Opinion of the destruction and annihilation of culture

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

While I was at work yesterday, I contemplated BRTD's point: that "protection of culture" was traditionally a conservative issue. My "conclusion" was that, under traditional political circumstances (this even going back to friggin' Cato) conservatism had supported the protection of whatever nation's culture and general identity. What liberalism sought was, in a sense, the death of culture as a barrier between humans--free trade, immigration; this extends, in a sense, to even modern international relations theory. It would only be with, let's call it, the evolution of liberalism that a third stance developed between the original two (conservatism's view of culture as both a weapon and as an institution to be protected, and liberalism's desire to confound culture's influence). This third stance would mirror conservatism's view of culture's power and importance while seeking to use it towards different ends: the protection of immigrant groups and indigenous peoples, for example. Instead of there being one supreme culture that the nation must protect, there were a million of these actors that deserved an amount of equality with the host, dominant, white, European culture. I've gotta get to work in a few minutes, and this was much more eloquent in my head when I thought it up.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

On my drive back home, I tried to develop this line of thought further. Conservatives, at least perhaps up until the rise of neoconservatism, held that not only was "our" (the "we" being whomever) culture sacred and in need of protection, but also that it was not transplantable. Culture arose organically, it was argued, and it was useless to attempt to bring aspects of it to others (the irony being that among those cultural institutions safeguarded by conservatives in the West were originally liberal triumphs). The liberal belief was that what some might call an aspect of culture, such as democracy, could, in fact, be instituted in new lands. After all, humans were adaptable, and the spirit or history of a people was not genetic! The central ironies of thought here were:
A. While conservatives considered our own culture vulnerable, other cultures were resilient.
B. While conservatives considered culture "natural", it must still nevertheless be upheld and reinforced by rule of law.
C. While liberals considered culture easily transferable, they did not consider that aspects of other cultures might undermine our own.

Of course, since the rise of right-wing liberalism and neoconservatism in the GOP, many original philosophical assumptions have been abandoned. We can transfer our beliefs to the Near East; cultural institutions are not something that need to be protected (I'm imagining Maggie Thatcher's public ambivalence about the rise of divorce in the UK); laborers in other countries are considered "equal" to workers in our own country to such that it matters not whether one is employed or the other; and so on. The GOP uses both "traditional" aspects of conservatism--"takin' er jobs!" "OMG China!"--along with newer stances--"We can bring democracy to every country!" "Your ability to be left alone is the most important governing priority!"--in its rhetoric to piece together a nominally right-wing coalition.

As for the "illiberal" left--ranging anywhere from paleo-liberals to modern day "SJW's"--[insert attempt at explanatory paragraph].

This was probably all said in a freshman-level political theory reader already and is in no way original. Just trying to piece this together.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

You're an idiot. We are standing up against it because these people deserve to not have their culture trampled upon.

Their culture will be destroyed the CORRECT way if they're allowed in, by assimilation. Not the way Trump and other bigots want to destroy it.

F#cking Leninists.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

My head is filled with images of ethnics in Russia's Near Abroad being shipped across the Soviet Union, Armenian churches being destroyed, and First Order ships setting villages ablaze in The Force Awakens.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

To get an idea of what I mean, there's a party in Spain that actually supports what I call for, it's a shame they are so right wing economically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_(Spanish_political_party)

Link doesn't work, but it's not hard to imagine why this would be like this.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

"The bourgeoisie...has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade... The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge."<sup>1

1. Marx, K & Engels, F. (1848). The Communist Manifesto</sup>

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Not that an individualist view of culture is, in-and-of-itself, in context, bad, but I'd like to offer that very few national traditions, and sense of independence, and collective identities around which people rally 'round to resist transnational tyranny, would have been destroyed had his view been adopted in the appropriate circumstances. It's honestly distressing to see BRTD glorify those same processes that, applied at the macro-level, resulted in the rise of various nationalist and totalitarian ideologies. Reminded of lines from a Niall Ferguson (spelling!?) book whereby he reminds us that Communist attempts to dissolve culture proved futile, and that 1991 represented not the end of history, but rather its resumption. God Help Us All. #RIP.

-Cathcon