Ann Coulter was shocked when she tried to speak in Canada. She had thought American Universities were bad, but the howling mob that greeted her in Canada was something else. Before this a professor at that same Citadel of Free Speech had warned her that she might end up in prison under Canada’s Hate Speech laws.
Yes, Virginia, it really IS different here.
There is a basically genetically different American population. In 1955, the last time it was allowed, it was estimated that over fifty percent of the blood of white people came from people who were here before the Constitution. And at the time of the Constitution, “we the people” had a higher percentage of native-born whites than we have ever had before or since.
Today this percentage is probably about the same. Why? Because areas of heavy immigration at the end of the last century have not been having children. This may seem strange given the idea that Catholics have endless number of children, but that has not been true for some time.
If you have an idea what the word “Catholics” means today. Names in the Northeast do tend toward “Catholic” names, Italian or Polish, but precious few of them are still “Catholic” in this sense. They belong to Mommy Professor, not the Pope.
Population in the “blue” states is dropping like a rock. Thee is no way to be sure, but I have a feeling that the population descended from the pre-1787 Americans is still in the habit of having more than one child, often three or more.
How does this relate to Ann Coulter’s shock in Canada? It has to do with the population only Eric Hoffer ever talked about, the Americans who in his day resided in what was called “flyover country.” I understood what he was talking about, but you can get lost in definitions.
Hoffer said that the Kennedys were loved in Europe because they were Europeans. New Englanders generally are. There is no difference in the thinking of Canadians and the thinking of Brits.
There is no difference in the thinking that dominates the “blue” states and the thinking of Europeans.
If you don’t understand that, I’ve lost you.
Michael Novak wrote the book Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics in which he coined the word WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I had lunch with him once and pointed out that I got along with “ethnic” Catholics, who actually often chose me to speak for them, better than I did with New England WASPs.
I pointed out to him that what he meant by WASPs was “Yankees.” HE AGREED. But Novak is a theologian, and therefore a psychopath. He had not the slightest difficulty in admitting he had lied because he could not have been published if he had said the real thing.
I was able to speak for the “ethnics” because by and large the ones who went to college have gone from total obedience to the Pope to total obedience to Mommy Professor. The steel workers and Southies I dealt with had become Americans.
Meanwhile a major portion of “ethnics” and “WASPs” had gone to college and became Europeans.
I wonder if readers understand what I am talking about.
This understanding which no commentator would understand — if he did, he wouldn’t be allowed to commentate, as Novak well understood — is the basis of the politics of the last half of the twentieth century.
What elected Reagan was the old combination, Southerners and Northern Irish and Italians and Poles, who moved from being the base of the Democratic Party to the Republican base. In order to put them all in a Wordist framework commentators call them “cultural conservatives.”
This is a combination that goes back before Andrew Jackson. In commentator terms there could not be a less possible combination than the Bible Belt Southerners and the Catholic ethnics who almost WERE the Democratic Party for over a century.
They certainly were not “cultural conservatives” in the 1850s. Midwest Republicans were as glued to their Bibles as any O’Hara in Chicago was to his bishop.
This coalition was WEIRD, but when I talked to a Chicago steelworker I didn’t need a translator the way I did in academia. That’s why they had no trouble with me speaking for them.
Let me end this excursion by going back to Ann Coulter’s experience. On campuses, the Beast is loose. But its power is limited by a lot of old Americans, Southern and ethnic and survivals like backbaygrouch.
What Ann Coulter saw, but could never understand, is that when she went to Canada, it was not just the Constitution that made the difference. What she saw was what happens when there are no Old Americans around.
#1 by shari on 05/12/2010 - 9:24 am
I don’t hear the term “culteral conservative” much anymore. We’re just people who didn’t go to college,or else just some riffraffy state college. We still cling to our “guns and bibles” and “don’t know much.” It’s gotten to the point,that the MOST provincial ones around,are the “highly educated” though. They can fly around the world and never notice anything.
#2 by BGLass on 05/12/2010 - 11:04 am
That’s the most clarifying post yet. A Canadian came into Northeast U.S. awhile back for work and was stunned to hear American radio in a hotel and discover not everybody thought FDR was the Savior of the World. In Canada, he saved America, and they helped with the underground railroad, too. I returned that, percentage-wise to the continent, they had as many slaves so I hope they didn’t drop ours off in Detroit.
That’s what stopped me from moving to Canada, an idea I’d had b/c Toronto was Asian now and crime stats lower. But I’d rented my place to an Englishmen while going to visit. I said I had grave reservations about going to a country so foreign, and he voiced horror at my xenophobic regionalism, not getting it at all, since America and Canada were exactly the same to his more differentiating mind.
Having studied with Catholics in the Northeast and Jews, it’s just a shame the Catholics keep hammering home the “Protestant as heretic idea,” but despite this schooling, the Irish seem less angry than before and the Italians are fine. Southern displaced Protestants can do ok with Russian Orthodox, too, over the agrarian and communist thing, and the Asians to Protestantism are the biggest religious cross-over, so at least they don’t hate Southern wasps as much, which is something in a lonely world.
Mainstream Canadians, though, are the total height of Mommy Professor. To them, the entire U.S. is what the Confederacy is to most Jews.
It’s impossible for me to realize that some Yankee-wasps have been in the U.S. almost as long as Southern-wasps. I always think of Yankee-wasps as fresh-off-the-boat and post-1850. I KNOW better, but it’s how they think.
Mr. Krauthammer on t.v. makes me chuckle sometimes. He’s both Jewish AND Canadian, and reminds me of school where you’re shown the pictures of Chinese and have “this is an American” drilled into you.
#3 by Dave on 05/12/2010 - 11:19 am
Shari’s comment: “They can fly around the world and never notice anything” is called “hitting the nail on the head”.
When a commenter says something that intelligent my ears really perk up.
What is the real issue with nonwhites? IT IS THE HUGE DOMAIN OF EVERYTHING THEY FAIL TO NOTICE.
Here is a central issue of social life in the form of a question: “Now that we are all together, what are we to do?”
Despite all the stupidities of white people, the great strength of the white race has been to answer that question in a way nonwhites never have. The wonderful white answer has been: NOTICE THINGS!!!!
I have just explained to you what science is.
But let us be honest. Our real history has answered the question very unevenly.
For example, Adolph Hitler’s answer to the question was: We all stand together and chant, Seig Heil!!!
Wasn’t that a brilliant answer? That is a vision of society where the public is a collection of Ronald McDonald’s. Everybody puts on a clown suit and chants and salutes in unison and that is the answer to the question,”Now that we are all together, what are we to do?”
Similarly, we have what Simmons calls “Patriotards” (the followers of John McCain).
Their answer to the question is to put on paper hats and assemble at war memorials and blubber over dead soldiers: Wah Wah Wah. Wasn’t their SACRIFICE NOBLE? Wah Wah Wah.
Again, this is a task I would assign to Ronald McDonald.
Alas, most white Americans answer to the question is to assemble before the TV to watch “America’s Most Talented” while chomping on a three pound bag of Cheetos, basically the same answer our wonderfully productive Black African brothers and sisters give.
Isn’t equality wonderful?
#4 by Creator on 05/12/2010 - 1:06 pm
Yes, equality is a dream.
You have to be sound asleep to see and believe it.
#5 by Simmons on 05/12/2010 - 3:09 pm
Shari is right. The libs can answer nothing off the script. Sure the Jon Liebowitzs (Stewart) can attack but they cannot answer. Without their sidekicks they would flounder into irrelevancy.
Any of those kids above described by Bob, Shari or Dave given 5 good sequential relevant questions would be reduced to violence, no exceptions, been there done that.
That is why the Mantra could and can be delivered in question format each clause converted into a question, and with 90% of the libs completely spent before you finished or violently wild responses.
It is quite simple the Left and their religion of PC has no moral authority whatsoever, even the semis are waking up to that.
#6 by Simmons on 05/13/2010 - 12:13 pm
Any investment adviser running his/her hedge fund should Mantra think if they want to make money in this market. For example the Canadian housing market propped up by raw materials sales to Asia and the Asians themselves paying for million dollar Vancouver crack houses (not a joke).
So anyone noticing these patterns of thoughts Canadian PC, Asian witlessnes fusing into one blowoff market creates an opportunity of a lifetime.