1. Liberals believe that the highest good is for individuals to be autonomous, in the sense of being self-determined or self-created.
2. Therefore, it is bad to simply inherit an identity, as this is something that is predetermined.
3. Immigrants make a self-conscious effort to become citizens, rather than being born as such. Therefore, they are better exemplars of individual autonomy than the native born.
Also,
4. For right-liberals, the most important way to self-create is to be a self-made man in the market.
5. Therefore, those who follow market incentives (higher wages/income) by crossing national borders are showing the highest commitment to what right-liberals see as the primary good in life.
Consider this when reading the following exchange, which begins with a tweet by Eliot A. Cohen, a prominent American neoconservative who served in the Bush administration:
One of Cohen's followers added this:
The responses from those not committed to right-liberalism were good. Someone posted the following graph:
The results are not surprising. If you came to the U.S. to further your economic interests, then you'll be more likely to identify with an open, globalised economy than with a culturally particular national tradition that your forebears did not found.
Someone also made this observation:
And this:
One final point. The most full-blown expression of the right-liberal view I have ever read came from Tony Abbott, once the Liberal Party PM of Australia. Back in 2013 he wrote these lines:
People who have come to this country from many parts of Asia; who have come, worked hard, prospered, succeeded and become first class Australians – that is the face and the name of modern Australia...
I want to say how brave every single migrant to this country is, because every single one of you has done something that those who are native born have never done. You have been gutsy enough to take your future in your hands and to go to a country which is not yours and make it your own. Modern Australia is absolutely unimaginable without migration and migration...has added a heroic dimension to our national life...
...I particularly respect and value the hard work and the skills that everyone brings to this country when they come to do a job from day one - in particular, those who come to this country as skilled migrants...they might come as temporary migrants originally, but they make the very best Australian citizens eventually. They are the most worthy, the most welcome parts of the Australian family...
Abbott makes the logic of right-liberalism sound flowery and emotional, but the bottom line is that it diminishes the native population in favour of recent economic immigrants. The economic migrants are cast as "the very best Australian citizens...the most worthy."
So right-liberalism has a built-in logic that pushes toward the valorisation of economic migrants. It is not, therefore, a political ideology that is likely to uphold the native culture and identity of a country. It isn't the solution for those who are concerned by the effects of open borders on local cultures - it is not just the left at fault here.
(Hat tip: reader Tim)
A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.
Of course another way of looking at it is that immigrants, by the very act of immigrating, have demonstrated that they have no loyalties. They're basically mercenaries. They'll go wherever there's a chance of a fast buck but if it doesn't work out they'll be quite happy to move on somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteIf you've happily abandoned your loyalty to one country then there's no reason to suppose you won't abandon your loyalty to your new country just as happily.
The right-liberals never chance this argument outside of a Western country. They'd never tell a formerly colonized country that the colonial settlers were "more Indian than you are".
DeleteThe so-called "intellectual dark web" are intellectual cowards. Ripping the minor signs of tribalism here, while ignoring the beam in the eye from the Third World.
Actually all of this is just selfish virtue signalling and one-upmanship.
ReplyDeleteWhen its so clear that none of these immigrants are even remotely better for the nation or anything but simple ethnic opportunists, the thing to do double down and say they're simply the best. AFter all, everyone 'likes' you that way.
That's easier, and lazier than standing up for your nation and future community, and it avoids the discomfort of having standards.
(Someone ELSE, can pay, and subsidize the community, until eventually of course, it been sucked dry and gone)