The question also remains, what qualifies as "Anglo-American" culture? The Cavaliers, English catholics who generally supported the King against Parliament, immigrated to the South in large numbers during the 17th century. They brought with them strict hierarchical ideas about society and religion which were the complete opposite of those who immigrated to Massachusetts. Yet, they are undeniably Anglo American.
Certainly, Thomas Sowell has argued that much of this Cavalier culture, which inspired the Scotch Borderers, Irish Catholics, and yes, the plantation culture of the South was also responsible for a violent honor, tribal code which also was passed down into Black culture today. This is certainty a *contradiction* to the idea that Anglo American traditions, per se, were entirely good or should be preserved.
Rather it's the ideas of the Enlightenment, that each individual has right against the State, checks and balances within the State, which specifically Wax must be reffering to. These ideas are certainty not limited to "Ango-America"; alongside Anglo Enlightenments were French and German Enlightenments. When Hong Kong, and yes South Korea embrace these ideas, they too are also successful.
So I don't think we need an "Anglo-American" culture, and it isn't exactly clear how the positive elements of our government are distinctly such. Certainty there are good British traditions, but there were also bad ones; it isn't where they came from or how they spoke, what they ate or how they dressed (much less the God's they worshipped - which were a hindrance too rather than a positive iinfluence), rather it is beliefs and values translatable to anyone who cares about reason, reality, and the individual.
I don’t think she ever said we need an Anglo-Protestant majority population. Rather, she said we need a culture that embodies Anglo-Protestant values. That seems rather uncontroversial when you look at the world today.
This is a fascinating and necessary discussion. Here is my admittedly rather simplistic contribution to a very tough knot:;
I would not want to live in a country that throws gays off of roof tops, tosses children into trenches where they claw cobalt out of the ground with crude tools, where women do not have equal rights or where female children are less valued and sometimes killed without repercussions. Not all cultures are equally valuable.
Yes, in earlier years America had reprehensible attitudes, and actions, toward natives, slaves, other ethnic minorities and women. But we had a Declaration and a Constitution that embodied principles of equality and freedom by which we gradually matured into a very large tent that continues to include more and more people. Those founding documents play a major role in making America the number one focus for immigrants.
The very talented writer Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote:
"One way or another, we are going to have to figure out how to make our multi-ethnic realities work, and one of the great intellectual projects facing us.....will be to develop a vision of ourselves strong and supple enough both to acknowledge the lingering importance of inherited group identities while also attenuating, rather than reinforcing, the extent to which such identities are able to define us,"
He went on to add: " Any human being sufficiently curious can fully possess another culture, no matter how 'alien' it may appear to be."
No we do not require a WASP population. In the 19th century, our goverment realized if we did not instill common values in our increasingly diverse population, diversity would kill the nation. Keep in mind that 90% of diversity then was white ethnic diversity. The values were speak English, hard work, value education, self-reliance, law abiding, and protestant values. The last one was rather quickly changed to Christian values because the population was increasingly Catholic, and Catholics would not send their children to schools teaching protestant values. The growing Jewish population was fine with their children learning American and Christian values because they wanted them to respect American values because they wanted to remain welcome and they wanted to be Americans. The instilling of these values was the responsibility of the schools. Shortly following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in 1965 the INA was passed which made it possible for people from anywhere to come to America. Something else happened. A chorus of Americans were calling for an end to using shools to integrate the increasingly diverse immigrants and Americans by instilling common American values. Some schools started teaching non-English speaking children in foreign languages. Because there was welfare, self-reliance, hard work,valuing education, and speaking English all became optional. Now immigrants and Americans didn't necessarily have to work hard, graduate from high school and more, and they didn't have to learn English. This is a source of many of the conflicts we have today with diverse populations. America would not be better as a nation of WASPs. But we have to get along and the easist way to do this is to learn and share common American values. Really is it too much to ask immigrants to speak English, work hard, value education, be self-reliant, and honor the law?. They'll be more propserous. Besides, it was this simple formula that has made people think that "white people" are homogenous. Anyone that knows the history of Irish, Italian, Polish and Jewish immigration knows that these groups were all rejected in America.in the 19th and half the 20th centuries until they adopted American values. If we go back to teaching children Amrican values, we would find a lot fewer discussions of racism and discrimination. We would not have hyphenated Americans we would just have Americans, just as assuredly as we now think of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc. as white Americans or just Americans.
The leadership and spirit that Donald J. Trump displayed, in extremis, after the Butler assassination attempt, was profoundly moving. He raised his fist in the air and called upon his fellows to "fight, fight, fight". The question is, fight who? The answer is to fight against the Clinton; Obama; Pelosi and Biden, 'criminal complex' ("the evil"). Those who are committed to stand with "the evil" cannot be helped. The evil must be exorcised out of USA polity.
There are two entirely separate issues here: culture and race/ethnicity. As Glenn points out, the culture is the basis for our success as a people. It is the secret sauce. That needs to be protected. But the biggest threat to the culture comes from “Progressive” ideas that flow from our elite Universities, not from the immigrants who come here to share our success.
My Dad was Irish Catholic and my Mom was German Catholic. In the 1850s, there was a major political party, the American or “Know Nothing” party, based on the fear that my ancestors were going to poison the secret sauce of American Republicanism. In the 1880s, it was the Italians who were unassimilable. In the early years of the 20th Century, it was the Jews, the Poles and the other Slavs. Recently it is the Hispanics. Same argument, and equally wrong every time. And needless to say, Glenn’s and John’s ancestors had it much worse than my ancestors ever did. But Glenn and John are tenured Professors and intellectual celebrities who defend the culture very ably.
As is the case with so many things, Abraham Lincoln put it best:
“We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors [who fought in the Revolution]—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
I'm lily white, of European heritage, but I can't go along with this. If this country was 100% white Europeans, would we all then get along and be insanely productive? Not a chance.
I do think that when there is no dominate culture, that can lead to conflict, regardless of what those cultures are. We've had that before, even among whites. The civil war comes to mind.
Europe has a history of deadly conflict between protestants and Catholics.
Still, I make no apologies for our founding fathers. Yes, they were flawed, as are we all. Yes, their culture ran roughshod over whatever other culture got in their way. They are hardly unique in that regard. Indian nations dominated other Indian nations. Same for Africans. Same for Asians. None of us should be proud of it, but neither should we pretend that any one race or culture is the guilty party.
What we can do going forward is walk a delicate line between defending our own values, while respecting other people's values. I can say from personal experience that, even when two people love each other and have dedicated themselves to living their lives together, there will still be conflict. So, what chance is there, when 330 million people who don't know each other, all want their beliefs to predominate? There will be conflict. Wise, intelligent people work thru it.
Where people come from is not as important as why and how. The essential characteristic of an American is get-up-and-go, initiative. Bringing people here is different. Making it too easy for them to get here discourages initiative. People used to have to make arduous journeys, often at their own expense, to get here. Now they can use a cell phone to set up a free flight.
Glenn, a bit of a nitpick here, but I wanted to push back against your characterization of South Korea's success as being primarily the result of its successful adoption of Western institutions, the implication being that all groups of people are capable of adopting such institutions and becoming prosperous. This strikes me as embodying the same sort of hubris that led to retrospectively questionable ideas such as the End of History, although as I've stated before Glenn I find you to be one of the great paragons of intellectual honesty and humility in our national discourse. Hence a small nitpick, but a nitpick nonetheless.
I'm certainly not an expert in these matters, but my vague high level understanding is that the countries of East Asia such as Japan, South Korea and China have all had a much greater degree of state-led industrial development and planning post-World War 2 compared to the free market democracies of the West.
Japanese state-led industrial development caused considerable American angst during our trade war with Japan during the 1980s and likewise Chinese industrial policy is causing significant angst among the American political class today. As the NYT and other publications have pointed out, the West and in particular the United States has increasingly pivoted away from neoliberal economic orthodoxy in favor of a more statist approach in its battle with China over the commanding heights of the 21st century. The recent Chips Act dishing out billions of dollars in subsidies for companies to manufacture advanced semiconductors in the United States is the quintessential example of this pivot.
As I said, I'm certainly not an expert and I would defer to the expertise of actual economists and social scientists on these matters. My own impression is that attributing East Asian success post-World War 2 to its successful adoption of Western institutions is somewhat simplistic and ignores the important ways in which countries in that part of the world operate very differently in contrast to Western neoliberal orthodoxy.
It was posited after Fukuyama's publishing of The End of History that the entire world would eventually converge to Western democratic norms. A large part of the reason behind granting China admission to the WTO in 2001 was the belief that as China became more integrated in the American-led world order, it would also increasingly converge to American and Western norms. Twenty years later and that thesis is in serious doubt. In fact, one could make an argument that the United States has steadily become more like China in recent years rather than vice-versa, although as evidenced by the misguided attempts to ban TikTok, oftentimes that irony is lost upon our political class.
Europeans killed millions of American “Indians” and since then have battled each other in world wars. I love LA not just because the majority have American Indian heritage (El Salvador, Mexico…) but because almost no one can claim to be largely European. JR
This makes me wonder about those who see obeying our laws as optional. Like whether people coming in illegally have every right to be here. Or those driving without licenses, or DUIs.
It's interesting that as a descendant of Eastern European Jews, Amy Wax advocates for America's Anglo-Protestant core. The United States was roughly 80% white and 20% black around the time of the first census in 1790, virtually the entire European population being Anglo-Protestant as Amy alludes to. After the initial wave of migrants, there was a lull in immigration until around the 1840s, when immigrants from places like Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia came to the US in meaningful numbers. The third wave of European migration to this country occurred during the 1890s to 1920s, when millions of people came over from Eastern and Southern Europe, including many Eastern European Jews. I saw on Wikipedia that Amy's own father worked in the garment industry in New York state.
Anglo-Protestant and Pan-European mean quite different things and I'm curious if Amy is particularly insistent upon the former as opposed to the latter. Glenn is absolutely correct in pointing out that Black American descendants of slaves are every bit the cultural fabric of this country as any other ethnic group. I particularly enjoyed Glenn's rhetorical questioning of who are we because it brought to mind the late Samuel Huntington's book of that exact name. Like Amy, he extols the virtues of America's Anglo-Protestant core and worries about the dilution of America's cultural fabric as a result of immigration.
Culture matters. Just because people come from other parts of the world seeking prosperity doesn't mean they bring the cultural toolkit or ideology to help create it. Ironically, many bring precisely the cultural pathologies that were so destructive to their countries of origin. For example, I am amazed at the number of politicians we have from India (e.g. Savant, Jayapal) who advocate the very policies (affirmative action and socialism) that made India the wretched place it is.
The notion that not all cultures are equal is generally voiced in this country to argue that people from various 3rd world countries aren't culturally compatible with American prosperity. Yet I find that very little is said regarding the ways in which immigrant groups help to bolster the American enterprise.
One thing that I've been pointing out is how East Asian and South Asian immigrants have been disproportionately involved in upholding the meritocratic institutions in this country, as evidenced by the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit against Harvard university that ultimately resulted in the recent Supreme Court ruling. My own impression has been that Asian immigrant groups are on average less susceptible to the same kinds of woke nonsense that white Americans have become enamored with in recent years. Rather than being a detriment, I would argue that the presence of certain immigrant groups has undoubtedly strengthened the cultural fabric of this country.
Personally, I would've loved for Glenn to have explored the cultural thesis more in depth with Amy. I've been fascinated by the geopolitical contest between the United States and China, in particular in areas of high tech like semiconductors. One of the more interesting occurrences over the last couple of years has been the efforts by the American government to re-shore advanced semiconductor manufacturing which has almost entirely migrated to East Asia over the past three decades or so.
There's been a lot of reporting over the past year related to TSMC's struggles to get their Phoenix fab up and running. Apparently there's a huge cultural gulf between American and Taiwanese workers which has contributed to frustration and tension for the entire project of re-shoring the production of advanced semiconductors. One sentence in particular in the article below stood out to me.
"At a meeting, a manager said Americans were less desirable than Taiwanese and Indian workers, according to people who saw leaked notes, which circulated among trainees."
When I hear people like Amy argue for the importance of culture and the necessity of preserving America's Anglo-Protestant heritage, I can't help but think to myself in light of current events that when it comes to things like semiconductor manufacturing it appears that culture matters too, but perhaps not in the direction that someone like Amy Wax would assume was the case.
Here's a provocative thesis. The Koreans, Chinese, Indians, etc. are ultimately going to be the ones who save the American republic from collapse and irrelevance. Fortress America, whether economically, technologically, culturally or racially is a mindset that will hasten the decline of this country rather than preserve it. I could point out the myriad ways in which that sort of mindset among our political class has led to counterproductive policies over the last 5 years such as the misguided attempts by Congress to ban DJI drones in the United States.
Challenging times for liberal pluralism. Thanks for defending shared humanity Glenn. I agree that America needs to maintain culturally liberal, democratic and capitalistic values, however, those values don’t belong to a specific race they belong to all humanity.
The question also remains, what qualifies as "Anglo-American" culture? The Cavaliers, English catholics who generally supported the King against Parliament, immigrated to the South in large numbers during the 17th century. They brought with them strict hierarchical ideas about society and religion which were the complete opposite of those who immigrated to Massachusetts. Yet, they are undeniably Anglo American.
Certainly, Thomas Sowell has argued that much of this Cavalier culture, which inspired the Scotch Borderers, Irish Catholics, and yes, the plantation culture of the South was also responsible for a violent honor, tribal code which also was passed down into Black culture today. This is certainty a *contradiction* to the idea that Anglo American traditions, per se, were entirely good or should be preserved.
Rather it's the ideas of the Enlightenment, that each individual has right against the State, checks and balances within the State, which specifically Wax must be reffering to. These ideas are certainty not limited to "Ango-America"; alongside Anglo Enlightenments were French and German Enlightenments. When Hong Kong, and yes South Korea embrace these ideas, they too are also successful.
So I don't think we need an "Anglo-American" culture, and it isn't exactly clear how the positive elements of our government are distinctly such. Certainty there are good British traditions, but there were also bad ones; it isn't where they came from or how they spoke, what they ate or how they dressed (much less the God's they worshipped - which were a hindrance too rather than a positive iinfluence), rather it is beliefs and values translatable to anyone who cares about reason, reality, and the individual.
I don’t think she ever said we need an Anglo-Protestant majority population. Rather, she said we need a culture that embodies Anglo-Protestant values. That seems rather uncontroversial when you look at the world today.
This is a fascinating and necessary discussion. Here is my admittedly rather simplistic contribution to a very tough knot:;
I would not want to live in a country that throws gays off of roof tops, tosses children into trenches where they claw cobalt out of the ground with crude tools, where women do not have equal rights or where female children are less valued and sometimes killed without repercussions. Not all cultures are equally valuable.
Yes, in earlier years America had reprehensible attitudes, and actions, toward natives, slaves, other ethnic minorities and women. But we had a Declaration and a Constitution that embodied principles of equality and freedom by which we gradually matured into a very large tent that continues to include more and more people. Those founding documents play a major role in making America the number one focus for immigrants.
The very talented writer Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote:
"One way or another, we are going to have to figure out how to make our multi-ethnic realities work, and one of the great intellectual projects facing us.....will be to develop a vision of ourselves strong and supple enough both to acknowledge the lingering importance of inherited group identities while also attenuating, rather than reinforcing, the extent to which such identities are able to define us,"
He went on to add: " Any human being sufficiently curious can fully possess another culture, no matter how 'alien' it may appear to be."
No we do not require a WASP population. In the 19th century, our goverment realized if we did not instill common values in our increasingly diverse population, diversity would kill the nation. Keep in mind that 90% of diversity then was white ethnic diversity. The values were speak English, hard work, value education, self-reliance, law abiding, and protestant values. The last one was rather quickly changed to Christian values because the population was increasingly Catholic, and Catholics would not send their children to schools teaching protestant values. The growing Jewish population was fine with their children learning American and Christian values because they wanted them to respect American values because they wanted to remain welcome and they wanted to be Americans. The instilling of these values was the responsibility of the schools. Shortly following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in 1965 the INA was passed which made it possible for people from anywhere to come to America. Something else happened. A chorus of Americans were calling for an end to using shools to integrate the increasingly diverse immigrants and Americans by instilling common American values. Some schools started teaching non-English speaking children in foreign languages. Because there was welfare, self-reliance, hard work,valuing education, and speaking English all became optional. Now immigrants and Americans didn't necessarily have to work hard, graduate from high school and more, and they didn't have to learn English. This is a source of many of the conflicts we have today with diverse populations. America would not be better as a nation of WASPs. But we have to get along and the easist way to do this is to learn and share common American values. Really is it too much to ask immigrants to speak English, work hard, value education, be self-reliant, and honor the law?. They'll be more propserous. Besides, it was this simple formula that has made people think that "white people" are homogenous. Anyone that knows the history of Irish, Italian, Polish and Jewish immigration knows that these groups were all rejected in America.in the 19th and half the 20th centuries until they adopted American values. If we go back to teaching children Amrican values, we would find a lot fewer discussions of racism and discrimination. We would not have hyphenated Americans we would just have Americans, just as assuredly as we now think of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc. as white Americans or just Americans.
The leadership and spirit that Donald J. Trump displayed, in extremis, after the Butler assassination attempt, was profoundly moving. He raised his fist in the air and called upon his fellows to "fight, fight, fight". The question is, fight who? The answer is to fight against the Clinton; Obama; Pelosi and Biden, 'criminal complex' ("the evil"). Those who are committed to stand with "the evil" cannot be helped. The evil must be exorcised out of USA polity.
There are two entirely separate issues here: culture and race/ethnicity. As Glenn points out, the culture is the basis for our success as a people. It is the secret sauce. That needs to be protected. But the biggest threat to the culture comes from “Progressive” ideas that flow from our elite Universities, not from the immigrants who come here to share our success.
My Dad was Irish Catholic and my Mom was German Catholic. In the 1850s, there was a major political party, the American or “Know Nothing” party, based on the fear that my ancestors were going to poison the secret sauce of American Republicanism. In the 1880s, it was the Italians who were unassimilable. In the early years of the 20th Century, it was the Jews, the Poles and the other Slavs. Recently it is the Hispanics. Same argument, and equally wrong every time. And needless to say, Glenn’s and John’s ancestors had it much worse than my ancestors ever did. But Glenn and John are tenured Professors and intellectual celebrities who defend the culture very ably.
As is the case with so many things, Abraham Lincoln put it best:
“We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors [who fought in the Revolution]—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
I'm lily white, of European heritage, but I can't go along with this. If this country was 100% white Europeans, would we all then get along and be insanely productive? Not a chance.
I do think that when there is no dominate culture, that can lead to conflict, regardless of what those cultures are. We've had that before, even among whites. The civil war comes to mind.
Europe has a history of deadly conflict between protestants and Catholics.
Still, I make no apologies for our founding fathers. Yes, they were flawed, as are we all. Yes, their culture ran roughshod over whatever other culture got in their way. They are hardly unique in that regard. Indian nations dominated other Indian nations. Same for Africans. Same for Asians. None of us should be proud of it, but neither should we pretend that any one race or culture is the guilty party.
What we can do going forward is walk a delicate line between defending our own values, while respecting other people's values. I can say from personal experience that, even when two people love each other and have dedicated themselves to living their lives together, there will still be conflict. So, what chance is there, when 330 million people who don't know each other, all want their beliefs to predominate? There will be conflict. Wise, intelligent people work thru it.
Where people come from is not as important as why and how. The essential characteristic of an American is get-up-and-go, initiative. Bringing people here is different. Making it too easy for them to get here discourages initiative. People used to have to make arduous journeys, often at their own expense, to get here. Now they can use a cell phone to set up a free flight.
Glenn, a bit of a nitpick here, but I wanted to push back against your characterization of South Korea's success as being primarily the result of its successful adoption of Western institutions, the implication being that all groups of people are capable of adopting such institutions and becoming prosperous. This strikes me as embodying the same sort of hubris that led to retrospectively questionable ideas such as the End of History, although as I've stated before Glenn I find you to be one of the great paragons of intellectual honesty and humility in our national discourse. Hence a small nitpick, but a nitpick nonetheless.
I'm certainly not an expert in these matters, but my vague high level understanding is that the countries of East Asia such as Japan, South Korea and China have all had a much greater degree of state-led industrial development and planning post-World War 2 compared to the free market democracies of the West.
Japanese state-led industrial development caused considerable American angst during our trade war with Japan during the 1980s and likewise Chinese industrial policy is causing significant angst among the American political class today. As the NYT and other publications have pointed out, the West and in particular the United States has increasingly pivoted away from neoliberal economic orthodoxy in favor of a more statist approach in its battle with China over the commanding heights of the 21st century. The recent Chips Act dishing out billions of dollars in subsidies for companies to manufacture advanced semiconductors in the United States is the quintessential example of this pivot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/business/economy/china-us-tariffs.html.
As I said, I'm certainly not an expert and I would defer to the expertise of actual economists and social scientists on these matters. My own impression is that attributing East Asian success post-World War 2 to its successful adoption of Western institutions is somewhat simplistic and ignores the important ways in which countries in that part of the world operate very differently in contrast to Western neoliberal orthodoxy.
It was posited after Fukuyama's publishing of The End of History that the entire world would eventually converge to Western democratic norms. A large part of the reason behind granting China admission to the WTO in 2001 was the belief that as China became more integrated in the American-led world order, it would also increasingly converge to American and Western norms. Twenty years later and that thesis is in serious doubt. In fact, one could make an argument that the United States has steadily become more like China in recent years rather than vice-versa, although as evidenced by the misguided attempts to ban TikTok, oftentimes that irony is lost upon our political class.
Europeans killed millions of American “Indians” and since then have battled each other in world wars. I love LA not just because the majority have American Indian heritage (El Salvador, Mexico…) but because almost no one can claim to be largely European. JR
This makes me wonder about those who see obeying our laws as optional. Like whether people coming in illegally have every right to be here. Or those driving without licenses, or DUIs.
It's interesting that as a descendant of Eastern European Jews, Amy Wax advocates for America's Anglo-Protestant core. The United States was roughly 80% white and 20% black around the time of the first census in 1790, virtually the entire European population being Anglo-Protestant as Amy alludes to. After the initial wave of migrants, there was a lull in immigration until around the 1840s, when immigrants from places like Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia came to the US in meaningful numbers. The third wave of European migration to this country occurred during the 1890s to 1920s, when millions of people came over from Eastern and Southern Europe, including many Eastern European Jews. I saw on Wikipedia that Amy's own father worked in the garment industry in New York state.
Anglo-Protestant and Pan-European mean quite different things and I'm curious if Amy is particularly insistent upon the former as opposed to the latter. Glenn is absolutely correct in pointing out that Black American descendants of slaves are every bit the cultural fabric of this country as any other ethnic group. I particularly enjoyed Glenn's rhetorical questioning of who are we because it brought to mind the late Samuel Huntington's book of that exact name. Like Amy, he extols the virtues of America's Anglo-Protestant core and worries about the dilution of America's cultural fabric as a result of immigration.
It's the English culture that we must preserve. Can that be done with Mexicans? Maybe. With Muslims? No.
Hi to Amy.
Culture matters. Just because people come from other parts of the world seeking prosperity doesn't mean they bring the cultural toolkit or ideology to help create it. Ironically, many bring precisely the cultural pathologies that were so destructive to their countries of origin. For example, I am amazed at the number of politicians we have from India (e.g. Savant, Jayapal) who advocate the very policies (affirmative action and socialism) that made India the wretched place it is.
https://jensheycke.substack.com/p/all-cultures-are-not-equal
The notion that not all cultures are equal is generally voiced in this country to argue that people from various 3rd world countries aren't culturally compatible with American prosperity. Yet I find that very little is said regarding the ways in which immigrant groups help to bolster the American enterprise.
One thing that I've been pointing out is how East Asian and South Asian immigrants have been disproportionately involved in upholding the meritocratic institutions in this country, as evidenced by the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit against Harvard university that ultimately resulted in the recent Supreme Court ruling. My own impression has been that Asian immigrant groups are on average less susceptible to the same kinds of woke nonsense that white Americans have become enamored with in recent years. Rather than being a detriment, I would argue that the presence of certain immigrant groups has undoubtedly strengthened the cultural fabric of this country.
Personally, I would've loved for Glenn to have explored the cultural thesis more in depth with Amy. I've been fascinated by the geopolitical contest between the United States and China, in particular in areas of high tech like semiconductors. One of the more interesting occurrences over the last couple of years has been the efforts by the American government to re-shore advanced semiconductor manufacturing which has almost entirely migrated to East Asia over the past three decades or so.
There's been a lot of reporting over the past year related to TSMC's struggles to get their Phoenix fab up and running. Apparently there's a huge cultural gulf between American and Taiwanese workers which has contributed to frustration and tension for the entire project of re-shoring the production of advanced semiconductors. One sentence in particular in the article below stood out to me.
https://restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-arizona-expansion/
"At a meeting, a manager said Americans were less desirable than Taiwanese and Indian workers, according to people who saw leaked notes, which circulated among trainees."
When I hear people like Amy argue for the importance of culture and the necessity of preserving America's Anglo-Protestant heritage, I can't help but think to myself in light of current events that when it comes to things like semiconductor manufacturing it appears that culture matters too, but perhaps not in the direction that someone like Amy Wax would assume was the case.
Here's a provocative thesis. The Koreans, Chinese, Indians, etc. are ultimately going to be the ones who save the American republic from collapse and irrelevance. Fortress America, whether economically, technologically, culturally or racially is a mindset that will hasten the decline of this country rather than preserve it. I could point out the myriad ways in which that sort of mindset among our political class has led to counterproductive policies over the last 5 years such as the misguided attempts by Congress to ban DJI drones in the United States.
Challenging times for liberal pluralism. Thanks for defending shared humanity Glenn. I agree that America needs to maintain culturally liberal, democratic and capitalistic values, however, those values don’t belong to a specific race they belong to all humanity.
Yes. It's just that all of humanity (including many Americans) haven't realized it yet.