Without a Core Ethnicity, Nations Struggle for Stability

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This is not an issue of race, but of human nature. Africa’s civil wars are tribal. Lest we think this is a residue of tribalism, Norway and Sweden (can you really tell them apart?) are both Nordic and Lutheran almost repaired to arms in 1905 before Sweden finally conceded independence to the Norwegians.

Nations run best when they have an ethnic core. Families form relatives, which form tribes, which eventually form nations. There is a strong sense of social cohesion in such political structures.

Now, the core can change over time … but it takes time.

From 1776 to 1848, America was genuinely Anglo-Saxon in core. From 1848 to 1890, Irish and Germans flooded in, with accompanying social strife. Such strife is inevitable. Even the usually obedient Germans were at the core of the Haymarket Riot of 1886.

But in time, the Irish and Germans blended in, and were somewhat accepted (though their Catholicism made some nervous) at just about the same time as Southern and Eastern Europeans (Italians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, and Jews) started flooding in.

Arrogant Nordic supremacists influenced Congress to get the Johnson-Reed Act passed in 1924, which drastically reduced immigration. Their intent may have been bad, but it gave America the time to absorb and assimilate the recent arrivals. By the time the Johnson-Reed Act was overturned in 1965, American society had been stabilized and the core definition of an American had been expended to a more generic Judeo-Christian and white. America’s ethnic core had broadened. But it took a while.

And if one says white was too narrow a definition, by world standards: white was actually very broad. In Europe, whites fight among themselves. In Asia, Asians fight. In Africa, Africans fight. By the standards of history, an American definition of whiteness was unusually generous.

In the meantime, Jews were a minority, but they were winning respect, and civil rights were being given to blacks.

It took American almost 200 years to broaden identity beyond ethnicity.

John F. Kennedy, an ethnic Irish-Catholic had become president. Fiorella La Guardia, of Italian-Catholic and Jewish ancestry – though ironically raised Protestant – had become mayor of New York City, the biggest city in the country. Herbert Lehman, a Jew, became Governor of New York State. None of this would have been acceptable a century earlier.

But all of this takes time. If you smash differing peoples into each other too rapidly, social upheavals will occur. Fiji is a warning.

Tacking the issue of race was not going to work overnight, and yet this is what liberals demand.

Instability – when addressed wrongly – can go on for centuries until a common ground emerges. Belgium, Canada, and Catalonia are all examples of what can go wrong. Can you really tell the difference between a Highland and Lowland Scot without a scorecard? It took England centuries to figure that out, and it did so by brutally ethnic cleansing the Highlanders.

White supremacists may be idiots in asserting supremacy, and the leftist press surely overuses the term to demonize anyone who calls for reason, but the fact is that America needs time to digest its immigrants.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting an ethnic core. Germany should remain German. Japan should remain Japanese. Do we really want Norway to become like the rest of the world? Let Vietnam remain Vietnamese.

America started as an immigrant nation, so it cannot assert a native right to ethnic purity as say, the Greeks or Danish might, but it can ask for sanity.

Israel is a classic example. The Jews want to remain a Jewish majority state, which is why they resist enfranchising the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The two groups are incompatible, as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a right-wing Zionist knew.

A minority always suffers everywhere: the Christians in Turkey, the Moslems in India, the Irish under the British, the Poles and Czechs under the Germans, now the Germans under the Poles and Czechs, and so forth, without end. – The Ethics of the Iron Wall – Jabotinsky

It takes time to absorb different people, and the core must not be threatened.

In time, Hispanics will become a part of the American core. Many already are; but immigration laws have to change. Generous … YES! But not suicidal.

White supremacism is a reaction to leftist overreach. Common sense is the antidote.

It is not wrong for America to remain majority West European white, as long as everybody is treated equally. That may change in time, but it will take time.

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American Thinker