(reposted from original site)
[P]at.
I rarely disagree with you, but regarding Russia, you posit a moral equivalency where none exists. Here is why:
The USA’s *Demonstrated* postwar policy operates by the following criteria:
1) BORDERS – states who don’t respect borders can lead to world wars.
2) HUMAN RIGHTS – states who don’t respect human rights export problems to the rest of us.
3) CONSUMER CAPITALISM – consumer capitalism is in the interests of ordinary people, because it will raise them out of ignorance and poverty, and more importantly, it creates states that can be competed with, and cooperated with, economically rather than militarily – this is profound because just as under consumer capitalism the market competition and conflict produce beneficial ends for consumers, so does does market competition between states produce beneficial ends for consumers since it forces a choice between consumption and expenditure on the ambitions of the central government – not the least of which is military expansion.
But that same policy also includes our greatest failure:
4) DEMOCRACY – it is our evangelism of democracy under the myth that all people desire and are capable of it, which has led to most or our failures.
WHY DEMOCRACY IS THE SOURCE OF AMERICAN POLICY FAILURES
Why? Because Northern europeans were uniquely capable of self rule for historical reasons:
a) we have a high trust society build through extensive outbreeding. (See Emmanuel Todd)
b) we have had centuries of suppression of the breeding of the underclasses under manorialism and its predecessors (See Clark and Todd)
c) We have had a unique history of the jury of our peers, rather than authority, for what appears to be more than 4000 years, and the common law for nearly as long – and as such a fairly unique ability and cognizance of truth and truth telling that separates us from the rest of the world.
The rest of the world, even southern Europe, cannot accomplish self rule because of pervasive corruption (See Fukuyama).
RUSSIA
Russia is a very, very, low trust society that DEPENDS upon systemic corruption to function, but that imposes corruption on its client states. Russia actively imposes brutality, murder, genocide on low trust countries to create military and commercial order necessary for low trust peoples to cooperate.
Conversely eastern europeans, especially Ukrainians, are NOT low trust peoples, any more so than Poles who are indistinguishable from Ukrainians, or even northern Italians (whom despite being largely germanic, the western Slavs resemble in many ways). So, Russian export of low trust means of government onto middle trust countries that can easily develop into high trust countries is by any definition evil and immoral, (they are Christian here in the east after all, and christianity breeds wealth because it breeds trust.) Just as American export of high trust means of government into low trust polities is harmful to them – they are incapable of self rule. They are incapable of self rule in many cases because they still practice inbreeding to control property in the family. (This is what prevents India from advancing more rapidly as well.)
THE HIGH VS LOW TRUST PEOPLES
So this is the difference between American and Russian political exports: If you export good government onto a medium or high trust people they they will flourish. If you export a low trust means of government on a low trust polity, they will also benefit somewhat – Russia’s southern neighbors did even if eastern europeans were murdered by the millions because of it.
Neither the Russians nor the americans are aware of Emmanuel Todd’s insights: That the only way to create a high trust society is the combination of consumer capitalism and outlawing near-breeding and inbreeding. Because as soon as you see everyone as a potential customer, business associate, mate or family member, trust must increase. Just as if you inbreed and rely upon relationships and corruption and parasitism, you will live in poverty (see Banfield’s Moral Basis of a Backward Society).
Most of the world lives in poverty because they have not adopted the christian ethic of treating all men as members of your family. This is the the first secret of christianity The second is the outlawing of cousin marriage by the church. The third was the granting of property rights to women by the church. The fourth was the construction of chivalry so that status only achievable by martial means was achievable by acts of public service.
These activities by the church were not prescient, but practical, and when combined with out indo-european heroism, birth control, truth telling, juries, and local sovereignty made us capable of self rule.
But none of these would have been possible had it not been for the aristocratic egalitarian ethos (see Ricardo Duchesne), which states that any man who wishes to fight for sovereignty must be aided: we must insure anyone who asks for defense as a means of increasing our numbers. We have been insuring one another’s property for thousands of years by the point of our spears, swords, bayonets and bullets. It is how we keep our numbers – we have always been a minority on the western edge of the world, and for most of history of poor one. Yet we were able to defeat greater numbers and and wealthier opponents for thousands of years.
Other countries cannot self rule because they have not experienced any of these advances. In fact, they find it heinous and prefer their familialism. And given our differences in reproductive rates, they may hold the correct evolutionary strategy – and not us. Western high trust society, high consumption and low birth rates, are not mathematically compatible with immigration of low trust peoples, dependence upon growth of consumption, and extensive redistribution. It is mathematically inescapable suicide (which you know, I know.)
So while in general I share your ideological position on all but marginal matters, it is this one that I think you err in: you are presuming we are strong enough on our own, and abandoning our aristocratic egalitarian strategy of keeping up our numbers by supporting the liberty of any who will fight along side us to preserve it. Instead we must always seek to increase our numbers – of high trust Christians.
Eastern European Christians are ‘us’. Ukrainians are ‘us’. Russians are steppe barbarians that understand only power. And in their world-view, truth is concept for fools. For Russians, “Words are just sounds you make to distract people so that you can defeat them”.
This difference in trust and truth is what separates Russians from westerners: they are a mix between us and the Chinese. Thy are a despotic low trust people with european aspirations and european mythos, but who have been influenced by mongol, muslim and turkic despotism such that they remain low trust people – what we mean by ‘barbarians’. They never had our commerce and outbreeding so they never developed trust and universalism.
Unfortunately Gorbachev’s vision to unite the circumpolar people would have been successful and beneficial for the world could we have achieved it. The only thing keeping Russians from despotism is 100 thousand western europeans running their laws for three generations.
Which is exactly what it takes to transform a country to western levels unless it can construct a powerful christian minority capable of taking rule long enough to transform the culture’s expectations into one that depends upon property rights, human rights, and dependable rule of law.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine,
Regarding: A Russophobic Rant From Congress
TAKIMAG.COM|BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN