http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/08/observations-about-american-culture-from-europeans/OBSERVATIONS: THE QUIRKS IN AMERICAN CULTURE
Just to be fair, now that I’ve commented on Canada, here are a zillion observations about the USA made by others, preceded by a few observations of my own.
(It’s too long for FB, so sorry for the link)
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-07 20:15:00 UTC
TEN CURIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT CANADIAN SOCIAL SIGNALING
It’s odd. I can walk around Moscow, Paris, Istanbul, or rural Hungary and understand the cultural signals people are using. Why is it that Canadian signaling is so strange to me when it’s right next door and they speak the same language?
(I’ve collected an interesting set of observations that foreign visitors make of the states. I’m trying to do the same for canada. The easiest country to understand is France. They have a fascinating signaling structure. But canada is hard to take apart for some reason — probably because I don’t know enough canadian economic history.)
Most of this behavior is kind of charming. But the fact that it’s charming simply doesn’t explain WHY people develop these signals in the first place.
1) Q: Why does every conversation about anything political end up using the Nazis as a counter example? It seems sort of ‘antique’. Or quaint. The world has moved on. Extremes are a way of actually avoiding complex issues. So I instinctually see it as a means of political self deception.
A: I found an answer to this one: Canadians have an international sensibility and the only people one can criticize without fear of offense is the Nazis. (Of course they don’t realize that radical Islam is using the Nazi propaganda playbook and the communist social and economic strategy.)
2) Q: Why is atheism worn like a badge of honor? Religion isn’t talked about in the states as much as it is here in eastern canada. It’s like canadians are more religious about not being religious than evangelicals are about themselves. Again, instinctually I see it as putting something down as an effort to raise one’s self up. But I suspect there is more of a reason for it. In Quebec I understand, because the church was so dominant in society. But I don’t understand the rest of canadian’s obsession with anti-religious statements. Is it a reaction to perceived american religiosity? (I don’t think canadians understand the economic value of american puritanism. It’s why we don’t have so much petty theft.)
3) Q: Why do people wear their injuries like an affliction is a war wound, and the cast a medal? Is it to promote the virtue of their medical system? That seems to be the canadian ethos. Very strange to me. Is it part of the victims-as-heros meme?
4) Q: Why is do Canadians grant each other the right to be oblivious? In most other germanic-language countries, you’re expected to be aware of those around you. In canada, waiting for someone to get out of the way is considered a sort of charity we should all be proud of. I mean, we all laugh at the Hindus and Asians for making shopping impossible. But what’s the deal with Canadians?
5) Q: Decisiveness. Canadians need far more information in order to decide something than most other westerners. This surprises me. I’ll figure out where it comes from eventually. Actually, it’s more like they’ve taken British lower class skepticism and distributed it across the entire spectrum. There is really no upper class here. It’s strange. In the states we have at least two layers of them. In Russia (Did I say I loved Russia yet?) they do. Or at least they still have aristocratic sentiments somewhat like the Germans.
6) Q: Customer Service. This is what people from other countries don’t understand about the states: the culture is the MARKETPLACE. That’s all we have in common. When you’re at your job, it’s ‘Game On’. When you go home you can relax. But we have high expectations of people who are ‘in the market’. Good customer service is a civic duty. It’s like french manners, or canadian deference, or german duty. In canada, people at work and home are little different. That’s why customer service is bad here, despite how nice people are. And really. They’re very, very nice. But why? Why didn’t they get the commercial social sentiment? I’m sure I can figure it out but I haven’t yet.
7) Q: Product Selection: Why, if we’re just across the border, is everything more expensive, with less selection? I swear, it’s like the USA in the 1970’s. Outside of Toronto you can’t even buy nice furniture very easily. There has to be a reason for it. But selection here is terrible by contrast. Like the UK in the 80’s.
8) Q: Health Movement. I know the health movement is a west coast thing that radiated outward, and as an Ecotopian (northwesterner) I have perhaps a odd expectation. But you literally cannot find food that isn’t saturated with every preservative and chemical on the planet. (Which for me is horrid.)
9) Q: The Quaintness of Political Problems. Really. To travel around the world, read newspapers and journals, and blogs from around the world, and the read canadian newspapers and the MUNDANE content of most political discourse is just amazing. It’s like kids arguing over whether Darth Maul or Boba Fett is cooler. I mean, is it so peaceful, spacious, gentle and comfortable here that the locals have to make something to talk about? I went through a week’s worth of newspapers circling the factual stories. You could reduce the entire content to half a page. Such is the lot of being a resource-rich english speaking country bordered by a friendly superpower. But the question is WHY is this noisy discourse so important to Canadians. They all seem to participate and care about it… but is that because the outcomes are so indifferent? Is it all they have to build community about given that there are no external threats? I have to figure this one out. All I end up with is that canada is the most privileged country on earth right now.
10) Q; Why less venomous racism? Living in Ottawa makes it very visible that the race problem is bigger in the states than I had thought. I understood that it was impossible to resolve in the states for historical reasons. But I didn’t realize how bad the problem was and how pervasive until I spent time here. Like the UK, the integration of blacks into society seems to be more successful than the states. I suspect this is largely an artifact of the power struggles in the states. But its painful. I still think affirmative action only exacerbates the problem.
A couple of other things in perspective:
0) Canada has roughly the same population as California. The population is centered along to the us-canadian border. the toronto-ottawa corridor is part of the “foundry’ culture, along with chicago, detroit, Cincinnati, new york, philadelphia. The Vancouver area is part of ecotopian culture along with san francisco, portland, and seattle. The plains provinces are indistinguishable from the US plains states, and they are culturally part of the “empty quarter” culture. Quebec is arguably its own civilization — and why english speaking canadians don’t support a quebec independence doesn’t make sense to me. Like their continental french peers, they are a blocking culture that is a hostile partner.
1) Power and Weakness. Canada is next door to a gorilla. They don’t have to pay for military, especially per square mile — so it’s amazingly cheap to be canada. The Weak generally treat pacifism as a virtue. (see the USA vs Europe prior to 1860). I can understand this influence on canadian culture. They are very proud of their little military. It’s a symbolic force. But they treat it with dignity. I find it very appealing.
2) Canada is unable to create innovative productivity because it is culturally too risk averse for widespread scale entrepreneurship. (Is it a cultural memory of being poor? A self concept of relative poverty that isn’t borne out by the facts? A class heritage?) And secondly, because they have a resource economy that makes high productivity unnecessary. But to pay for their social programs given the size of the country and the low population, they’ve been selling off land to immigrants like the USA did post civil war. This has not yet had the social impact in canada that it did in the 1930’s in the states. And they seem, like the english, to do a better job of integrating people than we do in the states, save for muslims, which don’t integrate anywhere in the english speaking world, even after three generations. This is probably what I see in the public discourse. I think the spatial stuff is just a remnant of ‘little england’. I know that Quebec was populated largely by members of the lower classes. Is the same true of english speaking canada? Was land that much cheaper here?
3) Consumer banking in canada is like consumer banking in the states before 1980. It’s much better for consumers here. Business banking is … (Amateurish?) by contrast. But I’d venture that either switzerland or canada has the best consumer banking system. I mean, I could write a book about it.
4) While there is a lot more petty crime in canada than the states (yes there is), the police are also a lot better here. Like the bankers they are here to help you. Cops in the states are there to punish and fine you. Bankers are there to soak you with fees. And that is the one thing about the USA that I have found simply intolerable. The militarization of the police force is more socially destructive than I would have predicted.
Anyway, that’s my list of curious questions.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-07 15:34:00 UTC
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/28/beyond-blue-6-the-great-divorce/Heartfelt Description Of The Decline Of The Blue Model.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-01 18:27:00 UTC
I should follow up on my last post with this thought: 1) For the fist time in western history, military leadership has been effectively denuded of political power. Our politicians are not only not required to have demonstrated military experience, but our generals are conspicuously absent from the political stage. Their departure is partly due to the change of the military’s focus from competition between tribes and states to the battle between consumer capitalism and world communism. A conflict which instead of pitting a group of classes against another group of classes, pitted classes within groups against one another. The pervasive fear of the military caused by the strategy of mutually assured destruction didn’t help reform military perception. And the cultural, regional, racial and religious factionalization of the USA combined with the leftist conquest of academia (sometimes by physical force) ((See Cornell University)) rendered the anti-martial sentiment a persistent property of the populist cultural norms. ALthough one feature of this change is interesting: The military as an institution has largely succeeded in maintaining the respect of the populace. The politicians are blamed for the misuse of military force. 2) If there are only three types of coercive political power: Force (the military and the militia), Moral (priests and public intellectuals), and Exchange (entrepreneurs and financiers), then one third of the balance of power has been removed from our political sphere. I would stipulate this is what instinctively troubles aristocratic conservatives. Not only are Whites becoming a minority, but their martial leadership has been ostracized from power. Social conservatives can still rally around the church for communal confirmation. But aristocratic conservatives cannot – they have no political venue. From antiquity until 1960, a male could seek status and acceptance through military service (and looting), familial provider-ship (and access to sex), religious conformity (demonstrated commitment to the community), and productive labor (craftsmanship), or at the very least, simply providing the service of his physical strength. Under agrarianism almost all of these venues are open to all men. Under industrialization the set is reduced. Under the information age, the male’s entire existence became materially undesirable. This is why the underclass males are abandoning marriage, religion, work, and even fear of imprisonment – they adopt a new version of mediterranean bravado. Upper class males are abandoning society altogether. The middle class and the upper proletariat fuss with the empire while its natural aristocracy revels in effete consumer decadence.) 3) I do not see a means of developing a natural aristocracy given the decline of agrarian self-sufficiency, the end of the regimental system in favor of conscription and state funding, and the rise of the majority of occupations that no longer participate in the market. Democracy is a slow road to totalitarian communism. And I do not see, absent some sort of extremely disruptive economic and geopolitical event, a way of altering this trend. WE will return to ignorance and poverty – or more likely, a two class system on the order of south america.
The Source Of Western Individualism Is In Its Military Strategy http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/02/15/the-source-of-western-individualism-is-in-its-military-strategy/
Source date (UTC): 2012-02-15 16:56:42 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/169827483984740356
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/medieval-manoralism-and-the-hajnal-line/MANORIAL EXPANSION MATCHES THE HAJNAL LINE
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Because the relationship between the protestant ethic, the inclusion of women in the work force, the relative equality of women, late marriage, consanguineous marriage. ie: The lower classes had a harder time breeding. People got smarter. Unlike now, where people are getting marginally smarter but on average the world is getting ‘dumber’.
Source date (UTC): 2012-02-10 10:15:00 UTC
WHAT IS THE HAJNAL LINE?
It is the line the separates the germanic manorial marriage pattern (late marriage, fewer children) from the early marriage cultures.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Because the manorial system seems to have increased northern european IQ.
Source date (UTC): 2012-02-10 10:06:00 UTC
Sometime within the past six months, I have unconsciously ceased to consider myself an American, and begun to think of myself as an English American – or even just a diasporic Englishman. It wasn’t something I chose. It wasn’t a decision. It was the result of living through these interesting, and increasingly fractious times, while writing on political philosophy. DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE The English population of the States varied from around 50% to around 60% prior to 1800. Over time, due to the immigration needed to fill the Louisiana purchase to keep the west free from another French or English war, then due to the further westward expansion, that number has decreased to about 25% in 1980. And now, it’s declined to something between 9% and 12% — depending upon the various data we refer to. Demographically people of English decent are spread in a band from Maine to Oregon, predominantly along the 40th-46th parallel, with rural northeast, midwest, northern Rocky, and the north west the only places that they are more than 10% of the population.
(As of 2000AD. We do not have the 2010 data yet.) Interestingly enough, if we look at the UK today, almost all the variation in IQ scores occurs within the ‘middle class’ or what we in the states would call the ‘upper middle class’. It’s dramatic enough that it skews the averages upward. There is a subset of the British people that represent the Northern European version of the Ashkenazim. IMPACT Will the decline of Anglos impact the national culture, or it’s legal system? We know that it takes about 10-15% of the population to hold an idea or value before it becomes part of the culture. It’s Pareto’s principle at work yet again: 1% figure out everything, 5% translate it, 10% prosthelytize it, and the rest follow them. If different groups ally together then ideas can be driven into the society’s norms simply by the process of ideological-flocking. Does that mean that Anglo values will, simply by demographic dilution, decline in influence within those norms? Perhaps, very slowly. It takes about two generations to change basic values, and four for them to fully disappear. And the English Americans aren’t alone. Our cousins the Germans are about equal in percentage and distribution across the country. The Irish and Italians had their impact. And now the Hispanic(Indians) join the Africans. The Asians and Hindus aren’t much of an influence yet. But it’s quite clear that those groups will come to dominate certain social classes and therefore have greater and less likelihood to influence the national culture. And if we look at our history, the Catholics achieved precisely what the protestants warned they would, and the Jews accomplished what the Catholics warned about, and now the Supreme court is a mix of Jewish and catholic, with english and germanic protestants noticeably absent. So significant change can occur in less than a century. Somehow I find that oddly fascinating. But the sentiment of collectivism in the catholics (who represent Europe’s lower classes) and the Jews, as well as that of the hispanics, will certainly express itself in institutional changes, as the germanic protestant culture and it’s calvinist roots are out bred and out immigrated, and those people become a minority. This change from majority to minority is the origin of the Tea Party movement in the states and the BNP-related movements in the UK – white people are acting like a minority, and will soon lose all care and guilt over their advantages, or their colonialist history. THE END OF GUILT But what will change, and is changing rapidly, is the desire for whites, whether protestant or catholic, (or those under the self delusion that they’re neither), to demonstrate that they are acting fairly and justly by granting others special rights as a means of getting over ‘white guilt’. What guilt is a remnant of what one side sees as colonialism, and the other side sees as dragging humanity out of agrarian mysticism, ignorance and poverty. That period of ‘guilt’ is about to come to a permanent end. (( See Paul Gottfried’s work on Guilt. )) The protestants, and then the catholics, will hold no privileged position. No inherited advantage. We’ll want our own protections. And we’ll want revocation of those prior advantages that we gave away. (( Instead of simply systematically invalidating Jim Crowe Laws.)) Colonial guilt is especially vivid in the English. English people were effete, technocratic, and messianic as well as colonialist. And the best technologies that they distributed to those cultures was christianity, accounting, empiricism, medicine, and the common law. They surrendered their colonies fairly easily. And in 500 years they dragged civilization into the modern age – despite the attempts of French intellectuals, and Marxists to fight them off. The most illustrative statement about English ethics is a quote my Mao: “If India had been a French colony, Gandhi never would have been an old man”. And the state of British colonies versus french colonies is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the different cultural virtues. THE TRIBE We’re a tribal people. Brits today are tribal in general. Remarkably so. And classicist as well – which is where the tribalism comes from. The English are already a diasporic people. a minority that was once in control of vast continents. But unlike the other diasporic capitalist peoples: the Jews, Chinese, Hindus and Armenians, we have a deep seated love of the land that is buried in our mythology and our values. Without control of land we are permanently frustrated from expressing our ancient desire to work metal, bend nature, and demonstrate our political devotion and social status, by making the world – every inch of it – a work of art that is left behind us, as a record of our character. RETURN TO TRIBALISM So, my country has left me, and I have left it. The romantic attachment I had to the constitution, the bill of rights, the revolution, its ideology — and my fervent patriotism — left along with it. It’s been a long hard attack on the ‘White Protestant Nation’. But like water on a rock, it’s been successful – unfortunately, almost entirely through the evasion and dilution of the 14th amendment, and the democratization of the Senate. The constitution was an innovation, it was brilliant, but it wasn’t strong enough. The most interesting thing, is that this destruction was done largely by women – initially puritan women – who, in America, liberated by the industrial revolution, then later by the availability of consumer appliances, directed their anger at men, rather than the church — as they did in most countries. (Which is what explains the peculiarly inaffectionate businesslike relationship between men and women in the states, versus other western countries that so many foreigners seem to notice.) THE FORBIDDEN TRIBE Political pressure and rent-seeking from other groups under the ruse of equality — but in reality for the purpose of rent-seeking and access to status and political power — has succeeded in forming a normative and institutional prohibition against our forming a separatist identity as does everyone else. It is entirely acceptable to promote a jewish homeland. It is entirely acceptable to have a jewish defense league, or a La Raza, or a black national movement. Everyone else can be sectarian, but we are forbidden it. In Canada, the lowest caste with the least rights, is white males – by law. In England, bureaucrats starve pensioners but pay the bills of ‘asylum seekers’ — in one of the most perverse incentive schemes ever to create a privileged political class. Now, if a people do not promote their country, their government, their institutions, and their way of life? What do they do? If their history is forbidden to them in their schools? If they are demonize? What do they do? The answer is consistent for all diasporic people: they form a predatory capitalist minority that works within the statute law, but profits from asymmetrical observation of all norms. Norms: habits, manners, ethics, morals — they take care of their own. Just as recent immigrants to the USA go through criminal, small business, and integrated phases. We are members of a forbidden tribe. Our religion is forbidden. Our values are forbidden. Our meritocratic, individualist, aristocratic social system is forbidden. Our history is forbidden. So, how do I feel about being a member of the Forbidden Tribe? I wish Mother England would open her doors to us, so that those of us who are still willing may return home to our live among our own. I am sorry that our ancestors waged a revolution in order to avoid paying for the french and indian war. God Save The Queen. And may God save our English people. (EDIT FOUND THIS) If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!! English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
A quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe:
Hoppe also condemned the French revolution as belonging in “the same category of vile revolutions as the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazi revolution,” because the French revolution led to “Regicide, Egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, hatred of all religion, terror measures, mass plundering, rape and murder, military draft and the total, ideologically motivated War.”
Let’s add to that a condemnation of French philosophers who twisted and then ruined the concept of English freedom by converting what had been a practical and empirical philosophy into an evangelical, ideological, verbally-empty absurdity which they used to justify taking power from and destroying both the monarchy and the catholic church — and by consequence they created the body of work that Marx would use to compose his irrational economic plague and pseudo-religion which in turn caused 160M deaths. Hitler is laughing in his grave. The Deutch Mark simply had to dress in Euro clothing in order to accomplish in only 20 years, profitably, and without firing a shot, what he had hoped to accomplish with his expensive purges and war. If you could to travel in time and kill only one religious philosopher in history at birth, it’s a tossup whether that should be Zoroaster, Abraham, Mohammed, Rousseau or Marx.
EVERYTHING FRENCH IS BAD EXCEPT THE FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE
A quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe:
Hoppe also condemned the French revolution as belonging in “the same category of vile revolutions as the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazi revolution,” because the French revolution led to “Regicide, Egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, hatred of all religion, terror measures, mass plundering, rape and murder, military draft and the total, ideologically motivated War.”
Let’s add to that a condemnation of French philosophers who twisted and then ruined the concept of English freedom by converting what had been a practical and empirical philosophy into an evangelical, ideological, verbally-empty absurdity which they used to justify taking power from and destroying both the monarchy and the catholic church — and by consequence they created the body of work that Marx would use to compose his irrational economic plague and pseudo-religion which in turn caused 160M deaths.
Hitler is laughing in his grave. The Deutch Mark simply had to dress in Euro clothing in order to accomplish in only 20 years, profitably, and without firing a shot, what he had hoped to accomplish with his expensive purges and war.
If you could to travel in time and kill only one religious philosopher in history at birth, it’s a tossup whether that should be Zoroaster, Abraham, Mohammed, Rousseau or Marx.
Source date (UTC): 2012-01-01 07:15:00 UTC