Victor Davis Hanson on the social corrosive called “diversity”:
For history’s rare multiracial and multi-ethnic republics, an e pluribus unum cohesion is essential. Each particular tribe must owe greater allegiance to the commonwealth than to those who superficially look or worship alike. Yet over the last 20 years we have deprecated “unity” and championed “diversity.” Americans are being urged by popular culture, universities, schools and government to emphasise their innate differences rather than their common similarities… Some hyphenate or add accents or foreign pronunciations to their names. Others fabricate phony ethnic pedigrees in hopes of gaining an edge in job-seeking or admissions. The common theme is to be anything other than just normal Americans for whom race, gender and ethnicity are incidental rather than essential to their character.
As a 4th generation Californian, I can certify everything … everything … that VDH penned about his rural Fresno experience. And it’s happening here in the SF Bay Area as well.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/14/are-there-any-limits-to-illegal-immigration/
The Golden State has become a steaming pile of Brown waste. Yes, you may assume the triple-entendre was fully intentional. Meanwhile, I am temporarily fortunate-enough to live in one of the white (and Asian) enclaves where the price of admission bars all but the elite of the elites. Yes, VDH, I live in a Pelosi-like sanctuary … hidden-away from the human and cultural waste she’s dumped in my State.
Here is how the demographics of my own neighborhood have changed in JUST the last 35 years. I live in the same town where I was raised most of my life. A nice little suburb which has always been an upper middle class enclave, but also had a mix of middle class streets (like my neighborhood) where people of modest means, but financial discipline could afford to live. In the 35 years I’ve lived here as an adult, I watched property values slowly increase to frightening levels. As a result, the number of young people with children fell. At one point, my street was totally childless. The price of admission to my town was unaffordable for young families. Our local school districts – both elmentary and HS districts lost so many students that multiple schools in our little (pop. 24,000) community closed.
But in just the last year or two … when house prices have skyrocketed to the highest in my lifetime … something very curious is happening. Young families with very young children are moving back into my town … in droves. Our local schools are now bursting at the seams. My next-door middle school has had to remove their tennis courts and half their athletic field to build dozens of new classrooms. The student population at one of our elementary schools is now larger than the local HS in my graduating year – in 1974. How is this all possibly happening!? How can these young families AFFORD the prices I see them pay!?
The short answer is they cannot afford NOT to move into the most exclusive, and most expensive suburbs in the State. They are not so much as moving-“into” my city … they are FLEEING the Sanctuary cities that dominate the SF Bay Area and the State. These young people are REFUGEES in their own State. Fleeing the VIOLENCE, LAWLESSNESS, and social MALAISE found everywhere … covering CA. Everywhere, except in the white enclaves. And outside our ethnic and culturally pure sanctuaries … it’s getting worse.
I have always had a retirement dream of moving to the CA “gold country” … above the valley fog, and (almost) below the snow line. Move onto 30-50 acres of off-the grid country bliss. Well, for the reasons VDH printed, that dream is dead. I now fear that the wife and I would end up murdered in our sleep by Mexican Drug cartel criminals tending their pot farm on my property. Or T-boned and killed by an unlicensed, illegal, drunk driver on a rural road. Or face a 3rd world fate that was unthinkable in my dream of 35 years ago. And I have the same fears for other States. So perhaps I have to “shelter in place” to avoid the environmental pollution swamping my State. Stay within the economic barriers insulating me (for now) from the degenerating State of CA?
As far as domicile goes, I have somewhat the same experience.
I bought into a lower middle class enclave on the westside of Los Angeles. (Yes, there were such things forty some years ago) We were a wave of younger (in my thirties at the time) couples replacing older folks who had been there forever. Now we are the older folks, and the real estate values have skyrocketed. Thank you Prop 13. But just in the last few years the phenomenon you mentioned has also happened here. Young families with young children are moving into the neighborhood. Perhaps what you conjecture is correct. However, my neighborhood is not entirely free of the results of California politicians. There is a tent city underneath a freeway overpass just ten minutes’ walk from my house. Nevertheless, my own street is very nice and quiet.
But my existential experience is quite different than yours.
I was born on the Burma Road near the Chinese border to parents fleeing imminent Japanese occupation of Rangoon (now transliterated as Yeungong.) It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, since our clan could flee in cars and trucks, and I was born in a villa converted into a hospital. But I still had to respond to an air raid of that civilian hospital when I was one day old.
After two wars (the Chinese civil war in addition to the second world war) my parents fled to Hong Kong, having lost nearly all earthly possessions. After applying as refugees for seven years, we were finally admitted to the United States as permanent residents. That was under Eisenhower. And we almost literally came with the clothes on our backs, (plus the Chinese literary books my father so treasured) and had to start again on square one.
I am forever grateful to be able to call U.S. my country, and politically I am the true heir of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, especially Thomas Jefferson, who would be supporting President Trump wholeheartedly today. And in terms of personality I am very much an American.
But there are other aspects of me influenced by other cultures. I am Chinese, and Catholic, and have had a heavy British influence. (I always insist that there isn’t anything enjoyable not frowned upon by at least one of the three, but yes my ethics are influenced by all three.) I know their history almost as well as I know American history. I lean much more to British literature (in English) but also enjoy Chinese literature in the original.
As an immigrant, I can completely agree with the author on e pluribus unum. That does not preclude me from enjoying contributions from other cultures, and adding them to the cioppino that is America. In fact, I enjoy many things not related to me in any way: Greek tragedy, Renaissance paintings, German opera, English romantic poetry, Russian novels, French Impressionist paintings. Globalism is good if you are talking about cultural cross fertilization. Globalism is bad if it involves treason towards your own country. I believe the same for everyone, with only one caveat–don’t add excrement to the cioppino, that would spoil the whole broth.
Wow! I am white bread without the crust compared to you. And of course you already know that The West side, Santa Monica is now referred-to as the White (and Asian) kingdom in SoCal. So you hit the acknowledged demographic perfectly. PS … the West side is my favorite part of LA. It is quite sad that my favorite beachtrail bike path is now beset by homeless camps. It’s horrible. My own next-door neighbor is a SoCal born and bred Korean with a FOB Korean wife, and there are several Chinese and mixed Asian/white couples on my street. We all share the same VALUES of e pluribus unum and ethics which include abiding by the law, working hard for a living, and living peaceful lives. But I am shocked by the transformation of my street. My kids grew up with hardly any playmates on our street. Today, my street is literally crawling with elementary and pre-schoolers … which makes me quite happy. I love hearing the joyful sound of kids playing from my front office window overlooking the street.
My youngest son is in a LTR (hopefully marriage soon), with a half-Japanese, Half-Caribbean woman who is both smart and beautiful. I am not now, nor have I ever been a “white supremacist” (although the American Democreep Party would use that slur against me) . My own family is already “pluralist” and getting more-so by the day. THAT IMHO is America. You, my friend, is what MAG(A). We are an overwhelmingly WELCOMING nation, and of that I am very proud.
However, I am watching a rapidly increasing INVASION of America from the South, and observing an even FASTER response to the invasion, and response to the liberal, err leftist leaders who are sanctioning the destruction of our social fabric. People “of substance” are FLEEING to their own SANCTUARIES … away from the lawless chaos. The Suburbs have always been mocked and derided as full of (implied racist) whites who fled the … ahem … “urbanization” of city centers. Well that migration has just EXPLODED … to include like-minded people of all colors and creeds.
BTW … I picked a Chinese kid on one of my competitive soccer teams (so much for that stereotype), and the kid’s father asked that he be excused from one of our weekly practices early. Why, I asked? His father said he needed to leave for his Chinese language and culture class. I couldn’t be MORE supportive of such a thing. The kid should embrace his heritage and culture fully. And I support any and all educational endeavors (except maybe wikken-training). But his classwork did not encourage his SEPARATION from his teammates at all. It was an ENRICHMENT to his Americanism, and to every other white kid and mexican kid … hey! it was a competitive soccer team … you think I wouldn’t pick a kid who was born with a soccer ball at his feet?
E pluribus Unum
Immigrant Entrepreneurs as Job Creators:
“25% of the net new jobs created by private incorporated companies were attributable to immigrant-owned firms, although they accounted for only 17% of the private incorporated firms studied. … Over the 11-year period, immigrant-owned firms tended to create more net new jobs on average (0.28) on a per-firm basis than firms with Canadian-born owners (0.16).”
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2019011-eng.htm
It’s what individuals have in common that strengthens the bonds of community. The more in common they have the stronger the community. Diversity, the way the Left preaches it, isn’t actually diversity but a strict monolithic set of diametrically opposed ideals to that of western culture. If anyone is “diverse” in how they accept those Leftist ideals they’re pushed to the fringe – make no mistake – the Left finds strength in what they have in common too and they use threat of ostracizing or worse to enforce it. Using catch phrases like “Diversity is our strength” provides a useful means of entrenching these anti-western ideals in a big enough young enough populace so it can take root and replace the previous classically liberal free market ideals. Then one day a subversive action like the one perpetrated by Obama’s admin on the FISA courts for 4+ years can be used successfully to defeat the power of democracy. Forever.
Oh sure,learning a useful skill and being of value to your neighbours is too much work.Asking people to assimilate is so racist.
So much easier to be Victim of the Moment.
“We are all individuals here” M.P.F.C.
I am the most victimized…respect my pathetic existence.
Rizzan you keep posting those wonderful stats..do they mean anything?
I would direct your attention to the Trucking Industry in BC, from the 1980s on as a perfect example of “Immigrants creating new jobs”, the Canadian Way.
I watched this interview, discussion and Q&A the other day and recommend it for the insight Hanson provides.
Hoover DC Book Discussion: Victor Davis Hanson on The Case for Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoVHUaZkAHM
Hanson notes that the money that pays for all this “diversity” and rewarding the “diverse” for anti-social behaviour is borrowed, with no realistic plan to re-pay it.
“Sometimes more desperate governments simply renounce their obligations to bondholders, on the principle that such creditors are well off anyway and can afford the losses.”
Not all creditors, obviously. Chinese oligarchs and Wall Street bloodsuckers will be made whole. It’s the life savings of Americans that will be stolen to pay for savages to settle in their neighbourhoods and breed like the vermin they are.
” Others fabricate phony ethnic pedigrees in hopes of gaining an edge in job-seeking or admissions.”
Heh heh heh.
Or mehbee becomin’ President?
This is stupid. The choice between ‘national unity’ and identitarian balkanization is no choice at all. The only correct choice is individualism.
That being said, diverse countries are the most prosperous ones. Mono-ethnic/cultural countries become much bigger welfare states.
Like Brazil? Pass the bong…
Geez, you ARE stupid.
The Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) were much more prosperous as mono-ethnic/cultural countries than they are now. They became much bigger welfare states with diversity. Japan is essentially a mono–ethnic/cultural country. South Korea. Taiwan. Hong Kong (political entity). All are prosperous, none is a welfare state.
European countries all became countries along ethnic lines. It can be argued that there are different kinds of Frenchmen (Brittany, Normandy, and therein actually caused separatist sentiments), or Germans, or Italians, but I don’t think that’s the kind of diversity you are thinking of. Even close cousins like the Czechs and Slovaks find a friendly divorce better.
The United States is probably the best example of a diverse country which is prosperous, but her race relations problems are well known. Switzerland is diverse, but mostly each ethnic group lives in its own cantons. Singapore is diverse, but I suspect it really is controlled by the 75% Chinese majority. I struggle to come up with another country that is prosperous because it is diverse.
one does not need many words to point out that diversity is divisive.