Reading old books affords one the opportunity to (almost) travel in time and to (almost) experience an alternative reality. Who needs sci-fi, when you’ve got Google Books?
Here’s an interesting response to my thoughts on Rhodesia.
The title mischaracterizes the substance of our disagreement. I certainly make no claim that a color blind society is possible. However, I believe stability and “diversity” are not necessarily incompatible. I will, however, be the first to admit that diversity makes stability much much more difficult and that, when it comes to stability, diversity makes many core components of the modern ideal of “freedom” impossible.
Indeed, if I had to start a society from scratch and was tasked with making it as stable as possible, I would, much like the Yglesian-ideal, start with a population of Swedes, or at the very least (and perhaps largely redundantly), the population of Minneapolis.
Nevertheless, if you spend a fair amount of time reading old books, you can’t help but notice that certain societies – that have actually existed! – were quite diverse and much more orderly than our own. If you read first-hand accounts of foreigners in the Reconstruction era south, for example, you’ll notice that they constantly remark on the orderliness, industriousness, strong family life, and generally civil nature of the black population.
Rhodesia is another wonderful example, which I covered at length. The most salient point, however, bears repeating. Per capita, Rhodesia had one of the world’s lowest crime rates and smallest police forces, despite having a population made up mostly of sub-Saharan Africans.
Similar results were achieved in certain colonial societies.
These places existed. The lesson from them is not that a rainbow nation or a post-racial society is around the corner. However, their existence does mean that Detroit is not the only possible outcome for a diverse society.
Other people seem to have figured this out, as Sailer recently noted, “Look, you can whine about the hypocrisy of white liberals all you want, but you’d be better off studying their methods.” I’d suggest Ian Smith or Lord Cromer instead of white liberals, but the point holds.
If, like all good progressives, you refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything before 1968, you may still find it interesting to note that (again from Sailer), “The most striking feature of this map is relatively low rate of black imprisonment in the Old South.” It’s almost as if there’s something about progressivism that makes blacks especially violent.
My point was not to defend diversity, equality or mass immigration. My point is that we actually have lots of examples of quite orderly, diverse societies. We know what works and what doesn’t.
To use the progressives’ own favorite test, if you were behind the veil of ignorance, would you rather be born in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or P. W. Botha’s South Africa? (Feel free to come up with your own examples from other parts of the world).
I guess then, we have two disagreements. The first point on which we disagree is that Rhodesia had no chance. In some sense, that’s probably true. The forces of progressivism are strong. In another sense, it’s a immaterial disagreement. If you can’t defeat progressivism, then any opposition to a race-blind society is impossible. Zimbabwe is our inevitable future. Detriotification is our best hope in the meantime.
The second point of disagreement is here:
There is a class divide here, and I suspect it means the difference between the genteel, bemused race-realism of Foseti, Moldbug and Sailer and the white separatism or white nationalism of working class whites. As a working-class white, I don’t see the overall benefit to white people of the presence of non-whites. Affluent whites in the city can’t see the possibility of living without non-whites. Who would clean and cook, and watch the children of the wealthy? But believe it or not, white people can clean, cook, and watch children perfectly well. In Canada, the hotel maids are white. There are even white hotel maids in Montana. Sailer understands this intellectually if not emotionally, but Foseti and Moldbug don’t even seem to consider the possibility.
There may be some truth to this. However, well, see here for the full response. In short, if you’re in the working class, “whites” are not and will never be your ally.
