What’s Wrong with the World

Oh, and by the way - if there's a single heterosexual male left in England with stones like this - I long to hear him speak.

I read the article and I agree with Starkly 100%. It's the gang culture that's causing this mess. In Peoria, Il, where I live, blacks have been shooting and killing each other on the average of once a week. Last week, an eight years old boy was killed in a vengence slaying between two gangs. A shooting involving two black gangs took place at a skating rink 1 1/2 miles from my house. And I live 10 miles away from the city! Is it any wonder I'm considering buying a shotgun and a pistol just in case the insanity comes to my street!?

In Peoria???

I used to work at a summer camp in the tiny hamlet of Metamora. Or Low Point, if you want to get technical. We went to the mall at Peoria for our night off. I thought of it as a nice little city. Guess that was a long time ago.

This thing started with a confusing TV discussion, where Starkey expressed himself very unclearly and then declined to clarify misunderstandings by the other people on the show. Then he wrote this very clear article expressing his views. I hope people will forget about the TV discussion and concentrate on the article.

The most interesting point in the article, I think, is Starkey's call for a multiracial English nationalism. That's nationalism, not patriotism. I think he chose his words carefully here, so the difference is significant. I'd love to see his opponents on the left respond to this call. It could be an interesting dialog.

I don't know about Britain, but I think multiracial nationalism is about the only hope left for America (not that there's any real hope of that happening either). To anticipate an objection: multiracial nationalism is not a contradiction in terms, if you define a nation as a largest group of people sharing a myth of common ancestry.

Anyway, Starkey's proposed solution is more provocative than his diagnosis of the problem. It's sure to anger people on the right and on the left, if they decide to pay any attention to it.

The most interesting point in the article, I think, is Starkey's call for a multiracial English nationalism. That's nationalism, not patriotism. I think he chose his words carefully here, so the difference is significant.

It isn't possible to be a nationalist and not a patriot (or vice versa).

Not necessarily. A Sicilian or Umbrian patriot may have been against the Italian nationalist movement and reunification. Likewise, a Southern American patriot would have opposed the American nationalists and their subjugation of his land.

The problem with multiracial nationalism in America today is that the races don't share a common myth. Black history is tied up with slavery and civil rights, and tends to be antagonistic towards the white majority myths. Hispanics don't yet have any identification with American identity, other than the myth of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and stealing of land (which I understand is official dogma in Mexico). There doesn't seem to be any will to forge the disparate racial groups into a true nation.

But then, Aaron did say there was little hope.

"In Peoria???"

Yes, Lydia. The wise and benevolent Illinois politicians decided to give housing vouchers to some of the fine residents of the south side of Chicago. Cause, you know, if you move them to Peoria, they'll behave like Peorians.

Aaron,

To anticipate an objection...

I think you're confused as to which website you're at :-) You're more likely to get an objection from the folks at some of the other sites you and I read and comment at.

But I'll object here.

multiracial nationalism is not a contradiction in terms, if you define a nation as a largest group of people sharing a myth of common ancestry.

Whether you're a believer in Darwin or Genesis (or both) we all share a "myth of common ancestry." But nationalism can't really support any distinctions if its "myth" goes back to human origins.

Oops. Botched the block quotes on that last one. The following was my response to Aaron:

Whether you're a believer in Darwin or Genesis (or both) we all share a "myth of common ancestry." But nationalism can't really support any distinctions if its "myth" goes back to human origins.

Well he kinda "came out swinging" Steve. But he had to add the requisite:

“It’s not skin colour, it’s cultural.”

Lydia: If you ever come back to Peoria, avoid Northwoods Mall at night. Go to the new Grand Prairie Mall instead. More shops and restraunts there. Safer too.
Bruce: So our politicians gave "blow tickets" the the Chicago Southsiders to come to Peoria, eh? You know where they ended up? The Southside of Peoria where nearly all the intra-black stabbings, shootings, and killings take place! Needless to say, they never learned to "behave like Peorians".
Newsflash. Three days ago, another senseless crime occured. At a payday loan place on Univercity St. in Peoria, (remember Univercity St Lydia?) a black man stabbed his estranged wife and her white co-worker. The white woman died from her wounds a day later. The murderer was from, you gueesed it, Peoria's Southside.

While I can't disagree with Starkey that gang induction of whites is a manjor factor in the growth of violent youth groups in England, nevertheless, i think he hasn't gone deeply enough. There is a reason for the ease with which whites have been inducted: in 1960, 1 out of 20 births were out of wedlock; in 1980, it was 1 out of 11; in 2003 (the last statistics I have), 1 out of 3 births were out of wedlock and, no doubt, the number is higher, today. Population replacement levels are at about 1.4 in England, so those out of wedlock babies represent the single child between most couples. There are 1.05 males for 1 female (a large difference in numbers) at birth.

The point is that there are no fathers to reign these males in. there a few people to teach them the laws or lay it down. When the older people are gone, even that influence will diminish. there can be no nationalism because there is no concept of a fatherland - merely a nanny state.

Clearly, England is reaping the benefits of its long love affair with diversity and broadmindedness.

The Chicken

Bruce, as Walker Connor writes:

Logically, such a sense of one's nation's origin must rest upon a presumption that somewhere in a hazy, prerecorded era there existed a Japanese, German, or Thai Adam and Eve. But logic operates in the realm of the conscious and the rational; convictions concerning the singular origin and evolution of one's nation belong to the realm of the subconscious and nonrational (note: not irrational but nonrational).

Matt: I agree. However hard this would be for Hispanics and Asians, it would be practically impossible for blacks. They've been in America almost since the beginning, and as you say, their history is set against white American history. Blacks will always be a distinct nation in America. Still, do whatever we can to get them to identify as much as possible with Anglo-Protestant America. The main problem is that there's no will to do this among the white elites.

I guess I prefer the terms "pre-rational" or "a-rational" to non-rational. I guess it means the same thing. But even if subconcious and non-rational, a myth has to have some degree of plausibility.

especially if you're trying to feed it to a public that's sceptical about nearly everything.

To anticipate an objection: multiracial nationalism is not a contradiction in terms, if you define a nation as a largest group of people sharing a myth of common ancestry.

I fail to understand why a nationalism MUST be rooted in ancestry as the critical component to begin with. Why cannot it be religion, or language, or hair color, or belief in the tooth fairy - that is, out of many different facets of shared experience, why is ancestry the critical one that you pick out? Wouldn't that unravel the nationalism of English people - you know, the Anglo-Saxons? That is, the people derived from Angles AND from Saxons. Not to mention the Jutes, the Vikings that took part, plus the much later invasion by Normans. I mean, c'mon, where is the "common ancestry" here?

In the US, there are plenty of second-generation Asians and such who have no problem participating in America as their nation. But they certainly don't share any Anglo-Saxon blood.

Tony: " I fail to understand why a nationalism MUST be rooted in ancestry"

The very word 'nationalism' from 'nation' from the Latin root 'nasci' implies link by blood.

Tony, again, I'm not trying to force any definitions on anyone. My point was that even if you define the nation by a myth of common ancestry rather than by civic-territorial criteria or by a belief in the tooth fairy, then a multiracial nation is not a contradiction in terms.

It's a truism that ethnic nations don't usually have a true common ancestry. Ethnic nations (what some just call nations) are about intuitive, subjective beliefs, not about objective facts of (true) ancestry, language, etc. An old definition of nation is, a group of people united by a common error in ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors.

However you define nationhood in general, the fact is that in the modern world, ethnonational loyalty is strong compared to, say, confessional loyalty (though they often coincide), class loyalty, or loyalty to the state. In a war between the ethnic nation and the state, most people will side with their ethnic nation against their state, if they even consider it their state in the first place. That's one reason to pick out ancestry. There are other reasons, too, which you can read about in Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism.

In American terms, there's a myth, though a weak one, of common ancestry in "the Founding Fathers," the Gettysburg Address, "Land where my fathers died," etc. I had no problem identifying with these phrases as a child, even though our family had only five generations of history in America, and only the first two generations had died there so far. As an American, I saw my ancestral heritage in that respect as English, even though none of my family came from there.

I think that's the kind of thing Starkey - a historian - was talking about for a multiracial English nationalism, with his references to St. George's Cross, etc. He's definitely not talking about a "proposition nation," much less multiculturalism, but he's not talking about what most nationalists mean by nationalism either.

Tony, the national myth of common ancestry has to be plausible and at least partially true. Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans can construct a myth of shared ancestry that's plausible & partially true.

Aaron,

It's a truism that ethnic nations don't usually have a true common ancestry.

I disagree with that statement. They don't descend exclusively from a founding father and a founding mother. That doesn't mean that they don't share a true common ancestry.

Strictly speaking, no national myth is wholly true. In any historical narrative, some elements will be emphasized while others will be diminished in the interests of forming a story. Also, at some point the story has a beginning that won't strictly correspond to the beginning of the ancestry line. In other words, no national myth goes all the way back to Adam and Eve (save possibly a Jewish one) or Homo Erectus in Africa or whatever is the idea of the month in this area.

Ancestry is a natural basis of the nation because the family is the basic component of human society. People marry, have children, raise them, and then those children have more children, and there's your historical thread. That isn't to say that ancestry alone is sufficient, and other factors like language and religion can break a nation even when the ancestry component is there. But, while ancestry is not a sufficient condition for a nation, it is a necessary one. A nation may begin with different bloodlines, but if they do not merge into a single one at some point then it falls apart.

"In the US, there are plenty of second-generation Asians and such who have no problem participating in America as their nation."

I think this is largely due to equivocation on the word 'nation'. In modern parlance, it is often used as a synonym for 'country', but 'nation' as we are discussing here is something different, and may not even have a political unit associated with it--think of Tibetans in China. America has never been a nation, but rather a confederacy of several nations, and is currently morphing into some sort of polyglot monstrosity where no one can get their bearings. Realistically, it's impossible for a gigantic country of 300 million + to ever form a single nation without a lot of glossing.

"It's a truism that ethnic nations don't usually have a true common ancestry."

True, common origins may be based in myth, but modern genetics in part confirms this myth.

A few examples:

Bryan Sykes (Blood of the Isles) has shown that the British Isles are very ethnically homogenous.

The genetic distance charts in Cavalli-Sforza's History and Geography of Human Genes show that Northern Europeans are quite closely related.

Gregory Clark in Farewell to Alms show that nearly all modern English are descended from the upper-class/aristocracy of Medieval England. (The lower classes simply did not pass on their DNA.) Other studies have shown the same results for other European countries. As a result, most modern Europeans are descended from a small group of ancestors.

Regarding recent studies on the DNA of Icelanders (summarized in Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn), of all Icelandic women born from 1972 to 2002, 92% are descended from only 22% of the women born between 1848 and 1892; 86% of contemporary men are the progeny of 26% of this group. Going back farther, 7% of the women born in the early 18th century are ancesstresses of 62% of contemporary women, while 10% of men of this period fathered 71% of contemporary males.

MAR, you mentioned these claimed statistics in a previous thread, but you didn't respond to a rather obvious doubt: if 7% of the women born in the early 1700s are the ancestresses of most of the current women, and 10% of the men sired most of the males, then it looks like somewhere around 3% out of those 7% of women were sleeping with more than one man (and bearing their kids). Nearly half. Given the intense social consequences of adultery and the fact that many women died in childbirth, that doesn't look too promising a statistic. I sure would like to see the methodology of these DNA studies before I put a lot of faith in them. What assumptions are built in to their argument?

@Tony: "if 7% of the women born in the early 1700s are the ancestresses of most of the current women, and 10% of the men sired most of the males, then it looks like [nearly half] of women were sleeping with more than one man (and bearing their kids)."

I don't follow the reasoning here. Can you elucidate?

I am making the rather simple assumption that when 7% of the women are the mothers of most current women, they are so by the same 10% of men that are the fathers of most of the current men. That is, the women and the men have to work together on this, and it would be statistically ridiculous if (for example) those 7% of the women are responsible for producing MOST of the women but only of 20% of the current men. So, 7% of women get together with 10% of the men to produce the bulk of this generation. When 7% sleep with 10%, there has to be a pretty large overlap among the 7% women to deal with the men, no?

Given the intense social consequences of adultery and the fact that many women died in childbirth, that doesn't look too promising a statistic.

You're assuming that the adultery was typically caught. One of the few downsides to a homogenous population is that if two men from the same basic stock have a child with the same woman, it's harder to tell whose it is. This is Iceland we're talking about, not the United States where you can have a Russian-descended husband cuckolded by a southern Italian-descended man.

Considering the fact that in modern America, about 30% of married women admit to having had or being in affairs, this statistic is not that unrealistic. Conservatives may like to believe that women were substantially more chaste back then, but we have no way of actually knowing that. Nostalgia is not evidence.

I don't think "nearly half" even works that way; a distribution of small amounts of adultery in different families in different generations would pile up between 1700 and now to skew the results.

"Considering the fact that in modern America, about 30% of married women admit to having had or being in affairs"

Vox done a post on this showing that this statistic is in fact wrong. The most recent figures state that 20% of married men and 15% of married women have been unfaithful.

They can be found here:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/11/mystery-of-female-infidelity.html

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/05/stay-away-from-career-women-ii.html

Mike, it's a good point, but I think that 40% is still unreasonable a statistic.

Erik, I don't think later generations of cuckolding matter to the basic numbers. In fact, I think later generations of ANYTHING irreversibly damage Clark's basic claim about percentages of siring, because those later generations intermarry indiscriminately with all of the available stock, thus mixing up the matter. I want to know: what percentage of the women of the early 1700's were responsible for the OTHER 39% of current women? Was it, say, 35%? I don't know.

More significantly, now that I bothered to look at the methodology just a teensy, weensy bit, I have grave doubts that the methodology can POSSIBLY yield worthwhile results for a whole population. He looked at and analyzed ancient wills. How many poor people (comparatively) ever made wills? Maybe 3% to 5% in proportion to rich people - first, because they had nothing worth passing on that wouldn't pass on in the normal manner (e.g. everything to wife, then to kids) without writing a will. Second because they would no more obtain the services of a lawyer (or whoever else would be capable) and pay money for that service of writing a will than they would throw money into the sea.

Finally, the downward mobility (from excess numbers of children of the wealthy into middle class and then into the poor) cannot possibly fail to be confused by the issue of inter-relations between classes: e.g. the bastard son of a wealthy noble, and his resulting liaisons in lower ranks: is the low-ranking woman who bore that bastard son also represented in the 7% of women who were ancestors to the current generation?

Tony,

Just to set the record straight, because I'm a big fan of Clark and haven't yet read Wade's book, you are confusing the two sets of statistics. Wade is the guy who analyzed Icelandic DNA. Clark is the guy who studied English wills.

Carry on.

Vox done a post on this showing that this statistic is in fact wrong. The most recent figures state that 20% of married men and 15% of married women have been unfaithful.

Genetic and/or blood type non-paternity statistics are the most reliable measure, and those vary significantly by geography and economic status (from 1% all the way up to 30%). There is also an unknown multiplier to those statistics, which is to guess what percentage of married men or women that have affairs do so without trying to prevent pregnancy and, at least initially, without intending to end their marriage (the higher statistics unsurprisingly tend to track marriages that end in divorce.)
http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_and_opinion/choices_and_behaviours/misattributed_paternity.htm

As for the English riots, few have seen better the underlying causes than Eric Hoffer and nobody listened when he wrote about them in 1951 with a prescience that Hitchens could only dream of:

Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by undermining the authority of parents; by facilitating divorce; by taking over responsibility for feeding, educating, and entertaining the children; and by encouraging illegitimacy. … a disruption of the family, whatever its causes, fosters automatically a collective spirit and creates a responsiveness to the appeal of mass movements. – The True Believer, p. 34 – 36

Wikipedia also gives additional commentary by Hoffer relevant to the matter:

In these and other books, Hoffer continued to build upon his earlier theories and observations. It was his view that rapid change is not necessarily a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a very different society than what that society has become. He noted that in 1960s America, many young adults were still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence, which, in his words, "is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood." He sees these puberty rites as essential for self-esteem, and notes that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior.

Hoffer further notes that the reason working-class Americans did not by and large join in the 1960s protest movements and subcultures was they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor who lived on welfare and the affluent were, in his words "prevented from having a share in the world's work and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay" and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that this need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a 2-year civilian national service program (not unlike the earlier programs during the Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps), in which all young adults would do two years of work in fields such as construction or natural resources work. He writes: "The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth."

Is it not exactly those two classes: those on welfare and affluent youths, who were at the center of the riots? Nationalism is not the answer. Indeed, the nationalism Starkey longs for is just another substitute for what is really needed. The answer is much simpler, perhaps: a pick, a shovel, a foreman, and a building to build. Indeed, the riots would stop in death-time if those who received unearned money were suddenly completely cut off from their supply of money, because, as Hoffer correctly observed:

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility...The Abject Poor…are immune to the appeal of a mass movement… The[ir] goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. – The True Believer, p. 26, et. al.

The Chicken

Tony: "He looked at and analyzed ancient wills. How many poor people (comparatively) ever made wills?"

Clark obviously considered this and spends a good deal of ink in his book showing that the poor did write wills and in these wills were childless compared to the upper classes.

Here's a paper by Clark on the topic:

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/JEH2006.pdf

In Farewell to Alms, Clark only entertains the idea that England's escape from the Malthusian trap was genetic (a result of the downward trajectory of people and genes) -- but more recently has adopted this view according to Steve Hsu.

"I am making the rather simple assumption that when 7% of the women are the mothers of most current women, they are so by the same 10% of men that are the fathers of most of the current men. That is, the women and the men have to work together on this, and it would be statistically ridiculous if (for example) those 7% of the women are responsible for producing MOST of the women but only of 20% of the current men. So, 7% of women get together with 10% of the men to produce the bulk of this generation. When 7% sleep with 10%, there has to be a pretty large overlap among the 7% women to deal with the men, no?"

You are overlooking that women pass on intact their mother's mitochondrial DNA and men pass on intact their father's Y-Chromosome.

Say you have an island with 4 people: John (J chromosome), Tom (T chromosome), Mary (M MDNA) and Ann (A MDNA). John and Mary marry and have ten kids, all of whom die except Richard (J) and Wallace (J). Tom and Ann have a daughter Elizabeth (A) and a son Henry (T). Elizabeth and Richard marry, and have two daughters Christine (A) and Julia (A) and two sons Edward (J) and Thomas (J). Now Wallace (J) marries Christine (A) and they have two sons Bruce (J) and Robert (J). A disease hits the island, and everyone is now dead except Wallace (J), Elizabeth (A), Henry (T) and Christine (A) and Julia (A). As you can see, from this perspective, 100% of the current generation is descended from 1 woman, but 50% of the population from one man and another 50% from another man.

True, true. I had wondered about just that scenario, but had not bothered to work out the details.

Does the fact that this scenario is possible only because the 2 strains mix in the next generation affect any conclusions? When rich folk marry poor folk, and their progeny are represented today, is that accounted progeny of rich folk or progeny of poor folk?

MAR - thanks for the elucidation.

Calculating naively, one might say that 60% of the survivors in your example are descended from John, 80% from Tom, 60% from Mary, and 80% from Ann - resulting in no overall sexual discrepancy.

I guess that the transmission of dna from mother to daughter and from father to son is kind of a special case.

MAR, you mean that 100% of the surviving WOMEN get Ann's chromosomes (and Tom's, of course). Not 100% of the population. Similarly, 50% of the MEN derive their Y chromosomes from Tom, not 50% of the population.

Starkey appeals to a "sense of national identity and common purpose" when the black thugs of whom he speaks can barely begin to comprehend the main features of our civilization.

So what would you have him do, Jd?

You've gotta walk before you can run.

England will be a shattered shell of its former self if it doesn't halt the "ghettoers", just like here in Michigan. Wanna' see England's possible future? Check out Detroit, not far from where I live. Don't want to? I don't blame you. Powell was correct, much like Thomas Jefferson.