What's So Bad 'Bout Blood and Soil? (And Fortune Cookies)
Take some America in your hands. So, my little fortune cookie post got some notice on LewRockwell.com and Andrew Sullivan and I received quite a few hits. I've been denounced by sensible people as "too glib." It's a blog, people. I've been averaging 14 hours a day at work this week and decided not to engage in a high falutin' debate about whether neo-conservative foreign policy is in the best interests of America - or whether they correctly understand the thought of Leo Strauss. (No, Strauss doesn't teach a kind of gnostic war politics.) So, now that I have been linked also on several liberal sites I should probably repulse all this new attention by noting that I'm not a funny mainstream liberal but instead a black-hearted reactionary. I may have grown tired and feel sick to my stomach when I'm reminded about "Islamo-Nazis" and how much they deserve to get nuked -- but I'm a young man of the right. Sorry.
To prove it, I'll take another nip of whiskey and defend Pat Buchanan.
James Forsyth noticed the hubbub related to the release of Pat Buchanan's book State of Emergency and found in the back issues of Foreign Policy Buchanan's response to Samuel Huntington's book Who Are We? Buchanan said that a person's position on immigration depends on whether they believe America is a creedal nation (a proposition nation) or a new nation, like most others, based in blood, soil, history and heroes. The majority of our political and pundit class associate "blood and soil" with the Third Reich, though they rarely associate the "proposition nation" with the Soviet Union. So, can we put those two horrors away for a moment? Here's Forsyth:
From an outsider's perspective it seems that the genius of America is that that it is a credal nation. Your family could have arrived on the Mayflower or in the back of a van, but if you believe in the values of this country as embodied by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the Civil Rights Act, then you are American. This is why the United States has not only survived as a melting pot, but thrived.
In his interview Buchanan quotes the right-wing British politician Enoch Powell's adage that all "political lives end in failure." There is something quite apt about Buchanan quoting Powell, as an amazingly over-the-top speech that he delivered in 1968 predicting that mass immigration to Britain would end with the rivers "foaming with much blood" did much to prevent any rational discussion of the topic in Britain and is responsible for many of the problems with integration that the country faces today. Let us hope that the shrill nativism of Buchanan, and others, does not have the same effect here. - James Forsyth
Forsyth posits that anyone who "believes in the value" of certain ideas is an American. If I'm supposed to take him literally then there are a number of absurdities that result : anyone in Latvia, Belize, the Congo, or China IS an American if they believe in a certain ideology. They may not know George Washington is the Father of their country, they may not understand expressions like "mom and apple pie", they may not be impressed with American ingenuity, or literature. They don't have any of the thousands of cultural marks that being an American imprinted on them unconsciously. They don't even have to speak English - they believe in an idea, you see.
Forsyth is not Tocqueville (perhaps I'd take him over Bernard Henri Levy), and so I don't care for him, "as a foreigner" telling me what being an American is all about. If he really believes this, then why doesn't he tell France that it should give up its cultural chauvinism (expressed so beautifully in French food, typical French conversation and French habits) and embrace once more creedal nationalism: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Perhaps Mr. Forsyth should remember how annoying teenagers become when they try to make universal claims based on their latest enthusiasms. Don't you want to hit those kids? They're obnoxious. So are we when we tell a world full of art, poetry, beautiful architecture, tribal loyalty, violence and sex that liberal democracy and neo-liberal economics are the meaning of life.
Note also that all the problems with immigration are blamed on the nativists. I highly doubt that those who committed the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London had Enoch Powell's "nativism" foremost on their minds. Nor does MS-13 terrorize their neighborhood because of some psychological injury inflicted on them by Tom Tancredo.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Source: Buchanan on American identityArch populist Pat Buchanan is in Time magazine this week promoting his new book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. As you might have deduced from the title, Buchanan isn't too keen on Hispanic immigration into the United States, which he prophesies will lead to "the dissolution of the U.S. and the loss of the American Southwest." Reading the interview with Buchanan, in which he talks about how American identity must be about "blood, soil, history and heroes" ra -
Reader Comments (29)
The problem is that Pat Buchanan has asserted that the key to living out American ideas is not to be raised in America or identify as American but to be equiped with the proper genetic code. This has been asserted before is less scientific and modern language about the Irish, Italians, Poles and other Eastern Europeans. When people are treated fairly and treated like individuals they do not tend to adopt or cling to strong group identities but if they consider themselves oppressed based on their identity then they hold to it all the more strongly.
For examples of this you only need to look as far as radical Islam, Black Nationalism, White Power movements, conservative fundamentalist Christianty all wrap their indentity around percieved intense oppression.
Uncontrolled immigration in a welfare state is a ticking time bomb (think unlimited entitlement to limited resources). Tension and competition are especially fierce if the population is subdivided into large tribal factions. Mass immigration creates large groups that are resistant to assimilation. This is a recipe for long term problems. Only selective immigration of high quality and compatible individuals can avoid this problem.
Also, frankly, it's clear why an ugly person (inside and outside) like John Podhoretz has a lot at stake in not having us look at blood-lines too closely. We might realize the only thing someone like him is good for is providing fodder for more intelligent writers than him that provide great content part-time and don't even need any nepotistic connections to have anyone read what they have to write.
Good column as always Michael!
Regarding blood and soil, you have to take into account how that argument has played out in recent history. Also, you're correct that the Soviets were propositionists, but they had different propositions.
Not all propositions are created equal - only men are and even that's stretching it.
Are you sure that’s the only solution to the problem? Why not eliminate “unlimited entitlement”?
It’s always easier to control one’s own actions as opposed to controlling the actions of another. “Unlimited entitlement is within the direct control of the state while “uncontrolled immigration “ is not within direct control because it’s according to another’s will, i.e. the immigrants.
For instance, control of the content on the television is not within control of the parent, but control of the particular television in the home is within direct control. The solution to objectionable content on the television is not to attempt to change the programing at the station, but to turn off the tv because the tv. is within direct control.
Thus, not only is there another solution to your ‘only’ solution, but there’s a better solution because it is within actual control of the state as opposed to chasing after shadows which only further foments suppression by increasing the nanny state's never enough control.
Now some people would be willing to argue in favor of massive (even violent) deindustrialization, although I would have to ask just how far those people are willing to take the concept of "naturalization." Should we limit human activity to those pursuits which are most nearly animal? There is something frighteningly sub-Pagan about that idea.
Why do you think that a man who would go through the hardship of immigration so as to provide for his family by seeking a living wage would turn around as a matter of course and support the welfare state except according to subsidiarity?
Your “blood and soil” Americans voted in unlimited entitlement. Within the genus of entitlement, is it possible to do worse?
The old AFDC program was an addendum to the Social Security Act in 1935 which was expected to function as a widow's pension. The common use of it as an open-ended dole for the mothers of bastard children dates from about a generation later.
Because $5.15 an hour is, by most standards not considered a "living wage," even if it is awesome compared to what they could make in Mexico. Once they figure out they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury, they will do it.
"Your 'blood and soil' Americans voted in unlimited entitlement."
As did the descendants of hard-working ethnic Europeans who came here where no welfare state existed.
"It seems the term 'bastard children' is a pretty ungenerous way to make your point."
Pardon me if I do not see what is so "ungenerous" about stating the truth. By that standard it would be "ungenerous" for a parent to scold or punish a disobedient child.
The content of Mr. Podhoretz column in the --New York Post-- may be wise or silly. It is doubtful that many of us are sufficiently acquainted with him to hazard a more than a guess about his agreeableness in mundane circumstances.
Yes, and they will be following in the footsteps of many generations of Americans who are employed by, or have contracts with the government, those who attend or send children to government schools, those who collect Social Security or Medicade benefits, those who collect unemployment or family assistance checks - heck, even those who check out books at the government library!
Mr Salzer is correct: the solution is to eliminate the welfare state, then neither immigrants nor 6th generation Americans can vote themselves their neighbor's money. It's called theft one way or another.
To collect unemployment compensation, one has to meet eligibility requirements as regarding the voluntary or involuntary character of one's unemployment. One is also limited in the time period over which one can collect same (which was six months the last time I had to check). Unemployment compensation also functions as an automatic stabilizer of aggregate demand during economic recessions.
To collect Social Security disability or survivors benefits, one has also to meet eligibility requirements which presume (involuntarily) unhappy circumstances (though it is true that intelligent and consistent implementation of disability standards has been a vexed question).
To collect Social Security old age and retirement benefits you have to be old and you have to have put in a certain minimum of full-time labor.
These are not equivalent to open-ended doles for young women for which the eligibility requirement is that they get knocked up.
The term in question, in the strict sense, does in fact mean an illegitimate child and traditionally it was used as such in print. It is also true that the term developed a derogatory conotation toward the one to whom it was applied, and that the shame is more appropriately applied to the parents of a true bastard. It is not something I would say at a cocktail party where I was unsure of others' persuasions, but on a conservative web site I think it is acceptable and desirable to use language in the prescriptive sense, and I am little worried about offending the sensibilities of women who have given birth out of wedlock simply to take money from the public treasury supported by my hard work. I say this as a man who is adopted and most likely a bastard himself.
My point was that the welfare system is now so deeply entrenched in society - not just among illegals - that it will be virtually impossible to eliminate it. If you would like to start with illegals that's fine with me but let's not stop there.
As far as illegitimacy is concerned there are two different dynamics at work. The Mexican and islander immigrants have a real problem with marriage. They are pro-children and very rarely resort to abortion, unlike their American counterparts, but they don't get married. This is due in part to the fact that the Church (by which I mean the RC Church) has abandoned them since V2. If we want to really help America and the immigrants we should focus primarily on this serious defect in their culture. The women need to be convinced of the absolute necessity of demanding responsibility from their menfolk. Letting them off the hook by offering welfare assistance is a huge part of the problem but it goes deeper than that. The immigrant women are now so used to a matriarchal family structure that it will be tough to evangelize them. Has George Gilder's 'Men & Marriage' been translated into Spanish?
It's made tougher still by the fact that our own culture has also undermined marriage, but for different reasons.