As I have noted on this site on several different occasions (and through a long-form piece in Counter-Currents titled “The Red Pilling of Rod Dreher”), I take Rod Dreher to be a shining example of the limits of Civic Nationalism buttressed by conventional, Christian, ‘pathological altruism’ ethics. The tortured and contorted logic… the impoverished theoretical approach… all can instructively be put on display through Dreher’s columns.
In his recent column “Of Sh*tholes And Second Thoughts”, Dreher believes his initial, pearl-clutching reaction to Trump’s “Sh*thole” comment may have been too emotion-based, not evidence-based:
I have to admit to you that I’m having second thoughts about my reaction to President Trump’s “sh*thole” comment. The whole thing is more morally challenging than I initially thought. Don’t get me wrong: I think it was crude, obnoxious, and wrong of him to say, and without question politically foolish. He has made it harder to defend sensible immigration restriction policies…
Let’s think about Section 8 housing. If word got out that the government was planning to build a housing project for the poor in your neighborhood, how would you feel about it? Be honest with yourself. Nobody would consider this good news. You wouldn’t consider it good news because you don’t want the destructive culture of the poor imported into your neighborhood. Drive over to the poor part of town, and see what a sh*thole it is. Do you want the people who turned their neighborhood a sh*thole to bring the sh*thole to your street?
No, you don’t. Be honest, you don’t…
I have no trouble saying that not all cultures in the world are equally healthy, equally good. “Different” doesn’t equal “bad,” but some places really are bad because the culture there is bad. Take the people out and put them in a different culture, and you should be able to expect different results over time. But not always.
Responding to one of the commenters, Dreher writes:
I would a thousand times rather live with people of any and all races who shared the same general set of virtues than with people of my own race/ethnic background who did not.
And, when it comes to immigrants from Sh*thole Countries like Haiti, where, exactly, does that happen? Relatively speaking, it is a rarity. When it’s the case that where this does happen is more than offset by the opposite, that’s when our culture begins to qualitatively change… for the worse. Waves of immigrants from country X tend to settle in urban U.S. areas with high levels of X immigrants. (IOW, people of all races want to be amongst their own kind.)
“But I know a Haitian with a PhD!” is a myopic way to approach the issue. One must look at statistical averages of immigrants from X. One must also engage in cultural anthropology to see how the micro-changes in cultural behavior by ever-increasing waves of X-immigrants begins to qualitatively change the character of the wider society emanating from those high concentrations of X-immigrants. These are the ‘critical mass’ inflection points.
Human biodiversity is real. I.Q. is real. Different populations with different average IQs have different collective potentials and create very different civilizations. Evolution + population genetics + time = different norms of social interaction… passed on through genes. Northern Europe has very different norms of reciprocity and higher levels of ‘social capital’ (willingness to trust & assist a stranger) than other civilizations. Degrees of consanguinity (e.g., Hajnal Line) matters. All of these dynamics involve long-evolving racial dimensions. Using Pareto Principle, European countries need to remain at least 80% racially homogenous to ensure continuity of their unique cultural and civilizational identities.
The same is true for Japan, Poland, and every nation on earth. The idea that America is different, that it is a ‘Proposition Nation’, is a myth. America was created by white Northern Europeans and for the vast majority of its history was almost entirely white (i.e., 90% white through 1965.)
Acknowledging these aspects of ‘race realism’ doesn’t make one a Nazi.
