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Entry: Global Hybrids Go Home Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/global_hybrids_go_home#25853 Post contents: The discussion above is (1) ignorant of history, (2) ignorant of the spiritual side of man, (3) and ignorant of economic reality. #3 has been a weak point among so-called "conservatives" (but see Burke's <i>Thoughts in Time of Scarcity</i>), but ignorance of ## 1 & 2, strong points for real conservatives, proves that this website and its authors are not conservative at all. 1. As to the history, Gringoland has always been a collection of cultures -- and by culture I mean an ethnos with folkways. My Borderer/Backcountry ("Scots Irish") ancestors fought bitterly against the New England Puritans, the Delaware Valley Quakers and Pietists, and the Tidewater Cavaliers and Sand Hill Scottish Highlanders. But for Hadar, Havers, Roach, Piatik et al. Shay's Rebellion, The Whiskey Rebellion, and the Regulators are probably the names of villages in China. The issue is just where a culture's border is, the line between who belongs and who doesn't and where one is supposed to assimilate. The Borderer Backcountrymen? Piedmont Carolina? North Carolina? SE Gringoland? The whole of Dixie? The whole of Lincoln's forced country? Western Civilization (thus including Hispanics)? The world? Aside: folkways can be shared without losing one's own folkways. 2. The spiritual side of man is also ignored and is replaced with the above mentioned writers' xenophobia and nativism and the corresponding Chinese Exclusion Act, the New Orleans lynching of Italians, NINA signs, quotas to keep Jews out of Harvand, and the Smoot-Hawley tariff. It is a fact, and one that real conservatives need to emphasize, that the local community, when its folk are attached to it, produces strong, deeper, and more stable personalities, whereas the cosmopolitan is often a man with the depth of a pizza pie pan. "Five miles wide, one inch deep". This is the real danger of cosmopolitanism, ignored above. 3. And the Economic: Like it or not, the market is a world market. To go back to nothing but a local or "national" economic is not only economic Luddite-ism, but also a recipe for economic collapse and destitution. And the world market mandates that entrepreneur know what people in other countries might want to buy. And that means familiarity with other cultures. And it also means learning some foreign languages and hiring people for other cultures. So the real dilemma is that for spiritual souls we need localism, and for full bellies we need cosmopolitanism. The dilemma was resolved, In fact, in the past in certain localities whose good burghers could be both fiercely loyal to their localities and still trade in a world market: places like Ghent, Brugge, Antwerp, Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. I suspect India will follow suit. Sent at: 2008 07 20