East Asia

The homogenization of America, and the Americanization of Europe and East Asia

Brandon Christensen Culture, Current Events , , , , , ,

Richard Hanania is trying too hard:

Meh. This is not good evidence that American society is fragmenting. In fact, I’d say Hanania has got it backwards: politics is fragmenting despite the ongoing homogenization of culture.

Hanania is pushing this narrative of cultural fragmentation because it aligns with his view of “decentralized order.” Many libertarians in the United States continue to try to maintain an uneasy peace with Leftists by paying strong tribute to one of the Left’s most endearing values: multiculturalism/identity politics. Libertarians like Hanania think that by showing how markets and decentralized orders enhance multicultural societies, they are making inroads with the Left, or at least maintaining that aforementioned uneasy peace. They’re not wrong, and I’ve done this myself, but when you start fishing for evidence it’s time to rethink your priors, and this is what Hanania does by trying to celebrate cultural fragmentation using online media preferences.

Hanania and others who do this have another motive besides maintaining peace with the Left. They like to use the harmoniousness of multicultural markets to show just how dysfunctional government is. They will contrast harmonious markets with the heavy-handedness of government. “Politics,” these libertarians claim, is holding market-based social harmony back, and in a big way.

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The problem with this narrative is that American society is more homogenous than ever before. This is the cold, hard truth, and it’s great news. I can travel from Waco, Texas to Chicago, Illinois and not see anything along the way that I can’t find in Waco. Compare this experience with an American traveling from, say, Provo, Utah in 1960 to Selma, Alabama. There were no “colored” drinking fountains in Provo in 1960. In fact, there probably weren’t any black folks period in Provo in 1960!

Now compare my travel experience from Waco to Chicago with that of somebody traveling from Albany, New York in 1860 to, say, Atlanta, Georgia. One of these places had slaves. Culture shock, from one part of the republic to another.

This doesn’t mean that American society is becoming more conformist, or that there is less cultural diversity, it just means that there is now a set of norms and values that almost all Americans — the vast, vast majority – tacitly agree upon. This is great news!

It’s not just the integration of black folks into mainstream American society that’s great. Immigrants are still assimilating, and after 2 generations they’re as American as apple pie. All of them. There’s not a single immigrant group that hasn’t been able to Americanize. Yes, there’s cultural diversity, especially once you get into the nitty-gritty of “local culture,” but there’s also a total homogenization that’s happened. Again, this is a good thing. This means that America is way more libertarian than you’d think.

It’s not just American culture that has homogenized, either. The people and places that have been allied with, or occupied by, America since the end of World War II have become Americanized. American culture is all-encompassing, including politics. In Europe and Israel, the Americanization is so robust that American media personalities such as Tucker Carlson can give major policy speeches in places like Budapest and small-time rappers from places like Memphis, Tennessee can perform in front of huge Tel Aviv crowds.

The NFL now plays regular season games in Germany and England. Major League Baseball clubs play regular season games in South Korea and Japan. The World Cup will be here, again, in 2026. UEFA is talking about hosting a Champion’s League final in the United States. Those are just examples of the major sports that were once viewed as regional peculiarities by allies on the other side of the ocean. Think about food. And, again, music. And books, and X, and research, and Netflix, and Disneyland. And, as Tucker’s speech in Budapest shows, politics. Local culture has persisted, but so too has the cultural homogenization of places enjoying the protection of the US military.

This is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing!

So what’s the problem? Only the US is experiencing continued economic and demographic growth. Our allies are dying off, and it’s because of their political systems. Demagogues in these countries exploit the Americanization of their societies in order to enact counterproductive policies that seek to revert liberty. You know where I’m going with this, right? Demagogues in the 13 American colonies also sought to extinguish liberty in the name of the local. To bring them to heel, the colonies federated.

We can, and must, do the same thing with our allies today. It’s time to start thinking about ways to help Europe and East Asia (and anyone else who wants to join) federate with us under the constitution.

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Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. That brutal uncivilizer of nations (pdf) Jens Bartelson, CAL
  2. “[…] the Taliban, who have long made international recognition and legitimacy a priority.“
  3. The end of the interstate system (pdf) Giovanni Arrighi, JW-SR
  4. Habsburgs, Ottomans, and British anti-slavers (pdf) Allison Frank, AHR

Eye Candy: Japanese anti-Russian propaganda

Brandon Christensen History , , , , ,

NOL map Japanese anti-Russia
Click here to zoom.

This dates from the late 19th or early 20th century. The Japanese won the Russo-Japanese War, but a quick glance at the casualties suggests it was more a pyrrhic victory for the Japanese.

Porn Preferences in China

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , ,

I’ve always said you can tell a lot about a culture by their sexual mores (Montesquieu would agree!). From Shanghaiist:

That Japanese porn, both gay and straight, is more popular than anything else is perhaps not surprising. Very little pornography is produced within mainland China (though some is), and China’s obsession with AV stars is well known. What’s interesting is the racial homogeneity of the top 10. Chinese porn watchers don’t appear to be very interested in anyone not of asian heritage, a mild xenophobia that’s shared with Korea and Japan, both of which also prefer to watch asians getting fucked or doing the fucking.

Pardon their French. There is more:

Of China’s neighbours, only India and Kazakhstan search for members of other races getting their sex on.

Do read the whole thing. There is a link at the end to a Buzzfeed article showing the top porn searches for all countries.

North Korea’s “Artificial Earthquake”: What is to be Done?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Foreign policy has been awfully quiet these days. President Obama has been murdering people left and right on a whim, and nobody in Washington seems to care. You can imagine what the reaction would be in Washington if a Republican had been the one flaunting the rule of law. The Economist has a good article on this development if anyone is interested.

One newsworthy item that concerns American foreign policy has been centered on the Korean peninsula, a place that the United States first became involved militarily during the 1950’s. Given that our government is currently mired in two foreign occupations at the peripheries of the Islamic world (Afghanistan and the Balkans) as well as being embroiled in conflicts along the Sahel (thanks to President Obama’s attacks on the Libyan state), one should naturally be curious as to why the current affairs of the Korean peninsula are of interest to the United States government.

To make a long story short, the US government currently has some 50,000 troops stationed along the border of the North-South divide (drawn up in the 1950’s after a devastating war was fought between communist and conservative factions within Korea, China, and the United States), and has an alliance with the South that guarantees military help in case of a war with the communist North. The later state is actively attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

As a rule, I think it is appropriate that when citizens of a republic hear about other nations and events, the subject matter ought to revolve around how beautiful the geography of a said nation is, or how beautiful the women are, or how bad the food is, or which team won the national championship, and in which sport. That American citizens are hearing about a possible escalation of military tension in the region is, by itself, not a bad thing nor a surprising thing, but when our military and our tax dollars are suddenly involved in the escalation itself, then American citizens have ample cause to be worried, angry, and tense. These are not qualities that are often sought out by individuals on a daily basis, and when a government that claims to be republican in nature begins to cause these said psychological factors within it’s borders, then citizens ought to question the supposed republicanism of their government. Continue reading →