The Damage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, Huntington 'Vindicated', Germany's Left-Populism, Why America Can't Produce Enough Military Ammo, Albanian Blood Feuds
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"The imbecilic Obama-Biden pandering to Iran demonstrates the foolishness of ignoring the fundamental realities of “clash of civilizations”; you can’t make a partnership with someone who wants you dead."
It sounds like a boomer wrote that, or a right wing person that pretends to be for freedom, but in fact is as pro censorship and pro war like the left is.
There is no mention of installing the dictator shah, or the numerous illegal wars in the middle east to drive this sentiment.
I can't stand cherry picked bullshit like that quote.
No more funding for Ukraine and Israel. That is how I would go about ignoring the fundamental realities of the 'clash of civilizations'. Let them clash while we focus on domestic issues.
[I'm replying to UB; he already knows this, but many/most do not] Funding for Israel (and probably for Ukraine) is almost all "military aid" of which, according to US law, 75% must be spent in the US, via purchases from American manufacturers, vendors, etc. IOW, the $$$ never leave the US (whether those $$$ end-up in the paychecks/pockets of American workers is a different conversation... as is whether US government subsidizing of American companies is good/desirable/etc.). In any case, that's one way in which our governments (over the years) have chosen to "focus on domestic issues".
75% is good, 100% is better. Money spent on "infrastructure" would have to be spent in the US, as would the infrastructure have to remain where it's built.
With the US trade deficit, USD are leaving the US everyday. In most cases, that's a good thing because Americans get something in return for that money.
It is a tool. Debts incurred during wars tie the indebted to the creditor...as the UK found put to its great disadvantage. And the US dollar reserves of overseas gov'ts bind them to the financial system.
Absolutely. Let voters decide if funding NATO is good for America. Let them decide if associating with murderous regimes is a valid long term strategy. Let pigs fly.
Trump was scorned for his suggestion to ‘reevaluate’ NATO- but he’s right. It’s been 75 years...time to change things up and rebalance a very imbalanced relationship.
"What no one can deny is the fact that immigrant populations will bring their own politics along with them as they settle in their new country of residence." One has to wonder if the much-maligned US urban political machines of the early 1900s weren't brilliant assimilation machines. All the best
Absurd is too kind. The right to wage war is integral to sovereignty. Using 'law' to limit the rights of states is the purest (or foulest) imperialism, hence dear to Wilsonians. The widespread expectation that only Congress (or the UN) can confer legitimacy on a war demonstrates just how de-politicised thinking really is...and how unrealistic.
Oct 28, 2023·edited Oct 28, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
It’s funny a lot of immigrants are getting the “lifeboat” mentality. Once you’re in a lifeboat you don’t want to get more people or else you’ll sink. When immigrants get their shit together in America they don’t want newcomers potentially giving them competition and affecting their image.
Almost all my family is diaspoo now(ancestor cry), but a lot of them are anti-immigration once they settle in their new countries or they go back home for retirement or summer vacations and will talk like they’re Enoch Powell when mentioning migrants in our home regions. It’s beautiful and this type of hypocrisy is just part of human nature
If they’re religious and don’t work in healthcare yes( I think the healthcare part is because of Medicare funding idk the details just what I heard from the yearly family arguments lol).
The problem being now no border, indeed cash bounties and massive government benefits for coming. This won’t end well, I suspect it’s not meant to end well.
Disaster capitalism worked so well for the Clinton Foundation in Haiti that it is now the template for governance in the US. The very essence of blowback.
I love the irony of America losing its ability to dominate the world by military might (or by the threat of it) because our leaders sought more money… while more money is the reason we sought to dominate the world in the first place!
I know it is not this simple, but it is funny regardless. Reading stories like these displays the true power of America: we can afford to make mistake after mistake, yet we rarely suffer for it. Our reckoning is coming, but until then, Turbo America continues.
The mistakes are mounting. You can get a sense that the world is starting to consider the US a paper tiger. This would actually be foolish, the US is still very capable, but less so year after year. There is time to correct, and I would argue the culture war stuff that has created so much resentment could be sidestepped quite easily, but the ideology that leads the US is simply unable to self correct.
We didn’t go into the World Wars - which led to the Cold War, which led to the war on terror, which led here. We went into WW1 over saving England, came out Universalist, in WW2 we then executed Universalism and never looked back, and don’t now.
We did not profit from either world war, were nearly broke by the end of WW2, had a Depression after WW1, a recession after WW2 , and only didn’t go broke after WW2 because of inflation.
We did gain from the postwar social contract and that all our competitors were broke and their cities and industries smashed.
We went for hard realpolitik motives, tried to make peace based on universalism. No amount of setback discouraged our rulers. This is a rich and remote from attack country and can afford mistakes. Every success bred arrogance even delusion, every failure only temporary.
And far from riches the motive is universal world government, the Capitol in Washington DC, this is simple Imperialism- that they have a conquering religion is nothing new. Every Empire had a conquering religion, was chosen by God, or had the Mandate of Heaven.
Universalism - call it Democracy- is our 🇺🇸 Islam. Nico calls it Turbo America, its name is Universalism - and Wilson is its Prophet.
Oct 28, 2023·edited Oct 28, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I very-much liked Ms. Wagenknecht's term "lifestyle Leftists", but quickly realized that it's little more than the grandchildren's version of what Mario Procaccino (a conservative Democrat running in 1969 for New York City mayor) described as John Lindsay's wealthy, "limousine Liberals" backers. Rob Reiner should be pleased, as they're keeping it "All in the Family". (I'm partial to the alliteration, in both)
Oct 28, 2023·edited Oct 29, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Yup, the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium is a distortion and perversion of reality and thwarts the right ordering of human affairs. I prefer the Albanians blood feuds, less people get killed.
Curtis has a piece “ Israel and the Nomos of the Earth that argues for apartheid in the most hilarious way imaginable. He is a card.
Freddie DeBoer also has a great piece on Israel, a solid and highly intelligent retrospective in which he, as always, comes to the wrong conclusion. I think Curtis has fantastic judgment (when I understand what he’s talking about).
CY hit the mark. DeBoer is a wanker. Real-life politics is not reducible to the categories of political theory. Ethno-nationalist projects can make for the most reliable democracies. In the case of Israel it appears that the non-Jews of Israel (Sunni Arabs, Druze, Bedouin who have citizenship) are very much responding to the current crisis by supporting the majority. This is political pragmatism of a high order and augurs well for the future IMHO.
Using a case as complicated and as singular as Israel to score points about liberal democracy is retarded. I might respect DeBoer if he cited verifiable facts rather than waffly theories but facts are painful, theories are laughing gas.
I still subscribe to Freddie, he has an honest streak a mile wide, but he is also beholden to some preconceived notion about the world and endlessly tries to contort the world into his ideal. I think one day the fever will break, older and wiser you know.
Like Curtis this author, Soldo, is an astute judge and for me a short cut, he does the work and I come along for the (very informative) ride.
That said, the best thing on Substack is an NS Lyons, he is a soothsayer.
Oct 28, 2023·edited Oct 28, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
When you say "more immigrants" to a working class first world.human, they hear "more competition for jobs and housing, longer lines at the clinic, etc."
When you say "more immigrants" to a PMC yuppie, they hear "cheap au pairs and ethnic restaurants, O goodie!"
I'm generally all in favor of immigrants, but I don't pretend that immigration is free of opportunity costs or that those costs are borne equally by all social classes.
The "YUMMY ETHNIC FOOD" meme always makes me laugh. Nothing could be more emblematic of modern leftism than giving away you're history, people, and culture so that you can eat 3rd world slop twice a year.
I think you might be surprised at just how much immigrants admire the philosophical foundations of the US. Recall that Ho Chi Minh admired the Declaration of Independence at sought to make it a model for Vietnam. We proceeded to make the scheduled election in Vietnam impossible out of our fear Minh would win and then laid waste to his country under cover of puppet governments.
This might surprise you but I'm not a huge fan of the philosophical foundations of the US. It's always been the case that Communist point at works like the Declaration of Independence and say; "Look your founding document says 'all men are created equal', therefore it must be capitalist society that accounts for the inequality we see!".
Uh, Ho Chi Minh did probably say that. He was also a committed communist from 1919 until he died. He co-founded the French Communist Party (1919). He spent the 1920s working for the Comintern in China.
In 1931 he founded the ICP - Indochinese Communist Party- operated out of Hong Kong.
He did play nice with the OSS in exchange for weapons, the reports of one OSS officer Archimedes Patty at the time did not match his recollections decades later. At the time Patty saw through him, decades later he remembered a “democrat.”
He murdered or betrayed to the French every rival or non communist (cooperating briefly with the French in 1945-46 before they went to war, eliminating the Vietnamese Nationalists).
The peace treaty signed with France gave North Vietnam millions of more people then the South, as the North would have voted 100% Communist and the South was both outnumbered and fractured Diem declined.
We reasonably didn’t force Diem on the matter.
It’s not what Ho said, it’s what he did that matters.
Never forget that Uncle Ho was a keen Zionist. He offered Ben Gurion a haven in North Vietnam. It was a different world back then. Inexplicable to the grad students of today who are foaming at the mouth about 'settler-colonialism'.
Even if the repubs were 100% serious about immigration/demographic change, the key issue is theyre held hostage by the left.
There was a vid of Trump talking about how immigration should be prioritized for actual first world nations instead of "shit hole countries" like Haiti. And everyone flipped their lid over "racism"
Haiti is 100% a shithole, so is most central Asia and sub saharan Africa. If you say you want to prioritize Europe (which should be the case imho) your career is over. And honestly, that's a moderate position imho.
Legal immigration should be prioritized for young, educated people. Even shit hole countries are capable of producing a few of those, so why not poach them as well?
Trump was held hostage by his big mouth. He was a failure on illegal immigration and Ann Coulter called him out on it. Yet for MAGA diehards, she's the bad guy.
Well I never said, "no immigration from Haiti/3rd world ever under any circumstances. Only that It should be prioritised from Europe. They're closer culturally than Asia/Africa. With the caveat that importing millions of Germans/French/Swedish whatever would also upset things as well.
No argument from me on Trump's mouth causing problems. But he could have said "we shouldn't accept too many haitians," a reasonable position, in the absolute nicest way possible. And they still would have burned him for it all the same.
All I'm trying to say is the immigration issue is overshadowed by the dominant leftwing framing of "racism/xenophobia" It's hard to get anything done because it always loops back to everyone screaming those words.
The only discrimination in terms of immigration policy is fleeing poverty. If you're an economic migrant seeking a better life, you don't qualify. You have to be fleeing political persecution or possess skills that are in short supply.
I was about to go on about how his own party subverted and f*cked him over. But you know what? You have a point. Trump lacked discipline and focus. The fact that the wall was only partly completed, is at least somewhat on him.
(Minor) correction: Central EurAsia should not be put into this category. The Tengri-worshipping ethnie living there made pretty good living in a frighfully hostile environment, developed entire new life-styles (horse-mounted nomadic pastoralism) excercised a good early model of parliamentary representation (kurultay) and at one time prevailed over the largest land-empire. It eventually failed, but elements of their ethos is still detectible.
See the film "Urga" for (Russian-made!) glimpse into,say, Mongol culture.
I'm old enough to remember GWB running on securing the border in 2004, on John McCain nearly tanking his campaign for the Republican Nomination in 2008 over Amnesty. Neither ever did anything to stop immigration and when by some miracle an anti-immigration Republican got elected(Trump) they did everything in their power to undermine him and get him removed from office.
With very few exceptions the Republican party exists to "manage" the political Right in America.
He was accused of this by pro open borders democrats that wanted an even laxer border policy, like what we have with Biden now. I don't remember the exact way they did it but the Obama administration was fudging the deportation numbers to look higher than they actually were so they could sell "Obama is tough on the border" to "blue-dog democrats" in places like Pennsylvania. Exactly the type of places that flipped from voting Obama to voting Trump in 2016.
My comment is tangential to the main thrust of this (very interesting) post about immigration.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, the word “racist” was virtually unheard. Now I am someone who has always hated bullies.....bullies of all stamps. And because of this I have always thought that, if only Western liberalism could set its moral compass against "bullies of all stamps" then this would be a far wiser moral framework than one based on these post-60s 'isms like "racist", "sexist" etc. Those people who are opposed anything that might "replace the older core population of the country" are - in a sense - "racists" but there is nothing wrong or ugly about that. Preferring one's own race should not be a moral crime; seeking to harm those of other races should be. These 'isms that get trotted out in our time - right across the political spectrum - are philosophically muddled and tendentious.
There has been a project of the American secret services to redirect leftish parties from class issues to anything else. First you had women's rights, then came the gays, anti-racism, LHTBQI and nowadays the environment. In the mean time the main social democratic party here declared class struggle a thing of the past.
There is noting wrong with those alternative goals as such. But the way they are interpreted is narrow and there is a lot of stress on correct speech. As such they appeal to a middle class public while driving out lower class people. The way Corbyn was driven out from the Labour leadership was a good example how hard is has become for a party to appeal to lower class issues.
I think Wagenknecht's main trouble will be to keep her party focused. I have seen party after party succumb to the politically correct dogmas of our times. It is very seductive for politicians to say the things that brings them praise from their fellow politicians (specially those holding power) rather than say the things that their voters want to hear.
" Leonhardt relies on the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose work led other researchers to divide people between “universalists” and “communalists”"
I don't believe those "universalists" are really "universal". They just consider their class interests more important than the interests of their ethnic group. The classic example is Europe's nobility that always had a very international outlook.
Thanks for this, esp the leonhardt piece. Hart Cellar turned the USA from a nation into an entrepôt and ATM for foreigners who can always retreat to their home country when things get real. Not great for actual Americans
"[Kotkin] fails to grasp that this multiculturalism that he supports and celebrates is negatively affecting the ability of the West to come to Israel’s aid" Indeed. Furthermore what's open. fair, decent etc [insert any other liberal pieties of your choice here] about the zionist project of an apartheid, ethnic-cleansing settler state? To say that universalists (or Soros-style proponents of an Open Society) should support Israel defies logic, never mind decency.
The apparent cracking of the left in Germany might be evidence of Academic Agent's thesis/bet that the left will "put the woke away" as wokeness accelerates cultural decline too fast for people to tolerate.
"Abounding in minorities, the left is increasingly attentive to hierarchies of respect and vigilant about monitoring them. Abounding in intellectuals, it is increasingly — and mistakenly — inclined to view democracy as a search for truth rather than as a search for consensus; it is prone to cast those who disagree with it, no matter how numerous, as democracy’s enemies and even as authoritarians."
Yes, and they can cowboy up and deal with it
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"The imbecilic Obama-Biden pandering to Iran demonstrates the foolishness of ignoring the fundamental realities of “clash of civilizations”; you can’t make a partnership with someone who wants you dead."
It sounds like a boomer wrote that, or a right wing person that pretends to be for freedom, but in fact is as pro censorship and pro war like the left is.
There is no mention of installing the dictator shah, or the numerous illegal wars in the middle east to drive this sentiment.
I can't stand cherry picked bullshit like that quote.
Very neo-connish.
Did you say neo-Knish?
Potato, or kasha?
No more funding for Ukraine and Israel. That is how I would go about ignoring the fundamental realities of the 'clash of civilizations'. Let them clash while we focus on domestic issues.
[I'm replying to UB; he already knows this, but many/most do not] Funding for Israel (and probably for Ukraine) is almost all "military aid" of which, according to US law, 75% must be spent in the US, via purchases from American manufacturers, vendors, etc. IOW, the $$$ never leave the US (whether those $$$ end-up in the paychecks/pockets of American workers is a different conversation... as is whether US government subsidizing of American companies is good/desirable/etc.). In any case, that's one way in which our governments (over the years) have chosen to "focus on domestic issues".
75% is good, 100% is better. Money spent on "infrastructure" would have to be spent in the US, as would the infrastructure have to remain where it's built.
With the US trade deficit, USD are leaving the US everyday. In most cases, that's a good thing because Americans get something in return for that money.
It’s a cause, not a money maker.
Or - it was a cause (universalism) and now it’s just money laundering.
It is a tool. Debts incurred during wars tie the indebted to the creditor...as the UK found put to its great disadvantage. And the US dollar reserves of overseas gov'ts bind them to the financial system.
How about we simply end all foreign alliances, especially NATO?
But if we’re just going to focus on the middle east, shouldn’t we not fund Egypt, the PA, HAMAS?
Absolutely. Let voters decide if funding NATO is good for America. Let them decide if associating with murderous regimes is a valid long term strategy. Let pigs fly.
We just need to abrogate the treaty. It serves no one’s interests but our ruling class.
Trump was scorned for his suggestion to ‘reevaluate’ NATO- but he’s right. It’s been 75 years...time to change things up and rebalance a very imbalanced relationship.
Well, we should end it.
NATO is mutually toxic.
It led us to the Danube and the brink of nuclear war.
Yes the overthrow of a peaceful democracy for resource theft and installation of a brutal dictator running torture camps
"What no one can deny is the fact that immigrant populations will bring their own politics along with them as they settle in their new country of residence." One has to wonder if the much-maligned US urban political machines of the early 1900s weren't brilliant assimilation machines. All the best
The British installed the Shah... both of them...
as for illegal wars...
they’re all illegal since WW2, or legal if Congress says OK, and it does...
the notion of legality and war is absurd, but if you insist.
Absurd is too kind. The right to wage war is integral to sovereignty. Using 'law' to limit the rights of states is the purest (or foulest) imperialism, hence dear to Wilsonians. The widespread expectation that only Congress (or the UN) can confer legitimacy on a war demonstrates just how de-politicised thinking really is...and how unrealistic.
Yep, and the idea of a civilized war is insane too.
We have a pretend arbitrator , the UN that can't do anything by design!
Well the UN 🇺🇳 is the USA 🇺🇸, it’s a Front Company.
It’s funny a lot of immigrants are getting the “lifeboat” mentality. Once you’re in a lifeboat you don’t want to get more people or else you’ll sink. When immigrants get their shit together in America they don’t want newcomers potentially giving them competition and affecting their image.
Almost all my family is diaspoo now(ancestor cry), but a lot of them are anti-immigration once they settle in their new countries or they go back home for retirement or summer vacations and will talk like they’re Enoch Powell when mentioning migrants in our home regions. It’s beautiful and this type of hypocrisy is just part of human nature
Do they vote Republican?
(Not implying that the GOP does enough about immigration to deserve their vote.)
If they’re religious and don’t work in healthcare yes( I think the healthcare part is because of Medicare funding idk the details just what I heard from the yearly family arguments lol).
The problem being now no border, indeed cash bounties and massive government benefits for coming. This won’t end well, I suspect it’s not meant to end well.
Disaster capitalism worked so well for the Clinton Foundation in Haiti that it is now the template for governance in the US. The very essence of blowback.
It’s Civil Rights; the prototype disaster capitalism. As was decolonization.
I love the irony of America losing its ability to dominate the world by military might (or by the threat of it) because our leaders sought more money… while more money is the reason we sought to dominate the world in the first place!
I know it is not this simple, but it is funny regardless. Reading stories like these displays the true power of America: we can afford to make mistake after mistake, yet we rarely suffer for it. Our reckoning is coming, but until then, Turbo America continues.
insightful comment. probably true of all declining empires though.
The mistakes are mounting. You can get a sense that the world is starting to consider the US a paper tiger. This would actually be foolish, the US is still very capable, but less so year after year. There is time to correct, and I would argue the culture war stuff that has created so much resentment could be sidestepped quite easily, but the ideology that leads the US is simply unable to self correct.
"You can get a sense that the world is starting to consider the US a paper tiger. "
yes, but in relation to China and Russia and Iran, the USA seems to be the STRONGEST paper tiger
I guess this is what it means to be at the very top of the food chain
You can commit mistakes and go one or 2 days without eating, with few consequences
Money? Oh no Sir.
🇺🇸 did not war for Profit.
🇺🇸 wars for our Prophet.
Our God is Universal.
Call it Democracy; Pallas Athena.
And Wilson is her Prophet.
We didn’t go into the World Wars - which led to the Cold War, which led to the war on terror, which led here. We went into WW1 over saving England, came out Universalist, in WW2 we then executed Universalism and never looked back, and don’t now.
We did not profit from either world war, were nearly broke by the end of WW2, had a Depression after WW1, a recession after WW2 , and only didn’t go broke after WW2 because of inflation.
We did gain from the postwar social contract and that all our competitors were broke and their cities and industries smashed.
We went for hard realpolitik motives, tried to make peace based on universalism. No amount of setback discouraged our rulers. This is a rich and remote from attack country and can afford mistakes. Every success bred arrogance even delusion, every failure only temporary.
And far from riches the motive is universal world government, the Capitol in Washington DC, this is simple Imperialism- that they have a conquering religion is nothing new. Every Empire had a conquering religion, was chosen by God, or had the Mandate of Heaven.
Universalism - call it Democracy- is our 🇺🇸 Islam. Nico calls it Turbo America, its name is Universalism - and Wilson is its Prophet.
I very-much liked Ms. Wagenknecht's term "lifestyle Leftists", but quickly realized that it's little more than the grandchildren's version of what Mario Procaccino (a conservative Democrat running in 1969 for New York City mayor) described as John Lindsay's wealthy, "limousine Liberals" backers. Rob Reiner should be pleased, as they're keeping it "All in the Family". (I'm partial to the alliteration, in both)
A John Lindsay reference!
Also similar to "Bionade-Biedermeier"
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionade-Biedermeier
Yup, the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium is a distortion and perversion of reality and thwarts the right ordering of human affairs. I prefer the Albanians blood feuds, less people get killed.
Systems of justice are a work in progress.
They die for a better cause than making the world safe for NGOs.
Perfect.
Curtis has a piece “ Israel and the Nomos of the Earth that argues for apartheid in the most hilarious way imaginable. He is a card.
Freddie DeBoer also has a great piece on Israel, a solid and highly intelligent retrospective in which he, as always, comes to the wrong conclusion. I think Curtis has fantastic judgment (when I understand what he’s talking about).
CY hit the mark. DeBoer is a wanker. Real-life politics is not reducible to the categories of political theory. Ethno-nationalist projects can make for the most reliable democracies. In the case of Israel it appears that the non-Jews of Israel (Sunni Arabs, Druze, Bedouin who have citizenship) are very much responding to the current crisis by supporting the majority. This is political pragmatism of a high order and augurs well for the future IMHO.
Using a case as complicated and as singular as Israel to score points about liberal democracy is retarded. I might respect DeBoer if he cited verifiable facts rather than waffly theories but facts are painful, theories are laughing gas.
I still subscribe to Freddie, he has an honest streak a mile wide, but he is also beholden to some preconceived notion about the world and endlessly tries to contort the world into his ideal. I think one day the fever will break, older and wiser you know.
Like Curtis this author, Soldo, is an astute judge and for me a short cut, he does the work and I come along for the (very informative) ride.
That said, the best thing on Substack is an NS Lyons, he is a soothsayer.
When you say "more immigrants" to a working class first world.human, they hear "more competition for jobs and housing, longer lines at the clinic, etc."
When you say "more immigrants" to a PMC yuppie, they hear "cheap au pairs and ethnic restaurants, O goodie!"
I'm generally all in favor of immigrants, but I don't pretend that immigration is free of opportunity costs or that those costs are borne equally by all social classes.
The "YUMMY ETHNIC FOOD" meme always makes me laugh. Nothing could be more emblematic of modern leftism than giving away you're history, people, and culture so that you can eat 3rd world slop twice a year.
I think you might be surprised at just how much immigrants admire the philosophical foundations of the US. Recall that Ho Chi Minh admired the Declaration of Independence at sought to make it a model for Vietnam. We proceeded to make the scheduled election in Vietnam impossible out of our fear Minh would win and then laid waste to his country under cover of puppet governments.
This might surprise you but I'm not a huge fan of the philosophical foundations of the US. It's always been the case that Communist point at works like the Declaration of Independence and say; "Look your founding document says 'all men are created equal', therefore it must be capitalist society that accounts for the inequality we see!".
Uh, Ho Chi Minh did probably say that. He was also a committed communist from 1919 until he died. He co-founded the French Communist Party (1919). He spent the 1920s working for the Comintern in China.
In 1931 he founded the ICP - Indochinese Communist Party- operated out of Hong Kong.
He did play nice with the OSS in exchange for weapons, the reports of one OSS officer Archimedes Patty at the time did not match his recollections decades later. At the time Patty saw through him, decades later he remembered a “democrat.”
He murdered or betrayed to the French every rival or non communist (cooperating briefly with the French in 1945-46 before they went to war, eliminating the Vietnamese Nationalists).
The peace treaty signed with France gave North Vietnam millions of more people then the South, as the North would have voted 100% Communist and the South was both outnumbered and fractured Diem declined.
We reasonably didn’t force Diem on the matter.
It’s not what Ho said, it’s what he did that matters.
Never forget that Uncle Ho was a keen Zionist. He offered Ben Gurion a haven in North Vietnam. It was a different world back then. Inexplicable to the grad students of today who are foaming at the mouth about 'settler-colonialism'.
They’re just foaming at the mouth, we could make them Nazis easily enough, oh wait...
THEY ARE!
Hey, the Blank Slate works!
Q; Why are you a Nazi?
A; Prof said extra credit for riot.
i wish I could like this more. A perfect concise statement of how Academia works.
It's as if cook books do not exist, and the extra 'auténtica' experience requires a Guatemalan's touch.
Nothing like an Indian's toe fungus to pep up a nice curry
Immigration would be an issue if the electorate were consulted. As it stands, it is a fait accompli.
For all their bluster, Republicans are marginally better on immigration policy than Democrats.
"For all their bluster, Republicans are marginally better on immigration policy than Democrats."
Yes... but only so much. They're the ones who believe it's possible to pick-up a turd by its "clean end".
Even if the repubs were 100% serious about immigration/demographic change, the key issue is theyre held hostage by the left.
There was a vid of Trump talking about how immigration should be prioritized for actual first world nations instead of "shit hole countries" like Haiti. And everyone flipped their lid over "racism"
Haiti is 100% a shithole, so is most central Asia and sub saharan Africa. If you say you want to prioritize Europe (which should be the case imho) your career is over. And honestly, that's a moderate position imho.
Legal immigration should be prioritized for young, educated people. Even shit hole countries are capable of producing a few of those, so why not poach them as well?
Trump was held hostage by his big mouth. He was a failure on illegal immigration and Ann Coulter called him out on it. Yet for MAGA diehards, she's the bad guy.
Well I never said, "no immigration from Haiti/3rd world ever under any circumstances. Only that It should be prioritised from Europe. They're closer culturally than Asia/Africa. With the caveat that importing millions of Germans/French/Swedish whatever would also upset things as well.
No argument from me on Trump's mouth causing problems. But he could have said "we shouldn't accept too many haitians," a reasonable position, in the absolute nicest way possible. And they still would have burned him for it all the same.
It's not clear to me what the issue is/was with legal immigration.
I might be a little confused myself.
All I'm trying to say is the immigration issue is overshadowed by the dominant leftwing framing of "racism/xenophobia" It's hard to get anything done because it always loops back to everyone screaming those words.
The only discrimination in terms of immigration policy is fleeing poverty. If you're an economic migrant seeking a better life, you don't qualify. You have to be fleeing political persecution or possess skills that are in short supply.
He should have shut up and built the wall.
And require employers to verify the legality of their employees, or face heavy fines/imprisonment.
I was about to go on about how his own party subverted and f*cked him over. But you know what? You have a point. Trump lacked discipline and focus. The fact that the wall was only partly completed, is at least somewhat on him.
UB in real life it’s all or nothing,
So nothing.
No immigration.
You might want to ask why Haitians have to go to Mexico instead of landing in Florida.
1980s South Florida Joke:
Q: How can you tell when a Haitian's been in your yard?
A: The mango tree's stripped and your dog's got AIDS.
(Minor) correction: Central EurAsia should not be put into this category. The Tengri-worshipping ethnie living there made pretty good living in a frighfully hostile environment, developed entire new life-styles (horse-mounted nomadic pastoralism) excercised a good early model of parliamentary representation (kurultay) and at one time prevailed over the largest land-empire. It eventually failed, but elements of their ethos is still detectible.
See the film "Urga" for (Russian-made!) glimpse into,say, Mongol culture.
Yes and they also have such great pepper steak! 🥩
Anything for good food.
Let ‘em ride!
Hey, do these Golden Horde guys do delivery?
We need some vibrant grub!
😉
No, they are worse.
I'm old enough to remember GWB running on securing the border in 2004, on John McCain nearly tanking his campaign for the Republican Nomination in 2008 over Amnesty. Neither ever did anything to stop immigration and when by some miracle an anti-immigration Republican got elected(Trump) they did everything in their power to undermine him and get him removed from office.
With very few exceptions the Republican party exists to "manage" the political Right in America.
And don't forget, Obama was accused of being the "deporter-in-chief". Does he still hold the record for most people deported during a presidency?
He was accused of this by pro open borders democrats that wanted an even laxer border policy, like what we have with Biden now. I don't remember the exact way they did it but the Obama administration was fudging the deportation numbers to look higher than they actually were so they could sell "Obama is tough on the border" to "blue-dog democrats" in places like Pennsylvania. Exactly the type of places that flipped from voting Obama to voting Trump in 2016.
My comment is tangential to the main thrust of this (very interesting) post about immigration.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, the word “racist” was virtually unheard. Now I am someone who has always hated bullies.....bullies of all stamps. And because of this I have always thought that, if only Western liberalism could set its moral compass against "bullies of all stamps" then this would be a far wiser moral framework than one based on these post-60s 'isms like "racist", "sexist" etc. Those people who are opposed anything that might "replace the older core population of the country" are - in a sense - "racists" but there is nothing wrong or ugly about that. Preferring one's own race should not be a moral crime; seeking to harm those of other races should be. These 'isms that get trotted out in our time - right across the political spectrum - are philosophically muddled and tendentious.
There has been a project of the American secret services to redirect leftish parties from class issues to anything else. First you had women's rights, then came the gays, anti-racism, LHTBQI and nowadays the environment. In the mean time the main social democratic party here declared class struggle a thing of the past.
There is noting wrong with those alternative goals as such. But the way they are interpreted is narrow and there is a lot of stress on correct speech. As such they appeal to a middle class public while driving out lower class people. The way Corbyn was driven out from the Labour leadership was a good example how hard is has become for a party to appeal to lower class issues.
I think Wagenknecht's main trouble will be to keep her party focused. I have seen party after party succumb to the politically correct dogmas of our times. It is very seductive for politicians to say the things that brings them praise from their fellow politicians (specially those holding power) rather than say the things that their voters want to hear.
" Leonhardt relies on the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose work led other researchers to divide people between “universalists” and “communalists”"
I don't believe those "universalists" are really "universal". They just consider their class interests more important than the interests of their ethnic group. The classic example is Europe's nobility that always had a very international outlook.
Thanks for this, esp the leonhardt piece. Hart Cellar turned the USA from a nation into an entrepôt and ATM for foreigners who can always retreat to their home country when things get real. Not great for actual Americans
That retreat is a matter of tricky timing.
"[Kotkin] fails to grasp that this multiculturalism that he supports and celebrates is negatively affecting the ability of the West to come to Israel’s aid" Indeed. Furthermore what's open. fair, decent etc [insert any other liberal pieties of your choice here] about the zionist project of an apartheid, ethnic-cleansing settler state? To say that universalists (or Soros-style proponents of an Open Society) should support Israel defies logic, never mind decency.
Excellent as always, thank you.
The apparent cracking of the left in Germany might be evidence of Academic Agent's thesis/bet that the left will "put the woke away" as wokeness accelerates cultural decline too fast for people to tolerate.
"Abounding in minorities, the left is increasingly attentive to hierarchies of respect and vigilant about monitoring them. Abounding in intellectuals, it is increasingly — and mistakenly — inclined to view democracy as a search for truth rather than as a search for consensus; it is prone to cast those who disagree with it, no matter how numerous, as democracy’s enemies and even as authoritarians."
Spot on.