Realism and toleration

Amy Chua of Yale addresses this idea in "Day of Empire". Her theory was that the most successful global empires, such as Genghis Khan or ancient Rome, were those that allowed for the promotion of talent, regardless of where that talent came from. But, once these empires started setting restrictions to a more select group of people, then they would start to decline. It is an interesting theory, and a very good book, but I am not sure. She may have put the cart before the horse. Did these empires become powerful and prosperous before they allowed diverse talent? And is there a tipping point, when too much diversity yields to greater distrust among different groups?

As an immigrant to the US, I'm mostly in agreement with the "diversity" argument, but it's not so clear cut. Until the 1950's, the US was deeply segregated, and still won WW2, and times were good, the dollar was strong and inflation was low.

A good argument can be made from the perspective of an ordinary individual (as opposed to the restless transnational type) that it's better to forgo the incremental benefits of a slightly better standard of living in favor of cultural continuity and a familiar pace of life.

Bringing in talent, energy, etc., is certainly useful and beneficial, regardless of source, so long as that talent, etc., is also assimilated into the broader culture of the new country/polity/whatever. The Roman model worked very well thanks to the assimilation of 'barbarians' by extending citizenship to those who were willing to fit into the broader Roman culture. Once this stopped with the Goths and other foreign elements being integrated into the legions and the administration in acts of desperation as the Eastern Empire fell apart, so did the cohesiveness of the Roman (or by this time, Byzantine, I guess) military, administration, and perhaps civilization.

By the same token, the US (or any other country for that matter) will benefit immensely by importing as much talent as possible, so long as this talent is all pulling in roughly the same direction - this doesn't mean uniformity, but it does require a general acceptance of the 'small-l' liberal ideals that make the entire process possible.

Professor, your State system is mono-law system, it tries to trap people by showing them the carrot of individual freedoms (individualism) on the cost of their group freedoms which would be manifested by their laws (you amy call this their religion). Your system denies the right to law to groups (which amounts to deny their religion), it assumes one group composed of citizens according to the Mono-law (religion of secularists) structure and assimilate all others to that religion (law). So, what you are actually trying to do is attracting a Jew, styripping him/her from his/her group laws by denying their right to law and replacing their laws with secularist State laws, in other words you are assimilating them to your State religion (laws). Of course through this process those individuals are no more Jew, they are secularists. So, your process of assimilation in fact degenerates those individuals. Of course the assimilation cannot completely eliminate the group instinct of those individual Jews and they find a way to crack your tyrannical system and emerge as the IL. So in the long run your mono-law State is going to be degenerated as a result of the degeneration it inflicted to those groups (which you call the process "assimilation" - happily).

Professor the IL is a serious crack on your tyrannical system, keep concentrating on that, rather than painting rosy pictures for the future of your tyranny;->>

Grand Sen~or.

assimilate talented citizens

You forget that creativity is much more important than talent for the survival of a society and by assimilating individuals, stripping them from their law-bound-groups you also strip them from their creativity, you degenerate them. But, hey! The State doesn't need others' creativity, would she? She is the Universal Creator with her Universal-Laws;->>

Here you go Professor: President Obama calls for "fair-minded abortion debate!", but of course he cannot be fair enough saying "For Christians their abortion laws and for Secularists their abortion laws, neither Christians nor Secularists allowed to impose their abortion laws to each other!". No! there exists one abortion law as it shall be imposed by secularists, because their laws are Jupiter given Universal Laws;->

Untouchable Holy State's exclusive monopoly on law.

Professor, why can't Christians have their own laws?
Why should Christians obey the laws made by Secularists?
How would Secularists like Christians imposing their laws to them?!
Why can't be Christians' laws to Christians, and Secularists' laws to Secularists?

Yeah right! it is too fair, State cannot handle that much fairness;->>

Professor, it looks like Communists were more clever promising;->

"State?! Don't worry about the State! it is just a temporary pain in the butt, dream about the future where there will be no State and no cry!";->>

An empirical test can be conducted by reviewing the behavior of American firms perhaps best in the southern states. Did those states that hired and promoted blacks achieve better performance? The point is a laissez faire economist would argue that a profit maximizing firm should hire the best talent (all things being equal) and if it doesn't the market will punish it as it loses a competitive advantage. A rebuttal of course would be if the discriminated group is small like say in Japan the actual loss of talent due to discrimination would make a negligible impact on performance.

At least Japan doesn't have to worry about affirmative action, unlike America. What does the reality of AA in America say about the meritocratic character of the country? The set-asides programs, the endless suing of companies for `discrimination´, the loss of community cohesion (cf. Putnam)

Those who oppose the current immigration policies choose to focus on illegal immigration because it's the easiest target. The weakest link in the armor, so to speak. They are afraid to frame their objections in ethnic, nativist terms (e.g. "we don't want these people displacing us") because they fear the social ostracism that follows when European-Americans engage in ethnic activism. How different from the earlie 1920s when Americans (both ordinary and elite) were not afraid to further their ethnic interests.

Economic succes correlates heavily with IQ. As the U.S. becomes more Latin-American demographically speaking, it's IQ scores will also look more like those in South America. This does not spell well for American economic prowess.

A final note on Amy Chua. I read her book World on Fire years ago and quite liked it (about market-dominant minorities like Jews and Chinese). However, it was quite apparent to me even back then that she has an ethnic agenda. She claims the ethnic groups mentioned above became succesful because of their superior abilities, yet when she turns to whites in Africa (also a market-dominant minority) then it's all about "racism" and "oppression" instead of quality.Her theory in "Day of Empire" does not surprise me a bit. You have to remember she's a member of an ethnic minority. That likely influences her position. She's not going to advocate policies that would be beneficial to the majority but not beneficial to minorities like herself. Would she feel the same way about mass-immigration "regardless of where that came from" if it would make the Chinese a minority in their own country? America became the most powerful country in the world when it immigration was limited to Northern-Europeans.

All this talk about how "diversity" is so beneficial for the economy, and even a requirement in this 'global age' is such a load of nonsense. Countries like Japan, Korea and China are, of course, highly homogeneous and at the same time massive exporters.

PS I hope this posts stays up a little longer than the other one, professor Walt. Like that one, this post does not contain any rude remarks or threats or insults. It is nothing more than an argument not heard of often, because powerful interest groups wish to exclude it because it threatens their dominance over a specific policy. Does that sound familiar to you and prof. Hearsheimer?

Ed Luttwak makes basically the same point in one of his books, possibly "Turbocapitalism".

Professor Walt's idea may need a few more centuries to be proved correct. However, today, many other factors can permit an intolerant society to be a dominant force in the world. For example, take Muslim countries' attitudes towards women. According to Walt's thesis, their repression and marginalization of half of their talent pool should doom them to a lack of power in international affairs. However, due to their possession of the world's most coveted resource, countries like Saudi Arabia buck Walt's thesis and command great respect and deference. It would be nice if Walt was correct, but other factors come into play.

"In effect, what I'm suggesting is that from a realist perspective, there is a strong case for "small-l" liberal toleration...."

Can you expound on what you mean by this?

Israel is gay friendly. How do you like them apples?

In the professor's last paragraph he mentioned "sexual preference"; I'm confident he meant sexual orientation so as not to imply people have an active choice in their sexuality.

Mr. Walt does here what many preaching the religion of "tolerance" do. He picks a topic ("attracting talent" in this case), attaches to it an unrelated cause of choice (homosexuality in this case), and shows how they are really related even though you didn't think they were. That established he then attempts to show how those who are intolerent of The Cause will have a negative impact on society.

The reality is that this is is not about attracting talent and staying competitive. The gay issue is about what sexual preferences we as a society will tolerate as desirable and beneficial.

If you honestly follow through with your premise Mr. Walt then you would have to say we should abandon any form of regulation or laws that make people uncomfortable being in the US for fear of losing "talent." But the truth is that we have laws (including immigration laws) that define our values and, yes, discriminate against those who don't share those values. We as a society can collectively decide to change our values, but the idea that a society that descriminates in favor of one thing or against another is somehow backward or self-limiting is just nonesense. Negative discrimination can certainly be demonstrated in many cases, and should be tamped down when it is found. But intolerence is not a priori negative. A country of laws is by nature a country of values and is therefore discriminating about what is good and what is bad. This is a positive thing.

I'm really getting tired of the assumption by many in recent years that homosexuality is obviously and unequivocally good for society and that anyone who thinks differently or who doesn't vigorously support gay rights must be a bigot.

There are many sexual preferences that society has decided are not beneficial and that should not be condoned. And like it or not there are many smart, talented people who participate in sexual behavior not generally accepted by society. For most of human history homosexuality was in that same category. I think it's about time we stop getting pop sociology and name calling from the pro-gay movement and start getting some cogent arguments for why all of a sudden we need to bring homosexuality into the fold of acceptible sexual preference. The burden of proof is on you.

Unlike race, which is a benign characteristic, homosexuality implies homosexual "behavior". The demand for 'tolerance' effectively absolves them of moral culpability for their behavior. Its as if the gay movement says: "nevermind what we do, just...."

As MLK once said, he dreamed that one day people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. If one removes benign characteristics, then one seeking to judge the 'content of the character' has to examine the actions which compose the content. The gay lifestyle has resorted to preAIDS proportions in terms of frequency of anonymous unprotected sexual encounters. In many cities, the homosexual lifestyle is predominately a sexually promiscuous one with sex clubs, hook up spots, and so forth.

While there may be conservative gays, the very nature of the lifestyle is engaging in activity against the norm, against the traditional values of the majority.

The problem today in America is not the rigidity of moral standards. On the contrary, the fractionalization of moral standards has led to numerous sociological ailments which are daunting and threatening, such as the over 60% single parent households, decline in households with married couples, decline in high school graduation of black and latino males to less than 50%, 100,000 sexual assaults, the rise in HIV spread amongst black women, 25% of college women experience rape or attempted rape, 1 in 6 women experience sexual assault or attempted assault.

Your atrticle assumes all immigration to America has been voluntary. African American slaves were forced here and did not voluntarily come here for the economic opportunities or melting pot culture. Nor does it take into account Native Americans who were forced to deal with the immigrants who founded this country and then forced them onto reservations and attempted to wipe them out. The constructed idea that America is a melting pot culture where everyone just melds together in harmony is a historically perpetuated myth not a relaity.

I would imagine the selective effect of cosmopolitanism on state survival would increase over time as wealth and technology became more important for successful war marking. If you look at Athens and Sparta - the cosmopolitan Athens was defeated by the culturally conservative Sparta.

More recently, however, one has to only look at how the United States and Britain took in the many scientific refugees from Hitler's Europe - victims of Nazi anti-Semitism - and the atomic weapons they helped create to see the material value of liberal cosmopolitanism.

Interesting though... doesn't this suggest that Marx was ultimately correct in his theory of history? Over time, more liberal societies will simply amass more material power than non-liberal societies and so, ultimately, will crush them or force them to adapt liberalism in order to survive.