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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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Ok, but the evolutionary argument applies to ellis island migration just the same- Italians aren't founding stock.

Some of my ancestors are of that, but the answer to this question is something along the lines of, "Yes And?"

Much of the things the anti-immigration advocates of that era did come to pass. We did have cities grow machines. We did have proliferation of crime. We did have expansions of ethnic tensions and permanent expansions of the federal government. The naysayers were fairly correct about the downsides. Did perhaps the upside of growing the labor pool fast enough that we could be the turning point in 2 world wars where our homeland went largely untouched thus making us the preeminent power in the world for over a half century outweigh that? Unknown. Perhaps it did, perhaps the other side of my family would have made up for all of that via some other force of will. I think this question is quite hard, but I still think a few of my ancestors and their kin should have voted against FDR more. They were stupid in at least that specific arena.

The same is true of the 1965ers. Most of the warnings have came to pass. Also America has continued to be the best (among, IMO a very weak selection of states on offer) larger power. Are we more bestest or less bestest (I think there is no scenario where America is not #1 without that immigration reform), obviously we cannot know. I say probably less. We continue to get richer mostly based on stepping on rakes less than other countries with the potential to be the best, not by outright excellence. This is why Peter Theil's idea of a new floating city state is absurd. If it was successful, America would nuke it. Well the regime would first try to destroy it by other means, but eventually it would be considered worse than Hitler and would be nuked.

The people against importing the Italians and Irish did have a point.

It was about religion, not genes. Otherwise, it would make no sense to complain about Irish immigration while pushing for more German immigration.

It applies at all scales from the family on up. Still, there is a threshold of distance between A and B in genetic space below which A and B perceive each other as partners and beyond which they perceive each other as competitors. All white Europeans are inside the genetic similarity threshold.

You do know that the bloodiest wars in world history* have been fought by white Christian Europeans against other white Christian Europeans, or by Han Chinese against other Han Chinese?

So was the bloodiest war in the history of the Americas (the American Civil War).

* Conquests of Genghis Khan being the possible exception.

So? You can fight wars against people on the "same" side of the same/other sociogenetic divide

But, why? Yes Italians are closer to the english midlands(where the WASPs came from) or the scottish marches(where southern Whites came from), genetically, than Indians. But they're still Indo-European. They're both closer than the west Africans who make up the single largest group in our founding stock.

Why draw the line there? What's special about white skin(and dot-Indians have more European than not features in other respects)? Literally.

I'm totally onboard with "Indian culture is bad and we shouldn't let them in because they're savages who worship cows/can't stop fucking close relatives/are awful scam artists/whatever". I'm onboard with "Their HBD is bad, Italians' wasn't". But there's no particular reason to draw the genetic similarity lines at the Bosporous and Gibraltar.

They're both closer than the west Africans who make up the single largest group in our founding stock.

Surely if we're going to reduce people to continent size blocks, then west Europeans are a larger part of our founding stock than west Africans.

This is rhetorical trick similar to saying "Mohammad is the most common name for baby boys in England" and leading people to inaccurately believe that a majority of boys born in England are Muslim.