardization but arbitration. It appeals more to French bureaucrats than American citizens. The examples we have of it being applied make equality before the law look in comparison like the minimal commonsense standard it is.

Lydia:

We've both seen it. It's this, "I'll appreciate you and your kind of people as long as you stay far, far away from me and my kind of people."

In those types of racialist groups, such "appreciation" is, in my opinion, a rather transparent and almost childish pretense.

The pretense is needed because of the dominant culture, just as many others doff their caps to progressive idols to avoid getting unpersoned.

But that's all right, I'm sure that in years to come you will have to put up with much less of this pretence as more and more people will drop the fiction and straightforwardly tell the outsiders to 'bugger off'.

Mark, read GJ's comment and note how it relates to what I brought up earlier in the thread. I wasn't going to go into this much, because I don't really have much concern about whether you realize that white separatist racialism is making a comeback these days. If you didn't know that, it's an unpleasant subject, and I didn't really want to take the time to illustrate to you that this fringy view is becoming more and more common (unfortunately) in 2016. But since someone came right into the thread, I figure I might as well point it out.

I am curious about something that GJ's comments bring to mind: the relative importance of race vs place of origin vs culture, to those who would "tell the outsiders to 'bugger off' ".

Let us suppose, to take an example, a white couple who had one girl and then could not have any more kids (assume a hysterectomy) and wish to adopt, and having trouble getting an equally white child in adoption, they adopt a light-chocolate Jamaican infant born of indigent (and unmarried) Jamaican immigrants here. The infant David, one month old, is raised in an entirely white family in a white suburb and goes to a white school, and imbibes (with his family and peers) all white perspectives and tastes which are natural to his environment. He also is made a citizen formally at the earliest legal moment.

Along comes the kind of person GJ refers to, who wishes that "those outsiders would bugger off". Let us suppose also that this sentiment becomes so common that SOME laws are passed that actively work to help push that wish through, so that at least some of the people who are the objects of their ire are encouraged / urged / pushed / forced to leave.

My question, then, is whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire? And, if so, whether the root reason is his notional place of origin (from parents from Jamaica), or his biological race as partially white and partially others (including both African black and native Caribbean). Or, whether being not only a citizen from before any possible memory on his part, but also _culturally_ indistinguishable from his older sister, he is not an "outsider" in their sense, but "one of us", in part because his mind-set is completely that of a white boy? (Please note that this question is different from asking whether David's bio parents should have been here to begin with, or should have conceived him as they did, and the latter questions are not necessarily germane to my question.)

Tony, I will just mention, possibly relevant to your question, that contemporary racialists tend to be *very* negative about international adoption. To such an extent that "pro-adoption" has come to be a term of disapprobation among them.

I'm tracking with you now Lydia. I misunderstood what you were saying earlier. I was speaking of something different that was a "fringe element". Yes, I'm aware that separatist racialism is making a comeback, sadly.

>> My question, then, is whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire?

In that case each person might differ in their attitudes. But it’s irrelevant. It’s harmful to individuals and society for a whole host of reasons in any case. Some would do like Obama did and dismiss the mother of his mother who raised him as “an average white person” and identify with the father who abandoned him because of the cultural politics of a better perceived identity.

Viewing race as a feature of biology hasn't actually been the scholarly consensus for a number of decades now. A cursory review of the literature would easily show that. Most view it as a social construction, as do I. Not that that would settle all questions and make problems attributable to race go away (it wouldn’t), but at least you’d think people might be interested in knowing what they’re talking about. But it’s a tough sell for the simple reason that there’s something in it for everyone.

The left of center want to use it for the reasons we all know. The grievance industry. But they don't even care that much if it's biological or not, since they can an make use of cultural racism equally well. The dirty secret is that there’s a pretty large contingent of those on the Right who need to think of race as biological. There’s a huge overlap between communitarianism and postmodernism. They think the classic view of man the political and rational animal is bunk. No, biology is what really counts for them, because there is nothing left in the postmodern wasteland. Our language is polluted with it. Mother-child “bonding”? That idea was based on animal studies. Goats I think. You could go on and on with the biological metaphors and animal studies from past decades (that have since been disproved) in attempts to understand human nature that don’t square with Christian or classic understandings of what man really is.

I know some will object and say “Hey, that can't be true; the average Christian is great with adoption”. Well everyone is as long as it fits a legal or romantic narrative. As long as they don’t need to think about it. Outside of that the moral reasoning fails. Then neighbor-love looks like some form of universal love. The universal and particular aspects of human love aren’t fully distinguishable outside of the classic understanding of man as rational animal. This is the Greco-Roman and Christian understanding. Biology or quasi-biological understandings or metaphors seem very natural to people in thrall to postmodern ideas. Sexual and family politics doesn't work dontcha know? Everything you need is given. You don't even need to think about it. Whatever else that is, at bottom it’s a lack of confidence, or rejection, in the classic understanding of man. And that is why the principle of neighbor love–in practice–can be every bit as controversial today as in Christ’s day, even by otherwise decent God-fearing people. It's always something.

Someday before I die I’d like to hear a savvy pastor update the parable of the Good Samaritan for modern times where they ditch the “people group” or racial interpretations they love so much, and catalog the modern reasons people look away. But I won’t be surprised if I don't.

Mark,

I'm pretty sure you and I have gone back and forth on this before, but when you say:

"The dirty secret is that there’s a pretty large contingent of those on the Right who need to think of race as biological. There’s a huge overlap between communitarianism and postmodernism. They think the classic view of man the political and rational animal is bunk."

I just want to note that:

(1) I'm someone who thinks race is indeed biological but came to that view via evidence, not through some sort of strange "need";

(2) I accept the classic view of man as a political and rational animal and indeed go further -- I accept the Christian view of man as created first and foremost in God's image.

This imago dei is the most important idea that should drive us as we think through ethics and even as we formulate public policy; giving prudential concerns to other considerations of race and identity.

In that case each person might differ in their attitudes. But it’s irrelevant. It’s harmful to individuals and society for a whole host of reasons in any case.

Mark, what is the antecedent to which the above "It's" points in the third sentence?

I daresay that plenty of racialists on the right would object primarily to the presence of "outsiders" on the basis of race understood as biology, because they consider race understood as biology to be objective rather than a mish-mash of subjective claims. Some of them, however, I suspect would be uncomfortable saying that point blank (others, not at all). I wonder what GJ would say. (I suspect that your idea, that the notion "race is (even partially) biological" is now a discarded theory, is a position still mainly extant in elitist circles, and has not percolated down to the minds of the rest as an appropriate explaining proposition for legal and political function.)

One of the perennial problems with race as the foundation for distinguishing "us" from "them" (in terms of forcing away the "thems") is the existence of children who are 1/2, or 1/4, or 1/8, or 1/nth "them" and (n-1)/n "us". Eventually even a rigid racialist must admit that the difference is negligible, but there is of course no principled basis for setting the denominator at N rather than N-1. "Let not my Lord grow angry with me, but what if there are only 40 just men...?"

Lydia, one of the reasons I constructed my example as I did was to avoid the adoption across national boundaries: the Jamaican bio parents were here and the child was born here. I know too many kids whose background is too muddled to make much sense out of their identity STRICTLY on the grounds of who their great great-grandparents were racially or nationally.

Lydia, one of the reasons I constructed my example as I did was to avoid the adoption across national boundaries: the Jamaican bio parents were here and the child was born here.

Right, so I can't say that I *know for sure* what the race-nationalists would say. But my strong impression is that for many of them the hatred for international adoption is very much racially motivated, hence, it would be hard really to think of David as "one of us." Naturally, too, they are completely against birth citizenship. (And don't get me wrong. I can think of rational arguments against automatic birth citizenship, but I'm just not obsessive about it.) So, if one thinks birth citizenship is really bad, David *shouldn't* have been an American citizen, in which case it *should* have counted as a transnational adoption, etc.

Yes, I think you are right on those points. I considered supposing instead that the child David was the offspring of a white American who raped a mixed-race Jamaican, here. Then, of course, the "birth citizenship" issue is muddled too, but generally would come out as "is a citizen" on most people's tickets even without adoption, or at least might. And, too, would not be a baby whose existence is not due to the action of a bona fide American.

Mark, what is the antecedent to which the above "It's" points in the third sentence?

The quote: "My question, then, is whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire?"

I probably should have left it alone since I don't really get the idea of calculating grievances like this. The race one is particularly poisonous it seems we all agree. I get the supposed Burkean idea where we're microanalyzing this abstractly. But never mind my comments. On second thought I don't want to get involved in that.

I would say though that the modern concept of race has been shown long ago not to distinguish "us" from "them". That is in fact the reason race hasn't been a scientifically viable idea since WWII. The in-group and out-group differences don't line up in such a way to so distinguish people. So it isn't used now to distinguish us/them, but to try to account for human variation.

It's folk taxonomy, not science. Las Casas refuted the mistaken idea about the phrase "natural slave" in Aristotle in 1551 in the famous debate in Valladolid, and the judgment has held up to better and later scholars.

See a terse description of the absurdity of it as used in practice in Galileo wept, A critical assessment of the use of race of forensic anthropology.

“… it is sobering to realize how many scholars with biological training still uncritically subscribe to the race concept. It is based on the implicit assumption that certain physical characteristics (skin color, hair form, nose shape, etc.) do not assort independently on the genetic level, and furthermore that such traits can in turn be used to define the race to which they belong. Such a tautology, when revealed as such, is clearly absurd."

Mark,

When you are getting your race science from anthropologists (in general) you are in trouble. They have a bad track record (see Stephen Jay Gould and the Samuel Morton fiasco) I'd recommend instead getting a copy of the 10,000 Year Explosion or reading this free book:

http://openpsych.net/OBG/2015/06/the-nature-of-race/

Jeff, I tend to be a bit more thorough than that. In fact, it might even be fair to say I'm not constitutionally capable of accepting a single or even too few multiple sources on any damn thing at all. That's why I'm such an exasperating person. :) The literature is quite extensive going back long before we were born. I just used that reference because I thought it had a few pithy and easy to grasp few passages that revealed that it is in fact folk taxonomy.

Find me any scientific discipline that isn't questioning or outright calling for the updating their public communication to at least reflect that most competent scientists across fields don't think race is a valid biological concept. Genetics researchers, geneticists, you name it.

Fuerst is a joke. This statement at the top is a howler:

"Early 18th century race concepts are discussed in detail and are shown to be both sensible and not greatly dissimilar to modern concepts."

What other 18th century scientific ideas aren't greatly dissimilar to what we believe today other than planetary orbits?

Based on my experience, race denialism has two types:

1) My liberal professor says it doesn't exist (or equivalent)

2) Folk conceptions of race are in general terrible for methodical scientific use. Which means there's no such things as race.

The latter is argued by Mark (and others in that Scientific American article he references). My rejoinder would be 'when the hell did the lack of any consistent layman conception of X form a disproof of X?' 'White' and 'black' are "too crude", sure, but this does not exclude the possibility of finer and more accurate distinctions and categories.

>> race denialism ... there's no such things as race.

No GJ, that isn't what I or any scientists are saying. At this point in history the question is whether it is a biological category or a social one.

>> My liberal professor says it doesn't exist (or equivalent)

Say GJ, not sure what you mean by "or equivalent". What does the guy really think about race, and what subject does he teach?

Sigh.

Based on my experience, [biological] race denialism has two types:

1) My liberal professor says it doesn't exist (or equivalent)

2) Folk conceptions of [biological] race are in general terrible for methodical scientific use. Which means there's no such things as [biological] race.

The latter is argued by Mark (and others in that Scientific American article he references). My rejoinder would be 'when the hell did the lack of any consistent layman conception of X form a disproof of X?' 'White' and 'black' are "too crude", sure, but this does not exclude the possibility of finer and more accurate distinctions and categories.

Mark:

Say GJ, not sure what you mean by "or equivalent".

There are two type of race denialists. One is the uninformed person who swallows what an authority person declares (e.g. 'my liberal professor says it doesn't exist, it's merely a sociological construct etc etc').

The other is the pseudoscientific person, who from the observation that a black/white schema is not a good biological classification deduces that 'since this one model of race is bad, there is no good model of race, so there is no race ergo lalalala I can't hear you!'

(I trust I don't have to insert [biological] this time).

GJ, it sounds like your professor is a composite character. Were you any chance Obama's ghost writer? On your 2nd idea that people reject biological classifications since black/white schemas aren't sufficiently perfect, that is a logical fallacy called the fallacy of the beard. If your professor is making that argument he isn't very bright. More likely you're projecting this fallacy onto your composite Liberal.

Like I said, racialism has something for both ends of the political spectrum for entirely different reasons. I don't think we need any more evidence that many on the Right are more wedded to biological race classifications than those on the Left. Not because they're racists or anything like that, but because with postmodern and communitarian lack of a belief in the classic Western idea of man the political (social) rational animal, biology is the only thing left to differentiate anyone. Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood" was about this retreat, a commercial failure I think.

We're at the end of the line here. Peace out.

Viewing race as a feature of biology hasn't actually been the scholarly consensus for a number of decades now.

Which is completely irrelevant. The people who drive much of what Jeff is talking about aren't scholars.

And is completely irrelevant. Whether scholars agree with each other or not, what matters is whether the thesis is true. If what they say is true, then it is true for reasons which are true independent of the degree of consensus so far achieved in academia.

And is completely irrelevant. Viewing "race" as as a heritable or quasi-heritable feature is not at all uncommon, nor uncommon with scholars. Take, for instance, the people who in ancient times located an adequate reason to distinguish between Abraham's great great-grandsons through Ishmael, and his great great-grandsons through Isaac, solely based on family genealogy, regardless of "biology." Using "race" thus in the ancient sense, under which Greeks from Argos would distinguish themselves from the race of Macedonians, or Romans of 600 BC from Latium would distinguish themselves from the race of Etruscans from (latter day) Sienna is a sufficient basis to speak of Jeff's topic - though all 4 of these groups are Caucasians. With regard to Jeff's original post, the Chinese of Taiwan have adequate reason to be careful of infiltration from mainland China, even though there is absolutely NO difference between the groups in any biological sense.

I asked:

whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire?

Mark thinks that asking this question is

harmful to individuals and society for a whole host of reasons in any case.

Am so sorry, I didn't mean to harm individuals and society. Please, point out which individuals I have harmed, and I will apologize to them. And please explain how it is that even asking the question is harmful to society, as you forgot to so much as mention ONE way, even though it is harmful in a "whole host" of ways.

Well Tony, strictly speaking everything is irrelevant to the truth of any given matter except whether it's true or not isn't it? When we think we have independent superior info on the truth of a given matter we're free to discard all other evidence. But that's not how any of us come to beliefs about anything in question here is it?

And please. I never said it was harmful to ask the question. That's silly. Peace out.

I must have misunderstood you. I said

My question, then, is whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire?

You said

In that case each person might differ in their attitudes. But it’s irrelevant. It’s harmful to individuals and society for a whole host of reasons in any case.

I didn't understand what the "It's" was that was harmful, and so I asked for clarification:

M

ark, what is the antecedent to which the above "It's" points in the third sentence?

You replied:

The quote: "My question, then, is whether these people include David as one of the objects of their ire?"

Do I understand, from your most recent comment, that this question is NOT what is harmful to individuals and society? Then what is? Sometimes, Mark, I think you drop pieces of sentences and make your comments opaque. Like here.

Well Tony, I wouldn’t weigh in with a value judgment on whether you've misunderstood or not, since I’m not sure what you have understood. So I'll tell you exactly what I thought and what I took myself to be saying, and you can think or do whatever you want.

When I said “harmful to individuals and society for a whole host of reasons in any case” I was speaking of racialization. I wasn't saying there was harm in asking any such questions in the abstract about that or race. I never thought that and it seems to me whatever other faults of perspicuity in my expression you can see this directly when I said afterwards:

“I get the supposed Burkean idea where we're microanalyzing this abstractly. But never mind my comments. On second thought I don't want to get involved in that.”

As far as I can recall, I saw the discussion in general before my comments as just trying to understand why people might resent immigrants. I do this sort of speculative exercise on about any topic myself quite frequently. I saw it as tracing the lineage of Burkean "prejudices" (and no I don't take that word in the Burkean sense literally, as few if any do) and I take that to be an abstract and neutral enterprise. I realized later how dry a subject that would be and how there was nothing else there interesting to discuss and that's why I said "nevermind". That’s it. Pretty simple.

Sometimes, Mark, I think you drop pieces of sentences and make your comments opaque. Like here.

Frankly Tony, I have to tell you my attempt above to clarify what I meant isn't because I give a rat's ass about what you think of me, or because I wish to have your approval. That would be a misunderstanding. Sorry to be so blunt, but since you're asking for honesty there you go.

I have little patience for the type of thing you're doing here. Over time I've become tired of your whining that "Mark can't read or write or communicate”, yada, blah, etc. In the communitarian idealistic dreamworld, interpersonal communication is really awesome. Awesomely awesome, and then some. Confuse that world with the real world and you get romantic disillusionment and despair. Advise others that: "If only you'd cite authorities", "if only you'd be more clear/brief/articulate/blah/blah", if only this and if only that no ones feathers would be ruffled. It's not what I say, it's the way I'm saying it, right? Keep telling yourself that. But it's pure idealistic BS. It doesn't get any purer than that.

The fact is that in the actual world, such things as increased articulation, brevity, subtlety, impersonality, and citing authorities that ideological opponents already accept only intensifies a clash of views. Welcome to reality. You can either deal with that, continue whining with personal comments in place of anything substantive, or claim I’m either communicatively challenged or refusing to agree on what I should be ideologically committed to. No matter. I’m good with any of them.

Sorry man, but some things just need to be said. What you really hate about what I say is plain enough, whether you realize it or not. You just have to learn to deal with it. A certain someone else here's way of dealing with the same issue is to insinuate I'm an immature egotistical jerk. Ask them whether or not brevity makes the differences go down better. Hint: it doesn’t.

I wasn't saying there was harm in asking any such questions in the abstract about that or race. I never thought that and it seems to me whatever other faults of perspicuity in my expression you can see this directly when I said afterwards:

“I get the supposed Burkean idea where we're microanalyzing this abstractly. But never mind my comments. On second thought I don't want to get involved in that.”

Mark, I tried to use your follow-on statement about Burkean micro-analyzing to parse what it was that you were saying was "harmful to individuals and society", but I was unsuccessful there too. See, I have read a bit of Burke, not really all that much but a bit here and there. And from what I can tell, one of his pre-eminent thoughts is to NOT deal with things in the abstract, but in the concrete. To NOT solve each and every problem at the level of abstraction, but to attend to the particularities of concrete reality in its actual condition in the here and now to settle some (many) things. Burkean micro-analyzing abstractly, to me, sounds like an oxymoron. I just don't have a notion what sort of thing you are actually saying here, unless I get rid of Burke or get rid of the abstract. Perhaps, knowing Burke better than I do, you know of a meaning for your phrasing that isn't oxymoronic. Good on you. But I don't know one, so I was unable to use your comment to clarify the other one. Asking you to clarify it wasn't trying to be sarcastic or in a subtle way trying to put you down. I didn't understand, so I asked for clarification. That's all.

Well, that escalated dramatically. It's a good thing nobody around here is able to diffuse things with humor. For example, the best immigration-inspired meme to come out of this awful election season: https://twitter.com/hashtag/TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner?src=hash

I have to tell you my attempt above to clarify what I meant isn't because I give a rat's ass about what you think of me, or because I wish to have your approval.

Good. You shouldn't need my approval.

I have little patience for the type of thing you're doing here.

The type of thing I was doing here, at least until 3:29 pm at a minimum, was strictly and solely trying to increase clarity and understanding of the topic of discussion, among and for ALL readers. I was not trying to do anything else. Reading into it anything more would be illegitimate projection.

Over time I've become tired of your whining that "Mark can't read or write or communicate”, yada, blah, etc.

Mark, if you think

Sometimes, Mark, I think you drop pieces of sentences and make your comments opaque. Like here.

is whining about your ability to communicate, and that I do it so much that you could grow tire of it, you have extraordinarily thin skin indeed. Far too much for it really not to matter to you about my opinion. Methinks... nah, never mind. It doesn't matter, so I won't say it.

The fact is that in the actual world, such things as increased articulation, brevity, subtlety, impersonality, and citing authorities that ideological opponents already accept only intensifies a clash of views.

See, here is a good example of your writing. From the tone of this statement, it SOUNDS like you are putting down all these qualities. But the ACTUAL meaning of articulation makes that nonsensical. No matter WHAT you are trying to DO with your language in a discussion ordered to truth, you can't do it less well with more articulation, (unless you are trying to actually DEFEAT people coming to think - and then it isn't ordered to truth.) Increased articulation can only help. Definition:

Articulate: (of a person or a person's words) having or showing the ability to speak fluently and coherently.

Even if you are trying to fool people with lies and confused nonsense, increased articulation of your fancy lies and confused nonsense would help you. ANY objective to increase understanding of truth cannot be hurt by increased articulation.

As for impersonality and citing authorities that your opponents already accept, if that is going to intensify a clash of views, what in the world would work to de-intensify a clash of views? Getting personal? Doesn't seem to work for you. Citing authorities that you know they dispute? How would that help? To me, this comment sounds like either the only discussions you have, or at least the ones you recall in formulating this, were discussions that were bound to turn into shouting matches no matter what, and the opponents merely USED "ploys" like using impersonal forms of address by pretending they were passive-aggressive tools, and adults with 4-year-old mentality who got upset at someone using THEIR OWN authorities to defeat their position because "HEY, that disproves my point, no fair! I'm going to punch you for that!"

As it is, you have confused me: I can't tell whether (like the Trumpkins running around lauding their candidate for his incoherent diatribes) you actually approve of that intensification of clashes of views - perhaps so that something definite can be accomplished - or whether you are repulsed by the said intensified clashes of views even though the reason for it was the sheer and complete irrationality of those who get angry when the other side makes a good point. Or something. Whatever. I refuse to agree that it is bad in an argument to be smart, coherent, careful, polite, proper, valid, and logical. If you think that being stupid, incoherent, careless, impolite, inappropriate, and illogical is good for arguing, it is no wonder I don't cotton to your arguments much.

I could have understood someone saying this as a complaint: "insisting on over-precise definitions, sharpness, osbscurantist subtlety, a mocking pretense of impersonality, and citing authorities that are disputed AS IF your opponents have already granted them approval only intensifies a clash of views." IS THAT WHAT YOU MEANT? Too bad it's not what you said. Or even close.

Welcome to reality.

Mark, I don't know what reality you inhabit. (A nuthouse, maybe?) It is nothing like the reality I inhabit. In my reality, people who make an argument try to state what premises they are working from, and try to see if their premises are agreed, or to what extent they are not agreed, before using them dogmatically. In my world, people trying to convince others of a new conclusion present an argument for that conclusion, from premises through intermediate steps to a conclusion, more or less in direct fashion, not running hither and yon to all sorts of side points. In my universe, people who don't understand what someone said ask for clarification without that being a personal attack on them. In my world, people who disagree sometimes have fruitful discussions in finding out just how far they DO agree, and locating more precisely the sources of their remaining disagreements, without dissolving into name-calling and fisticuffs. Where I come from, personal comments interjected into strong disagreements tend to become fighting words, and impersonal phrasing tends not to. In the reality that I know, people who take issue with the kind of discussion you take issue with do so because they are losing, and they can't accept that, not because their opponents are dishonest, but because their opponents argue better.

Your reality ain't worth a bucket of warm spit.

The type of thing I was doing here, at least until 3:29 pm at a minimum, was strictly and solely trying to increase clarity and understanding of the topic of discussion, among and for ALL readers. I was not trying to do anything else. Reading into it anything more would be illegitimate projection.

Sure you were. Just for a last clarifying point. In the scenario in question as I understood it at the time, as far as I knew your question was whether the process you had in mind–that I didn’t take you to be approving of–might not result in the adopted “infant David” as an “object of ire”. I took it that you would disapprove of that if that were to be the outcome, as I'm sure you would. Therefore I still have no reason to think you should object to my understanding such a process to be one I'd call racialization, which I regard as a bad thing. Maybe I misunderstood everything here, but I know what I thought and that’s it. Moving on.

That's funny Step2. Some humor is definitely needed. IIRC, a few years ago you bucked me up when I was acknowledging I'd acted in a less than stellar fashion–otherwise known as apologizing–by commenting to me that my sarcasm might not be a bad thing. It's funny how you never forget stuff like that. There's a reason for it.

Jeffrey S

I'm not sure what you mean about Europe having mixed populations

Look at a pre-1914 map of Europe showing ethnic distributions. You have Germans, Slavs, Latins living all jumbled up. In East, you may have German in cities, Poles in countryside. Further East, you may have Poles in towns, Ukrainians in countryside. Along with other significant minorities such as Jews and Roma.
It took two great wars, massacres and deportations to produce ethnically pure states that you are holding up as universal ideals. The fact is that the old empires, Russian and Austrian, were superior in safeguarding the freedom and security of the people who lived in them to any ethnic nation-state that succeeded them. The Austrian empire, in particular, was sabotaged by the very partisans of national purity that you are recommending now.

My reference to British India was again related to the fact of a prosperous country of throughly mixed population.
Unfortunately again sabotaged by a frenzy of nationalist purity.

Trouble with Kurds is not entirely that they do not have a state of their own. But that the Turks, possessed by the frenzy of national purity, do not allow them basic human freedom. That is very recent. I would be surprised if there were any restrictions on Kurdish culture and language dating more than a century.

Thus, the problems you cite have stemmed from zeal for national purity and the cure does not consist in further inflaming this zeal.

Tony,

do "a people" have a moral right to keep their culture intact and functioning, even in the face of pressure from outsiders who are not members of "this people" to alter it for their (the outsiders) benefit?

Why are people in scare quotes? I agree of course, but I define people differently. And who could ever force a people to change their culture? Problem is not culture per se, but who is going to be the master, the dominant culture.

Americans are hardly forced by outsiders to change. The Americans themselves are a most radical people, in a full frenzy to jettison their culture. No outsider is forcing Americans to adopt gay marriage, to adopt transgender rights, to celebrate euthanasia. Indeed, it is the Americans that are bent to export their culture to the rest of the world.

How have the scientific approached biological race, given that the layman black/white/... schema fails? Naturally, they have sought to elucidate finer and more accurate categories. Some, however, have eschewed the controversial word 'race' for other terms (as in the article Mark linked to), preferring "ancestry" or "population".

This approach, discontinuing calling race "race", has the clear advantage of allowing the biologists to continue carrying out and discussing work on race while avoiding hysterics by egalitarianism-obsessed people (especially the social scientists).

In the scenario in question as I understood it at the time, as far as I knew your question was whether the process you had in mind...might not result in the adopted “infant David” as an “object of ire”. I took it that you would disapprove of that if that were to be the outcome, as I'm sure you would. Therefore I still have no reason to think you should object to my understanding such a process to be one I'd call racialization, which I regard as a bad thing.

Your quote here can be read as suggesting

A - Process A is David becoming culturally like a white American
B - Process A might not have the result that David is an object of ire.
C - Tony would disapprove of B.
D - You would call process A racialization.
E - You think Process A is a bad thing.

Alternatively,

It can be read as the following:

A - Process A is David becoming culturally like a white American.
B - Result B is "David is an object of ire".
C - Process A MIGHT NOT produce Result B.
D - Tony would disapprove Result B.
E - Process E is the race-concerned finding David an object of ire (i.e. the same as Result B).
F - Process E you call racialization.
G - You think Process E is a bad thing.

I am not positive which one you are trying to say, but in my book the charitable interpretation is the second approach. At least it correctly states my sentiment at D, whereas the first interpretation is wrong at C. What makes me uncertain is using the word "process" in the first sentence for David's inculturation, and not clearly re-setting the word later to mean a completely different process E.

Step2, usually your humor is excellent, but I found this a bit flat. Surely there are better jokes out there on such a nutty "straight line".

Tony:

I daresay that plenty of racialists on the right would object primarily to the presence of "outsiders" on the basis of race understood as biology, because they consider race understood as biology to be objective rather than a mish-mash of subjective claims. Some of them, however, I suspect would be uncomfortable saying that point blank (others, not at all). I wonder what GJ would say.

One of the perennial problems with race as the foundation for distinguishing "us" from "them" (in terms of forcing away the "thems") is the existence of children who are 1/2, or 1/4, or 1/8, or 1/nth "them" and (n-1)/n "us". Eventually even a rigid racialist must admit that the difference is negligible, but there is of course no principled basis for setting the denominator at N rather than N-1. "Let not my Lord grow angry with me, but what if there are only 40 just men...?"

I'm not sure I see a problem here. Indeed, regarding someone as 'one of us' is a subjective measure (which however, it must be noted, can be informed by objective measures like genetic heritage), but so is regarding someone as a 'friend': is there something defective with 'friendship' because each person has his own subjective threshold used to determine if another as a 'friend'? Surely not.

is there something defective with 'friendship' because each person has his own subjective threshold used to determine if another as a 'friend'?

It depends. If we were going to start rounding up and deporting people en masse on the basis of whether or not I considered them friends, then we would have a problem. If we're going to advocate policies of various kinds that forcibly separate groups considered non-friends, that is likely to cause a problem. If it's just a matter of whether or not I invite someone to a barbecue, it's no problem.

It depends. If we were going to start rounding up and deporting people en masse on the basis of whether or not I considered them friends, then we would have a problem.

You might have a problem with the rationale used for expulsion, but that does not imply any issue arising from the fact that the criteria used for friendship are subjective.

You might have a problem with the rationale used for expulsion, but that does not imply any issue arising from the fact that the criteria used for friendship are subjective.

If we are not under the rule of law, but under the rule of a an autocrat, this might be OK. Law is supposed to be "no respecter of persons", and "the same for all", and predictable. Which doesn't work so well with subjective criteria. I think.

GJ, I am not sure what your overall thrust is for these last 2 comments. Are you proposing that it would be OK in the concrete (not just some ethereal hypothetical) for our government to use subjective standards to determine who to allow to stay here as permanent residents, and who to give naturalized citizenship to - (and with or without the addendum that at least some of the subjective standards rest partially on objective criteria)?

More critically, do you think that race (identified, more or less, through ancestry) is an adequate basis to deny residency and citizenship to people whose grandparents were born here? Or, race tied with other traits, perhaps?

Tony:

At first, we were discussing the criteria for being 'one of us', and its subjectivity and whether the subjectivity is a problem. That's all I was trying to address in my first comment.

Then Lydia confused the issue by claiming that the hypothetical use of the 'one of us' demarcation for expulsion can be bad (as though that had any relevance to the first discussion). So my second comment was trying to disentangle the two issues (though by your response I judge wasn't quite successful).

More critically, do you think that race (identified, more or less, through ancestry) is an adequate basis to deny residency and citizenship to people whose grandparents were born here? Or, race tied with other traits, perhaps?

Many of the founding patriarchs of the USA through the 1790 Naturalization Act limited citizenship to whites. I don't see that as unreasonable, therefore I think it is adequate. This, of course, doesn't exclude other reasonable and adequate bases.

It's almost like some of the alt-right are being more 'conservative' by wanting to return to race-based definition of citizenship.

Someone hold me.

Someone hold me.

Sure. In which loony bin would you like to be held?

Sure. In which loony bin would you like to be held?

Just hold me in your arms. That should satisfy 'loony' while preventing my gales of laughter at 'conservatives' from causing me to fall out of my chair.

Sorry, I don't touch neo-Confederates. Allergies.

Many of the founding patriarchs of the USA through the 1790 Naturalization Act limited citizenship to whites.

Tied to my first comments far above, I am curious whether any of the several states permitted or had black citizens before 1790. For, the "Naturalization Act" pertained to Congress's power to provide for "naturalization", which was the power to regulate how persons not citizens might become citizens. On its face, it says _nothing_at_all_ about the status of persons already citizens under the laws of the states before the Constitution took force. Nothing.

http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H105-documents-web/week08/naturalization1790.html

In theory, then, if a state like MA provided for, or actually had, black citizens, the Naturalization Act did nothing to speak to this. Their black citizens from before 1790 remained black citizens after 1790.

Further, the primary category upon which it provides a path of naturalization is "aliens". Arguably, a person whose grandparents were brought over as slaves in 1700, and whose parents were made free blacks in 1730, and who was born to said parents in 1740 in MA, probably could not be said to be "an alien" in any rational or legal sense of the term. I suppose, for this argument, a premise that for any person who rightly can be called an "alien", there is some country other than ours to which he is properly its subject. If a free black person was not a citizen and was an alien, then under this premise there would have to be some other country to whom he was subject. And if NOT an alien, the Naturalization Act did not speak to his naturalization: it provided no rule for his becoming a citizen. Nor did it provide a rule against his naturalization, if there was a state law that provided for it.

So, I ask: were there before 1790 state laws that provided for naturalization and citizenship status, and if so, did they continue in force at all after the Naturalization Act (in such matters as that act was completely silent), or did they cease to be valid in toto?

More critically, would race be an adequate basis to deny residency or citizenship?

Boy, you stay away from your own thread for a day or so and who knows what is going to happen :-)

Since Tony and GJ brought us back to the subject of my OP, I thought I'd answer GJ's last question:

"More critically, would race be an adequate basis to deny residency or citizenship?"

I think the answer should be no -- in justice and fairness to an immigrant or foreign spouse this seems like a bad idea. However, as I frequently argue, I think immigration policy as a prudential matter can and should take into consideration race as one factor among many in thinking about ease of assimilation and ability to integrate into the host culture/nation.

Finally, I want to push back once more against Bedarz and his defense of multi-cultural empires. While I think there is much to admire and respect concerning the historical track record of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I still think the track record of most of Europe is one of mostly homogeneous nation-states (smaller in size) or nation-states that share a very similar culture/language and yet exhibit regional differences (like France and Spain) and people who want and enjoy the ability to flourish in regions where their kin, language and culture are one. A place like modern-day Spain is not really oppressing the Catalans or the Basques but yet those people desire to live in their own states, using their own language, free of central control from Madrid.

I think the Catholic Church's ideas around subsidiarity serve us well here and probably served Europe well for many, many years (which is why a less restrictive European Union is also a good idea!)

GJ quotes back to me:

More critically, would race be an adequate basis to deny residency or citizenship?

Standing alone, this can be taken in two ways. First, to deny to new persons the right to reside here, or the right to _become_ a citizen.

Secondly, for persons already here, already legally resident or citizen, to TAKE AWAY their legal right to reside here, or their legal right to citizenship, and force them to remove themselves to yonder. In my phrasing of the question, I presented only the second option, as I added the criterion of the persons having their grandparents born here - their legal residency and citizenship status is already existing and determinate, not needing to be granted.

Like Jeff, I have no problem in principle with an immigration policy that is very restrictive indeed, one even that strains out persons who "just won't fit in" even if for fairly small reasons. Immigrants don't have a natural right to be granted a place here. Obviously (to me, anyway) race is one of many criteria that could be used in a just manner to decide such immigration decisions. Full assimilation, which should be understood as the end goal of any permanent residency or citizenship granted, should be not only possible, but reasonably likely for most so accepted.

There are many other matters of justice in applying such criteria to persons already here either as residents or citizens on the history of their grandparents and parents being born here, (presuming that at some point their grandparents achieved legal status as residents and/or citizenship). Taking away the legal right to be here, to someone who is purely and fully subject to our laws and no other, who purely and fully owes allegiance to our nation and no other, and who has no legal or moral claim on any other country in ANY sense, would seem to be a clear injustice.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of white men bringing Africans to the Americas in the 1600s, by the time of the Constitution there were black people here whose ancestors had been here before MOST of the white citizens' ancestors had been here. Some of these blacks may have been citizens. To me, suggesting that in 1790, there might have been a just way to take away their citizenship, simply because of their race, sounds entirely wrong.

Tony, let me say in all honesty it was just a brushback. Serious debates get testy sometimes, but it's still nothing more than a brushback. All of us need such things even if they're unfair sometimes. Good fences make good neighbors. It's part of our social nature. I've taken my lumps over the years and sometimes I certainly deserved it, and sometime I think probably not but I'm not the best judge. I hold no grudges and I hold no ill will against you whatever. You're entirely right that your way of seeing the same info is perfectly valid.

As far as my comments on ideology, I don't mean that in a pejorative sense per sé, and I have one too though I'm not sure a name for it really. But I am an implacable foe of certain ones and I had to have some way to telegraph that I though I see myself as quite ordinary I've developed some incisive critiques of certain ones, and such things are explosive for reasons I find interesting but I'll not get into. I shouldn't have made it seem as if I was putting it all on your head. I was just kind of getting it out there because it's background for a subtle argument, right or wrong.

Anyway, I'm going to forget about this and hope you will too. I can't promise I'll be any less annoying but times like this are good to reflect on how to do it better. It was just a brushback, nothing more. Feel free to do the same to me if I need it as I sometimes do. If I could buy you a virtual beer I would. Cheers man.

Jeffrey S,
I wonder you do not yet see unsolvable problems that you proposal for national purity raises. For one thing, the outsider/insider distinction is subjective: you would have a third-generation Japanese to be an insider, but a lot of your fellow Americans might not, and how are you going to convince them?

Secondly, what is your proposal for already mixed countries? Should they get unmixed via transfer of populations a la Turkey-Greek 1923 and India-Pakistan 1947? And what about the cosmopolitans? Oh, but they are already dealt with.

Not many years ago, much of the business in Baghdad was owned by Jews. And Sunnis and Shia and Christians lived there in large numbers. Who was insider and who was outsider?

Things that worked for small homogeneous nations may not work everywhere. It was a matter of chance than England and her colonies were homogeneously populated. The American constitution reflects this homogeneity. But perhaps, other political arrangements, such as Ottoman millet system, is superior in dealing with the fact of a mixed population.

It took two great wars, massacres and deportations to produce ethnically pure states.

WWII has disappeared into myth, even for the parts we think we’re familiar with. Here’s a book-length citation I read recently that spells out what Bedarz is saying. It’s amazing what we don’t know on this side of the pond, although I don’t know that other sides haven’t let what they know recede into myth as well. I forget what it said about that.

Finally, I want to push back once more against Bedarz and his defense of multi-cultural empires.

Well it’s worth pointing out that the Roman empire was a multi-cultural empire, as was the so-called Persian empire multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multiethnic, not that the Iranians have any clue of this. This is an amazing piece of scholarship, interesting for so many reasons.

I think immigration policy as a prudential matter can and should take into consideration race as one factor among many in thinking about ease of assimilation and ability to integrate into the host culture/nation.

I think it could be a possible consideration, since anything that effects assimilation should be under consideration because that is the goal of immigration. So race only matters when it matters, not of itself. A bureacracy must use lists and other crude methods because we're dealing with statistical probabilities of perceived (I'm skeptical there will be agreed empirical long-term data) problems with assimilation, and other necessary arcana. Hopefully there will also be discretion to consider any other thing for an INS agent or whatever that might appear. Just basic profiling. But such bureaucratic necessities in practice are very different from the idea that race should be a consideration.

Also, I think there are negative and positive senses in play here. Above the consideration was about negative senses in which one's race might correlate for some reasons with non-assimilation. But lacking that I don't think we should think that one's race has a positive sense of making a better assimilated citizen, because other assumptions are baked in. Hypothetically should country A accept a Chinese immigrant if there are no other Chinese citizens in the country? How would the decision be affected if country A has a place called Chinatown? What if you know the Chinese immigrant won't go to Chinatown? I actually shifted to from race to something non-race because the example is easier, but I think race is even more highly problematic in any positive terms for assimilation.

It really would come down to the presence of radicalism already in the country and how likely it is the natives will corrupt the immigrants. But that's really a negative consideration and not a positive one. All this sounds Kafkaesque, and I think that's the point really, Just an attempt at teasing it out, but no surprise I think it's a mistake.

I wonder you do not yet see unsolvable problems that you proposal for national purity raises.

I wonder that you are assuming things not said. If a nation can regulate its borders to control the influx of people that they might or might not want, so can an empire. If a nation can use race as one criterion to decide questions of immigration, so can an empire. A multi=nation empire might use race in a different manner as such a criterion, but still use it well: we will accept only these 5 races at this time, until X condition has settled down..."

Tony,
Sure empires can do and have often done plenty of mischief but empires are not defined by notions of purity as a nation-state is. So, it is incumbent on the partisans of the nation-state to tone down the purity rhetoric.

"So, it is incumbent on the partisans of the nation-state to tone down the purity rhetoric."

Hah! As if empires don't have their own ideological purity tests! Just try and refuse to acknowledge Caesar as a god (or any Roman gods) in the early Roman Empire -- many Christian martyrs are honored today because of imperial demands for ideological 'purity'.

Bedarz, if you examine what Jeff said above, (and what I said, as well), you will find nothing that indicates that what we are rooting for is "racial purity". That's just a myth of your own imagining.

Sure empires can do and have often done plenty of mischief

Using race, along with other factors, to drive immigration decisions with an aim toward assimilation, is not "mischief".

but empires are not defined by notions of purity

They can be driven by notions of racial purity. The Nazi empire sure was. Most empires historically have been driven at least in part by the assumption that the (politically) supreme nation in the empire is, also, racially supreme. While they might not insist on running the empire through a filter of racial purity to discard the lesser races altogether, they usually were careful to politically support NON-assimilation of the subject peoples into the politically supreme people, and to keep those other peoples not only subject but oppressed.

Tony,
I know that you are not rooting for racial purity but Jeff, at least, is rooting for national purity, which is no less mischievous. Just look at the historical record. This idea of national purity simply wrecked Christendom which was based on super-national solidarity. In country after country, the minorities were oppressed, their language and religion prescribed far beyond the norm had been in traditional empires. Poles after gaining independence post-WW 1 begin to oppress the Ukrainians and others. This oppression was of a new and more severe kind, aimed not at just asserting a dominant status but aimed at eradicating the perceived impurity.

To say that outsiders should not be allowed to live among us even though we are eager to trade with them is to idealize national purity and rejecting the historical norms of how people lived. There is one trouble stemming from inadequacy of American Constitution as it was framed for a homogeneous population. So, American constitution should not be held as generalizable for all kinds of states. There is nothing wrong with a degree of political inequality among various peoples. This has been American practice as well irrespective of the fine words of the Constitution.

"racial purity"? When did Bedarz mention anything about racial purity? I didn't read him that way and I did a page search and all I can find is "purity" with no qualifier. I don't presume to speak for him, and I presume he'll chime in later, but I think you're misreading him Tony. I think what he's saying is that it doesn't rest on purity of any sort.

Whatever Bedarz meant, I'll say there is no sense in which purity works for a political organization. Not linguistic, not ethnic, not cultural, and not ideological. And not any I've forgotten or ones I don't know of either.

They can be driven by notions of racial purity.

Empires? The Roman Empire wasn't. The Persian empire is greatly mythologized. In fact there were several Persian empires with little in common with each other but being generally located on the Iranian Plateau. The Roman of course was not. Besides which, there was no modern concept of race as biological to begin with. I think even that is breaking down now, but even if that's false it is a much more modest statement to say the ancient concept was radically different.

Barbarian and civilized were what mattered. When Europeans came to the New World, they noted the Indians weren't as hairy as they were. They didn't even note their skin color because no one thought that meant anything. There was no heightened consciousness about skin color until African slavery spawned stigmatizing black skin , and then later biological inferiority theories were ginned up to support the White Supremacy that had slavery had spawned.

They can be driven by notions of racial purity. The Nazi empire sure was. Most empires historically have been driven at least in part by the assumption that the (politically) supreme nation in the empire is, also, racially supreme.

But the 3rd Reich wasn't considered an empire. At least since 1918 when it's monarchy abdicated, the official English name for Germany was the "German Reich". In English it tends to assume a monarchical form of government. So after that the English referred to it as the "German Reich". So it's not a direct translation to "empire".

Still, even if we consider the 3rd Reich a state, I think the point about nations still wouldn't be that they couldn't be driven by notions of purity, but they couldn't be driven by purity and be a decent state by any modern standards. What are the historical examples of this? People simply beg the question by assuming successful regimes were racially pure since they assume that is a basis for success. But there is no evidence of any realistic sense of racial purity. It's a myth as far as I can tell. What examples do we have? Greece? No, not really.

And linguistic purity isn't any better in practice. In theory everyone learns the language. In practice languages are very difficult to learn, and besides there is too much human pride involved in being superior. So what happens is that while linguistic purity is supposedly the goal, in fact the authorities are screwing with the resources of minorities to ensure minorities who aren't native speakers actually won't or can't. There are many examples of this. Iran for one. 2,500 years of a unified Persian empire centered on Farsi? Pure bunk that supports an unjust regime that pulls exactly the stuff I just mentioned. There have been plenty of others. Purity is a dodge, and is always and everywhere poisonous. Successful states of the past weren't pure in any sense. It's a myth born of question begging.

It always has been and always will be. That is what I took Bednarz to be saying. If he wasn't saying that I am. I think the relevant assumption operating here is that similarity breeds unity. But does it? Is that what makes unity? I'd say there is no evidence of it in fact.

To say that outsiders should not be allowed to live among us even though we are eager to trade with them is to idealize national purity and rejecting the historical norms of how people lived. There is one trouble stemming from inadequacy of American Constitution as it was framed for a homogeneous population.

That's a common misunderstanding about the American Founding. The eminent scholar Lovejoy takes an axe to this myth as only he can in the words of the Founders in the essay The Theory of Human Nature in the American Constitution and the Method of Counterpoise, in Reflections on Human Nature. It was surely not founded upon agreement or homogeneity. It's innovation was a political system where no warring faction could gain control. Some love to read statements where they presumed upon the decency of the population as assuming they were depending on agreement, but it simply is false to say decency implies agreement or homogeneity. The Founders were not communitarians or idealists, but their words are often read by these folks and corrupted thereby.

So, American constitution should not be held as generalizable for all kinds of states. There is nothing wrong with a degree of political inequality among various peoples. This has been American practice as well irrespective of the fine words of the Constitution.

Since the premise above isn't valid, it invalidates the conclusion. Moreover, it also contains the idea that the ideal of equality in the Founding documents was something other than equality before the law. But that's exactly what it was.

Look, people have read back into it absolute understandings of equality. The Founders were well educated men. I'll give a flavor of the kind of minimalism and realism from a prior generation. John Milton famously gave a defense of free speech. It was clear that his defense was not based on the idea that all men actually are equal in any way, nor that they are equal under the law. No, his defense of free speech was based on the simple fact that we usually can't tell in advance who was going to have something worth listening to until it was heard. That is a radically minimal belief and statement. And it's quite true. Great generals have said exactly the same thing about generalling. It's simply a meritocratic view. It's no different than a coach having open tryouts to make sure no talent gets missed. Is that wise or dumb? I say it's wise. If you don't do that, who decides in advance who is worth listening to? That is the problem with nondemocratic systems. Who is worth listening to is decided in advance by means guaranteed to eliminate things society needs while being unfair. That is bad for society. Just being unfair isn't necessarily a problem as long as it doesn't touch equality under the law.

Now if you have a real means of predicting in advance without prejudice who cannot succeed in advance then there's no need to let everyone try. That would be stupid, and for many things there are ways to screen out those who can't make it. Find who is disqualified on a valid criteria. That would be perfectly fine an anyone knows. But some things aren't that way, and worthwhile speech is one of them. It isn't good for society for elites or authorities to decide arbitrarily who gets to speak. Is that radical? For it's time yes, but it doesn't sound like it now. Now we need to inflate what we think is in the Founding documents to something that seems to us now as radical so we can call it radical. Lacking true historical knowledge, we're just back reading into it our own prejudices. So let's be clear about what they Founding documents really say and what the Founders really believed, and not import corrupted versions of what illiberal skeptics and cynics claim they did.

Finally, Bednarz you say the American constitution isn't generalizable, but constitutional governments went from none to many after the American experiment. Was that not a generalization?

In trying to get the above comment out quickly I misspoke about the "founding documents". Of course the Declaration states the moral equality of all men, so it isn't quite right to say as I did that the documents were about nothing other than equality under the law.

BTW, since race and slavery have been mentioned, at least by me, here is a quick background on the latter. The justification of slavery from dirt until roughly the time of the American Revolution give or take was nothing other than the rules of war.

If it is considered morally permissible to kill defeated prisoners, then it was clearly permissible to enslave them too. See here. It’s just basic logic. But when this rule of war that had held for so long lost its moral status, then it could no longer justify slavery. Again, simple logic. Therefore a new justification of this institution needed to be found, and that was done by 1) ginning up pseudo-scientific racial inferiority theses; 2) finding a basis for it in the Bible. Before the change in perception of the rules of war no other justification was needed, or sought.

Mark,
Consider the track record of the constitutional governments, genocide (Pakistan twice, Turkey once). Soviet Union too was a constitutional govt with a very fine constitution. One could read Mencius Moldbug for the havoc that the constitutionists wrecked on the world.

"Equality under the law" to all was the single thing that wrecked the old order. And it did not lead to more order, rather disorder as Moldbug documents.

Soviet Union too was a constitutional govt with a very fine constitution.

Bedarz, of course, the Soviet Union started off owning an empire inherited from its predecessor, and it's "constitution" was a dead letter from before it existed, given that its founders never had any intention of following it. So, atrocities committed under the Soviets cannot really be much blamed on the constitutionalism of the Soviet Union.

"racial purity"? When did Bedarz mention anything about racial purity? I didn't read him that way and I did a page search and all I can find is "purity" with no qualifier.
The Roman of course was not. Besides which, there was no modern concept of race as biological to begin with.

I admit that I read Bedarz's comment narrowly, perhaps too much: I did not see it applying equally to things like "cultural purity". However, Mark, please realize that in this context "race" can be used, and HAS been used in the past, not just for the modern notion of "biological race", but for distinguishable peoples, even if the distinguishing features are not biologically significant. Danes, Swedes, and Finns were distinct "races" because they were distinguishable peoples, even though some of the distinguishing takes off genealogy rather than biology, and most of it comes from cultural distinction.

But the 3rd Reich wasn't considered an empire. At least since 1918 when it's monarchy abdicated, the official English name for Germany was the "German Reich". In English it tends to assume a monarchical form of government. So after that the English referred to it as the "German Reich". So it's not a direct translation to "empire".

What in hell does its official name have to do with it? It was a national sort of entity that went out and conquered a bunch of other nations and peoples and ruled them by force and threat of more force. They ran an empire, regardless of what it was called.

BTW, since race and slavery have been mentioned, at least by me, here is a quick background on the latter. The justification of slavery from dirt until roughly the time of the American Revolution give or take was nothing other than the rules of war.

If it is considered morally permissible to kill defeated prisoners, then it was clearly permissible to enslave them too.

I agree that in ancient times "spoils of war" was, indeed, the main ingredient feeding the institutions of slavery. I am not quite sure that I would call that its "justification", as I am not sure that, before the Greeks, anybody bothered actually TRYING to justify the behavior as moral, any more than anybody much tried to justify rape of a conquered city's women as moral. I understand the Greeks tried to justify the enslavement of the people who, instead of fighting to the death in defense of their people, gave up and surrendered, as being the "natural" condition for giving up and surrendering, as it belonged to those "unable" to control themselves enough to give their lives for their people, to be controlled by others. As an aside, this version of the spoils-of-war theory of enslavement always had a major defect in that it could not properly address the slave status of children of slaves, as the children had not been given the chance to fight for their freedom and so had not failed in that chance.

There was a more or less explicit attempt, by the Spaniards and other colonizers of the European Powers, to justify their colonization of Africa and the Americas - including treating the peoples thereof as slaves - for fully 250 years before the American enterprise was established. These attempts did not rely primarily on "spoils of war" for their rationale. Mostly, they claimed that the peoples were savages incapable of self-control, and needed to be controlled by others in order to live semi-human lives.

If it is considered morally permissible to kill defeated prisoners, then it was clearly permissible to enslave them too.

I am curious about this as a way of justifying slavery. Did they actually SAY that it is "morally permissible to kill defeated prisoners"? I am having trouble understanding how this would work (as a rational enterprise). Why would a person, warrior or not, surrender to opposing forces if it is morally permissible to kill defeated prisoners out of hand? Where would the practice of surrendering to superior force have come from, if there was the general prospect that surrendering meant you would be killed on the spot - or maybe in half an hour when it suited them better (after you had dug your own grave?) - but for no further reason than "defeated prisoner"? I have read (but only in western sources) that part of the problem of fighting the Japanese in WWII was that ther soldiers did NOT have the western notion of "surrender" meaning "I won't kill you". Rather, being a soldier meant fighting until death or victory, and not fighting right now (like, when I am unarmed and he has a gun on me) was per se only a temporary cessation until a later moment (like, when he turns his back on me).

How do you go from "if I fight, I may be killed resisting, and if I surrender, I may be killed out of hand not resisting" to "So I will surrender"? Seems to me that both offering surrender, and accepting surrender, have generally been understood as meaning something like "I agree to stop resisting, and you agree not to kill me except on the basis of some further reason beyond my surrender (like failure to obey)". How else would people come to see surrender as reasonable?

All,

I'm tempted to close down this post as we seem to be veering off with some regularity into all sorts of bizarre OT subjects, not to mention the fact that we also don't seem to be enhancing anyone's understanding of the issues raised in the OP. But to wrap things up a bit, I did want to respond to just a couple of points:

(1) Mark says, "So let's be clear about what they Founding documents really say and what the Founders really believed, and not import corrupted versions of what illiberal skeptics and cynics claim they did."

O.K. -- let's take a look:

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

- Federalist #2 [my emphasis]


(2) Tony says to Mark:

"However, Mark, please realize that in this context "race" can be used, and HAS been used in the past, not just for the modern notion of "biological race", but for distinguishable peoples, even if the distinguishing features are not biologically significant. Danes, Swedes, and Finns were distinct "races" because they were distinguishable peoples, even though some of the distinguishing takes off genealogy rather than biology, and most of it comes from cultural distinction."

I'm afraid (for Mark's sake, not Tony's -- he seems to have an excellent intuitive understand of these concepts) that in essence, genealogy is indeed biology. Sure, Tony is right to point out that there aren't many distinguishing biological differences between Swedes and Finns, but they do exist:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/02/swedes-not-so-homogeneous/#.V9F1r1srKUk

Genetic analysis has been a remarkable tool, essentially validating the folk wisdom of the past -- people are alike in many ways but we are also different biologically in subtle ways.

I should also note that Tony is right to point to cultural distinctions being important -- the vagaries of history and human agency have impacted people in countless ways that have echoed throughout the ages leading to real differences between people today that cannot be explained simply by pointing to differences in a couple of gene clusters between the Swedes and the Finns. I'm no socio-biologist and off-line have had some fruitful discussions with my colleague Lydia on the difficulties of attributing differences between people to a simple biological cause! We are divine creations, all of us, and have created our own destinies throughout history!!

I think the relevant assumption operating here is that similarity breeds unity. But does it? Is that what makes unity? I'd say there is no evidence of it in fact.

Mark, that perhaps is a valuable attempt to get at the roots of this discussion. Jeff and I have been defending a nation's right to filter immigrants, to pick and choose who can become a new resident, based on criteria. We both believe that those criteria can and should include a whole host of factors, with the aim or intent of locating those less likely to be peaceable to our existing order, and telling them "no".

While this might superficially sound like it is filter for uniformity, that "those just like us" are the ones we want, and "those not just like us" need not apply, I submit that this is not the correct understanding. In my estimation, the applicable criteria would sort for "those whose differences will not disturb the good of the existing order of law and culture detrimentally and significantly".

This is not a filter for uniformity. We can tolerate differences that are not detrimental to the common good: people who are better than our existing people, because they have more virtue, will not be (for that reason alone) detrimental, even though they are different. People who are more given over to vice, and to different vices than our own, however, will be detrimental to have around us, just on that basis alone.

Many differences will be differences that are, of themselves, neither good nor bad, and the presence of these differences may be completely neutral to the goods of our existing order of law and culture: new foods, new ways of cooking them; new folk songs and even new modes of music; new hair styles; new color dyes for clothes; new idiomatic expressions: all these can be different without disturbing any of the GOODS of our existing order of law and culture.

On the other hand, here are some ways that relatively trivial changes could create disturbance to the existing goods of the culture: new clothing styles that presume significant differences in where the limits are for modest attire, such as dresses that run much lower in the bust or much higher on the leg; new songs that valorize behavior that runs counter to the existing virtues (such as rap songs glamorizing mistreatment of women?). Allowing the immigration of a large number of women used to going around without anything on above the waist, into a northern culture where that is the height of immodesty, would certainly be problematic.

In addition to filtering for detrimental differences, the filters will test for significance as well. We can tolerate SOME departure from the ideal, without in principle tolerating ALL possible damages introduced by new people. We can say "that is a difference that will cause a small disturbance, small enough tolerate". Such a criterion is to some degree a common sense sort of measure, there is no definitive bright line standard for "too much harm to tolerate" even though there are clearly cases that really are too much harm and cases that clearly are not. We really don't need to permit the invasion of some immigrant who explicitly professes and teaches "your entire legal and cultural order is bad and must be destroyed, by war and revolution if not voluntarily." Even if such a person does not, himself, act violently directly, his behavior is still an invasion that is damaging to the existing good of the law and culture."

Tony, on the justification for slavery we have the word of Sir William Blackstone, Solicitor General to the Crown and Vineries Professor of Law at Oxford and Commentaries on the Laws of England.

In it he says “the right of making slaves by captivity” depended on the “supposed right of slaughter”. Written in 1760s this citation was surely familiar to nearly every American lawyer in the revolutionary generation. This acknowledges that it was a previously a commonplace (and at least the context I think, if not explicitly, shows the understanding is at least several centuries old), and the use of “supposed” (and probably other text besides though I’m not sure) signals that the moral equation was in the process of changing.

However, Mark, please realize that in this context "race" can be used, and HAS been used in the past, not just for the modern notion of "biological race", but for distinguishable peoples, even if the distinguishing features are not biologically significant.

Please in bold? Tony, you're not good at hiding condescension. What would make you actually think I don’t understand such things as Aryanism? I’ve been citing a work on that over and over again in hopes that as google bait someday someone might read it. I thought I'd explicitly acknowledged such things. If I didn't state it bluntly or clearly enough it would only be because I can't imagine anyone in their right mind disputing it. Wow.

I couldn't imagine anyone that would ever question this obvious fact. I'm gobsmacked. Peace out on this thread guys.

Tony I'm out. I'm not interested in disputing practices I don't disagree with. I've no problem with the immigration stance you're taking. I've even already said it's ok to screen by race.

I have not run across the phrase "peace out" before. What do you mean by it?

It's a common phrase I've heard I think. I thought it just meant something like "see ya later".

Look Tony, let me say I'm sorry for getting testy a minute ago. If I'd have waited and thought a little bit than banging out a reply it would have been better. We're on different sides of things (though in minor ways) and I know we're both dealing with conflicting data from our perspectives. I regret saying you were condescending and I wish I'd not said I was "gobsmacked". That was pretty over-the-top and thin-skinned. In any case, the discussion has shifted between theory and practice too, which isn't unusual or bad at all, but I think it gets confusing after awhile for everyone. I need to take a break, but I'm not stopping because I'm exasperated or anything, but because Jeff is giving the signal and it's been a wide-ranging discussion and they can only go so long.

You've made a lot of insightful points, especially about the law and slavery. Many I agree with completely; I don't have time to spell out where, and where is the fun in agreeing? :) But feel free to reply to anything that you'd like to treat if Jeff forbears. I would encourage Jeff to read get a library or used copy of the Lovejoy book though. Old phrases sometimes don't carry the meanings we think. I could pull out my copy and transcribe passages here, but now isn't the time. Cheers.

OK, Mark. Thanks. Adios.

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