Our rights do not originate with government, but they are to be "secured" by government.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Diversity: Where Libertarianism Goes to Die

by Tom Rhodes, 3/27/2017

I read this at Voxday today, “Libertarianism and pure classical liberal economics are elegant and seductive systems; but they did not stand up to the test of empirical evidence.” That sums up the failure of libertarianism.

Libertarianism works for a people willing to self-govern who share a culture, with common values. Libertarianism like our constitution is a reflection of a specific culture with a specific set of values. Any society that embraces libertarianism but does not have a shared culture by an overwhelming majority will fall apart and cease to function as a cohesive society.

Our forefathers were clear, and our constitution based on libertarian(classical liberal) ideas, functioned and created a society where more people prospered than any other in the history of the world. Until 1965 the USA protected it’s cultural heritage, it did so by not accepting large numbers of people from dissimilar cultures and worked at having those cultures assimilate and adopt American culture. The root of that culture is from Northern Europe primarily the English with some Dutch and German. There is/was one unifying cultural root of those Northern European Cultures - Protestant Christianity.

Significant numbers of most other cultures cannot be readily absorbed, and will cause strife and separation and disharmony in a society if allowed to immigrate in large numbers. Because Catholicism is closely related to Protestantism small but significant amounts of immigrants from Catholic cultures have be absorbed in the USA.

History is clear, any society is invaded by force or allows invasion of large numbers of people from other cultures dies. Opening our doors to the third world as resulted not in those immigrants assimilating and becoming Americans. Rather than diversity being uniting and uplifting phenomenon, it has resulted in strife, and the breakdown of our culture. Such invasion inevitably leads to war. Be it the Hispanics and Blacks in Compton, American colonists and Native Americans in the USA, the Moors and Christians in Spain, or the Mongols and where ever they moved, cultures don’t survive large numbers of a different culture invading. The tactic of moving in, building up a significant but culturally separate population, then taking over and eliminating the native culture is how both the Quran and history showed as the method for Islam to expand. The clash of cultures results in War. The mime “Diversity + Proximity = War” is proven by history. Right now there appears to be one exception, but it isn’t over and may yet come to war, that is Brexit. England may be able to salvage it’s culture and remain England without war, but the jury is still out.

History has shown that man is tribal and does not generally trust, tolerate, and live well with other tribes. God separated man into various tribes at Babul. Weather you believe this is an allegory to the evolutionary divergence of man, or to explain tribalism, or the literal truth, is irrelevant. Unless artificially forced, man will choose to live with people of his tribe. You have to be blind not to see that people live and mingle in groups of others who are like them. Almost every big city in the USA has a “China Town” or “Little Italy” within its borders. When I was a kid, the kid’s from our block were a distinct group from those “others” who didn’t live on our block. This is not forced it is natural and part of our evolutionary design. Gated communities exist because people don’t want to live in close proximity to “others.”

One group, tribe, culture, race, whatever is neither superior or inferior to another. They however are not the same. Being different is neither bad nor good it is just different. Utopian thinking libertarians, liberals, conservatives, socialists or whoever, that believe “if everybody would just blah blah blah, then everything would be great and everybody would be happy” are all wrong. Be it a society without government where everybody respected and valued the property of others or a society where government owned and controlled all property with no individual having ownership and all receive a share of the total, or whatever, they are all utopian ideas that history has shown will not work.

What history shows is that pure libertarianism, or anarchy, or socialism, or capitalism, or communism, or Islam, or any other “system” of governance don’t work for all people everywhere. The reason is clear, not every person is the same, not all tribes are the same, not all cultures are the same, and what one person or group values is not the same as what the other group values. History is clear when one group tries to force or otherwise condemns the values of another group, either the other group surrenders and allows its culture to die or they fight.

The people of many cultures say stuff like, “My culture will not surrender to yours, and will fight to the death rather than abandon our values and beliefs.” In the USA that is shortened to “Live Free or Die” or “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” but it would just as easily be believed if said from a Japanese samurai; all variations on a theme of “Death before Dishonor.” So when cultural values clash, the result will be WAR! Islam is great in recognizing and capitalizing on this historic human trait that exists in all cultures, an evolutionary means of protecting culture. Islam clearly and boldly claims, you will surrender to Islam, or we will fight to the death. Other cultures will do the same, they cannot and never will live peacefully together. Ignoring this human trait that exists in every culture will lead to nothing but sorrow and violence. Keeping cultures separate is civilized, to do otherwise is to invite barbarism.

There is not, nor ever will be, one set of values and customs that everybody agrees. God separated the people, when man tries to undo what God did it never works out for the betterment of Man. When God separated men and created the different languages, it wasn’t only other language that men couldn’t understand, the very thinking and values of those “others” are so foreign that different tribes cannot understand (hence appreciate) the values of other tribes. The Alt-Right has a bull’s-eye on this point. All cultures have the right to protect themselves and keep other cultures from taking them over. As such, all cultures have the right to keep other cultures out, and institute a government, laying their government’s foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

When looking at languages, how do you reconcile people who don’t have a different word in their language to differentiate earning and winning. They equate earning money through hard work as the same as winning the lottery. You have money weather you earn it or win it is not relevant. The idea that actions, work to earn, or gambling, are the same when it comes to how you gain property. Who has more, is luck based, not based on the consequences of actions. This means that in some cultures, the idea that you must work to earn riches just doesn’t compute. You gain wealth because of who you are, who you know, and how lucky you are, what you do doesn’t relate to what you have. In the USA, what you do, is more important, than who you are. That is almost unique to American culture, where what your dad did or who he was is kind of irrelevant, a place where a black kid out of Chicago can be elected president one election cycle after an industrial robber baron’s family was president. A Chinese labor immigrant’s kids will never be president in Saudi Arabia, it’s just not culturally possible.

If a people choose they may institute a theocracy that they think will likely provide for their safety and happiness, or a commune, or a republic, or a democracy, or a King, or a Pope, or whatever. But no culture has the right to institute a government on another and all cultures have the right to protect themselves. The nation state appears to be the best method man has devised to divide diverse cultures avoid wars, and provide the means in which those societies can institute governments on principles that seems each separate and distinct society can best prosper. Forced unification, as seen last century by the USSR, fails and cannot be sustained.

When our founding fathers formed the USA, declaring our independence they summed up the idea that all not all cultures can get along and stay as one unified group of mankind. They declared that all men (meaning mankind and each culture) were created equally, but recognized they are different. As such declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

The forced unification in Iraq of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites has resulted in a constant war, some arbitrary outside group like the UN cannot force divergent cultures to live under one roof and not war. It has never happened and will never happen.

The EU is falling apart, the English are not the French who are not the Germans, who are not the Swiss or Dutch. The English have shown that they cannot and will not tolerate “others” dictating to them how they must live, Brexit is the best we can hope for, as English left the EU without violence. Great Britain has had to war to maintain unity because the Scotts, Irish, Welsh, and Brits, although nominally unified in being a Christian nation, as separate cultures have a lot of trouble staying together, much less staying bound to EU. The history of Great Britain is one of trying to force different cultures to unify and those different cultures warring to maintain their independence.

The USA will fall apart, the states used to have a set of shared values and culture, that is no longer true, the separation of the USA into smaller nation states is as inevitable as the breakup of the USSR. Hopefully we won’t repeat our past as when Americans war against each other the losses and devastation are more massive than any other warring tribes in history. If the USA has another civil war, it will end when one or the other group will be destroyed, ask the native Americans when we’ll stop, and how much of their culture and way of life can be maintained. The civil war resulted in the utter destruction of the South, it’s no longer the same, there is some “southern” culture but the facts are clear the Union invaded and forced cultural and societal change on the South in the War Between the States, some states still aren’t allowed to create their own voting laws.

If you believe “we can all get along” you’re an idiot. We can’t, never have, never will. Each culture should for the betterment of their own people learn to live with themselves, and nurture and institute what form of government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Globalism and one-worlders ideas have in the past, are now, and will always lead to war. Libertarianism is not functional except for a group of people who share the same values and culture. As a system it has proven to work for such a group whose values and culture are rooted in Protestant Christianity, but libertarianism is not a functional political system on a world wide scale where the same values and traditions of Christianity are not shared.

Diversity and libertarian ideas don’t work together. If they did the LP would be the strongest political party in the USA. The libertarian party theoretically embraces diversity, but it cannot and does not attract a diverse cross section of the population. The LP is made up of protestant white males of northern European heritage, and although not technically Christian, as a group and philosophy libertarians embrace the culture of the “protestant work ethic” a product of Reformation Theology. At its heart, libertarianism is the political manifestation of a subset of Protestantism, Calvinism. Cultures not of northern European origin, reject Protestantism, and disdain Calvinism and thus don’t accept libertarianism. The USA started changing at the beginning of the 20th century with a large influx of Catholics (Irish and Italian), this changed the culture and diluted the Calvinist influence. As such even though the LP, which as a political philosophy is clearly non-racist, and embraces acceptance of diverse people and ideas in principle, the LP is rejected by most of the USA.

The Libertarian Party (LP) rejected the Christian roots to libertarianism, and is the party is a combination of the libertine with Calvinism which makes the party inherently illogical and unacceptable to most people. The historic fact that libertarianism, allowing people liberty to succeed or fail and do what they want so long as they don’t harm others, resulted in the most prosperous society for more people doesn’t carry much weight. The reason is cultural. The idea that people are not duty bound, nor should they be forced to support others who fuck up is not acceptable to most other cultures, and as such libertarianism is rejected by most people.

Diversity is Strength is a lie. There is strength in unity not diversity. The USA is a prime example, since 1965 when we abandoned protection of our culture and unity as people and embraced diversity, the USA’s strength politically, economically, educationally, has diminished. Libertarianism worked for a while for a culturally unified Protestant population. On a larger world-wide scale it is and will remain a failure. Libertarianism will only function for a culture that is willing to protect itself. Libertarians for open borders, who embrace diversity, and reject the idea that a culture has the right to protect itself from others is virtual suicide. The 16 points of the Alt-right are currently the most advance and practical reality based political ideology where libertarianism can function. Read what Alt-Right says, not how they make you feel, the Alt-Right is coming together of great philosophy with realism and human nature. You can ignore the Alt-Right, but like ignoring the ideas of radical Islamists, the reality of what they represent will change your life and eventually world view.

3 comments:

  1. Quote from the blog: "Until 1965 the USA protected it’s cultural heritage, it did so by not accepting large numbers of people from dissimilar cultures and worked at having those cultures assimilate and adopt American culture." This is just not true. The U.S. have had large immigration populations from Mexico (and South America), China (who built the railroads), blacks (many as slaves from Africa), Southern European, i.e. Catholic all well before 1965. The U.S. is a melting pot and always has been. Our "cultural heritage" while mainly Anglo-Saxon has always had influences from around the world and here's hoping it continues to do so.

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  2. "History is clear, any society is invaded by force or allows invasion of large numbers of people from other cultures dies."

    Those are not the same and the second is definitely NOT true.

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  3. While various cultures will never agree perfectly, there is a very good reason why in early America peace, prosperity, and liberty were largely maximized: our Civil Law was originally rooted in Natural Law. THIS is why the American culture — even as a "melting pot" — was once great.

    IF we united over this cause, We the People could serve to truly "make America great again".

    Of course, those among the masses (certainly most of America) who have been indoctrinated into the Philosophy of Collectivism beyond any return to logical and reasonable thought processes will resist.

    However, perhaps millions more among the American masses who grow tired of tyranny will finally see the light of liberty and support such a movement.

    The LP is doomed to failure primarily because of its internal warring between two primary factions: Libertarians VS Anarchists. These two opposing ideologies are simply incompatible.

    Consider the following article: Liberty VS Anarchy
    https://sites.google.com/site/naturalrightscoalitionsites/principles/philosophy/philosophical-spectrum

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