I swear on the current endless edit that if I hear one more supposedly smart, normally thinking person talk about our being a nation of “blood and soil” I’m going to go on a rampage.
Now my rampages usually involve a lot of words and explaining to people why they’re out of what passes for their minds, so it might already be too late.
I think part of the problem with this is that we have two camps that are absolutely convinced that the US is “blood and soil”: one is foreigners who have never been here, and have actually not the remotest clue what the US is like, what it looks like and what actually happens here, other than the portraits in our utterly bonkers media; the others are Americans who either have no clue what blood and soil means (I’ve had some explain it to me as having a border and people having died for our territory. Rolls eyes.) OR who don’t realize what profound bullshit “blood and soil” is in ANY modern nation, but PARTICULARLY in the US. Or how dramatically different the US is from every other nation.
So, first let’s speak to the foreigners: you don’t understand the US and won’t unless you move here, and ACCULTURATE at least enough to see what’s around you not through old-country eyes. Put a pin in this, we’ll return to it.
Second, yeah, we are a nation with soil and multiple generations have bled on it. However we are also a nation who pragmatically bought a huge portion of its land, which is not a thing normally done for a blood and soil nation. (Yes, Israel is an exception.) Our best model really is a theocracy: a nation informed by beliefs, which sought and obtained land to be faithful to its beliefs in. Put a pin in that, and we’ll return to it too.
Normally blood-and-soil implies that your ancestors lived there, their bones and blood are mixed with the land. Etc. etc. You are of the land, the land is of you. It also implies — which is what Americans don’t get — that you and your ancestors are part of a genetic, lumpen heritage. That everyone in the country is cousins, so to put it.
This is very rarely true in modern nations. Unless nations are really tribes (and here I don’t know if any of those still exist, because I don’t know enough about Asia and the weirder parts of Africa.) Okay, this is the part Americans born and raised here don’t get:
Nations of unified ancestry are practically non-existent anymore. No, really. Just in Europe, regardless of what the claimed ancestry in, there have been so many continent spanning wars with troop movements, rape, colonization in some form, etc, that there is no “pure” anything nation.
The people here claiming we’re really Anglo-saxon and our heritage of freedom is because of that make me giggle hysterically. Because while there were Anglo Saxons back there, they were already pretty diluted (celts, Romans, heaven knows what, but apparently Iberians — probably Celts) by the time the Norman invaded, and after that… No one shares a nation with another breed for centuries without becoming more or less hybridized. And the answer is always more.
And no, don’t go waving a 23 and me kit in my face. I know what mine says, but what you have to understand is it compares to present day populations and to what people report themselves as. I love making fun of Fauxahontas as much as anyone, and to be fair, her genealogy really seems to be a tissue of lies. BUT her genetic test isn’t proof of anything. Most of you who have Amerindian blood won’t show it on 23 and me, because Amerindians were genetically overwhelmed and tribal leaders don’t encourage members to test, because even they have very little that can be identified as such. Which means almost any Amerindian that shows in a 23 and me test is from South America. (I have…. an irrelevant amount, but more than Warren. I figure great great great great grandad was a traveling man.)
It’s like this: yes, most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. In peace time. But this discounts war time, armies, refugees in time of famine. Traveling — forgive me — salesmen (mostly sailors and selling expeditions) who might live and die near where they were born but spread their seed with a high dispersion tip. It ignores traveling mendicants, crusades (yes, Portugal and Spain were once crusade territory and were mostly liberated by Proto- French.) It ignores nobility and their marriages and the fact that while Prima Nocta was made up, men with money and property sleeping around wasn’t.
I’ll let you cast a cursory glance at European history and then come back and tell me, with brass face that Europeans are distinct blood-per-nationality nations.
Now we get to the tricky part, though. The tricky part is that THEY THINK THEY ARE. There is a distinct effort ongoing since about the 14th or 15th century where European nations really pushed on thinking of themselves as breeds (before that the divisions were smaller and more complicated) and spent a lot of capital on propaganda to make their people think of themselves as such. There are books, poems, paintings, etc. etc. ad nauseum extolling the “so and so race” where the “race” is the name of the nation.
And it works, kind of. It works, because it slots into the part of the brain who wants to live in a family band like our hominin ancestors. And the problem here is that it’s exactly what modern day Americans are falling for as well.
Now for the European nations believing they are a “race” (I refuse to tell dad about my 23 and me, because he keeps going on about the Portuguese “race.” Friends of mine, I have more Spanish than Portuguese, and both of them are less than 50% together.) is a survival necessity. They have nothing else to hold them together, but their history, their shared sense of a past and this idea they’re all cousins.
Except– It makes it very hard to assimilate other people. And it is part of the reason the idiots importing the rest of the world by the bucket full are doing stupid ass shit like making movies where there are black nuns in England in the middle ages and they’re unremarkable (people, Portuguese, who were commonish immigrants into Great Britain since…. ever were called “Blackamoors” because my level of tan was “black” and remarkable in Northern Europe. (No, it’s not a contradiction. No nation of Europe is pure anything, but the imports might make the tan level slightly darker, but not enough to count as mediterranean unless it were a full blown invasion, as it arguably is now. Think about it, the English messed around in India forever, but Indians aren’t suddenly blond and blue eyed. That’s not how genetics works.) ) or where there is black nobility in regency England, or… They are trying to create the idea that multi-racial society is normal and claiming otherwise is suppression.
This is as much bullshit as “our country is a race.” And it is for Europe, lethal, destroying bullshit. They are equipped to cope with admixture in very small numbers, until they forget it ever existed. Nothing else. Anything more, and they tear themselves apart. Remove the idea that they’re even supposed to be one thing and they…. well, they die, which most of Europe seems to be trying to do, though people are still fighting back.
Which bring us to America. America has never defined itself as “we are all one thing.” Go and read biographies from the time before the revolution. There were enough Germans that it is arguable whether they’re mostly ‘English’ (under which Irish and Scottish often hid) or ‘German’. But there’s also, because the colonization happened at a time of great turmoil, a lot of French (And a lot more were added at the time of the revolution.) Some Spaniards, and I’m sorry, if you are from New England, a lot of Portuguese. Entire villages of them. Mostly because the Portuguese fight, eat and make Portuguese so that they routinely bust the restraints of their altogether too small allotment of land. (Or used to. These days the colonization seems to go the other way.)
Anglo-Saxons? For the love of little fishes. Not a chance. People who thought they were, while everything else had fallen in? To an extent.
Mostly, ultimately they were a stew of Europe. What made them different is that even in fairly intolerant times, the Founding Fathers, within being men of their time were “tolerant.” There were Jews who fought for independence, and at a time where Catholics were the debil, one signed the declaration of independence.
The nation they created is a culture, a creed, and VERY TOLERANT of appearance discrepancies or religious nutbaggery. (Mostly because we’re all religious nutbags. Even the atheists are very vehement, more so than anywhere else in the world by and large. But we’re all nutbags of a different kind.) One of the things I can’t hope to convey to the family is that I have friends from every national/racial background and worse of every possible religion and some fairly impossible ones. And we don’t fight about it. We might pray for each other in the privacy of our hearts, etc, but mostly we just take people for what they do/are, and don’t hang too much on the differences of religion and color. This despite the left’s push to make us care only about it, mind.
Here’s the thing: faced with an invasion of people, facilitated by the leftist nuts after their color revolution, who care nothing for and do not even understand our culture and our basic national beliefs, people are rebounding by screaming “blood and soil.”
This is wrong. Specifically this is wrong for us. What holds us together is our civic religion, our culture, our ability to be a nation despite all superficial differences.
It might be right for Europe where most nations can claim “Our ancestors lived here, and their bones and blood mixed with the soil. We are the land.” Yeah, sure, it’s not even close to as uniform as they pretend, but it is their SOLE REASON FOR EXISTING AND OCCUPYING A PLACE.
Now, are we just a creed or a nation? We’re both. Our nation is where we can exert our creed in peace. In that we are closest to a theocracy, and might in fact be one, albeit a theocracy without a theos. (We wouldn’t be the first or the last in history.) Our borders matter, our soil matters, because without them we can’t live the way we believe we should. Our culture matters, because diluting it by too-fast import of people not in the least interested in becoming of us will destroy us as a nation.
However what holds us together is not a real, or imagined genetic heritage. Most Americans, knowing or unknowing, are mutts. And we’ve lived here too short a time and have too weird burial practices for us to say we live in the remains of our ancestors, as it were.
Going down that path is just stupid. First of all, even if you go by “must have had ancestors here at the time of independence” if you also say can’t have immigrants in the last three generations, you’re going to exclude everyone but three people, who have 15 fingers a piece and love to play the banjo. I mean, my husband and my sons both fail to qualify, despite qualifying for the daughters of the American Revolution scholarships.
If you try to kick 99% — or let’s be generous and a little crazy and say 80% — of the population out of “America” you’re the one who will end up stomped and ignored. So, on the practical level this is crazy.
But let’ say you managed it. Are you going to tell me we have a higher Anglo-Saxon component than England? Some guarantee of liberty-in-the-blood.
The sad news I have to give you is that there is no genetic inheritance of liberty. Liberty is not natural to humans in a state of nature, and we must struggle for it every step of the way.
The good news is if you don’t go looking for it in the blood and soil, you are allowed to say “Our nationality is the culture, so fit in or fuck off.”
Which is also a good counter to the idiots who claim opposition to invasion is “racism.” No race, all culture. Changing cultures is difficult, mind, but it is not impossible, and it should be the basic demand on any immigrant.
Don’t accommodate their language, their quaint customs, their…. Sure, take what you like (food, mostly. Some clothing) but don’t take the rest, and don’t encourage them to keep it. They want to be of us, they have to become American. I’m here to tell you it’s possible, if not painless.
The really good news is that America, as it is, is the only possible model for out-of-Earth colonization.
Yes, I know, science fiction is full of “nation planets” but that’s not how it will work out. Due to the cost and the need for high skills, space colonies will draw from everywhere. Which means a culture like America which believes specific things, but is able to tolerate differences in color, creed and other such discrepancies is the best possible model for a culture that will conquer the stars.
Don’t fall back into Europe. They have nothing we want. Our home has always been in the future, and we’re going there.
According To Hoyt 
Still reading, and ghu knows I am not the one to pick on typos, but I think there’s a typo you might want to revisit – “…Prima Noche was made up, me with money and property sleeping around wasn’t” where I think you mean “men” unless you have a more colorful past than you’d been admitting.
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My fingers and the keyboard are not interacting well today.
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If we are being anal, then it is “Prima Nocta” (or Droit du seigneur) not Noche.
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Aw, come on. Didn’t you chuckle when you read that? Or at least grinned a little?
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And re racepasting, if you want to make an Egyptian native really, really mad, bring up the black Cleopatra thing. Whoo boy howdy. And bring a towel for the spittle.
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<chuckle>.
Stirling had a certain amount of fun with that in his Nantucket series, where a black Coast Guard cadet full of “Afrocentric,” beliefs goes to Egypt and has a very rude introduction to reality.
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Hilarious. In addition, after getting over his shock, decides “I can make Egypt the black of my dreams!” Only ultimately discover the Egyptians really, really, were indifferent to his ideal goal. Ready to hand him over and let him become a very small flea of a footnote.
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Stirling doesn’t say whether they actually did. I kind of hope he got away, as he’d pretty well learned his lesson at that point.
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Yes. Stirling did leave the actual turn over as a mystery. What wasn’t a mystery was Egypt was definitely willing to turn McAndrews over rid themselves of him. That the only reason that was the price to remove the overwhelming force of the Nantucketers was a bonus.
Having McAndrews get away? Whatever. Where was he going to go? He wasn’t going to Africa, not and survive long term. Black skinned? So? Still “not of the tribe”.
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McAndrews was shown making contact with Black Africans as he was very aware of how the Egyptian Powers-That-Be viewed him.
And Stirling has said that he left Egypt to Black Africa and has been successful.
As for “not of the tribe”, he’s seen as a Wizard and has loyal followers in the slaves that he freed.
So when he escaped Egypt, he didn’t escape alone thus had a power base of his own and had something to offer the various tribes where he settled.
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Ah.
Thus McAndrews was doing what the Nantucketers would have gladly done hand they the bandwidth and needed to. Not like they went a Viking world wide. Contacts, yes. They had to for survival to gain more livestock and grain. The N. American natives the initial contact was an unfortunate tragedy. The S. American incidents were to get Mrs. Armastian back, not to invade (not that the Olmec culture didn’t need to be eliminated. Books don’t state who took over from the Olmec’s if anyone. After all the saying goes “Get Chicken Pox as an a kid, no problem. Get Chicken Pox as an adult, problem, no kids.” Who knows how far that spread into neighboring areas.)
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According to Stirling, he made his escape from Egypt and has been successful in building a new Africa that will be able to protect itself from the Europeans of this new time-line.
Note, we saw him making contact with non-Egyptian Africans as he didn’t trust the Egyptian Powers-That-Be.
According to Stirling, he didn’t create (or attempt to create) an African Empire controlled by himself.
He apparently decided that his “job” was to introduce the new technology to Africa not to make himself “Master” of Africa.
IMO he likely has a home-base powerful enough to protect himself and his people from others but he’s not hoarding his knowledge.
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So…
A Wakanda that isn’t closed off to the outside world?
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I think I might join them.
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Didn’t Egypt file a lawsuit against Netflix for that one?
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Truth was she was Greek. Descendent of Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals. And the Ptolemys practiced brother sister marriage to keep the inheritance intact. Occasional marriage with one of the other Hellenic kingdoms who were also Greeks.
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Macedonian, even, which was not the same thing as Greek at all. (Pure-blood Macedonians in the kingdom of the Ptolemies despised Greeks, and even half-caste Macedonian/Greek hybrids.) I believe it’s generally considered that Cleopatra was more likely blonde than brunette.
She was also quite ugly. At one point the Ptolemies had intermarried with a line of Syrian royalty – and I do mean Syrian, not the Seleucids, who were also Macedonian. She inherited the classic Lebanese nose. If you look at Cleopatra’s coin portraits, it appears that about 55 percent of her total body weight was nose. Remember, those portraits were idealized.
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Almost all “blood and soil” nations are trying to establish or justify an aristocracy of some kind. Even our local pseudo-aristocrats, the E!Democratic Party (have been that way since the country was founded) have a “blood and soil” narrative that is very Inner Party with them.
Pretty much everybody that thought otherwise left those nations, because they would never get any blood or soil-or at least no more than to be buried in.
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My first thought when I read the post was “people still believe in blood in soil? Really?” But yeah, they do. I know a gal that thinks drinking water is bad for you. Crazies come in all forms…
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“I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.”
― W.C. Fields
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The drunk in the village thought drinking water was bad for you.
“Don’t drink water. That stuff will kill you. Only drink wine, ‘caus wine is the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He said it so often, everyone knew what he’d say.
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I can remember when I learned that most municipal water supplies come from reservoirs…around age nine or ten. I was shocked to learn that city water was SURFACE water. I mean, ew! No matter how much you dope it with chlorine and other chemicals.
I grew up on WELL water, and still live there. The clean taste of water filtered through yards and yards of clean soil. It’s a mite hard, but minerals are good for you, right?
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I mean I’d take blood and soil for Earth as planet if we were fighting interstellar aliens.
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Not enough coffee but I suspect that some “star colonies” might start out as “New Britain”, “New France”, etc. but beside the “mongrel nature” of many current-day nations, they wouldn’t remain as they “attempted” to be.
As Sarah said, to be prosperous they’d couldn’t remain “Only This Kind Of Humans” for very long.
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At least in my WIP, those colonies are choosing the forms and functions of government and society and language they want to maintain, not any genetic mix snapshot they want to keep.
Of course I also have colonies that used various fiction works as their template as well…
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Chris Nuttall has had colonies named after Heinlein and their governments are “sort of based” on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. [Wink]
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Most of my colonies are pretty much American-based (except the one where all the RIFs got sent), since in my stuff, the Americans went interstellar first and then said, “The rest of you can twiddle your thumbs till we get things set up the way we want them to be.”
And History and Moral Philosophy is a course in my American high schools, and is repeated in Basic Training and again in OCS (where you have to pass with at least a B).
Sadly, I didn’t go so far as to say the franchise was extended only to those with military service and an honorable discharge, but I could only file the serial numbers down so far. ;-)
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Which reminds me: One of my stories, often projected but never actually to be completed, features torch ships of what is called the Robert class. The finest ships of that fleet are, of course, the Robert A and the Robert L.
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Mine too, curiously enough.
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Well, my MC’s home colony worlds, which base their society directly on the US, in part use yours to inform their society, with the Second USAian Multidenominational Church, indoor range in the basement, cookout and grilling every weekend, and readings to include things from this blog. Quite a thing, the future…
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“Star Colonies” on not prior intelligent occupied planets would have a monolithic single government at least for a long time, given they would start as a single landing location and grow from there. Now if various earth governments are targeting the same planet, be different. Just like space moon or space station colonies would be a single government. But a single universal government between each separate colony? Not seeing that happen, ever.
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It depends on how common desirable worlds are. If they’re common, then yes, probably one initial government per planet. If they’re rare, then the second scenario goes into effect, as everyone sends their own colony ship to each useful world.
Sid Meier’s games Alpha Centauri, and Beyond Earth, both depict the latter.
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Humans split those monocultures into factions almost from day one.
I believe your assumption is wildly optimistic. Couter examples abound.
(grin)
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Sure they do. Counter factions, but single world government, initially. Stay that way over multiple centuries? Please (there go my eyes rolling under the couch again, sarcasm JIC).
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At some point in at least one of the stories I’m working on, there is the whole question of colonization of other worlds.
One thing that happens is the concept of “culture colonies,” where if you can afford to get enough people and currency together, you can have a planet of your own and run it the way you want to, including telling the central government to go to Hell (with a few very specific exceptions). The biggest rules are-
Hilarity does ensue when this happens, and an astonishing number of these colonies suddenly change governments after a few hundred years.
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Yeah, they’ll have as much to do with the originals as New Zealand has with the Dutch province, or MAYBE as much as New York has to do with Yorkshire . . .
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Eh, much depends on how they get settled. If STL or difficult and expensive FTL, they will probably homogenize in due course, through evolution and loss of genes by dumb luck.
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I could see large religions trying to set up colonies as well.
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80%+ of Americans are decenents of people who said “S**** you, I’m leaving” to their government and made it stick. No matter what that government was, we have that in common.
Other than possibly Israel, every other nation (with the possible exception of Canada) formed from “my family first, all others last” to “I have more power, you will do as I say or else” to the extent of their reach and power.
As for creating a ‘race’, go look at the history of Germany in the late 1800s (it was “The Germanies” at that time, not one nation) That is recent enough to still have good documentation of the process.
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Yeah. Saw some of that in the early Aughts. Was working with a company in rural Bavaria, and one of their employees was married to a lady from northern Germany. Same language, rather different attitudes…
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Deutsche Welle had a feature story about East Frisia’s extreme tea culture.
I mean, yes, they had China merchants and India merchants and huge warehouses selling stuff for cheap to the locals… but yeah, they have special blends of high quality tea, and the local water is very soft, and the local cream is 36 percent milk fat… so they drink two or three cups of tea each, three or four times a day, and they go into withdrawal if they travel somewhere, and can’t have the right kinds of tea, water, or cream.
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Pop had business dealings in Germany and in Austria. It wound up mattering that our branch of the family name comes from Prussia, not Bavaria.
“Of course you are of Prussia. Bavarians would not fight so.”
Also mattered rather much that our branch emigrated here when it was still “Prussian”, not “Ostlander”.
But there are current parallels right here. I was a near outcast in rural NC gun clubs, until it came up that Mom’s family is from SC, and goes all the way back to “third boat at Jamestown”, fought in the (unmentionable and regrettable unpleasantness we won’t discuss), and only went north when wiped out.
Plus those scandalous Cherokee brides at two different eras, ahem….
(Grin)
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Then you beat out me. I have ancestors who were among the first settlers in New France. One married a local bride because there were no Frenchwomen. (Then she died childless. I’m descended from his second, French bride.)
We could sit together and talk about the Mayflower as johnny-come-latelys.
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Not that we on the west talk about those who stayed in the east. But the 400th year of the first ancestors first stepped on to US eastern soil is in either 1626 or 1628. Guess we are some of those “Johnny come latelys.” 😉🐱
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Nearly contemperously with the Mayflower!
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Will never know now but I wonder if my seasonal integration to a very rural district might have gone better if they’d had known that I wasn’t an interloper from college, and the “big city”. That my roots were actually from a tiny town in the same county and extended family who arrived in 1843 (not where I was raised after age 5, but grandparents still lived there). Would not surprise me that some of the local crew weren’t, 2nd to 5th, cousins (not the local tribal members).
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waggles hand Hochdeutsch and Boarische are probably more like RP English and Glaswegan. Or Doric if ye gae up by Aberdeen.
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WE are definitely all mutts. My wife does serious geneaology, and has her family tree hard-core confirmed back to ALL of her 6-greats (some further) and those were all first generation “Americans” as in residents of this new land of colonies. They all predate the United States of America by generations. I, OTOH, personally knew all of my immigrant ancestors and half-jokingly refer to my genetic heritage as Eastern European mixed with whatever army was raping their way across the countryside. Our kids are MUTTS, and not a hint of Anglo-Saxon anywhere in the history. They’re the absolute rule among their peers, too.
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Ironically in the case of Israel when Hertzl (if I spelled that right) first started Zionism as a thing, one of the things they did do was to buy chunks of future Israel from the Turkish landlords. At that time they were prepared to buy the entire place back from the Ottomans if they had to. Kind of like buying your stolen goods back from the pawnshop but it’s called, whatever works.
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absolutely. It was their land, but….
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Yeah, so they stole the land by…buying it from the Turks.
So much for the mythology…
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There’s a widespread tendency to assume that anyone who has the money to buy things you can’t must be dishonest, that merchants and thieves are essentially the same, and that the whole thing is unfair.
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There is an Old Testament example. (Grin)
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My beloved is part French, as his Mom was French and had to learn English by the total immersion method -as in, she went to school and hung in there until she was able to understand the teachers. So one side of his family is French and the other might actually have a touch of Saxon, as his remote forefather married the daughter of one of William the Conquerer’s nobles.
Me, I’m so whitebread I should be in the dictionary under, “Western European.” So, a mutt.
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You expressed very well the single most important thing, which should be driven home to the idiots at every opportunity:
“Our nationality is the culture, so fit in or fuck off.”
The uniquely American culture, regardless of regional variations (“That sumbitch ain’t been born.”), is what we are; we don’t need ghettos, or to become the “Balkans West”, and the harder the Left tries to make us the harder we need to push back.
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Blood and Soil nationalist checklist: common language, common religion (USAin doesn’t count), 10 generations of ancestors in graveyard, shared history (actual or legendary), living in same general part of world (within 100 miles or so for 250+ years).
Maaaybe parts of the East Coast, NM, and CA meet a few of those, but not the entire US.
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There’s very few in the Formerly Spanish Posession Until They Discovered Gold State who can trace their ancestry back to the Spanish Land Grant Californios who were here before the (real) ‘49ers arrived. There are a few, but very few.
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On the other hand, San Jose, California (current motto “The Capital of Silicon Valley”) was founded as a city in 1776, so where I reside has had continuous municipal government longer than anyplace else in the United States.
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Thanks spellcheck. ^^…longer than many places in the United States.”^^
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One of my 5th level grandparents is a guy named Moraga. Second in command of 1776 De Anza expedition. He led the soldiers down to found San Jose. Also helped found Mission Santa Clara . He is buried in the floor of the San Francisco Mission.
His granddaughter married the son of an early illegal alien, (captain of a New England trading ship, he met a beautiful young thing. He told the second in command to sail back to New England, he was staying). Mexico had just stolen California from Spain, so the new governor got wind of this dangerous illegal alien, and tried to put a stop to their romance. The lovers plotted. They found a friend of the captain was in San Diego, and sailed on the ship (British ship “The Vulture”), down to Chile, where they married, 200 years ago. He was a descendant of folk who came over on the Mayflower 400 years ago.
My ancestors have come from a lot of different places. Some were Germans invited to Russia to be a buffer against the Turks. They stayed German. Spoke and read German. They came to America 150 years ago as German. They became American. This is the secret of America. I am an American.
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My line ends with me, but my great-grandparents were Volga Valley Germans.
Mother’s side–she can remember their heavy German accents, and occasionally they would speak German to each other. But if any of the grandkids–Mom had three siblings–asked about the German words, they always got the same answer: “We are Americans now. We speak English.”
I kinda-sorta regret this because I’ve read about bilingual benefits for the brain, but I totally understand. Especially after all the nonsense about German last names during WWI.
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It’s weird. Supposedly there are benefits, but the studies are ambiguous. it also can make for lower IQ. At any rate, my kids refused to learn two languages and spoke only one.
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The one definite benefit is that if you grow up with two languages, it makes it much easier to learn more – and especially to learn to pronounce foreign words more or less correctly.
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OT, but 38 years ago today my beloved came into a Sunday school classroom being used as a changing room to ask how I was doing. My snarkiest bridesmaid announced, “We’re telling her what to expect tonight!” And without a second thought I snapped, “Get away from me, you animal!”
He stared at me, and then he started laughing. And I started laughing, and we laughed until our sides ached while the bridesmaids let themselves out, smiling.
Not a bad way to start a marriage.
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LOL. Also, congratulations. We have two years on you. BUT LOL.
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Nation in Europe used to mean “the people in a kingdom/duchy who matter,” so the nobility. Or students who spoke the same language-not-Latin, so you have the nations in Medieval and Renaissance colleges (Bohemian Nation, Polish Nation, French Nation).
Then along came the middle-class to gentry to some noble Romantic Nationalists who were trying to define a country as “not French, not Habsburg or Russian or Prussian.” As a result they got into the “poor sons of the soil are the REAL nation,” since the nobles either sold out or had their own ambitions and plans. While Medieval kingdoms had produced stories about their ancestors (see the Magyar princess and the white falcon), the Romantic Nationalists took those and added in local folk lore and folk songs and “costumes” and so on. After 1848 the Romantics got nudged aside for “national idea as tool to bash someone with,” and the rest is Willhelmine statuary and so on. [Yes, very superficial, leaves out a lot, especially France and England, but you get the idea.]
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Another thing to keep in mind is that from the very first, the US was not culturally monolithic. Leaving aside the slaves and the natives, there were at least two major cultural identities, and it took a long, bloody war to keep them together under one government. I’d say that the only time we came close to cultural unity was the 1950s and early 60s, when everyone watched the same TV shows and mass immigration from Mexico and points south hadn’t hit its stride.
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one American can be three factions.
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There is a sense in which the USA is Anglo-Saxon, or at least British, which serves as a first-order approximation — and it is the one that matters. Our political philosophy is British, from Magna Carta and English Common Law all the way forward to the Scottish Enlightenment. It is little coincidence that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations mere months before Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence.
Readers may conclude what they like about that heritage getting hybridized with others.
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The US is extremely mobile as well. While there is a large portion of families that have been in a certain area for generations, there are even more that have moved to diverse locations almost every generation. People since before the founding have been extending borders farther into the “frontier.”
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Is “culture and soil” a recognized thing? Would it mean anything useful for discussion?
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No. It’s not. Because I think it’s us and that’s it. However of all the nations of the world we’re the most resilient. Take our soil away, we’ll find soil elsewhere.
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Creed and country.
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Creed and Freed.
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Now you’ve got me wishing “creedom” was a word.
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We only care about the soil in the “you aren’t going to take that away from me (but I’ll sell it to you at a fair price)” type of way, not “if I’m forced to leave the plot of land that my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather farmed, I have nothing to live for (even if paid millions to do leave)
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Obi Wan voice: ”It is for sale if you want some.”
lots of other countries have laws forbidding foreigners from owning land. As far as I am aware no such exists anywhere in the U.S..
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And that is very definitely a problem.
Foreigners have been buying up quite a lot of real estate in the US as an investment/inflation hedge. (Not to mention the comparatively wealthy from the Coasts doing the same. And Blackrock etc. doing the same.)
This quickly pushes prices out of the range where a local median wage-earner can hope to compete.
It’s one of the factors pushing the American Dream out of reach for Gen Z.
(There’s also the mass purchase of farmland thing, and the land around military bases thing.)
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Not just that. Completely ignored by the people screaming is that it is a way of getting money out of their country. If they lose 90% of it, they don’t care: that is 10% which they successfully got out of China or other country.
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Safe haven. There are suburban tract homes kept vacant and maintained here in Silicon Valley that are in fact safe haven investments for some family in China. And there are suburban tract houses occupied by immigrant Chinese couples that are in fact the same thing, as the family put the money together and got it over here as a home purchase, which cousin Li and his wife live in, but it’s still the family’s money…
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Of course, part of the reason for purchases like that is, “An overseas bolt hole in the event Beijing turns on us and we need to run for it.” I’m sympathetic toward those kinds of purchases…
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Two factors in the screaming that libertarians overlook is
Many of those immigrants you mention should have illegal as a prefix. Why are they here to drive up the prices citizens and legal immigrants pay?
Meanwhile, the families are perfectly happy to stay in China and work for the regime against the US and allies. Why are we making that easier?
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Damned few of the Chinese who come West are working for the regime. The Chinese themselves have a 4,000-year history of not working for their own regimes.
There is a reason why any time there’s a murder or a robbery in Chinatown, there are never any witnesses. ‘Cooperate with the authorities’ does not compute in Chinese culture.
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Huge purchase of land along hwy 126 between Sisters and Bend. Ranch but now conservation land. To be fair, relatively poor ranch land (multiple *acre cow land), but great wildlife land. This isn’t government doing this, but private (one or many, doesn’t matter, someone putting their money on it).
(*) For those of you east of the Mississippi. Most places out west it isn’t the # cow/calf pairs you can put on an acre, it is the number of acres required to support a cow/calf pair. Places like Willamette valley are an exception.
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Florida thusly has more cows than Texas, because it’s a freaking river of grass.
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Don’t ask people in parts of the Midwest how they feel about that. When the land got purchased in huge swaths by [redacted] and [redacted], they locked it into conservation easements, so it cannot be taxed. The counties are struggling as a result of that and other things. When you can’t tax a quarter of the good grazing and farming land in a county because it’s been taken out of use “for the environment …”
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In the west? What is another 100, or so, acres locked up that isn’t taxed? Ag land is typically taxed on the revenue from the resources (whether timber or cattle), plus a small stipend/acre annually (usually interest free deferred, in some cases). If the land isn’t producing anyway, little to no revenue. Oregon alone has 56% land not taxed because it is governmental owned (53% Federal, including tribal). Huge problem for a lot of counties. That percentage breaks down to 8% – 78% of county land.
I am afraid there are a number of counties in western US states, because Oregon isn’t standing alone, the response to Midwest states is “Aw, poor babies. Hurts doesn’t it?” Local counties have been feeling this hit since the decline of timber (in lieu of tax) and grazing fees revenue from federal and state lands since the ’70s.
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I’m not horribly worried about land purchases. I mean, if we end up in a war with them, what are they going to do? Take the land back to China?
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True. Although the land conservation off Hwy 126 isn’t reported as foreign. Just land conservation lockup. Even if foreign, given the land, they aren’t dropping a lot of people on it to live. Can’t. Not enough water and workable land.
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THIS
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Oh, I don’t know, Sarah, I came up with a horrible scenario in about 2 minutes. I’ll share if needed for discussion.
The danger isn’t limited to foreign nationals with attachments to home…. but why risk it? Security is never all or nothing.
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There’s a pretty big fraction of the current right that are not conservatives so much as radical anti-leftists. The problem is they’re still largely running leftist software; they’re just tired of being the victims of the pogroms.
The challenge will be convincing them that the core software they’re running on if what caused the pogroms in the first place.
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Well, the core software, and the practice of denying reality in front of one’s face, as the mayor of Amsterdam has been lately, insisting that the “Amsterdam riots were not pogrom”.
https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-829656
I guess that’s a core software override. Massed Muslim gangs organizing to hunt and attack Jews is apparently not to be called a “pogrom” because use of the correct descriptive word might offend the Muslim immigrant community that carried them out.
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“Unless nations are really tribes (and here I don’t know if any of those still exist, because I don’t know enough about Asia and the weirder parts of Africa.) “
Emphatically YES, but also no. Tribalism is alive and (un)well. Tribes still exist, even with internet access and mass communications. Are they living in mud huts and hunting their food? Largely no, but a few still do here and there (where the flag of civilization has fallen quite low).
The tribal mindset is soo deeply engraved into the human genetic psyche (or whatever passes for it) that it pops up bloody everywhere, and is about as welcome as venereal disease to anyone not mired in the muck of tribalism.
Tribalism has evolved as human culture has. It may have access to cell phones, cat memes, semi-modern appliances, cars, and enough weaponry to level a decent sized town…
But the tribe is still all, to the tribal. I do not mean amoral familism, though there can be significant overlap. The tribal’s myopic vision of the world begins and ends with its relation to the tribe.
There are tribes still making war on each other all over the world. They cannot conceive of what lies beyond the tribe because let me say it again, the tribe is all. Anything else?
Can it hurt the tribe? Can it be taken to benefit the tribe? Does it matter to the tribe? All for the tribe.
Tribalism destroys anything larger than it. Tribals cannot come together to form something greater (a nation, hell, even a city). The other tribes are the enemy, and all people are tribals to the tribal- enemy tribals to be killed, captured and converted, or exploited.
If it sounds like I have a mad on for tribals, it is because I do. This anti-civilizational impulse causes endless suffering. The sooner humanity as a whole kicks it to the curb, the better.
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Sounds like the Balkans, honestly.
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It is possible to combine tribes to grow larger, but the result (after a lot of pain) is just a larger tribe
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Those would be ariatocrat A-S nincompoops ignore the whole “Scots-Irish” thing.
idiots
No matter what you think of him, Andrew Jackson was an -American-. But the A-S Wholes seem to think he and others like him had neither input nor contribution to “American” or “Liberty”.
But it takes only a few minutes for those would-be-Aristo A-S Wholes to prove it is -they- who know nothing of America, with their insane diatribes on how Founders were wink-wink setting up the same Aristocracy they just overthrew.
Idiots
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There were tons of Scots-Irish and Border families among the Founding Fathers and the first revolutionaries. Not a secret.
But yeah, generally the parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France, etc. that had been embroiled in political problems or rebellions were the places that colonists tended to come from. You have to have motivation to get out of town, or somebody else has to make you get out.
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Well, or you came over because there was not much chance to make your fortune staying at home. One of mine was minor nobility in the northern border region of England (so the Scots and my family stole each other’s horses), yet he left the family manor and moved his wife to New England. It is certainly possible he was not the eldest son (long time ago, records not totally clear) but he and his wife were both titled.
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Initial slaves consisted of families who had to choice of starving at home or indenturing, sometimes even voluntarily, themselves to take a ship. Entire families. If they were very lucky they stayed together. Heck initially African slaves were the same, except involuntary indentured. Theoretically the indentured could work off their passage, upkeep, and starting stake on conclusion of the indentured period. Too often that did not happen. Difference between indentured paler skin and African were should the latter try to disappear into the population to skip on what they owed, they stood out. Indentured Europeans could disappear into the wider population as the areas were settled.
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There are two huge differences between Indentured Servitude and Slavery
I think it’s very important to recognize the difference, because I think that as we go to space, we are going to see a new round of Indentureship (At least, I hope we go that route rather than just debt-based slavery with inherited debt)
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Extending on the latter. It is going to be VERY expensive to get into space (not just the transportation, but the equipment needed to survive). There aren’t enough super rich who are willing to leave their current life behind to make humanity survive, so we need a way to get more people out there.
I guess the other ‘option’ would be to use it as a way to get rid of the undesirables, but we have a huge number of stories showing how that goes wrong, and there are enough people who want to go if they could only afford it that we don’t need to go that route.
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I have no particular expertise here, but it seems like the early drivers will be commercial and scientific. In both cases, the sponsor has every incentive to make sure their staff are capable and well-paid.
So I don’t see any “work for your air” scenarios in the short term. In the long run, I suppose it depends on the economics. The only way we’ll see colonization en masse is if someone can make a buck off it.
You might see settlers going into debt to get set up, but they will do so expecting to make enough to pay off the loans (and the loans will be priced accordingly). Likewise, companies will only hire employees when they expect to make a profit off them, pricing in expenses.
Put another way, it seems like our existing pricing mechanisms, contract law, and insurance policies should be enough to cover colonization without indentured servitude.
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Farmer in the Sky. Had to apply to colonize. Had to pay for transport. This was paid out of earth funds. Family followed could pay. Anyone else? Who knows. When arrived, were allowed to take up land that had to be proved from scratch, but was not “free” (provided 20 acres, had to prove all 20, but 10 was for the colony). Not even the shared machines needed to grind up the rock (no soil), the worms and bacteria needed to make soil. Any money left on earth could not be used to pay for any of it. What kind of surprised me was why the family followed, an engineer, didn’t use money left banked on earth to pay for colony needs as a way to “bank” against personal needs (granted the intent was to use the money for any children to return to earth, to educate, and room/board, but still). Lack of knowledge of colony needs I suspect. Although opportunities to offer in the future as the colony debated imports needed (like horses, and other livestock, or machinery).
Even the Pern series in DragonDawn, describes how the colony ship company was put together and what different buy in levels were entitled to on landing. Which was implemented. Then it fell apart because of nature. But later in White Dragon, and All the Weyers of Pern, as the decedents centuries later learn of their forgotten origins, they are shown how the spirit of the original charter, even in the establishment of the weyers themselves, was kept even throughout the emerging emergencies the colony faced.
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If the law allowed it,, they most certainly were. They were treated a lot like serfs in some cases.
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This.
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When children were held liable for their parents’ debts, Then, yeah, the children could easily be forced into indenture.
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Their parents couldn’t maintain them. Consequently, they were paupers. Indenture of children was common even when the parents weren’t themselves indentured.
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Their masters tended to neglect such matters as adequate food in the last year of the indenture because it was a waste.
Also, yes, the children of indentured people were indentured. It was a commonplace way of dealing with pauper children.
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Depends when and where. Some children of indentured were indentured.
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When I first heard the phrase “Blood and Soil” I was maybe six or seven years old and thought it referred to using blood meal as a fertilizer. It was several years later I learned the “real” meanings which as Sarah has explained are mostly nonsense for Americans. America is not a place (soil) nor is it a race/tribe (blood). It is a set of ideas and principles. These are briefly summarized in the Declaration of Independence and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not a vacuous bromide but is, in fact, a pretty precise specification.
One thing America is not is the Constitution though a lot of people seem to think it is. The Constitution is a framework for a government intended to protect the underlying principles. It was a good, well thought out try but, objectively, it hasn’t really worked all that well. In truth, no piece of paper can defend what America is. Only Americans can do that and I’m pretty sure we can do it with just about organized government. Or maybe even no government at all.
So much for my random thoughts.
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“It was a good, well thought out try but, objectively, it hasn’t really worked all that well.”
Eh. It’s actually holding up pretty well. How many other political documents are alive and kicking 250 years on? Notice that the major rights violations we see are widely denounced, routinely overturned, and nowhere near as egregious as in other countries.
I agree that it’s up to Americans to defend what America is. At the end of the day, it’s the principles that matter. The Constitution is just a battering ram.
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“…supposedly smart, normally thinking person talk about our being a nation of “blood and soil”…”
There are many mal-educated idiots in the world. Always have been.
I mean, imagine trying to have a conversation with someone who once read a book by Herbert Spencer and only half understood it. But they’re very enthusiastic. Very sure of themselves. “Survival of the fittest, you know!” But they think “fittest” means “richest,” because of course they do.
Same manure, same idiots throwing it, different day. Point, laugh, move on.
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In short, the Star Trek model – don’t care where your people come from, you’re either one with The Federation CULTURE, or you have to coexist peacefully with us.
Romulons, keep your guns down and act peacefully, and we’ll tolerate your strange ways. Screw with us, and it’s Game ON!
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Agreed
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Thanks for explaining the 2% Iberian that just started popping up on my 23 and Me and Ancestry DNA.
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Place not much thought upon that: Beloved Spouse, just about pure German, had 1%ish Chinese coastal for a while, but last round of updates that vanished.
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I know. One of my early ones said I had Indonesian, which has since vanished…
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Dan has Portuguese Jew. We’re probably 10th or 12th cousins. :D
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My mother is 1% Russian/Finnish
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Perhaps the bottom line of “How to be an American” can be summed up very simply?
The Spirit of ’76 requires neither common blood, nor long term (10 gen +) to claim a place in ‘old fashioned’ American Society, but a willingness to apply oneself to the common good, and truly meet the motto of “E Pluribus, UNUM!”
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A couple of fun points. I am descended from one of Henry VIII concubines. Also, one of a Scottish (?) ancestor’s sisters traveled to Sicily to marry one of a Sicilian ancestor’s cousins. This was in the 15th century, or some such. I am also a direct descendant of El Cid’s daughter.
I am Irish, Scottish, English, French, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish. Not much from other areas of the world, but it’s buried in there somewhere.
Mostly I am human.
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Most Europeans are like that.
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Please, please, Mrs. Hoyt lead with porque no los dos. No-one who needs to read what you wrote will get past the first half.
Unless you are encouraging the hun and hoydens, in which case never mind. Good stuff.
You cannot say that the land of Colorado is not in your bones, anymore than I can claim that the rain forests of Washington are not in mine. They were there before we found the place that had them.
And Blood is equivocal. Is there anyone but a neo-pagan* who understands it to mean the sacrifice to the spirit of the land? Blood is shared genes, share “blood relationships”. The Bloods have a point – Dunbar numbers will not be denied. Our Catholic frens and founding fathers understood distributed power. So did pre-Talmudic Jewry come to think of it. And they brought us ethical monotheism.
All that’s left is Spirit and Heyo! Is that not the very underpinning of reality itself? The smallest unit of society is the family (3). The Mind that made tge Universe is 3.
Let’s start with that, and build
*Because they assume their paganism is blessed by Christendom, so they will not gut living men to bring fertility to the soil, or sacrifice children to read omens, and all the other myriad violations required to keep a hostile supernatural world at bay.. No shade on pagan glories, but there’s a reason they called the story of Christ, “good news”.
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Forget the illustration. I was talking PRECISELY of shared genes.
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All of that is a flowerly way of covering over the fact that strict Blood *doesn’t work*.
So everyone who tried it ends up having to dillute the concept until it becomes a mockery of itself. Which is why America went with a creed instead; because that is the direction Blood-with-sufficient-epicycles goes anyway.
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There’s the famous old quote from Letters from an American Farmer, written ca. 1770-1778, published 1782
“What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a man whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations.”
The idea of America being “Anglo-Saxon” was busted from the start. (And never mind “New Amsterdam” before it became New York)
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“(And never mind “New Amsterdam” before it became New York)”
Why they changed it, I can’t say.
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The Dutch called it “New Amsterdam” and Britain took over the Dutch North American Territories (The Netherlands lost the war). The British changed the name to New York. [Wink]
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*cough* “People just liked it better that way.”
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the world has gone nuts
most people just dont get it, they are too consumed in idiotic frivolity to see whats going on.
im glad im old, had a good run
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Most people are whining that the world is nuts and too complicated and that no one but them can see how terrible everything is.
Some of us who actually have a faint inkling of recent history are excited and filled with hope, because the future is the brightest it’s been in a century.
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well good for you
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Good for everyone who doesn’t have a pathological need for evil to win.
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Or who recognizes that unwarranted and unbounded optimism allows evil to do so. YMMV
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Indeed. It’s almost as bad as the destruction wrought by unwarranted despair.
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Despair is literally called out as a sin. Optimism never was.
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Excessive optimism tends to be self-punishing. Pessimism is a win-win — either you’re proven right, or things are not as bad as you thought.
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Pessimism makes you not try. It makes you attack anyone who does try. And finally when people try and win despite your best efforts, it makes you work to destroy their ability to celebrate, recuperate, and fight the next battle.
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curious your age Ian,
my experiences have shaped my outlook,
some call it pessimism, i call it realist
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Born in ’90. My entire life has been spent:
the actual facts on the ground getting better.
And “realist” is the black dog’s favorite lie. It is hilarious to watch people twist and turn in their absolute refusal to face actual reality, all the while yelling how much of a realist they are.
Or it would be, if it wasn’t so tragic.
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I try to be either a cynical optimist, or an optimistic cynic.
I plan and aim for things to go well, but am not bothered when they don’t.
As others have said, the pessimist never tries, and if you are too optimistic, you have no backup plan when things don’t go perfectly
Newt Gingrich tells a story of two kids, one who was always super optimistic, the other a pessimist. The parents decide to try an teach them a lesson one Christmas. They take the pessimist to a room full of the latest and greatest toys, and the optimist to a room of horse manure. They wait a while and then go into the rooms.
The pessimist is sitting in a corner crying, all the toys unopened, when asked, he goes through the toys, “that one will break”, “that one will have the batteries dies”, etc (negative about all of them.
They then go to the room where they put the optimist, who is jumping for joy, throwing the manure around. When they ask him what he’s doing his response was “I’m looking for the pony”
Neither extreme is healthy.
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ian
you are entitled to your opinions
so is everyone else
As well as their outlook
enjoy your rose colored glasses
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David
sounds familiar, i cant even remember all the times i have tried stuff, i still try stuff,
sometimes they flourish, sometimes they flop, meh, such is life when they flop, wooppieee when they fly!
lotta grey areas out there eh, i think better grey than extremes
world still crazy
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“We just got lucky! It definitely wasn’t the guys working themselves crazy while I said it was impossible!”
And similar.
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Ha, I don’t know you, Tommyboy, but I know that Ian has never had rose-colored glasses! He’s feeling optimistic because the wind has changed.
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“We just got lucky! It definitely wasn’t the guys working themselves crazy while I said it was impossible!”
The person saying that something can’t be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
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well, and sometimes things just are,,,,
i dunno, lifes pretty good, but yea, the world has gone nuts
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at least a century. Closer to 2.
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To coin a phrase, we didn’t start the fire.
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The world always goes nuts. And yet, reality abides. And reality is always sanity.
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I look at the current state of the world, and it looks awful.
Then I compare it to the state of the world from 1914 to 1953 – what I firmly believe will go down in history as the Age of Horrors. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, world wars, atomic bombs, ‘eugenic’ forced sterilization, Jim Crow, Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, Chinese warlords, Latin America ruled by caudillos, Africa ruled by shiny-bottomed Eurocrats who had never set foot there, and in India, of course, they ended the ride with the Raj inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.
The current state of the world is actually pretty damned good.
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The early 1600s were also pretty lousy for a lot of the Northern Hemisphere. Ditto 1300-1360 or so. And yes, 1914-1953 ranks down there in the Bottom Ten “Lousy Periods for Humanity.” Then you get the Great Leap Forward …
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The only blood in the soil I want is that of tyrants for watering the Tree of Liberty.
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Of course, I misunderestimate most of politics these days (daze?); but the only one I want kicked out of America are those who arrived illegally.
Let them come back by the front door, if they want to be an American. Politely. That’s how it’s been done since at least 1870, so there’s a decent precedent.
My background is pretty much Heinz 57, so I don’t care about suntans or religions, as long as they are willing to play by the rules. And I kinda liked TR’s 1912 speech about no room for hyphenated Americans. We either hang together or our enemies will hang us separately, to paraphrase Ben Franklin from 1776.
Mind you, I do believe those who reject Jesus will have a bad afterlife; but the Bible doesn’t tell me to “slay the heathen”, just share the Gospel with them. And in America, we have the right to make some bad choices.
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