Poor Mexico, Poor America II
by Thomas Fleming
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American Empire or Paper Tiger?
To take the American side first, a country expecting to absorb or “assimilate” a large population of aliens must have a coherent sense of itself. This sense of identity arises from the existence of a single language and a unified culture, based on shared moral values, common faith, and a sense of history. To shape these values, strong institutions and traditions are required, such as a national literature, effective schools, a self-confident Church or churches, some form of adolescent initiation such as universal military training. France had all of these in the period before WW II, but with the abandonment of compulsory military service and the collapse of education and decay of Christianity, French institutions were simply unable to cope with the flood of North African Muslims.
The United States today has virtually none of them. American and English literature is seldom read and scarcely taught; public schools are a demonstrable failure from every point of view, the churches are beset by scandals and are, in any event, too weak to undertake the necessary process of moral formation, and the all-volunteer army eliminates whatever good effects a common military experience might have.
Just as significant as the weakness of American institutions is the fact that America has always been a divided country. Even before the Revolution, the different sections had been settled from different parts of Britain with different dialects, customs, and ways of life. These differences did not disappear, but became more acute in the 85 years between The Declaration of Independence and the secession of South Carolina. South and North, nearly 150 years since the outbreak of the Civil War, are still different places, and the growing interest in Southern history and the Southern identity is proof, if any proof were needed, that the difference between Florence, South Carolina, and Stockbridge, Massachusetts is at least as great as the differences between Dublin and London or even between Quebec and Cincinnati.
Religious diversity. American religiosity is inevitably described as “Judeo-Christian,” but there is no such thing. The only Judeo-Christians are Jewish converts to Christianity, such as the members of Jews for Jesus. Although Protestant churches are coalescing, there is still a great divide between mainline liberal churches and mostly conservative Evangelicals, and neither group has much in common with Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who, despite enormous similarities, have little use for one another. And, as the religious mix has been enriched to include Muslims and Hindus, religious disputes become more acute. Far from being a unifying force, religion divides Americans.
Despite the pieties of multi-culturalism, racial and ethnic conflict is a fact of everyday life. There is an endless variety of conflicts–Black v. white, Anglo v. Hispanic, black v. Asian. But even in the white Christian population, not all is sweetness and light. Descendants of North European immigrants do not always like people whose ancestry is from Southern Europe, and neither necessarily feels much sympathy for East Europeans. Not long ago, it was a sociological fashion to speak of “unmeltable ethnics,” but the phenomenon is scarecely new. I have Irish ancestors who came to the US in the 19th century, but I well remember relatives expressing hostility to Anglos in the 1960’s and I have heard similar complaints from Sicilian Americans in the Scandinavian Midwest. Although they are officially banned from polite conversation, racial ethnic jokes are as common as sexual jokes, and they are increasingly brutal.
However, quite apart from this regional, religious, and ethnic diversity, there is perhaps an even greater gulf between ordinary Main Street Americans and the elite and professional classes who control the universities, media, and federal government. There is hardly an issue on which self-described conservatives and self-described liberals can agree on. In a healthy society, history and myth reinforce the sense of group identity and common purpose, but in the United States, there is hardly a national hero or symbol that has not come under attack. Students of English literature no longer need to read Shakespeare and Milton; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been replaced in the national pantheon by minority representatives such as Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez; and for the old heroic story of the pioneers carving their future out of the wilderness we have substituted a story of white male patriarchal oppressors who beat slaves, massacred Indians and Mexicans, exploited women and children, and subjugated homosexuals.
The only cement holding Americans together is the mass culture that is destroying the American character, the national government that has turned a nation of citizens into a mass of mere taxpayers, and, since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, a series of threats (many of them largely imaginary) to American security—Libya, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea. As Irving Kristol has said on a number of occasions, if Communism did not exist, it would have to be invented, because only the threat of Communism kept Americans united. With the loss of the Communist enemy, it has been necessary to discover—or invent—an endless parade of Hitler-imitators bent on global domination.
Compared with the United States, Mexico has a vibrant culture, with a literature as distinctive as its cuisine. Though Mexico is even more regionalized than the US and beset by more serious ethnic divisions—unassimilated Indians, in particular–Mexican immigrants arriving in the US are greeted by a shoddy mass culture—food chains, mass music—that offers few incentives except to the lowest characters. The choice of most immigrants is either to assimilate, jettisoning language and cultural identity in favor of mass culture, or remain Mexican. Ironically, the latter may be the better choice, since the longer immigrant children remain in the United States, the worse off they are, and “the more ‘Americanized’ they become, the more likely they [are] to engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse, unprotected sex, and delinquency.”
Octavio Paz spent some time studying Mexican-Americans in California after WW II, particularly the so-called Pachucos, who combined social rebellion with a dandified costume. “The pachuco does not want to become a Mexican again; at the same time he does not want to blend into the life of North America.” The Pachuco phenomenon is not restricted to Mexican Americans. In losing their ancestral identity, Swedes, Italians, and Poles did not necessarily become Americans in a sense that Thomas Jefferson or Mark Twain would have understood.
There is a difference between American in 1906 and today. In the 19th century, America, though crude and ill-formed, possessed a certain exuberant self-confidence that impressed all but the most civilized visitors. By and large, 19th century immigrants had little education. A Sicilian laborer had not read Dante and Manzoni; indeed, unable to read at all and ignorant of the Tuscan language, he could not have read them, even if he had wanted to. More importantly, few immigrants could return home, and, once an influx trickled out (as after 1921), direct contact with the mother-country ceased. Foreign language newspapers began to die on the vine, and the various ethnic organizations formed to preserve an Old World culture were gradually transformed into social clubs.
It is true that Latino immigrants are no better educated than the Irish and Italians of 100 years ago, but they can and do return, frequently, to Mexico or Guatemala, and even if they do not, their language and culture is being constantly reinforced by a steady stream of new arrivals. And what indoctrination do they and their children receive from schools and television teaches only the politics of historical resentment and ethnic privilege. Enrolled in a bilingual program, carefully instructed to hate the United States as an oppressor, and exposed to no cultural influences that do not encourage recklessness and indolence, Latin-American immigrants have few incentives and fewer opportunities to embrace whatever is left of traditional American civilization.
Even if the border were immediately put under control, America would inevitably become a hybrid country, and since high rates of immigration are likely to continue, some degree of Hispanicization is inevitable. What would (will?) such a country be like?
Mexico
If it were possible to establish fixed criteria for an easily assimillable immigrant population, cultural compatibility, as defined by religion, ethical standards, and temperament would, be at the top of the list. In the 19th century, when America was primarily a British and north-European Protestant country, a hierarchy of the most desirable immigrants would be 1) British and 2) North European Protestants, followed by 3) north-European, and South or East-European Catholics. German Lutherans would thus find it easier to join the American mainstream than Italian, Polish, or even Irish Catholics. Although the American mainstream has expanded to include (at least officially) all European groups and, secondarily, all hard-working immigrant groups, there is still a recognizable core by which Americans recognize each other and exclude some groups as alien. How likely is it that a massive number of Mexicans could be absorbed into that core?
Octavio Paz, revisiting the themes of the Labyrinth of Solitude in 1979, does not paint a picture of compatible cultures:
"Our countries are neighbors, condemned to live alongside each other; they are separated, however, more by social, economic, and psychic differences than by physical frontiers."
While the more obvious differences in wealth and power might be overcome, he added, “the really fundamental difference is an invisible one, and in addition it is probably insuperable. To prove that it has nothing to do with economics or political power, we have only to imagine a Mexico suddenly turned into a prosperous, mighty country, a superpower like the United States. Far from disappearing, the differences would become more acute and clear cut.”
In his various writings on the question, Paz has analyzed several differences between the two countries. Mexico, he argues, exults in the body and lives to celebrate the festival, while the United States, until recent decades, seems ashamed of the body, and, even now, is capable only of a joyless hedonism. While Americans shrink from the reality of death, Mexicans revel in death and horror.
North American culture was formed by the Reformation and the Enlightenment, while the Spanish culture brought to Latin America was the product of the Catholic Counter-Reformation that tried with all its might to suppress the Enlightenment. While the Spanish Catholics, in approaching native cultures, were inclusive, English Protestants were exclusive, marginalizing and segregating the Indians in reservations. One result is the prevalence of the Indian element in the Mexican gene pool.
Americans are prone to lump all the countries south of the border into a generic category of “Latin America,” submerging the obvious differences between Portuguese-speaking Brazil and its neighbors, between Chile and Argentina, which have more European populations than the US, and Guatemala 45% Indian, 45% Mestizo, 5% white) and Peru (45% Indian, 37% Mestizo, 15% white, 5% Asian). But it would be a serious mistake even to lump Mexico (60% Mestizo, 30% Indian, 9% white) with its neighbor Guatemala. Guatemala, in the pre-conquest period, was dominated by Mayan Indians, while in Mexico, though ethnically quite diverse, the most powerful state on the eve of Conquest was the Aztec empire in the Valley of Mexico.
Books can tell a great deal about the Indian civilizations that rose and fell in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish, but books are no substitute for a trip to Mexico City. Both the Aztec Templo Mayor, with its excellent small museum, and the magnificent Archeological Museum in Bosque de Chapultepec make an indelible impression upon visitors. All the displays have been crafted to teach a message: the Aztecs, with their glorification of human sacrifice and cannibalism, represent the apex of Mesoamerican culture, a civilization that can stand comparison with ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Mexico, far from being the creation of the conquistadors who destroyed Tenochtitlan, is the continuation of the Aztec empire. Neither of these dogmas is true, but they are an integral part of the Mexican state and the Mexican identity.
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1 Comment by Bruce on 5 August 2008:
I feel the same way about Anglo-Saxons as you do about Italians and Sicilians.
2 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 5 August 2008:
These two pieces are thought-provoking and nuanced, and I applaud you for them.
Glass-half-empty guy that I am, I nevertheless have an impression that like many (non-neo) conservatives, you revel a bit more than is warranted in cultural pessimism. Sometimes we do muddle through.
When I have a bit more time and my thoughts connect better, I may comment in more detail.
3 Comment by Tom Jacobsen on 5 August 2008:
I’m as Nordic as they get, but I’ve always had a great deal of respect for the Aztec civilization and the other pre- Christian American societies. I’m including the Native Americans in this group.
I’ve often thought that these civilizations may have been more advanced than we realize today, because so much of what they had discovered has been lost, having been destroyed by the Spanish invaders, and, later, by American cultural imperialism.
Who knows what’s buried under all that rubble, and what ideas they had that have been smothered by time?
4 Comment by Allen Wilson on 5 August 2008:
Some of those Latin American writers like Paz have this country figured out to a tee, and they merely confirm what we already know to be true. Americans could benefit greatly by listening to such frank and knowledgeable criticism from outsiders, if only they had enough sense to.
5 Comment by MAP on 6 August 2008:
Terrific article Dr. Fleming. Your ability to pull out information on so many different topics is truly amazing!
6 Comment by TJF on 6 August 2008:
We actually know a lot about the Aztecs, and what we know is not very pretty. They represent a step backwards in Meso-American civilization, and their rule was harsh and nasty, resented bitterly by their subjects who helped the Spanish in overthrowing them. Although virtually every known Indian people regularly practiced cannibalism, the Aztecs raised human sacrifice and cannibalism to a diabolical pinnacle, hard for us to fathom. They were not, however, savages, and there are many features of Aztec life that seem quite lovely. We humans are a bizarre lot.
Octavio Paz was one of the smartest and wisest men I have ever known, a brilliant conversationalist and a mind as sparkling on the surface as it was deep below the surface. This book is one of the few things I have read in Spanish, and it is among the truest and best things I have read about America. But, then, Mexican literature is an interesting though rarely explored subject. I have a friend in Tennessee who is learning Spanish by reading his way through a vast set of classic Mexican literature. There are worse ways to spend time.
7 Comment by MAP on 6 August 2008:
“The only cement holding Americans together is the mass culture that is destroying the American character, the national government that has turned a nation of citizens into a mass of mere taxpayers, and, since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, a series of threats (many of them largely imaginary) to American security—Libya, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea. As Irving Kristol has said on a number of occasions, if Communism did not exist, it would have to be invented, because only the threat of Communism kept Americans united. With the loss of the Communist enemy, it has been necessary to discover—or invent—an endless parade of Hitler-imitators bent on global domination.”
Dr. Fleming, do you see a return to local control, as the founders envisioned, as the the only real solution? An out of control central government appears to be the source of all our problems.
8 Comment by O'Raifeartaigh on 6 August 2008:
It is impossible for millions of Mexicans to assimilate to Euro-American society. It is impossible because it is such a low probability event to the point of it being a waste of time to discuss. Race has everything to do with it. Even if one takes the view that race,culture and language is a contingent relationship, with very high probability , a racial identity will be deeply embedded among Mexicans living in the US. The numbers will favor this.
This is the crucial part of the analysis TJF leaves out. Culture and language are very important. However, for the most part, culture and language are deeply entrenched within a racial group. To point out that there cultural diferences within the Euro-American community doesn’t undermine this point.
The racial transformation of America is the fundamental issue. When it is complete, European Americans, over time, will be a very small minority in the nation curently called America. When the racial transformation of the US complete, there won’t be a Euro-American population to culturally rehabilitate.
I don’t have the warm spot in my heart for Mexicans that TJF has. I see them as invaders and should be dealt with as invaders are usually dealt with. So the big question is this:If European Americans-enough of them-ever come to their senses and find it unacceptable that Mexico has taken over several large American states, I would expect European Americans to do what is normal and justifed response to the Mexican invasion:throw the invaders out. This is defintely within the realm of very real possibilities.When both the Republicans and Democrats can no longer deliver the goods to a large number of European Americans, there will no longer be any incentive for European Americans to participate in their own annihilation within the borders of the United States.
I expect the Mexicans to resist. The racial transformation of the United States is the fundmantal issue. It will change everything permanently. Mexicans are actively participating-biologically and politically-within the borders of the United States in the racial dispossession of the majority Eruopean American population. It is for this reason that a do not have a warm spot in my heart for the Mexicans.
Mexicans- through migration and breeding- are waging an agressive and unrelenting race war against the European-American majority. This is obvious. There is no point in being PC about this.
9 Comment by TJF on 6 August 2008:
A return to local control would be a necessary though not sufficient step toward recreating some form of decent republican life. On the other hand, much good would also be done if our elite class became a genuine aristocracy as opposed to merely a vulgar and self-destructive oligarchy.
The problem, it seems to me, has two major components: 1) an overcentralized system that drains the energy out of everyday life and small communities, and 2) a decadent, stupid, suicidal culture that his shared by lords and peasants alike. Our decadence makes any move toward decentralization very difficult if not impossible and the stranglehold of the system– both government and cultural institutions-makes a cultural/moral recovery difficult.
It seems to me that the only practical steps that can be taken at this point would consist of A) a national or even international movement of serious people, who B) organize themselves locally and regionally into cells, not for direct action against government but to revivify private life and cultural traditions. In a way, some of this goes on through larger religious groups and even with various strands and movements in “the arts”–music education, for example. But for what interests us or some of us on this site, we need the equivalent of a national or international network of local and laergely autonomous John Randolph Clubs, where people would meet to clarify issues, talk about books, and discuss how to apply the big ideas to small local issues. The point would not be activism or even education per se but the creation of small-scale little communities of decent civilized people. Any way, it is a thought I have been toying with the past few days. Perhaps I have seen Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe once too often.
10 Comment by TJF on 6 August 2008:
It is hilarious that someone named O’Raifeartaigh should worry about race, when most of the higher branches of the great white race regard the Irish as white Negroes. I say this, conscious of “the Irish blood that’s in me.” Like most racists, our Irish friend is both ignorant and untruthful. Untruthful, because I was quite explicit on the racial/ethnic question, which I discussed at length, and ignorant in attributing motives to people he does not know or understand. No one would accuse Chilton Williamson, for example, of being weak on the immigration issue but like me Mr. Williamson loves Mexico and admires the many civilized Mexicans he has met. And, like most racists and other leftists–yes, racism and nationalism are leftist movement at bottom–our Mick friend knows–they always know–the real arguments another man is or should be making. What a trivial universe these tedious little bigots would create in their own image!
11 Comment by Bruce on 6 August 2008:
The reverend Charles Kingsley called the Irish white-skinned chimpanzees. I’m guessing that he perceived them as (in modern terms) “white trash.”
The neocons and other race nominalists/nihilists are wrong on race but so are the race determinists. Why? Because racial determinism misses lots of things that matter.
For example, white men are (now) quite effeminate and, well, neutered, whereas Mexican men act like men. By the race determinist’s flawed logic, white men are this way inherently. Of course, we are not and we could learn a thing or two from them whether we love their country or not (I don’t). They sure wouldn’t take the level of disrespect and abuse that I see my colleagues take from their women folk.
12 Comment by TJF on 6 August 2008:
Kingsley is an interesting case, a classic anti-Catholic bigot. I am equally disgusted by those who deny the significance of race and those who make a religion out of it. In the good old days, a man might have strong views on this or that ethnic group without becoming a monomaniac, but the younger racialists I keep running into have nothing else to talk about. Their minds are as empty as their souls.
13 Comment by Frank on 6 August 2008:
Regarding Irish Chimpanzees,
the difference in IQ is thought to be due to brain drain. And this seems reasonable due to the other Celts, including the Ulster Irish, having higher average IQs.
And yea I’m part Irish, Ulster Irish that is, but I see the two as nearly the same.
14 Comment by G.S. on 6 August 2008:
“But for what interests us or some of us on this site, we need the equivalent of a national or international network of local and laergely autonomous John Randolph Clubs, where people would meet to clarify issues, talk about books, and discuss how to apply the big ideas to small local issues.
The point would not be activism or even education per se but the creation of small-scale little communities of decent civilized people. Any way, it is a thought I have been toying with the past few days.”
While an expression of commitment from me might not be all that reassuring, I wholeheartedly second this — and would offer to help in any way possible.
I’ve wondered for some time if — if nothing else — there might be a way of getting all the Chronicles subscribers in my state in touch with one another.
Obviously I don’t know how many there are, nor how many would actually be interested in forming some sort of network, but it seemed to me to be worth a shot.
15 Comment by joshua on 6 August 2008:
Please Dr. Fleming, extrapolate upon the differences between modern oligarachs and aristocracy!
16 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 7 August 2008:
I always took many of the 19th-century anti-Irish sentiments to be more class-based than ethnic, along the lines of “white trash” as one commenter puts it. The upper class of Ireland had long been incorporated into British society.
Generally speaking, most people from Northern Europe can be categorized as
(A) Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Bretons, et al.)
or
(B) Germanic (Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, et al.)
Although these two groups have had their long-standing differences (e.g. linguistic), they also share many similarities. Roman soldiers, for example, often confused the two. And 19th-century Anglos, who grew up reading works like Book VI of Caesar’s Gallic War, would have been well aware of their similarities and historic intermingling.
17 Comment by TJF on 7 August 2008:
While it is true that the Irish upper class had been Anglicized, they were still subjected to occasional bits of ridicule for their extravagance, their alcoholism, their patriotism. Thackeray mocked them mercilessly and Trollope, though he loved the Irish after living among them, nonetheless is careful to distinguish them from real English. I suppose the partial exception is his thoroughly amiable character Phineas Finn, though even he displays Irish traits of sentimentality.
Race or ethnicity are partly rooted in natural facts and partly in cultural traits and partly in attitude. WASP racists in America frequently go to the extreme of demonizing even North Italians and certainly Sicilians and Greeks as non-Europeans. When I once pointed out the superiority of Sicilians and Greeks to Swedes, Instauration denounced me as a racial mongrel, etc. etc. Actually, “Wilmot Robertson,” who created and edited Instauration was an intelligent and well-read man of good manners. His book, The Dispossed Majority, is quite moderate and written on a fairly high plane. In a decent country, he would not have had to publish the lowbrow Instauration or associate with the racist cretins who ruined his work. But people all too often become captive to their audience. “Robertson’s” problem was that he lacked a spiritual and moral center, and that is the problem of every anti-Christian racialist I know. Some of them are, at bottom, very fine men, and we can only pray for them. I have had a good friend for many years who fits this description. We used to poke fun at each other, but as soon as he recovered his faith-a form of Protestantism–he mellowed. He did not change his views–why should he–only his attitudes. Of course, now he is an anti-Catholic bigot and we poke fun at each other’s religion.
18 Comment by Bruce on 7 August 2008:
May I indulge in some light-hearted chauvinism?
The Swede, the Greek and the Sicilian all desired to join an Anglo-Saxon society not the other way around.
19 Comment by TJF on 7 August 2008:
True enough, though it is also true that they tended to be the poorest and least-educated Swedes, Greeks, and Sicilians. In the Sicilian case, the Italian Revolution known as the Risorgimento had impoverished Southern Italy and reduced the Neapolitans and Sicilians to a level of bestiality it is hard to imagine. Today, however, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Italian immigrants, when they go to the old country, are astonished at the affluence of Italy and at the superiority of everyday life over there. One friend of mine, a Venetian who came in the 1950’s and felt she could lord it over her relatives, now feels her position as middle-middle class American to be inferior to that of her cousins. America is no longer the promised land for anyone outside the Third World.
20 Comment by Bruce on 7 August 2008:
Yes, I certainly don’t have any romantic delusions of them coming here for ideological abstractions.
Forgive me but could someone explain the distinction between a savage, a barbarian, etc? I noticed the comment where Dr. Fleming indicated the Aztecs weren’t savages. What category do they fit into?
Were our Celtic and Germanic tribal ancestors savages or barbarians and at what point did they make the transition from savages to barbarians?
I read 100+ year old (American and British) children’s textbooks to my kids and some of them unapologetically refer to our Germanic ancestors as “savages.” In other words, they had a healthy bias towards our Christian and Classical heritage.
21 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
I’ve been to Tuscany and have always wanted to see Venice, but the Celtic peoples are more fun and ah primordial (in an uncorrupted, natural albeit intelligent way).
I realise Christianity saved them, but there’s nothing wrong with preferring one’s own.
22 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
Ah, not to imply that anyone has said there’s something inherently wrong with preferring one’s own. I’m just replying quickly…
23 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
I wonder if it’s possible to put Celts in a city like Venice.
24 Comment by TJF on 7 August 2008:
It is absolutely not wrong but entirely right to prefer one’s own, whether one is civilized or not. The civilized man, however, learns to admire the virtues of other people to whom he is indebted, as we all are to Greeks, Romans, and Italians. In one of my favorite 19th century literary works, The Mountain Wreath by Petar Petrovic Njegos, a Montenegrin Serb recounts his adventures in Venice, where he was astonished by the magnificence of the city but pitied the poor Venetians for not having the gusle, a single-stringed instrument that sounds (to alien ears) roughly like a cross between a small bagpipe and a cat being tortured.
Here is a problem today, for Frank and others to consider, one that I have been reflecting on for some years. Being wild Celts, we are drawn to wild places and peoples. Unfortunately, when the fires burn down and the wild ones are corrupted by modernity, they sink into swinishness and a kind of loutishness that we have no evidence for from the Mediterranean. As much as I would like to live in or visit the modern equivalent of the Wild West or Ireland before the Normans came or the Highlands in the age of Rob Roy, those places are for the most part ruined or in the process of being ruined, whereas the decadent parts of Mediterranean Europe not only preserve a good deal of monuments, ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, but also a way of life that although not Christian is not exactly swinish either. I dreamed for years of visiting Ireland and Scotland but other than landscape, they are for me somewhat depressing–Ireland more than Scotland. On one side I have ancestors from Kerry, from a town that was only recently ruined by development. Siena and Lucca, by contrast, are not only physically well preserved but also there is some continuing sense of local identity. The same is true in parts of Greece and France. I am not saying this to discourage a love of Celtic places–far from it–but only to make the observation that in postChristian Europe, the countries that were under the Roman Empire preserve more than traces of civility, while the people beyond the limes have reverted to brutishness.
Anthropologists distinguish between savages and barbarians on a number of levels. Rather than go into them, let us just say that the Celts and Germans whom the Romans met were barbarians–people living in a settled social order, with agriculture, metal work, etc.–and, say, Apaches, Eskimos, and Hottentots. The peoples of the Valley of Mexico will be either civilized or barbarian depending on point of view. I am ethnocentric enough to be repelled by child-murder and cannibalism, to say nothing of the use of fecal matter and urine in medications. For the Greeks and Romans, a certain level of human kindness was implied by civilization.
25 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 7 August 2008:
Ancestrally, many people from Northern Italy are Germanic, as well as many people in France, going back to the migrations at the end of the Roman Empire. Not that Germanic blood is the sine qua non of being European, but it is the largest demographic of Western European ancestry. (I wasn’t implying that Greeks or Italians are not European.)
What Dr. Fleming says is correct. Rome is less decadent than, say, Berlin or Prague, which one can certainly gauge by the level of debauchery in the night life. Nevertheless, I still felt least “at home” while living in Rome than I ever did living in France, Germany or the UK. Perhaps it was my Midwestern Protestant upbringing. Perhaps I’m used to Celtic-Germanic decadence.
26 Comment by TJF on 7 August 2008:
I go back and forth between feeling more comfortable in Britain or Italy. Life in the Mediterranean can be annoying to people who expect a certain level of public order and civic virtue. On the other hand, there is the hushed sound of dusk as you walk out in the evening, the quiet waiters slicing the prosciutto, the smell of the first pasta being put to boil, the first sip of wine….
Interestingly, the Germanic impact on central and northern Italy would seem to be mostly on the upper classes. What appears to be Germanic blood in Lombardia may well be Celtic, certainly the dominant note in the ancient world and according to a modern geneticist Celts still predominate north of the Po. This led my quondam friend Umberto Bossi, after seeing Mel Gibson’s movie on William Wallace, to declare; “Io sono Braveheart.” It was about this time that a student group in Merate (roughly SW of Lecco) was formed, I Giovani Celti Meratesi. They invited me to address them on their Celtic inheritance. I began by observing they were all drinking Coca Cola. I pointed out that everywhere they are found, Celts drink distilled spirits: Whiskey in Scotland, Ireland, and the South; Slivovica in Serbia and Slovakia, grappa in Piemonte and Lombardia. “I Celti non bevono Coca Cola,” I exclaimed. Embarrassed, the boys sneaked out and brought back beers.” “Va bene?” I left feeling I had corrupted them. On the other hand, there are clearly German types. My good friend the novelist Eugenio Corti, although he speaks only a few words of German, is taken everywhere in Europe and elsewhere for German.
27 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 7 August 2008:
Funny Coca Cola story.
Do you know whether anyone has conducted a DNA ancestry analysis of Northern Italy to determine how much of it is Celt and how much Germanic?
28 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 7 August 2008:
Cavalli-Sforza may discuss this in one of his papers, but I have never seen any data.
29 Comment by TJF on 7 August 2008:
I read an article by him about 15 years ago and that is my source. Sorry I have not seen it since. I’d be reluctant to put too much stock in these things since the genetic gap between Celts and Germans is so small to begin with and since the two groups were rather intermingled on the borders even in antiquity. There is, still, something to the Celtic thesis for Northern Italy. On the other hand, the Milanesi strike me as a lot less Celtic than German and less Celtic than the 7-foot Bosnian Serbs who are crazy enough to be Irish.
30 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
Haha, the Serbs truly are crazy enough to be Irish – I’ll be sure to say that to the next crazy Serb I meet. I wonder if an anthropologist has ever used insanity as a racial marker…
They do like to work (relatively), they are organised and efficient, and they are naturally empathetic I believe. Are they truly too abstract and unattached, or simply corrupted by culture/societal forces? Are they perhaps more susceptible to mass media and more prone to bending to peer pressure?
Or, I hate to say it, has the Catholic church been more effective than the Reformed churches at encouraging morality? And if so, what can be learned from this?
The northern mind and morality is abstraction. It is capable of kindness, loyalty, and perverse horrors depending on what is conceived. The attachments aren’t, sadly, as biological and irrational as are the southern Europeans you mention. So, can they be saved? (rhetorical…)
—
Are there any tradition minded thinkers focusing on this? Are there any Reformed traditionalists focusing on anything, haha…
31 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
I was telling someone the other day that if Christianity must be rejected, Asatru is the next best thing. Asatru appears to be a sort of symbolic religion that puts value on small “kindreds” and ancestors. Though the Vikings of old might have been terrible warriors, their ways appear to be largely forgotten, so perhaps Asatru wouldn’t as immoral.
Whatever the case, belief in god, even just an abstract belief, seems impossible for the Nordics I meet. They’ve been brought up to view religion as a sort of insanity that clouds reason, so perhaps the symbolic belief in odd folklore would fit them, who knows…
Note: I’d be more concerned about Asatru if I thought many actually believe in it. Did C.S Lewis believe in god(s) when he was a pagan?
32 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:
Perhaps the Romans misunderstood them or were biased/lying even.
33 Comment by TJF on 8 August 2008:
On Frank’s various points in reverse order: archaeologists generally confirm the Roman impression of the Germans. The latest idea is that the Romans created their own destruction in teaching better techniques of agriculture and warfare to the people who would then be able to overpopulate and conquer their empire. Far from being biased against Germans, our best source–the historian Tacitus–goes overboard in praising their virtues as a way of condemning the corrupt morals of his own people.
This business of neo-paganism is quite interesting, because it rests on such obviously stupid and fraudulent foundations–quite as foolish as Wiccan but it is part of an ongoing rebellion against Christendom. Quite apart from the question of whether there is or are God or gods, we have–to the extent we have a civilization of any kind–a Christian civilization. To attack it is to join the enemy. I have explained this many times to the leading neo-pagan thinker alive in the world today, but his hatred of the Church is a force that cannot yet be overcome. One Catholic friend of his once explained to me, he hates the Church because he hates his country and he hates his country because ultimately he hates himself. All of the good things in ancient paganism were incorporated into the Medieval Church, which makes the Reformation–as well-intentioned as many Reformers were–a disaster for Christendom.
Yes, although religion is only part of the explanation, non-believing Catholics tend to live better than non-believing Protestants. In turning religion–which is a matter of behavior and custom–into ideology–a question of ideas about faith, grace, etc.–Protestants stripped Christianity of much of its power to inform, reform, and transform society. Obviously, they did not intend to do this, but it happened.
Let me illustrate the difference between Catholic-Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism by the microcosmic examples of men who drift away from religion in their early 20’s–a very common phenomenon. When a Protestant ceases to practice his religion, he often–not always but often–finds himself rejecting the ideas–is there a God? Did He create the universe and send his son to die and be reborn for us? He will not come back unless he receives a shock that makes him doubt the anti-Christian ideology he has absorbed from the world around him. The Catholic or Orthodox male will also drift away, probably in equal or greater numbers, but since for him religion is not simply what he believes in but a way of life involving weddings and funerals and baptisms and house blessings and saints’ days and a million other things in which his womenfolk are involved, he can never get entirely away. Indeed, I have known many Orthodox men who go to church for a few minutes in the beginning, slip away to drink and smoke with their friends, and then return at the end. As they get older, however, and less preoccupied with success or women, they begin to stay a bit longer and by the time they are 70, they may be pillars of the Church. Among Italian Catholics, it is sort of a joke that the ushers tend to hang out in the narthex–important business, naturally. The point is that while they may not believe much of anything, they remain connected by an umbilical cord that brings them nourishment and solace.
I do not say that traditional Anglicans and Lutherans do not have some equivalent mechanisms, only that Protestantism in general has not been so good at informing the entire society. This is the flip side of the fact that church-going Protestants are often more moral and responsible than regular Catholics. I do not at all wish to enter into religious polemics here, but I think the issue Frank has raised is quite real and quite important, and the only two choices seem to me to lie in 1) conversion of European Protestants to the Catholic Church or 2) Medievalizing Protestant Churches as some Calvinists are trying to do. By the way, the failure of the Catholic Church in the USA is, I believe, primarily the result of Americanization, a process that has tended to make the Church more ideological and less Medieval.
I am closing this thread and transferring the discussion to my most recent entry on immigration, where it will be easier to keep track of everything. I do want to thank anyone who has been at all patient. Some of the more foolish attacks have reminded me that we should spend some time and scan in much of our writing on immigration. When my good friend Peter Brimelow was writing only about business, we were being attacked by the neoconservatives for our strong stand against illegal and mass-legal immigration. We have not changed our position.