When I first saw this in my inbox this morning (over coffee, in London, where I've come to really appreciate just how great of a nation the US is) I was like, 'oh hell no, they're coming for us'
The reality is, the United States is the first country in arguably the modern world that has had to deal with citizens not looking like each other and, by extension, the very specific problem of citizens looking at each other and not being to immediately know "hey that is my fellow citizen."
This is not a bad problem. This is not a racist problem. We should have empathy for this problem.
When I wrote my book on South Asian American assimilation, HERE TO STAY, I got criticism from the (far) left that it was too pro-America, that the whole idea of multicultural identity that American public schools (atleast in the Northeast, where I'm from) fed had to be deconstructed.
I disagreed and thought that idea was dangerous. It still is. It's what led to the racist and (frankly) dumb reaction from Bo French and that ilk. But it's a fair point that American identity can't be based (only on) multiculturalism. It need to be based on our ideals. And what I learned reporting for HERE TO STAY, is that we all kinda want the same things 1) do right for ourselves 2) do right for our families 3) do right for our communities. America has, and always will be, the best place to do this for the most people.
The reality is that since the post-war era we have been creating an American identity that racists (on the right AND left) will hate because it's note a race-based identity and that the woke will hate because it's pro America.
I'm optimistic, as long as we continue to protect the creation of this new American identity, an identity grounded in our ideals.
Not that I agree with their DSA politics but I think it’s interesting that this explosion of anti-Indian sentiment is happening at the cusp of the 2 largest cities in America being led by Indian American immigrants (Zohran Mamdani and Nithya Raman). People forget Mamdani is Indian, in fact, his mom is Hindu and never even converted or changed her last name.
Excellent post. I _finally_ understand what Noah's flavor of liberalism means, and why he is so scornful of the 'woke' project.
I can get behind his plan... ethnogenesis (and abundance) 100%.
The appeal of the 'woke project' was to me a matter of historical truth. It required holding two beliefs in ones head at the same time: (1) That the 'American Experiment' has been a very great good for both Americans and the world since the 18th century and (2) that the US was built to a significant extent on the back of slaves before 1860 and from 1860-1960 engaged in open ethnic cleansing against blacks.
I can hold both of those ideas in my head at the same time, but perhaps many of my fellow Americans simply cannot. They HAVE to pick one truth to be more important than the other.
I think this IS the tension between the left and the right today... do we force ourselves to pick just one idea, presumably (1) to be good American (conservative) or can we accept BOTH ideas at the same time, and do BOTH the ethnogenesis that Noah wants and ALSO stamp out racism at the same time (which also seems to be Noah's interest). Noah would likely argue that the 'woke left' went to far to embrace idea (2) while forgetting (1), and I have to agree with that.
I get it now. Many Americans cannot accept the cognitive dissonance of holding those two ideas at the same time. By acknowledging the historical fact (2), we lose the majority we need for the larger ethnogenesis project. Both by some clinging to (1) and denying (2) and others embracing (2) and denying (1)
IOW, (2) might be good history, but cognitive dissonance is not good politics!
I thought the Manhattan Institute was still normie, but I guess not. Sad to see that we no longer have a serious conservative intelligentsia (in the vein of Buckley or Friedman). Even what passes for the high end is just trollish culture warring now.
What amazes me is how much all of this sounds just like Norman Tebbit's 1990 "cricket test" in the UK, and how it targets the same people. Back then, the idea was that British Indians who supported the Indian cricket team and not the England one were sufficiently not-integrated. Now you have something very similar-sounding with college football and whatnot in the US. In both cases, it suggests that the person making the argument just doesn't like Indians, and has no better reason not to like them than that.
It's all the more striking because, back then, British Indians were pretty well-integrated by most reasonable-sounding measures, like Indian-Americans are now. They spoke English well, had generally high educational and professional attainment, observed British laws, participated in electoral politics, and so forth. Those comments, like these ones, come across as goalpost-shifting with the specific intent of denying people access to your national, social, or political community.
No time to dig up citations, but many people on the far right claim racial homogeneity is better because you have greater national unity. One big thing they miss is research showing that a diversity of races and cultures creates greater creativity and diversification. This definitely seems true to me. Having engineers from China, India, Europe, the US,... really brings perspectives and creativity of a type you will not find in homogeneous cultures. And, I'm sure Noah can attest to this from his academic experience. Imagine the US without the 40% of immigrant Nobel Prize winners, people like Einstein and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
"We both basically subscribe to the principle of nationalism — we believe that nation-states are exclusive clubs that exist for the benefit of their members, and that this is a basically good way to organize human society."
It should be stressed that any good family or club still cares about human beings outside of their group, and still treats them ethically, and still provides help to those less fortunate outside their group. Every good family I know donates some money or time or effort to help others in need outside the family.
the best thing about the US, is that anyone can be American.
It makes me sad that the right wing today thinks that only some people can be Americans.
It should be that anyone that accepts American values as their own, participates, and lives there *is* American. That's it. You can be a recent Chinese immigrant barely speaking English, a hillbilly, or an educated Indian doctor - do you love what America stands for? You want to be part of it? You contribute? You're in!
Great column. And you're absolutely right that the Right will self-destruct as it tries to the country up by ethnic group, ironically the very thing that the Right accuses the Left of doing with DEI and arguments about white privilege. I guess this is an example of the Horseshoe Principle, where extremists on both sides of an issue increasingly resemble one another.
And I do have to wonder about the utter obliviousness of someone who's Jewish allying himself with neo-Nazis like Bo French to argue that people from India can't assimilate in the US. I mean, how long does he think it will be before these folks turn on him?
Argentina, a country I know very well, is a great example of non-forced national identity creation. It has at least as many immigrants as the US, from all over the world, that have come in various waves. Yet everyone thinks of herself as Argentinian. They share a certain way of life and are very proud of their country but at the same time, in their homes, they also maintain their original culture and traditions. A German family will observe German traditions, an Italian family Italian ones, same for the English, Spanish, Syrian, Polish etc. Some more, some less, but when you get invited to people’s homes you see it very clearly. But it in no way conflicts with being an Argentinian as well.
Amen Noah. I’m a conservative, but you are exactly right. Liberalism rightly understood is a big tent - traditional conservatives and liberals are always going to have policy disagreements, but we have far more in common than the rightists and far left that embrace different flavors of racial identitarianism. Keep up the good fight.
I'm a longtime listener, first time caller.
When I first saw this in my inbox this morning (over coffee, in London, where I've come to really appreciate just how great of a nation the US is) I was like, 'oh hell no, they're coming for us'
The reality is, the United States is the first country in arguably the modern world that has had to deal with citizens not looking like each other and, by extension, the very specific problem of citizens looking at each other and not being to immediately know "hey that is my fellow citizen."
This is not a bad problem. This is not a racist problem. We should have empathy for this problem.
When I wrote my book on South Asian American assimilation, HERE TO STAY, I got criticism from the (far) left that it was too pro-America, that the whole idea of multicultural identity that American public schools (atleast in the Northeast, where I'm from) fed had to be deconstructed.
I disagreed and thought that idea was dangerous. It still is. It's what led to the racist and (frankly) dumb reaction from Bo French and that ilk. But it's a fair point that American identity can't be based (only on) multiculturalism. It need to be based on our ideals. And what I learned reporting for HERE TO STAY, is that we all kinda want the same things 1) do right for ourselves 2) do right for our families 3) do right for our communities. America has, and always will be, the best place to do this for the most people.
The reality is that since the post-war era we have been creating an American identity that racists (on the right AND left) will hate because it's note a race-based identity and that the woke will hate because it's pro America.
I'm optimistic, as long as we continue to protect the creation of this new American identity, an identity grounded in our ideals.
Not that I agree with their DSA politics but I think it’s interesting that this explosion of anti-Indian sentiment is happening at the cusp of the 2 largest cities in America being led by Indian American immigrants (Zohran Mamdani and Nithya Raman). People forget Mamdani is Indian, in fact, his mom is Hindu and never even converted or changed her last name.
Excellent post. I _finally_ understand what Noah's flavor of liberalism means, and why he is so scornful of the 'woke' project.
I can get behind his plan... ethnogenesis (and abundance) 100%.
The appeal of the 'woke project' was to me a matter of historical truth. It required holding two beliefs in ones head at the same time: (1) That the 'American Experiment' has been a very great good for both Americans and the world since the 18th century and (2) that the US was built to a significant extent on the back of slaves before 1860 and from 1860-1960 engaged in open ethnic cleansing against blacks.
I can hold both of those ideas in my head at the same time, but perhaps many of my fellow Americans simply cannot. They HAVE to pick one truth to be more important than the other.
I think this IS the tension between the left and the right today... do we force ourselves to pick just one idea, presumably (1) to be good American (conservative) or can we accept BOTH ideas at the same time, and do BOTH the ethnogenesis that Noah wants and ALSO stamp out racism at the same time (which also seems to be Noah's interest). Noah would likely argue that the 'woke left' went to far to embrace idea (2) while forgetting (1), and I have to agree with that.
I get it now. Many Americans cannot accept the cognitive dissonance of holding those two ideas at the same time. By acknowledging the historical fact (2), we lose the majority we need for the larger ethnogenesis project. Both by some clinging to (1) and denying (2) and others embracing (2) and denying (1)
IOW, (2) might be good history, but cognitive dissonance is not good politics!
It will be interesting to see how they react if Nithya Raman is elected mayor
I thought the Manhattan Institute was still normie, but I guess not. Sad to see that we no longer have a serious conservative intelligentsia (in the vein of Buckley or Friedman). Even what passes for the high end is just trollish culture warring now.
What amazes me is how much all of this sounds just like Norman Tebbit's 1990 "cricket test" in the UK, and how it targets the same people. Back then, the idea was that British Indians who supported the Indian cricket team and not the England one were sufficiently not-integrated. Now you have something very similar-sounding with college football and whatnot in the US. In both cases, it suggests that the person making the argument just doesn't like Indians, and has no better reason not to like them than that.
It's all the more striking because, back then, British Indians were pretty well-integrated by most reasonable-sounding measures, like Indian-Americans are now. They spoke English well, had generally high educational and professional attainment, observed British laws, participated in electoral politics, and so forth. Those comments, like these ones, come across as goalpost-shifting with the specific intent of denying people access to your national, social, or political community.
No time to dig up citations, but many people on the far right claim racial homogeneity is better because you have greater national unity. One big thing they miss is research showing that a diversity of races and cultures creates greater creativity and diversification. This definitely seems true to me. Having engineers from China, India, Europe, the US,... really brings perspectives and creativity of a type you will not find in homogeneous cultures. And, I'm sure Noah can attest to this from his academic experience. Imagine the US without the 40% of immigrant Nobel Prize winners, people like Einstein and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
"We both basically subscribe to the principle of nationalism — we believe that nation-states are exclusive clubs that exist for the benefit of their members, and that this is a basically good way to organize human society."
It should be stressed that any good family or club still cares about human beings outside of their group, and still treats them ethically, and still provides help to those less fortunate outside their group. Every good family I know donates some money or time or effort to help others in need outside the family.
the best thing about the US, is that anyone can be American.
It makes me sad that the right wing today thinks that only some people can be Americans.
It should be that anyone that accepts American values as their own, participates, and lives there *is* American. That's it. You can be a recent Chinese immigrant barely speaking English, a hillbilly, or an educated Indian doctor - do you love what America stands for? You want to be part of it? You contribute? You're in!
Great column. And you're absolutely right that the Right will self-destruct as it tries to the country up by ethnic group, ironically the very thing that the Right accuses the Left of doing with DEI and arguments about white privilege. I guess this is an example of the Horseshoe Principle, where extremists on both sides of an issue increasingly resemble one another.
And I do have to wonder about the utter obliviousness of someone who's Jewish allying himself with neo-Nazis like Bo French to argue that people from India can't assimilate in the US. I mean, how long does he think it will be before these folks turn on him?
Argentina, a country I know very well, is a great example of non-forced national identity creation. It has at least as many immigrants as the US, from all over the world, that have come in various waves. Yet everyone thinks of herself as Argentinian. They share a certain way of life and are very proud of their country but at the same time, in their homes, they also maintain their original culture and traditions. A German family will observe German traditions, an Italian family Italian ones, same for the English, Spanish, Syrian, Polish etc. Some more, some less, but when you get invited to people’s homes you see it very clearly. But it in no way conflicts with being an Argentinian as well.
Amen Noah. I’m a conservative, but you are exactly right. Liberalism rightly understood is a big tent - traditional conservatives and liberals are always going to have policy disagreements, but we have far more in common than the rightists and far left that embrace different flavors of racial identitarianism. Keep up the good fight.
Remember how our greatgrandparents were happy and well integrated in Germany and the like? This is one of those times again.