Today’s guest Norman Eckart is a pro-white intellectual from the mountain west who describes himself as a “Scholar of American Nationalism, Purveyor in organizational operations, essayist and bloviator on many topics.”
You guessed *mostly* right- a system where you have a limited amount of elite immigration for the sake of collaborating with different cultures, all of whom bring their own flavor of vitality to the host culture, is exactly what I was suggesting in our conversations.
However, I don’t believe in the whole “brain drain” thing much. It is a real demographic trend and it has some consequences, but its impact is very limited in the long term. I have been around enough people of integrity and genuine love for their culture to see that, unless there’s an actual genocide or something, any culture and civilization lives or dies by its merit in compelling enough of it’s people to believe in it. If people inside a culture, country or religion have lost faith in it then there’s nothing anyone can do to save it. And if they haven’t then those people will keep it alive despite everything, including their location.
Starting to move into the paywalled back catalog...
On immigration... Low skill immigration in the US could work if you did it Dubai or Singapore style. Here to do a job. Infinitely replaceable but at the same time with basic health & safety protections so arms aren't getting sliced off left and right 1920s style. Don't get fully paid until you're back home, which will be in max five years. No becoming a public charge, let alone importing intergenerational poverty.
For me, one of the oddest stances you take is on Latin American immigration. I realize Californians are sometimes guilty of treating the entire Western US as Greater California, but Arizona is right next to California. I'm roughly ten years older than you. California was amazing in the 1990s and up until the mid 2000s, but the state jumped the shark with high immigration coupled with millions of middle class people leaving the state. Most of the Hispanics coming were indigenous Central Americans who never even assimilated into the local mestizo culture. Instead they were an entrenched underclass for over a century. The US already has an entrenched underclass. We don't need to add another layer to it. Yes, there is some upwards mobility, but not a lot. Right now, our system just selects for the poorest of the poor, the most desperate of the desperate, and the most criminally inclined (if the stories of Venezuela emptying their prisons are to be believed). And, isn't immigration contributing to turning Arizona blue?
Florida is the outlier because it received middle class people who were already of full Spanish or castizo descent. I think we could square the circle here by cracking down on illegal immigration, deporting the people most likely to not assimilate and become public charges, and eliminating birthright citizenship while at the same time being much more open to legal immigration of culturally middle class Latin Americans from countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. The Florida Latin American vibe is actually one of the top reasons I'm considering moving to that state.
On elite immigration from certain developing countries... this is far more of a Europe issue than one for the US but I'll give it a go. Brain draining local elites can delay the development of those countries, preventing local reform. Instead of facing pressure to fix problems, the local elites have an out. Long term they just produce more poverty that can be exported, leading to more boats in the Mediterranean.
Liked the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone references... Putnam's follow up article (which he sat on for years because of the political implications) showed increased diversity causes a corresponding loss of social capital because of the hunker down effect, where everyone begins to distrust their neighbors and you fall from a high trust to a low trust society. If the right of center wants to attract votes, they really need to have the carrot of offering people the ability to increase social capital. But, I'll acknowledge that too much social capital can lead to the Hobbit effect in the Midwest, so it just needs to be optimized in the right way.
Instead of using intersectionality, maybe think of multivariate variables. Could avoid giving the intersectional left an inch by conceding to their framing.
Finally on CRISPR... I'm going to pull out my Internet Geek hat for a moment and talk about... Star Trek. In their lore, one of the major causes for World War III was the "superior ability produces superior ambition" effect of genetic engineering, causing different genetic supermen to go to war with each other for dominance. Afterwards genetic engineering is banned and becomes a major social taboo (which also explains why there's no transhumanism 400 years in the future). People usually fear the AI singularity and climate change, but genetic engineering can't be overlooked as a major looming threat for the 21st century as well.
You guessed *mostly* right- a system where you have a limited amount of elite immigration for the sake of collaborating with different cultures, all of whom bring their own flavor of vitality to the host culture, is exactly what I was suggesting in our conversations.
However, I don’t believe in the whole “brain drain” thing much. It is a real demographic trend and it has some consequences, but its impact is very limited in the long term. I have been around enough people of integrity and genuine love for their culture to see that, unless there’s an actual genocide or something, any culture and civilization lives or dies by its merit in compelling enough of it’s people to believe in it. If people inside a culture, country or religion have lost faith in it then there’s nothing anyone can do to save it. And if they haven’t then those people will keep it alive despite everything, including their location.
Starting to move into the paywalled back catalog...
On immigration... Low skill immigration in the US could work if you did it Dubai or Singapore style. Here to do a job. Infinitely replaceable but at the same time with basic health & safety protections so arms aren't getting sliced off left and right 1920s style. Don't get fully paid until you're back home, which will be in max five years. No becoming a public charge, let alone importing intergenerational poverty.
For me, one of the oddest stances you take is on Latin American immigration. I realize Californians are sometimes guilty of treating the entire Western US as Greater California, but Arizona is right next to California. I'm roughly ten years older than you. California was amazing in the 1990s and up until the mid 2000s, but the state jumped the shark with high immigration coupled with millions of middle class people leaving the state. Most of the Hispanics coming were indigenous Central Americans who never even assimilated into the local mestizo culture. Instead they were an entrenched underclass for over a century. The US already has an entrenched underclass. We don't need to add another layer to it. Yes, there is some upwards mobility, but not a lot. Right now, our system just selects for the poorest of the poor, the most desperate of the desperate, and the most criminally inclined (if the stories of Venezuela emptying their prisons are to be believed). And, isn't immigration contributing to turning Arizona blue?
Florida is the outlier because it received middle class people who were already of full Spanish or castizo descent. I think we could square the circle here by cracking down on illegal immigration, deporting the people most likely to not assimilate and become public charges, and eliminating birthright citizenship while at the same time being much more open to legal immigration of culturally middle class Latin Americans from countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. The Florida Latin American vibe is actually one of the top reasons I'm considering moving to that state.
On elite immigration from certain developing countries... this is far more of a Europe issue than one for the US but I'll give it a go. Brain draining local elites can delay the development of those countries, preventing local reform. Instead of facing pressure to fix problems, the local elites have an out. Long term they just produce more poverty that can be exported, leading to more boats in the Mediterranean.
Liked the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone references... Putnam's follow up article (which he sat on for years because of the political implications) showed increased diversity causes a corresponding loss of social capital because of the hunker down effect, where everyone begins to distrust their neighbors and you fall from a high trust to a low trust society. If the right of center wants to attract votes, they really need to have the carrot of offering people the ability to increase social capital. But, I'll acknowledge that too much social capital can lead to the Hobbit effect in the Midwest, so it just needs to be optimized in the right way.
Instead of using intersectionality, maybe think of multivariate variables. Could avoid giving the intersectional left an inch by conceding to their framing.
Finally on CRISPR... I'm going to pull out my Internet Geek hat for a moment and talk about... Star Trek. In their lore, one of the major causes for World War III was the "superior ability produces superior ambition" effect of genetic engineering, causing different genetic supermen to go to war with each other for dominance. Afterwards genetic engineering is banned and becomes a major social taboo (which also explains why there's no transhumanism 400 years in the future). People usually fear the AI singularity and climate change, but genetic engineering can't be overlooked as a major looming threat for the 21st century as well.