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Where is the historical West? Part 4 of 5

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The Hellenistic World

Europe’s connectedness has created much confusion and opened the door for the imposition of a Trotskyite program claiming that Europe’s history was dictated by developments occurring elsewhere. But I wish to argue that Europe, despite its many connections, external influences, internal changes, and colonization of non-White areas, was until recently, before the imposition of open borders and mass immigration, a clearly identifiable area historically, geographically and ethnically. Let me start with the Hellenistic world, a vast area testifying to the vigor of the West yet hardly “Western” beyond small segments of its territorial/demographic potpourri.

Western Civ textbooks always include a full chapter on the Hellenistic era to describe a period of about three centuries, roughly from 323 BC to 30 BC, during which time, Greek culture, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, was brought over a remarkably wide area from its small Hellenic homeland — to Egypt and far into East Asia. The significance of the Hellenistic era, however, does not consist in the vast areas and diverse peoples it covered, but in the high cultural accomplishments this period saw in literature, art, science, medicine, and philosophy led by ethnic Greek individuals, particularly in the cities of Alexandria and Pergamum. The new schools of philosophy, Epicureanism, and Stoicism were actually centered in Athens. Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC), Archimedes (287-212 BC), the author of Euclid’s Elements (early in the third century BC), Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275-195), including the characteristics of Hellenistic sculpture and literature, were all Greek.  Although the four Hellenistic kingdoms which emerged as the successors to Alexander (Macedonia, the Seleucid kingdom in Mesopotamia, the Ptolemy dynasty in Egypt, and the kingdom of Pergamum in western Asia Minor) involved a clash and fusion of different cultures and ethnic groups, the political elites and high culture of these kingdoms were thoroughly Greek. The Greek/Macedonian rulers of these kingdoms encouraged the spread of Greek colonists to the Near East; with the result that cities were created replicating the architecture and political institutions of the Hellenic homeland. Many of these new urban centers were completely dominated by Greeks, while natives remained cut off from all civic institutions. A group of Greeks who broke away from the Seleucids carried Hellenistic culture as far to the east as the Indus valley, creating an Indo-Bactrian society. Read more

Where is the historical West? Part 3 of 5

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The West is Difficult

Western civilization is the most difficult to identify geographically for two reasons: i) the West has been the most dynamic territorially, developing across many lands, while advancing to higher stages of knowledge and power in the course of which it experienced “rises” and “declines” in different territories, ii) the West is the only civilization with a developmental pattern characterized by dramatic alternations in its philosophical outlooks and institutions. All in all, the West has displayed far more territorial movements, cultural novelties, and revolutions in the sciences and arts; and, for this reason, answering “where is the West?” requires one to ask “what is the West?” with an awareness of the fact that both the “what”  and the “where” have changed over time.

This civilization, for example, is not simply “Christian” in the way others are “Confucian” or “Hindu” in a more stable, less varying way. Its Christian character alone has been infused with a theological and institutional dynamic (flowing from its synthesis with classical reason and Indo-European aristocratic expansionism) stimulating a multiplicity of monastic movements, Cluniacs and Cistercians, Franciscans and Dominicans, heterodox movements (Pelagians, Waldensians, Cathars), not to mention Crusades and numerous Protestant denominations lacking elsewhere. The West—depending on locality, time, and groups— has been Platonic, Aristotelian, Epicurean, Stoic, Cynic, Augustinian, Monarchist, Newtonian, Gothic, Anglican, Humanist, Republican, Machiavellian, Hegelian, Fascist, Marxist, Darwinian, Surrealist, Cubist, Romantic, Socialist, Liberal, and much  more. By contrast, the intellectual traditions set down in ancient/medieval times in China, the Near East, India, and Japan would persist in their essentials until the impact of the West brought some novelties. Read more

Where is the historical West? Part 2 of 5

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Carleton Coon

What follows is a revised paper trying to answer the same question while taking account of the prohibited criteria of race. This is not a paper on the geographical distribution of the Caucasoid race. The objective is to ascertain the historical geography of Western civilization/culture without ignoring race. The concept of race will be implicit rather than the subject of investigation. I will accept as generally true the standard investigation of Carleton S. Coon’s book, The Living Races of Man, published in 1965. Humans are members of the species Homo sapiens, and all the members of this species, regardless of geographic location, can breed together and produce mixed offspring.  However, “humans also vary racially to an unusual degree,” and thus it is possible to divide humans into sub-species of races. While there is (still) no general consensus on the number of races, the term “race” is sufficiently precise to allow for a general classification of humans on earth. For the purposes of this paper, it should suffice to mention that, according to Coon, the three major sub-species of races are: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Congoid. He identifies four more races. He also draws further divisions within each of these main racial types to take account of important additional morphological differences, geographical variations, and the ways in which different environments engendered cultures which “profoundly” affected the character of the races. The following succinct statement by Coon is worth quoting:

A race is a major segment of a species originally occupying, since the first dispersal of mankind, a large, geographically unified, and distinct region, and touching on the territories of other races only by relatively narrow corridors. Within such a region each race acquired its distinctive genetic attributes – both its visible physical appearance and its invisible biological properties – through the selective forces of all aspects of the environment, including culture. After having become differentiated in this fashion, each race filled out its space, resisting, because of its superior local adaptation, the encroachment of outsiders with whom it mixed, from time to time if not continuously, along its borders (p. 10).

But what about the much talked-about difference between ethnicity and race? The more we emphasize culture the closer we are to the concept of ethnicity. The term “race” pays closer attention to the genetic attributes of a given group, whereas when the term “ethnicity” pays closer attention to the cultural attributes of a group, i.e., language, religion, customs, institutions, and historical experiences. This does not mean that ethnicity excludes the genetics of race. Liberals think they can suppress the concept of race by defining ethnicity in cultural terms and thereby defining race as a “cultural construct”. Coon correctly avoids this arbitrary elimination of physiological and genetic factors from his definition of race without ignoring the importance of culture. I use the term ethnicity as an intermediate term between race and culture. Western civilization comprises many ethnic groups with difference languages, cuisines, histories, which are nevertheless members of the Caucasoid race. Likewise there are many ethnic groups within the Mongoloid and Congoid sub-species.    Read more

Where is the historical West? Part 1 of 5

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Over a year ago I completed a 5000-word draft offering an answer to this question.  A few months later, after recurrent visits to VDare, American Renaissance, The Occidental Observer, and Counter-Currents my answer seemed naïve, adolescent; one more paper carved out under the “tyranny of liberalism” and the belief that the Western world was different from the Rest in its cultivation of universal values and transcendence of ethnic identities.  I no longer accepted the claim that humans around the world could become Western through proper guidance in the merits of civic equality, free markets, and tolerance.

I had been inching my way in this direction for some years, but never to the point of allowing the word ‘race’ to enter into my writings. In the draft I emphasized the ancient and medieval pre-liberal social context upon which the historic success of liberalism was predicated, but the convergence of my view with liberalism was obvious: the triumph of universalism was the high point of the West. I thought that identifying the location of the West was a matter of tracing the historical evolution of this ideology, beginning with the rise of citizenship and rational discourse in ancient Greek times, through the Roman invention of the legal persona, the Catholic fusion of reason and faith, the discovery of the individual in Renaissance times, the Newtonian Revolution, the Enlightenment, and so on, until the Allied victory in 1945 or even the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

What concerned me above all (in the draft) was challenging the leftist liberal idea that the historic West was a social construct without definite geographical and cultural boundaries. I rejected the view that all cultural expressions were equally valid and that a proper liberal attitude required an egalitarian view of world history. I was reacting to an academic environment in which the teaching of Western civilization had been replaced by a new curriculum emphasizing “the unity in diversity” of the world’s peoples. Only a handful of universities were still teaching the history of Western civilization. Everyone was captivated by the postmodernist claim that “no concept is by itself, and consequently in and of itself”: ergo the West must be conceived only in relation to the rest of the world.   Ancient Greece was an outgrowth of the Near East, or, as Martin Bernal put it, “Afroasiatic”.  Greek civilization was not founded by Aryan settlers but was instead the product of Egyptian and Semitic influences.

Even the landmass of “Europe” was found suspect. How can a small straggling peninsula on the western end of a much larger and richer Asian landmass be called a “continent”? The “the racist privileging of Europe” (on Mercator-derived maps) should not be allowed; accordingly, the Peters projection was promoted, where Europe was “considerably downgraded.”   The TV serial drama, The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin, endorsed this new projection as a great way to raise the status of the Third World against Western privilege. A variety of other projections were soon announced; the one world historians were most enthused over was the “Hobo-Dyer Equal Area Projection Map,” in which the world was turned upside down with  Europe occupying a marginalized corner in the south east. No one cared to mention that Europeans were the ones who discovered and mapped the entire geography of the earth.

The Hobo-Dyer Projection

Facing this challenge, I thought it was important to identify the West as the birthplace of liberal universalism. The key was to delineate geographically the expansion of Western liberal values and institutions. I concluded that Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were currently the most deeply Western; whereas Eastern (Catholic) European countries were  closely Western but not entirely due to their lack of well-developed democratic institutions. Latin America was unevenly progressing in a Western direction but was not yet quite ready to be allowed in the universal club. So were the Orthodox countries, Russia and the Balkans.   Read more

Spotting the Enemy

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Could you spot a Jew in a crowd? And if so, what does it say about you? These questions, believe it or not, have been the subject of much hair-splitting in the academic study of nonverbal behaviour for the past seventy years. Although nonverbal behaviour (and psychology more generally) does not fall within my “expertise,” I stumbled upon this scholastic circus recently during an evening with some friends. As the night progressed, and not finding the subject of conversation among one group particularly interesting, I drifted towards a smaller knot of individuals who had assembled in front of a television of monstrous proportions. On screen was an inconsequential news item, but what drew my attention was the interviewee. It would be facile for me to name this individual, but I was struck by his appearance. I had neither heard of him, nor seen him previously. Nonetheless, I was struck with a certain sense of recognition. “A Jew,” I said. “He’s a Jew.”

Those nearby, some aghast and some smirking, turned to face me. A female acquaintance sitting nearest to me asked “How can you tell?,” while another nearby asked someone for the name of the interviewee (not, it appears, a typically Jewish name) and reached for his iPhone in an effort to verify my “psychic” supposition. A small number, I noted, began slowly moving away. I remained silent while the technophile consulted his phone, and only when he looked up, smiling and nodding, did I respond to the good lady beside me. I couldn’t then, and still can’t, articulate precisely what it was that led me to deduce that the interviewee was a Jew. The volume of the television was low, so I could neither hear his accent, nor pick up on any of the typically Jewish sound bites like “tolerance” or “persecution.” Having only recently sat in front of the television, I was entirely ignorant as to the content of the news item, and could see no indication as to this man’s profession. In terms of his bodily movements, the interviewee was not a wildly gesticulating remnant of the ghetto. In fact, he was almost perfectly still. To dismiss any further stereotypical notions, his nose looked perfectly European. Rather, it was something about the placement of his eyes, his pallid complexion, the texture of his hair, the shape of his forehead. He struck me as inescapably different. Some of my friends, not entirely satisfied with this explanation, joked that I must have known the man was Jewish. Others, evidently to some extent unsettled, asked quietly how it could be possible for someone to have such an acute awareness of the ethnic origin of someone in whom they themselves could see no visible difference from the White mean. My own curiosity aroused, I departed later that night into the cool evening air with more questions that I had answers. Read more

Thanksgiving: “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained”

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The problem with holidays like Thanksgiving is that they give White people the impression that nothing has really changed. Just like when we were young, there is a huge Thanksgiving dinner, football on TV, and family get-togethers. The only difference is that now it’s all followed by an orgy of shopping on Black Friday, which now often begins in the wee hours of Friday morning or even on Thursday.

So the average American sits around all day, adds a few pounds, and then marches off to buy cool stuff. Life goes on much as it has for decades.

And that’s the problem. Only around 30% of White males and 40% of White females support the current government in a country that was founded, built, and run by Whites until very recently. … But all that seems fairly irrelevant when you are celebrating Thanksgiving.

It’s like the Fourth of July: All those fireworks make a lot of White Americans think that they still live in the country they grew up in.

So there’s no sense of urgency because life for most of us is pretty much the way it has always been.  There’s certainly some anxiety and anger about the election among Whites. In the back of their mind, there is worry that the multicultural future might not turn out as advertised. But all that is put on the back burner on holidays like Thanksgiving. Most Americans can hardly wait to get to the mall. Read more

Asian-Americans are part of the non-White coalition

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Voting sign in LA County. Notice the prominence given to the English version, obviously a residue of America’s racist past.

An op-ed today’s LATimes argues that Asians have signed on in overwhelming numbers to the non-White coalition that has become dominant in the Democratic Party. Based on their experience studying the Asian American community, two political scientists, Taeku Lee and Karthick Ramakrishnan, claim that the main reasons that Asians voted overwhelmingly for Obama have to do with seeing the Republican Party as too concerned with limiting immigration and too much associated with Christianity (Asian Americans turn Democratic).

The 73% of Asians voting for Obama was indeed remarkable—higher than Latinos (71%) or Jews (~70). Given their income profile, Asians are voting much more like Jews who, as the old saw goes, vote like Puerto Ricans but earn like Episcopalians. The point here is that their motives for doing so are similar to those of Jews—a lack of identification with the traditional people and culture of America (although doubtless with far less fear and loathing than is typical of Jews).

Since 2000, the Republican Party has moved more sharply to the right than the Democratic Party has to the left, especially on issues that resonate with Asian Americans. For example, Republicans in Congress escalated their heated rhetoric on immigration and, despite the Bush administration’s efforts, consistently scuttled efforts toward comprehensive immigration reform.

[During the Obama Administration,] the Republican Party has not been helped by its close liaison with the tea party movement, which received low favorability ratings in our 2012 survey, nor by presidential candidates and party activists emphasizing Christian values. Thus a Pew report on Asian American religion showed the highest Democratic Party support among Hindus and the religiously unaffiliated who, together, account for more than 35% of the Asian American population.

Taeku and Ramakrishnan also mention Obamacare and ending the war in Iraq as issues that helped Obama with Asians. But the bottom line is clear:

 If Republicans …  are able to project a more inclusive image of the party on immigration and religious diversity, they can hope to reverse their steep descent among Asian American voters.

So, once again, the Republican Party is encouraged to abandon any allegiance to the interests of its White base. Implicitly, Whites are urged to give up any attitude that immigration should be limited—Whites should have no concern about their displacement and should get on board with transforming the country away from its historical people and culture as soon as possible by admitting even more non-White immigrants.   Read more