The shared understanding of who "we" are has eroded significantly in the UK as the pace and volume of immigration from incompatible cultures increased from 2000 onwards and after Brexit in particular. We ordinary folk may not use the academic terms in this article and we may struggle to articulate exactly why immigration is the defining problem it now is in politics, referencing second order problems like pressure on housing, but the disaffection with our institutions is real. An increasing number of us just feel it, sense it, and view the growing balkanisation of society with foreboding.
The problem is not just about numbers of people from (and often still loyal to) overseas lands, but also about the establishment actively undermining the family and nation state through law and education indoctrinating each new generation to despise British history and achievements.
A particularly sinister development is "two-tier" policing in which, as the recent Henry Novak case is a tragic example, ethnic minorities are privileged over white people. Novak's murderer played the race card when the police arrived and the significant point is that the race buttons were there in the police to be pressed causing Novak to bleed out while the police pandered to the murderer.
Once a society loses equality before the law for all its citizens, the historic achievement of English common law, then we enter very dark days indeed.
Look around. No. You don’t need to be a scientist for that. Nor do you need expensive researches or statistics. It just takes common sense. We are all human, but we are not equal. Not equal in capability, things we value and so on.
Excellent work! I had an idea that these studies were out there, nice to see them gathered together and analysed coherently.
I love the description Putnam gives in 2007 of people avoiding their diverse community and staying in "huddled round the TV". Today, I really think people over blame social media as the demon behind everything. That he wrote that before social media took over, shows that social media is not the cause, just the medium of today. Before TV, people would have stayed in reading subversive books about their lot in life.
I spent 24 years doing voter targeting and analytics for political campaigns in south Florida. Between 1988 and 2006, I watched neighborhood trust erode. I watched alien enclaves grow and self-segregate. I saw demarcation lines between precincts where ethnic and racial interests drove voters to select markedly different candidates with radically different morals, ethics, and expectations about how they would be governed.
People on opposite sides of a four-lane road would never agree on they way they would like to be governed!
I had read Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, Query 8 with great interest because he outline–and cautioned against–mass immigration, particularly of those who would have radically different expectations.
Then, I came upon Robert Putnam's work and research. That framed it correctly.
Many of those in my generation who grew up in the 60s and 70s pine for the days where kids could free-range during the day. Our "social media" consisted of riding our bikes around the neighborhood to see where our friends were. We knew this because of all the unlocked bicycles scattered on our friends' lawns. That's where the action was.
Then I studied the First Great Awakening and realized the greatest contribution of Whitefield and Edwards was that their sermons were preached from countless pulpits, across denominations. They instilled a common vernacular, which was essential to proper shared understandings of the meanings of things like liberty, justice, fairness, and–probably most essentially–order. At the top of the "order" list was a moral order.
It all came down to a shared understanding of the Christian way of life that America had built. It was a Reformed, Protestant culture. The language came from it. The Constitution is a mirror of the Presbyterian Church governance structure. John Jay framed it in the second Federalist Paper–the first one of substance, with the first being an introduction and statement of intent–and actually defined the "who we are" that Samuel Huntington so excellently explored.
A balkanized, diverse, non-Western, non-Christian country is not a "nation." It will become a gaggle of squabbling, incompatible ways with contrary moral expectations. The friction will eventually cause The People to beg for a stronger hand of government to keep the peace–to protect themselves from each other.
And liberty is lost.
It's the goal of the Long March Through the Institutions. It's the wet dream of the Frankfurt Schoolers.
We must reframe who we are. We must disabuse Americans of BS nonsense like "A Nation of Immigrants," "The Melting Pot,"–America was a "crucible," where all the impurities were forged out and removed by pressure-and all the other nonsense foisted upon us by one particular train of thought.
That insertion of alienation comes from a particular faith and a particular ethnicity–and a notable outlier in our population–that wields absurdly outsized influence in media, government, education and all of our key institutions.
We either push back now, free ourselves from fear of being called names for having the traditional understanding of basic "common sense," or America is done. We are being pushed over the precipice . I fear for Posterity.
Sorry for rambling on, but this excellent article unleashed all of my thinking along these lines.
The answer is a single word, an emphatic "NO!" Any society without unity of purpose is doomed. So called "diversity" dilutes and fractures the chance for social Unity of Purpose. Modern "diversity" is not the same as "classic diversity", just as modern "liberalism" is not the same thing as "classical liberalism".
Of course, social "science" CAN tell us things about the world around us, and governments depend on it for the legitimacy of their policies. But, ordinary citizens hardly need to be told by academic pseudo science what has happened to them and their communities under the ingress of mass Muslim immigration. Of course we don't trust these strange folk; how could we when have absolutely nothing in common with them and them with us. I won't list the irreconcilable differences between us and them...anybody who can't escape living within this catastrophe will be well aware of what these differences are.
Of course we don't trust each other: they have always hated us and now we are starting to return the favour. In ancient Greece, citizens were held to account by the demes for making stupid suggestions and dangerous decisions which put the City in peril. Given our rulers contempt for ordinary folk in their decision making, perhaps its time for THEM to get a knock on the door from US?
Well said. These positions and comments are true to the point of being true-istic. But I am curious--why are these positions more commonly delivered from, in this case, Australia. There are other commentators doing as much out of UK or France. Even Germany seems to have found its voice.
I am American and 'Boomer' and follow Celina for its Gen Z voicing but would like very much to learn more of Celina's bio details. Australia, after all, is a foreign country to this American. As is Europe. As is, regrettably, much of the U.S.
The shared understanding of who "we" are has eroded significantly in the UK as the pace and volume of immigration from incompatible cultures increased from 2000 onwards and after Brexit in particular. We ordinary folk may not use the academic terms in this article and we may struggle to articulate exactly why immigration is the defining problem it now is in politics, referencing second order problems like pressure on housing, but the disaffection with our institutions is real. An increasing number of us just feel it, sense it, and view the growing balkanisation of society with foreboding.
The problem is not just about numbers of people from (and often still loyal to) overseas lands, but also about the establishment actively undermining the family and nation state through law and education indoctrinating each new generation to despise British history and achievements.
A particularly sinister development is "two-tier" policing in which, as the recent Henry Novak case is a tragic example, ethnic minorities are privileged over white people. Novak's murderer played the race card when the police arrived and the significant point is that the race buttons were there in the police to be pressed causing Novak to bleed out while the police pandered to the murderer.
Once a society loses equality before the law for all its citizens, the historic achievement of English common law, then we enter very dark days indeed.
Look around. No. You don’t need to be a scientist for that. Nor do you need expensive researches or statistics. It just takes common sense. We are all human, but we are not equal. Not equal in capability, things we value and so on.
Terrific piece. Thank you for the effort involved in putting this together.
Will share...
Excellent work! I had an idea that these studies were out there, nice to see them gathered together and analysed coherently.
I love the description Putnam gives in 2007 of people avoiding their diverse community and staying in "huddled round the TV". Today, I really think people over blame social media as the demon behind everything. That he wrote that before social media took over, shows that social media is not the cause, just the medium of today. Before TV, people would have stayed in reading subversive books about their lot in life.
I spent 24 years doing voter targeting and analytics for political campaigns in south Florida. Between 1988 and 2006, I watched neighborhood trust erode. I watched alien enclaves grow and self-segregate. I saw demarcation lines between precincts where ethnic and racial interests drove voters to select markedly different candidates with radically different morals, ethics, and expectations about how they would be governed.
People on opposite sides of a four-lane road would never agree on they way they would like to be governed!
I had read Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, Query 8 with great interest because he outline–and cautioned against–mass immigration, particularly of those who would have radically different expectations.
Then, I came upon Robert Putnam's work and research. That framed it correctly.
Many of those in my generation who grew up in the 60s and 70s pine for the days where kids could free-range during the day. Our "social media" consisted of riding our bikes around the neighborhood to see where our friends were. We knew this because of all the unlocked bicycles scattered on our friends' lawns. That's where the action was.
Then I studied the First Great Awakening and realized the greatest contribution of Whitefield and Edwards was that their sermons were preached from countless pulpits, across denominations. They instilled a common vernacular, which was essential to proper shared understandings of the meanings of things like liberty, justice, fairness, and–probably most essentially–order. At the top of the "order" list was a moral order.
It all came down to a shared understanding of the Christian way of life that America had built. It was a Reformed, Protestant culture. The language came from it. The Constitution is a mirror of the Presbyterian Church governance structure. John Jay framed it in the second Federalist Paper–the first one of substance, with the first being an introduction and statement of intent–and actually defined the "who we are" that Samuel Huntington so excellently explored.
A balkanized, diverse, non-Western, non-Christian country is not a "nation." It will become a gaggle of squabbling, incompatible ways with contrary moral expectations. The friction will eventually cause The People to beg for a stronger hand of government to keep the peace–to protect themselves from each other.
And liberty is lost.
It's the goal of the Long March Through the Institutions. It's the wet dream of the Frankfurt Schoolers.
We must reframe who we are. We must disabuse Americans of BS nonsense like "A Nation of Immigrants," "The Melting Pot,"–America was a "crucible," where all the impurities were forged out and removed by pressure-and all the other nonsense foisted upon us by one particular train of thought.
That insertion of alienation comes from a particular faith and a particular ethnicity–and a notable outlier in our population–that wields absurdly outsized influence in media, government, education and all of our key institutions.
We either push back now, free ourselves from fear of being called names for having the traditional understanding of basic "common sense," or America is done. We are being pushed over the precipice . I fear for Posterity.
Sorry for rambling on, but this excellent article unleashed all of my thinking along these lines.
Thank so much for this article!
The answer is a single word, an emphatic "NO!" Any society without unity of purpose is doomed. So called "diversity" dilutes and fractures the chance for social Unity of Purpose. Modern "diversity" is not the same as "classic diversity", just as modern "liberalism" is not the same thing as "classical liberalism".
No. and No. Diversity is our weakness.
Crap. Anyway, it’s COHESION that’s our strength. Not anything else.
Of course, social "science" CAN tell us things about the world around us, and governments depend on it for the legitimacy of their policies. But, ordinary citizens hardly need to be told by academic pseudo science what has happened to them and their communities under the ingress of mass Muslim immigration. Of course we don't trust these strange folk; how could we when have absolutely nothing in common with them and them with us. I won't list the irreconcilable differences between us and them...anybody who can't escape living within this catastrophe will be well aware of what these differences are.
Of course we don't trust each other: they have always hated us and now we are starting to return the favour. In ancient Greece, citizens were held to account by the demes for making stupid suggestions and dangerous decisions which put the City in peril. Given our rulers contempt for ordinary folk in their decision making, perhaps its time for THEM to get a knock on the door from US?
Well said. These positions and comments are true to the point of being true-istic. But I am curious--why are these positions more commonly delivered from, in this case, Australia. There are other commentators doing as much out of UK or France. Even Germany seems to have found its voice.
I am American and 'Boomer' and follow Celina for its Gen Z voicing but would like very much to learn more of Celina's bio details. Australia, after all, is a foreign country to this American. As is Europe. As is, regrettably, much of the U.S.
😂 all you have to do is look at the people spouting this retarded mantra to answer this question immediately and permanently. FUCK. NO.
Depends on who Our is referring to.
Unity is