Ron Unz on the illusory American meritocracy

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French Translation, by Armor

An enduring aspect of the self-concept of Jews is that their ascent to elite status in America and elsewhere is the natural result of a meritocracy. For example, after Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court, Robert Frank penned an article in the Wall Street Journal (“That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP”) hailing the rise of a meritocracy where Jews could finally assume their rightful place as an elite, and cheering the demise of those lazy, corrupt WASPs who did everything they could to thwart the rise of the Jews, including placing limits on Jewish enrollment in the elite universities.  The fact that Kagan is remarkably unqualified to be a Supreme Court Justice in terms of the usual standards (judicial experience, academic publications, or even courtroom experience) never seems to have entered his mind. In Frank’s view, her ascent from Princeton undergraduate to Harvard Law, to high-level government positions and dean of Harvard Law is the American meritocracy in action—a view that conveniently ignores the role of her Jewish ethnic connections (see also here) in greasing her ascent, most egregiously her appointment as dean of Harvard Law by Larry Summers.

Ron Unz has published a very important article showing that Kagan’s remarkable rise is a symptom of a far wider issue—that Jewish admission to elite universities is far from meritocratic (“The myth of American meritocracy: How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?”). (On the basis of Unz’s article, it would be interesting to look at Kagan’s SAT and LSAT scores!) Because of their role in replenishing elites, university admissions is a huge lever of power. The implication of Unz’s article (although he would probably shy away from this wording) is that a Jewish elite now controls this lever of power and has used it to its advantage, resulting in a massive overrepresentation of Jews in elite universities compared to their academic qualifications or intelligence, while discriminating against non-Jewish Whites and against Asians. Read more

Croatia’s Patron Saints; the House of Habsburg and the Idea of the Reich

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St. George (engraving) by Albrecht Dürer

What follow is the English translation of my lecture given in the German language for the gentlemen of the Order of St. George, held on September 29, 2012 in the city of Varaždin, Croatia, under the patronage of the House of Habsburg and the crown prince Karl von Habsburg. The speech was subsequently published in the December 2012 issue of the Austrian literary monthly Die Aula.

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The word ‘Reich’ (empire) and “the idea of the Reich” have become ugly ideas. In accordance with new politically correct language rules, these words trigger feelings of unease among German and Austrian politicians. If one were to push it further in a poignant manner, one might just as well dispose of the German language altogether. In the United States, but also in England, the word ‘Reich’ reminds many people of something sinister, something threatening, of the proverbial Hitler — and of the Third Reich. Yet the idea of a Reich has a thousand-year long history and one encounters this word in the Weimar Republic and in post-war Western Germany. In fact one could say that the EU bears also some traits of the Holy Roman (German Reich) Empire, or at least should have had them in the first place.

The idea of the Reich is also a question of identity. For a long time this idea was — in a figurative sense — a patron saint of Central Europeans. The word ‘identity’ or the “imperial idea”, however, is not appropriate for deeper social analyses, since these words are ambiguous and may convey distorted meanings. Read more

The Politics of Non-White Ethnic Coalitions: Tipping Point of a Changing Electorate

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Anyone who remembers the early 1960s—a period that Charles Murray describes as the zenith of American society—knows that our country is not the same. The America that Baby Boomers fondly immortalize is reaching the point of no return. It is the same America that Obama rebuffed when he criticized Mitt Romney for attempting to return to the “social policies of the 1950s.” It is a country that was culturally and socially unified, less diverse, less violent, less crowded, and had a smaller and less intrusive federal government. Obama’s repeated snubs at the 1950s during the 2012 presidential campaign would lead one to conclude that it was a dreadful era Americans should abhor.

Political analyst Michael Barone recently noted, “The culturally cohesive America of the 1950s that some of us remember, usually glossing over racial segregation and the civil rights movement, is no longer with us and hasn’t been for some time.” According to 1960 Census figures, the White population of the U.S. was 88 percent—158 million out of a total 180 million. The entire non-White population was only 12 percent of the U.S. population. In fact, the published census data in the table “Population, by Race, by States: 1940–1960,” listed the U.S. population by race in three categories: “White, Negro, Other races.” Hispanics, consisting of less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population, were categorized as “other races.” Read more

Ann Coulter: The Republican demise is all Teddy Kennedy’s fault

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Ann Coulter’s column, “America nears a demographic tipping point,” has some good, if unoriginal points. Yes, we are nearing the point where pretty much all the White people will have to unite behind a candidate to win a presidential election. Even young Whites voted for Romney, with only 41% voting for Obama. This despite being brainwashed by the school system and MTV. American politics is clearly becoming ever more racialized.

And yes, the Latinos are never going to vote for a conservative candidate given their family patterns:

More than half of all babies born to Hispanic women today are illegitimate. As Heather MacDonald has shown, the birthrate of Hispanic women is twice that of the rest of the population, and their unwed birthrate is one and a half times that of blacks. That’s a lot of government dependents coming down the pike. No amount of “reaching out” to the Hispanic community, effective “messaging” or Reagan’s “optimism” is going to turn Mexico’s underclass into Republicans. Read more

Where is the historical West? Part 5 of 5

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Russia

The West also includes areas which are seen today as partially Western. I am thinking (firstly) of Russia. There is much uncertainty about Russia’s Europeanism. Perhaps of all the cultural factors which may classify Russia as Western none is more important than the bringing of Christianity to the Slavs by Byzantium scholars in the 10th century. With the end of Byzantium, the role of the emperor as a patron of Eastern Orthodoxy was certainly claimed by Ivan III (1440-1505), Grand Duke of Muscovy. Yet, the same Caesaropapism we saw in Byzantium developed in Russia, leading some historians to question Russia’s place in the West.  The Russian allegiance to Orthodox Christianity, they argue, kept Russia outside of the Catholic scholastic culture, the Papal Revolution, rise of autonomies cities and universities. Russia was the most resistant to classical liberalism. While Tsar Alexander I (1801-1825) was raised in the ideas of the Enlightenment, and during the beginning of his reign relaxed censorship and reformed the educational system, he refused to grant a constitution; and, after the defeat of Napoleon, he returned to strict and arbitrary censorship. In 1914 the Russian autocracy and its police were firmly in controlled. In March 1917, the Tsarist autocracy fell apart, and a provisional government led by the middle classes and liberal nobles passed reforms that provided universal suffrage, civil equality, and an eight-hour workday, but in October 1917 a small militant faction toppled this liberal government and set out to transform Russia into a bureaucratically centralized state dominated by a single party.  The Soviets tried to destroy every institution and cultural lifestyle associated with Russia’s Christian past in order to reconstitute society on the basis of an anti-Western doctrine Read more

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