Transnationalism Is The Last Refuge of A Scoundrel

This fits nicely with the last post though it is from exactly a year ago.

Samuel Johnson originally said "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Johnson said this in the mid-18th C, before Europe became convulsed -- for good and ill -- with movements which purported to transcend mere national boundaries and uplift Mankind in general. The nation was a cause larger than one's own self, and thus the most convenient sheep's clothing for a wolf to hide in. Marx would not appear on the scene for a century. Even the American and French Revolutions, with their high-falutin' language about the Rights of Man, were unknown.

If transnationalism had existed, Johnson would have picked that instead, not merely because it follows that the "higher" cause creates the better cover, but because he would have observed it happening.

Mark Steyn excoriates the UN, (HT: Instapundit) not because it is flawed, but because its flaws are now central to its existence. The UN retains wide emotional approval, especially on the left, despite its demonstrated corruption and active interference in the improvement of nations.

In fact, however, the UN is a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.

It retains this cachet because transnationalism is thought to be a holier cause than nationalism. Perhaps even especially in the Christian denominations, there is a fuzzy logic which believes "Because the Church transcends national boundaries, therefore anything which also transcends national boundaries is holier than the merely national." When you put it this way, it is revealed as merely silly. But the denominational offices, the seminaries, and the higher clergy really do think this way. Causes which "reach across" (notice the image) national boundaries are seen as aspirational and inspirational. Trying to rise above "mere nationalism" is seen as a default Good Thing.

It is not. CS Lewis notes that the higher things may rise, the more evil they may become. Devils are made of fallen angels, not fallen cattle.

Additionally, notice that the Church didn't begin to think this way until socialism became part of the equation. The Holy Roman Empire did not envision itself as a mini-UN. The laudable cooperation of Christians from different backgrounds occurred because they had an allegiance to the Church, and hopefully, ultimately to Christ, not because they had an allegiance to transnationalism per se.

Transnationalism is a new false god, and like Moloch, has devoured many children.

The Holiness of Transnationalism - Again.

Other posts relating to the moral difficulties of transnationalism are here.

I listened to a friend expound on the need for Christians especially to identify more expansively than just their own country, expressing his sincere desire for a more transnational, world-Christian approach. I have no doubt that expanding our circle to include who we can, treating Samaritans and even Gentiles as brothers is fully consonant with Christian values. I take his point immediately that when we are patriotic we run the risk of confusing our American and our Christian values and drifting away into some less pure form of the faith.

What he does not see is that his identification with transnationalism as a secular ideal is as strong as any patriotism, and as dangerous to faith. He identifies with American and European progressives, the United Nations, the familiar A&H Clan – that is the nation he is patriotic about. From a Christian standpoint, that is neither better nor worse than the possible temptations of traditional patriotism. As a practical matter, it is worse, for the simple reason that he does not see it, and thus has no hope of repenting of it.

Loyalty to an ideal carries an additional danger. Who, exactly, is in the group can be quite flexible. There is no boundary which demands that you have to try and include this person or that. You can simply not deal with uncomfortable people – no rejection, no impoliteness, no animosity, none of that. But neither do you have to adjust yourself or your own thinking in any way. You can choose what different ideas you will expose yourself to, which reduces the number of surprises.

If anyone claims to identify with all of humanity, he deceives himself. There are no world citizens, we are not built for it. We may, by effort, expand our general boundary beyond our own tribe – and we should. We are also able to make ourselves respond as if we loved Samaritans and Gentiles in specific situations when need arises – and we should do that as well. As Christians we are called outward, to invite the unlikely in and to help those not of our own little circle. But it is hard, and the circle does not stay expanded on its own. As I said, we are not built for it. We will limit the circle of who we feel we must listen to, and deal with, and strive to include. So does my transnationalist friend, but he doesn’t see it, and so allows himself the secret pleasure of self-righteousness. When he says that expanding the circle is hard, he is encouraging you to transfer to his tribe and commiserating how hard that change will be for you. His need to change is not up for discussion, because it is not even visible.

Not Their Tribe

The Arts & Humanities crowd in America do not support OIF, or indeed nearly any war, because they do not perceive their tribe to be in danger.

There are numerous American tribes, and we all belong to a few. Usually, we will have one as our primary identifier. James Webb, just elected Senator from VA, wrote Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America, which is a powerful defense of the oft-maligned Southern, Appalachian, South Central US culture. Webb’s point is that this culture has fought our wars and continues to fight them – it is absolutely the case that the Revolutionary War could not have been won without them, for example – and is defined by honor, duty, country. Other tribes, particularly the Arts & Humanities crowd, deride them for their cars, their music, and their accents. Actually, the A&H crowd pretty much derides anyone who tries to do entertainment or academics that’s not under their supervision.

On the negative side, this Scots-Irish/ Appalachian/stereotypical Red State culture is historically racist (or more exactly, very tolerant of racism), suspicious of outsiders of any color, and violent. While this is less true now than previously, some remains.


Arnold Kling, over at TCSDaily, writes about “trust cues,” of the different groups, and in particular identifies some of the verbal cues of the Business Tribe. Such cues declare “I am part of this group. To lose that status would be painful for me. You can trust me to obey certain norms.” Such trust cues apply only for the specific tribal rules. Business trust cues don’t indicate whether you can trust the person with your wife or what his politics are.

Black voting patterns are tribal in this larger sense. Being loyal to “the community,” giving back to “the community,” remains important. White liberals like to note that black theology stresses social action and justice. Which would be more convincing to me if the justice sought didn’t always involve a large percentage of other black people. The black social action which defends Hispanics or American Indians exists only in the context of defending African-Americans, with others as throw-ins. It is invisible otherwise. Ironically, this larger tribalism may be a result of slave owners making extreme effort to destroy tribalism in the African sense. Slaves were split up from their historical tribes so they could not communicate with each other and become dangerous. Mandingos and Bantus lost their historical importance. Had these persisted, the national rivalries we see resolved in America – Poles & Germans, or Serbs & Macedonians as comfortable neighbors, shaking their heads at those idiots in Europe – might have taken place among Africans as well, as they are with Caribbean blacks now. That sort of natural accommodation might have be better. But because white people saw blacks as “all of a piece,” they came to see themselves that way.

There are regional tribes: Joel Garreau convincingly describes Nine Nations of North America. Texas conservatives are not the same as New Hampshire conservatives, as my second son is finding out. They are an affiliated tribe. They like making noise. We like being left alone. Or perhaps, their other tribal identifications are very different from what you find in New England. Libertarians in New England are geeks who really care about the Tenth Amendment; the same party in Arizona tends toward people who also belong to NORML. There are religious and ethnic tribes as well.

Many people straddle tribes, or move fairly easily in more than one. Many more think they move easily but don’t. The entire cultural weight of the LL Bean catalogue was founded on the illusion that even though you’re a chieftain in the (Preppy) Business Tribe of suburban Boston or New Haven, you can still mix naturally with hunters, boat repairmen, and dog breeders in Maine. The balancing act for those trying to rise in the Business Tribe is difficult. You actually might mix well with the lobstermen and pie-bakers – because they really are your relatives. There’s just something humorous about wearing the look that is supposed to be an imitation of the relatives you are trying to hide, so that you can assume the appearance of unassuming wealth.

Come to think of it, the Arts & Humanities tribe tries to do that on their vacations also. It’s no accident that there are lots of books about people having profound thoughts while hiking in the wilderness. That group doesn’t hunt or fish much, however.

There is an element of choice. Many of us have family from several tribes, and at some point choose to align more with one. My wife and I aligned early with the Arts & Humanities tribe, and both have our jobs in its offshoots. Our closest friends haven’t tended to be from that group, and our allegiance to it has waned, but that alignment shows in our two older children. We belong to some older version of that tribe.

Each tribe has at least some disdain for the others. The A & H tribe looks down on the others, despite its shameful dependence on the Business Tribe. Most other tribes look at the A & H with suspicion, enjoying the shows and magazines, sending their children to the colleges, but wondering whether these people are quite stable and sensible. Couldn’t all this talent and energy have gone into something more, well, important? Businessmen are regarded as being removed from emotions, relationships, and “real life.”

Strong crossovers provoke both respect and nervousness. A friend who is both a Poli-Sci professor and a parish minister laments that the Poli-Sci professionals regard him with suspicion because of his MDiv; church folk treat him tentatively at first because of his PhD. Austin Bay is a retired Air Force colonel, and also a PhD in English from Columbia. People just don’t know what to do with that. They ask test questions upon meeting him, hoping to establish which tribe he identifies with. To many people, it is crucial to know what tribe you identify with.

Though the military draws from all the national tribes, it draws least from the Prep School and A & H tribes, and draws most from the Western, Southern Heartland, and Rust Belt workingman (especially ethnic) tribes. Also, the military specifically inculcates a value common to those groups, mutually reinforcing it: we are all Americans, leave your differences at the door, we have to work together. As I noted in an earlier post, some groups find it infuriating that others split themselves off, claiming a primary allegiance elsewhere. “Proud to be American,” their bumper-stickers read. No hyphenated Americans, please. The Prep and A&H tribes tend to be internationalist, and worry about displaying the flag. They believe that Transnationalism is a higher calling, and the mainstream clergy, drawn heavily from A & H, believes transnationalism is more holy . This gets a lot of dressing in religious language, but is essentially a merely tribal value. A & H values the opinion of Brussels more than Nashville. So do their pastors.

Few writings in recent years have provoked more anger than Michael Moore’s screed immediately after 9-11. His comments that the terrorists should have targeted Texas rather than New York, because “these people didn’t vote for Bush,” was a clear statement that his identification was not with the US as a whole, but with his particular subgroup. His statement was interpreted, rather accurately, as “I don’t care if people from your tribe die. I care if people from my tribe die.” This sentiment of not merely disagreeing with other large tribes in the American coalition, but actively unfastening oneself from their fate, is growing in Blue America, and may be dominant in the A & H tribe.

Contrast this to the country music song “Have You Forgotten,” referring to the destruction of the Twin Towers:

Have you forgotten, when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside goin through a livin hell.

The A&H tribe in NYC doesn’t think of Biloxi as “neighbors.”

The fact that the 9-11 attacks took place in NYC created some temporary realignments, but Arts & Humanities quickly quarrantined the victims as “Business” and were able to avoid connection. By defining themselves out, what they define as their tribes are indeed not in much danger. Why stir up trouble, George Bush? We’re not going to be losing our sons unless it’s a very large war.

Moral Reasoning

I mentioned Jonathan Haidt’s research a few months ago, and Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm just brought it up again. Haidt claims that liberals measure morality on just two axes, fairness/reciprocity and harm/care. Conservatives, OTOH, work from a suite of five measures of morality, adding in authority/respect, purity/sanctity, ingroup/loyalty. Experimentally, conservatives accurately predict how liberals will reason about a moral issue, but liberals have a hard time guessing how conservatives reason.

My initial reaction was that the schema which comprehends the others is usually regarded as better in some sense. Dreaming/waking, insanity/sanity, uninformed/informed – we give the nod to the side that sees both. But Haidt goes through enormous contortions to show that liberal moral reasoning is actually better because the three things added in by conservatives are unnecessary, superfluous. The two measures liberals use are the Real Deal. Sigh.

Upon reflection, I took too much at face value. Haidt reported that liberals disregard three axes and I believed him. Yet looking at the three rejected measures, I see liberal archetypes more than conservative ones.

Purity/sanctity makes us think of religion, sin – sex, drugs, and rock & roll – so we leap to the conclusion that it is a conservative fave. But environmentalism has a strong, even puritanical strain, of purity/sanctity issues. Organic foods, pristine wilderness, biodegradability, offshore drilling – why should you care if there’s a hill of plastic in Montana? Heck, why should you care if there’s one in your town? You’re not affected. Your sense of purity is affected. All-natural, my Aunt Fanny. Victimology and anti-corporate rhetoric also have purity strands hanging off them.

Authority/Respect What is the bias toward academia and credentials if not an appeal to authority? That experts from the government should regulate the behavior of others? These are not the conservative stereotype of authority – parents, police, the Bible – but it is equally rigid. Liberals question authority by relying on other authorities. Maybe they are better authorities, but it’s still the same type of fence.

Ingroup/Loyalty – I have previously gone on at length about the Arts & Humanities Hive. Ingroup and loyalty issues are as strong among progressives as conservatives. As with transnationalism versus patriotism, it’s the same phenomenon with a different tribe. When feminists agonised over supporting Bill Clinton in 1998, it was a conflict between the loyalties of feminism and liberalism, but it was still much about loyalty.

If these other measures are just as much a part of liberal moral reasoning as conservative, why isn’t it showing up in Haidt’s data? My suspicion is that they are less-conscious, less rational, and so get stuffed into the other two categories. Environmentalism is not seen as a purity issue, but as a harm issue, even when there is nothing measurable. If I bury ten car batteries deep in the White Mountain National Forest no one’s ever going to notice it unless they are looking for it with sensitive measures. But liberal reasoning would say that it is wrong because there is harm, somehow. Incidentally, this is why people actually addressing environmental problems come up with very different priority lists than activists and popular opinion.

Because the authority issues are more diffuse – not much, really, but enough to make it invisible – liberals don’t see that authority is entering in to their reasoning. It’s subtle, disguised, but still present. Accepting the word of experts rather than running the data yourself is at least as common among libs.

Thus also with loyalty. Liberals don’t officially consider it a moral measure, but their behavior says it’s just as much part of the package. They are affected, but are not aware they are affected.

Related: I think this ties in strongly with the post about bias as a spiritual problem. Insight. Self-awareness.

Best of March 2007: Remainder

As before, better to comment here than there.

First, the post with the odd name that for some reason is my major spam-attractor, even years later: Half-Syllables and Barrow-Wights.

A post about blasphemy, which includes my only use of wanker on this site.

Some reminiscence for those under 55 of the impact of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Commencement Address over 30 years ago.

Brief parenting advice.

Seeker-friendly churches. "What we call seeker-friendly churches are those which appeal to as large a number of who they think is out there as possible. The complaint against them would be that they appeal to a lowest-common-denominator. The complaint against the other churches would be that they have narrowed their appeal so enormously as to become useless."

Some Contradictions, when towns in VT were finding it necessary to vote to impeach Bush.

Finally, some serious posts about subjects I have revisited many times since then, but not at such length. I confess to being rather proud of a few of these, and may even repost them individually in the near future. I tried to argue with some exactness, giving due weight to possible objections while summarising key ideas of mine. All, unfortunately, depend somewhat on the posts leading up to them, but I think you'll pick it up. Doubly unfortunately, some are long.

Lots of odd cameo appearances here: NPR, Wordsmith Tribe, Chief Seattle. Christmas pageants, competitive bridge, Swedish newspapers in America.

Liberal Ideas, and why they're wrong.

A reply to my uncle about our family's membership in the Arts & Humanities Tribe, and why said tribe is not really the smartest.

Turning the other cheek, as applied to nations and individuals. Many comments, including a typical argument with copithorne.

Related: Why Transnationalism Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel.

Also related: Why Do Intellectuals Oppose The Military?

A quote about Bernard Lewis: "Lewis urged us to have a little sense of proportion, and went on to say — and it was an illuminating line — ‘The crusade was a late, limited and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad.’"

The Meanings of Words

I am back on the edges of this tax-protestor thing again – from a different direction and partly my own fault. Ah well.

One of their arguments is that the tax system is “voluntary.” They interpret this according to the everyday meaning of voluntary, as in a voluntary contribution to a charity, or enlisting in the armed services rather than being drafted. It’s easy to see why this would be the first definition that would occur to anyone seeing it in print. “Hey! Voluntary! I never knew that; this is great! I’m not going to volunteer anymore.” As is usual, things that look too good to be true usually aren’t. Voluntary has a specific legal meaning in this case, in that you are allowed to figure out and submit the data yourself, rather than the government sending you a bill.

People don’t like that. It seems like some sort of trick or playing with words to them. The plain meaning of a word should be what wins the day, in their eyes.

But this happens with words all the time. Everyday words have specific meanings in context. I argued with my high school English teacher that such-and-such a character couldn’t be the “hero” of the book because he was so unheroic. To me, it seemed that the word hero required some sort of heroic behavior. It doesn’t. It’s a technical term. We use the word “depression” in an everyday sense, but medically it has a specific meaning; in the case of an agitated depression, it might even look quite different from the usual picture in our minds of a depressed person. Force has a specific meaning in physics. Culture has a specific meaning in anthropology. There are other meanings to those words, but those are irrelevant to the physics or anthropology discussion.

Words can even have dramatically different meanings in different contexts. To a probate court, both biological and adopted children are your descendants. To a genetecist, only biological ones are. Who you call your children might be a third thing: she’s no daughter of mine – she cut herself off from the rest of us years ago.

One more example and I’m done. In my long twilight political arguments with my liberal uncle, he objects to my using the word “liberals” to describe people who subscribe to certain political ideas: belief in using government as a force for good, a fondness for transnationalism, a preference for more redistribution of wealth. He wishes to use the term “liberal” to mean open-mindedness, considering many options. It could mean that in some contexts, I suppose. But in current political discussion it simply doesn’t. We might argue about what the precise meaning of the word is, but it is a word about beliefs, and not attitudes in that context. None of us gets to veto the meaning in context. Refusing to be convinced doesn’t change the reality.

Civil Discourse

The Daily Show
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I keep trying to have a soft spot for Stewart, who is a W&M grad, but his condescending style still irritates me.  Except when I completely agree with what he is doing and skewering someone who really deserves it, in which case I love his style.  Which is a pretty clear indication of character flaws on my part.

I do start to feel sorry for her toward the end, against the time when she realises what an ass she is being, and how she might feel that night.  Yet she seems so impervious and well-defended that I suspect that moment might never come.

Here is the extent of my generalisation:  I don't believe that all liberals are like this, nor even that most are.  I do believe that there is a significant minority that is pretty close to this level of denial, and I believe that of the convinced liberals, the 16-19% of the American population identified by Pew every few years, a majority have much more of this jaw-dropping lack of insight than they have the faintest clue of.  There are folks with similar levels of denial among the other political groupings, but much fewer and less intense.  This is not because they are inherently nicer or more honest people, but because liberalism - the set of ideas itself - lends itself to denial of reality in favor of what we might wish were true.  It is a one-step-forward, two-steps-back set of ideas in all realms: transnationalism, environmentalism, government incentivizing and redistributing.  All of these are ideas that have some strength, and can be made to perform if they are used wisely.  Absent that, they depend on deceit to stay afloat.

Thanks to Philosophical Fragments via Tigerhawk

A Regard For All Mankind

At the simplest level, those who want to eliminate, or at least deemphasise nationalism in favor of a more universal regard for humanity are absolutely correct. If Frenchmen were as generous of spirit to Algerians as they are to their fellow townsmen, that would be a good thing for the world. If an American saw no real difference in personal responsibility to Iranians as to other Americans, we would regard that person as noble and elevated, having achieved a level of love for mankind worthy of emulation. If we had only the practical objection that such things are beyond the capabilities of mortal men, or that they are often poses covering a darker tribalism, that would not tarnish the ideal. This is the sort of completely unprejudiced openness we think Jesus had, that Mother Theresa had, that the Dalai Lama has.

If the Iranians and Pakistanis and Canadians and Brazilians – all the nations of the world – could indeed achieve or even approach such a comity of coexistence, who wouldn’t like it? Of course that’s a better world. Of course we should all try to get there. I sometimes get the impression that those who advocate for this ideal think that those who disagree with them are so base as to not want universal peace and justice. They seem to think that we prefer a world of strife so long as our guys can be dominant. They are quite sure that nationalism is an obstacle, even the obstacle to universalism and transnationalism.

That’s rather insulting, and more than a little self-congratulatory. It is the moral attitude of adolescents, who think that because they feel something so strongly they must be better than those others.

Yet even in this perfected world, wouldn't nationalism be part of the fun? Like rival teams or towns or schools, might we not hope the best for others while still enjoying our own group making its way through the troubles of the world together? Even heaven seems to be populated by different groups, each with its own song, its own honors, its own unity.

More seriously, what do we do with the people who don't want to go along with us? To keep things simple, imagine a village setting rather than national messes for the disputes. The village decides that certain land shall belong to one group. Someone else puts a house there. After five years of arguing and mediation, the town stops negotiating and decides to evict. It looks like it's going to require force. What do you, the citizen, do? What if you think the village is correct but disapprove of force? Now all of a sudden it's you that is no longer part of "we."

There is no general answer to this. It matters greatly what this house and group are. If it's a black person building in a designated white neighborhood, then it looks one way; if it's Israeli's settling on the West Bank it looks another way; if it's an illegal immigrant building in a state park it looks a third way. What if one of the parties is being impoverished or endangered by this? To pretend that there is a Christian solution, an always-moral solution to this generic dispute is absurd. We appeal to an authority, a tradition, a church for a decision - but what if one party will not abide by it?

These are not silly hypotheticals. This is what will always happen, everywhere, with every group of human beings, from the family to the international level. Nor can we resort to the idea of starting everyone afresh, clearing the slate and making a new arrangement, for there will be disagreements about that arrangement also. Do we start afresh again? After fifty tries, when we have established that one party will not stop until they have everything, do we start again? It is one thing for me personally to forgive seventy times seven, spending my life humbling myself before another for the sake of the gospel. But what if the side that will only be satisfied with complete victory is robbing the poor? Shall I do nothing?

But here I will add an interesting twist. Thus far, it has all been very basic stuff. Only the most ardent of pacifists would deny that eventually, people have a right to seek justice, on behalf of others if not themselves. Well of course you can eventually take firm action. No one's denying that. Well, actually you are.

Let's add a new person to the village. This sensitive, moral person arrives just after the fiftieth infraction and says the village is being hasty. They should try to work with the offender. They should appeal to a mediator, or be willing to make more concessions. The village makes another fifty tries, just to live up to that elevated morality, when a second new person arrives, exhorting the others with tears and heaving bosom to have mercy fifty more times.

Something odd has happened here. The new people arriving on the scene aren't personally tired of the whole thing, so they think the village shouldn't be either. Because they haven't seen the injustice and the honest efforts, they think they haven't "really" happened. At this point we must note that there are always new people coming into the village. They might feel as if they are more moral and just, because their personal store of forgiveness has not yet been exhausted. They see the villagers as vicious, divisive, uncaring, unwilling to listen...

This is what is happening behind these calls for peace. John has been victimized for years. Joe says he's not sick of it yet, so John shouldn't go to war. Except Joe just came in last week. Of course he's not sick of it. He wants to start afresh. Worse, he's self-righteous with John about it.

We Are The World

In my previous blogging on transnationalism, or the general idea of expanding our notions of who we consider us and who we consider them, I have focussed on practical rather than theoretical objections. It is worth challenging myself whether that is the whole story. After all, I do not regard nonbelievers’ criticisms of how terrible many Christians are as determinative whether the doctrine is true. That wickedness is not irrelevant, but neither is it the main consideration.

Those who believe We Are The World certainly believe it is a more moral choice; at a minimum, that it is a higher moral aspiration. It is trivially easy for me to point out that this view consistently leads to greater injustice, or that its proponents reveal themselves to be a zoo of primitive motives which they are oblivious to. Self-righteousness, self-deception, and hypocrisy are always fun to poke at. Don’t get me started, I’ll never stop.

But might the belief itself, the shining ideal, actually be a higher morality we should strive toward, gradually remaking ourselves for a better tomorrow? Is it a more Christian sentiment, that believers should consider themselves obliged to attempt, even with little hope of success? It’s worth considering.

So start thinking about it. I will post soon, perhaps as early as tonight, perhaps as late as Wednesday.

(NOTICE: The following is not fair. Many people who earnestly desire a world of comity and mutual support are not hypocrites, self-righteous, or self-deceiving. Okay, they have to be one of those things, but not all of them together. And they're nice people. Well-meaning people are not in such large supply in the world that I should spend my time kicking them. Yet I do.)

NO, NO, I can't take it! I have to make fun of them before I move on to the serious discussion.
For you younger ones who don't know what WATW refers to, I torture you with this :

 

PJ O'Rourke did the best summary of it in his excellent book Give War A Chance.

We are the world [solipsism], we are the children [average age forty].
We are the ones to make a brighter day [unproven], so let’s start giving [logical inference supplied without argument].
There’s a choice we’re making, so let’s start giving [true as far as it goes].
We’re saving our own lives [absurd].
It’s true we’ll make a better day [see line 2 above],
Just you and me [statistically unlikely].

That’s three palpable untruths, two dubious assertions, and nine uses of a first person pro-noun, not a single reference to trouble and anybody in it and no facts. The verse contains, literally, neither rhyme nor reason. And these musical riots of philanthropy address themselves to the wrong problems.

Death is the result of bad politics.

Thanks PJ.

Proto-English

I was trying to find out where the idea that there was a West Germanic language in Britain before the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, etc arrived around 400AD came from and what the evidence behind it is. John McWhorter mentioned it about a year ago with some qualified approval. It is certainly plausible, as groups were back-and-forth across the North Sea for centuries. But I'll have to get back to that farther on, as something more important has come up.

Cambridge openly admitting it now teaches students that “Anglo-Saxons aren’t real” to “fight nationalism”. God forbid we be historically well-versed if it means the descendants of certain people get to have a unique group identity.

Razib also tweeted about this today, which is where I originally found it.  It is lunacy. A lot of the Brits are blaming this on American influence, and I have to admit they have a point. They have some of this nonsense on their own, but we really are exporting this.

The complaint about nationalism was originally from communists, who believed their internationalism (or transnationalism) was so necessary to changing the governments of other places that all other goods had to be sacrificed to it. Internationalism is a wonderful thing, as are universal peace and brotherhood, but somehow the expressions of it seem to go bad very quickly. Perhaps CS Lewis's general rule is what applies here, that it can fall lower because it aims higher.  Demons are made of fallen angels, not fallen cattle. But we aren't supposed to notice the demons, only that they wanted to be angels when they started out.

Nazi Germany, offered as a catchphrase, not used as an intellectual argument, is given as an example why nationalism is always bad. It is not an unlimited good, but its faults are usually in its misuse, and sometimes these are slow in coming.  It was the various nationalisms working together, not ignored, that defeated the Nazis. National Socialism could more fairly be described as Racial Socialism, or Tribal Socialism. Germans across national borders were included; Slavs, Roma, and Jews within the borders were excluded. I think an additional problem arises because once people have been divided into groups, one can't help but notice that some of them seem to have more success. Steve Sailer kids that he keeps getting in trouble just for noticing things.

But back to Proto-English. I can't find much to support the idea, yet it does remain possible. I ran this video a few years ago and forgot it, it seems. The towns mentioned are in the west of England, halfway between Oxford and Bristol. 

The idea is that there was an inland lake, and the -ey endings indicate a Germanic ending for islands. But the lake was well back before the Common Era, four centuries or more. Next, the Belgae claimed to be a Germanic people. But most of the energy put into this theory seems to be devoted to pointing out the weaknesses of the prevailing theories. The DNA evidence neither proves nor disproves either side, but the Proto-English believers think it points more in their direction.

There may be newer evidence that I just haven't heard of.

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Health, Wealth, and Peace

Christians who reject would contemptuously the name-it-and-claim-it, health and wealth gospel as it relates to bodily health and personal prosperity nonetheless want to apply something similar for peace and international relations. The idea that there is this prescription for peace that involves negotiation, showing the other guys that we mean no harm, and crucifixion humility is imbedded deeply in the Christian Left. Because Jesus wants us to be, like, peacemakers, then it Only Stands To Reason that being peaceniks should work. Work for peace. Teach peace. Prince of Peace. War is not the answer. Interrupt the cycle of violence. If we do our part as Christians, then peace will follow.

Ignoring for a moment that the Bible does not actually teach that nations are morally obligated to do this, and granting arguendo that it does, it still doesn’t say anywhere that acting in pacificistic humility will bring peace, neither in the short nor the long run. With all the sophisticated dressing, the accusations of American arrogance and empire, the giving voice-to-the-oppressed rhetoric, and intonations about the Authentic Gospel, that’s what it boils down to. Underneath it all, there is the unexamined assumption that Jesus says it will work. Jesus never says that.
A related post, Transnationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

That 60's Theology

Almost 20% of the faculty at Boston College has signed a letter by two theology professors protesting that institution granting of an honorary degree to Condi Rice. An excellent summary of the issue by Anil Adyanthaya is here.

Because Dr. Rice is one of the architects of an "unjust war," and her article in 2000 in Foreign Affairs, the professors believe that her ideas are incompatible with Catholic and Jesuit thought, and should not be thus exalted.

Let me guess. Their step-by-step through the Just War doctrine specifies the UN as the legitimate authority. Yes, I believe it was Athanasius, or perhaps Anselm who specified that the legitimate authority was a collection of the governments of many nations, regardless of their individual moral authority. No other answer is possible.

I have commented previously on the holiness that the American left assigns to transnationalism. Because the Church is transnational, it must follow, as the night does the day, that transnational groups are holier than the merely national. To seek America's best interest is necessarily flawed; universal interest must dictate our affairs.

I am curious whether the professors apply that principle more universally. They are educators, and their job is to educate the young. But if BC recruits a professor from a larger school, isn't BC's educational excellence achieved at the expense of the larger world? If BC accepts talented students, are they not stealing them from Brandeis? The idea that a person might be assigned by God to protect a certain interest or group of people seems incompatible with the professors' contention.

It Takes a Village Idiot

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:39

The direction from Jesus is pretty clear. One might try and get around it by noting that this is the highest possible response, on the order of "Sell all your goods and give the money to the poor," or "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." But that might be an evasion. Jesus did say it, and having lived in the same world we inhabit, He presumably knew that this is counterintuitive, unnatural, and difficult.

What we do not have from Jesus, however, is any indication how this applies when it's someone else who is being struck, or what this means for people under our protection. The classic pacifist would immediately apply this to all situations of aggression. By that reading, attacks on your wife, your children, your flocks, fields, or nation would fall under the same command - to never use force in response.

Perhaps so. That is more counterintuitive, unnatural, and difficult, but it is the same sort of difficulty. Certainly Jesus does not say anything here to suggest exceptions for group behavior or protection of others. Maybe we're stuck with it as is: if someone takes your son, give him your daughter as well; if the Mongols burn your fields, deliver your flocks as well, that the tribe might perish, but you all die a witness. Perhaps the Mongols will be stunned by your righteousness and convert. Maybe it will take the righteous capitulation of a dozen Christian nations before they get the message, but it will eventually work. Won't it?

So let's apply this cheek-turning command to other progressive causes. If Caucasians have better jobs than African-Americans, then give them better schools as well. If the state forbids you to have an abortion, give up birth control as well. If your rich neighbor cheats on his taxes, then pay his share and give him one of your cars. If the mills burn too much fossil fuel, let them dumb junk in the river as well.

Hmm. Something seems to be going wrong here. It seems this cheek-turning is being applied selectively. Community action to enforce justice seems to be a good thing when it's taxes or pollution, but a bad thing when it's war. What exactly is the difference between them? Is Jesus's command only for the rich? But he delivered it mainly to the poor. Are Christian progressives to encourage the poor to seek greater oppression, then?

Perhaps the behavior of nations, and the Christians who inhabit them, is too far a jump to make cleanly. Jesus gave an individual command; it just might mean something in the political realm as well. But how are we to make the leap and apply it? Taking Matthew 5 as command for nations and warfare leads us to a terrible contradiction with what the religious left espouses in other areas.

And the contradiction is enormous, almost complete. Not only is the verse only applied to the examples of warfare and redistribution, it is applied in reverse in other areas. Working for justice means confronting the powerful, sending them to jail if they're wrong, making the system give the oppressed what they deserve. And probably rightly. In the history of getting justice for the downtrodden, the confrontative, strong-arm tactics do seem to have worked better. Christians just can't have it both ways. If the community can organize to tax the rich at higher rates because it is just, then it can organize to defend the oppressed of other nations. Just 'cause we wanna, even.

I offer the following explanation. The religious left would like to believe it is against war because they believe it such the way of Christ. They don't mean it. They are not lying to us, but to themselves. What they really believe is that talking works better than war. They see avoidance of war as a tactic, not a principle. They don't perceive this. But there really isn't any escape. They don't believe Christ, they believe Gandhi, and quote Christ in support. They want to be servants of Christ, when you pull off the disguise, it's Gandhi underneath.

That last was a brutal accusation on my part, but I make it with full knowledge of the fact. The religious left does not believe in the principle of returning good for evil - not at the community level - as much as they believe in the principle of nonviolence, which is not the same thing. They embrace pacifism not because they are prepared to apply non-resistance to all injustice, but because they think it will work. (There is one escape I see. They might also believe that military action is only justified when sanctioned by the United Governments, uh, I mean Nations. They believe transnationalism has some innate holiness.) If you have a better explanation, give it a try.

I think there is a way of envisioning these issues in an intermediate step between individual and society at large: imagine a village. Imagine a village of predominantly Christian people, who wish to do well by each other and be an example for Christ. When one woman starts to break into houses and steal, what do they do in response? When one young man begins to rape the women of the village, what should they do? Cast them out? Kill them? Give them more? Try and reason with them? Send for the King's men? - And what would the king's men do?

Once you've answered that set of difficulties, go on to a harder one. What if the next village is stealing your sheep, or not letting you get to the market town to trade? Pretend you are a simple Christian villager, even the Village Idiot, and determine what should be done.

Racialism and Nationalism

There is no moral difference between trying to do bad things to people and failing at it versus trying and succeeding.  There is enormous practical difference – society devotes more energy to punishing successful crimes for good reason.   There is also a difference in the likelihood of forgiveness.  If Jack tries to harm me but fails, I may hate him for the rest of my life, but my children and certainly my grandchildren are not likely to hold a grudge or even remember.  But if Jack succeeds, so that my children lose a father, or an inheritance, they will remember longer.

One stream of my ancestors were New England Puritans.  The way the story is told in retrospect emphasises the conflict and rancor, but the first fifty years were comparatively peaceful.  There were brutal Indian wars just prior to the European arrival, and just west of Puritan settlement, those continued.  The Mohicans were especially nototious for their aggression.  Back in England, the cousins of the New Englanders were in a bloody war with the cousins of the Virginians, and much of Europe was engaged in religious persecution up until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, or even Utrecht in 1713. So relations in New England were goo, by international standards.  There was a lot of trade and goodwill.

There were also many just plain horrible things done.  The old conventional wisdom was that the Europeans had brought civilisation, technological advancement, and individual rights to the Indians, who were after all just benighted savages, so the bad things they did should be water under the bridge.  The victors write the history books, as they say.  The new conventional wisdom is that the Europeans ended up with all the spaceships by stealing and killing, so all the good things they did should be ignored.  But in the 17^th C, it wasn’t clear who was going to win, nor was it entirely clear who was doing the most stealing or killing.  There were settlements/tribes/groups of both Europeans and Natives that did nothing wrong and won extermination for their troubles.

I focus on New England because it is the history I know best.  It may not be representative of European-Native relations as a whole.  That is my suspcion, based on my more limited knowledge of other events.  But my limited knowledge is largely drawn from the new conventional wisdom, which may not be that accurate either. 

In discussions of race one often encounters accusations such as “took the Native Americans from their cultures and put them in schools where they were forced to learn white culture.”  Hmm.  When the balance of power was more even, Indians captured Europeans, including children.  I don’t recall that they set up special colonialist schools in their villages so that the Europeans could preserve their culture, nor that they made accommodation for religon or language.  That’s not what anyone did, anywhere, until very recently.  Forced assimilation of language, custom, and religion is just what human beings always do to each other when they win.  Even now, the number of countries which voluntarily grant cultural space to helpless minorities is small*. Tolerance usually only happens when the minority is sizable enough or has cousins just over the border.

So too with accusations like genocide. Indian tribes certainly tried to wipe out each other at times, and when the opportunity presented itself, some tried to wipe out all the colonists within easy reach as well.  Were those genocide?  We are back to the who succeeded argument. One can attribute the European success to superior technology, Native American disease resistance, lack of Indian unity, or your theory-of-the-month.  But the evidence for greater meanness and evil is largely an impression.  It feels that way because they ended up with all the spaceships.  I will note also that at least in New England, not many colonists ran away to join the Indians and go to their schools and adopt their culture, but the reverse was common, especially among women, who noticed the higher regard that the newcomers had for their wives and daughters.  Further, I don’t know of incidents of Plymouth County invading Barnstable County to exterminate them for trading with Indians and adopting Indian ways.

The European settlers did many evil things.  They did, and there’s no getting around that.  It’s just not the whole story.  The old CW and the new CW are both founded too fully on who won.  The moral questions may be clearer if we look at the actions of the players who were on the scene at the time, when the outcome was unknown.

*And what countries would those be?

We come up against similar poorly-thought-out arguments about nationalism.  There is this surprise that nationalism was not forever discredited by the existence of the Nazis.  It’s got national socialism right in the title and everything.  How do you fools not see that it’s obviously evil?

Well for openers, the Germans weren’t nationalists, they were tribalists, or racialists in the older sense of the word. Secondly, they were defeated by countries that actually were nationalist, including, when the push came, the Russians in the Soviet Union. That last is a bit of overstatement, but is more than half-true. The defense of Stalingrad was about Mother Russia, not the New Soviet Man. (If someone wants to argue that defense of territory does not rise to the level of nationalism I will not object.  That circle of us-ness may have been even more tribal, not including Novosibirsk or Magadan.  I simply note that it isn’t UN-style internationalism they were fighting for.)

Fascist comes from a word for sticks, and the story of how each stick can be broken if it stands alone but a bunch of them together are unbreakable.  It’s the whole if-we-stand-together ethos, that can be very inpiring (coaches use it at halftime a lot), but can also lead to a lot of anger at people who aren’t getting with the program. With the Italians and the Japanese, the nation was all pretty much one tribe, so the distinction did not come up. Also, what lack of unity they did experience was along tribal lines: Sicily, Hokkaido. You can see that as nationalism, but even with those countries, tribalism is a better descriptor.

With Germany it’s not even close.  They called it nationalism, but there were plenty of people in the nation who were suspect and eventually rejected: Jews, Slavs, Gypsies.  There were also people in other nations who were ethnic Germans who were counted as part of this whole supposedly nationalist fervor.  It wasn’t nationalism.  Nationalism applied more to Great Britain, whose tribes buried their differences for the sake of the nation; or to the French and Walloons in Belgium or the Frisians and Dutch in Holland or the everyones and everyones in Canada, Australia, and the US.  That’s nationalism.  What the Germans had was a racialism that did not rise to the level of nationalism, that they tried to dress up in the language of the day to look more elevated than it was.

You can still make other arguments against nationalism, of course. As tribes cohere and each want their own nation, as in the Balkans, it does seem to lead to a fair bit of violence, animosity, and even warfare.  Lots of folks think transnationalism or internationalism would be better (I use the terms in popular, not precise senses here).  They see nationalism as a halfway point at best and an obstacle at worst on the way to those goals.  I think the spectacular failure of the Soviet Union would suggest we be cautious at a minimum about such arrangements, but I see the attraction.  People believe that the UN has done good in reducing warfare, and we should all move in that direction.  I think global markets have done far more, and the uselessness of the UN has reinforced the power of dictators and oppressive regimes.  Separate discussion.  I am simply noting there is no obvious and automatic discrediting of nationalism because some evil groups have called themselves nationalist.

The theory is that the “we’re all brothers under the skin” method of achieving comity is the only one that has any chance of working, so all else must be suppressed as actively dangerous.  It is true that some evil people were very conscious of race or nation in their hatred and violence.  But so were those who defeated them. Some who proclaim the brotherhood of man have guillotined, assassinated, or liquidated those who were inadequately brotherly.  Others have been simple decent folk trying to give everyone a fair shake.  I suspect those who teach otherwise of partisan spirit for some second cause.

It comes up often in the “race is only a social construction” claim in the social sciences.  Because people had bad definitions of race based largely on color in the past, and did evil things on that basis, we should never use the term with regard to humans again. I don’t think we apply that reasoning in many other places, but when we do, the intent is usually to define a word more precisely, like culture, or marriage, or depression, or progressive. We don’t usually abandon the word altogether.