Tag: decline and fall

The decline of entrepreneurship in America

The media is beginning to notice that there are fewer and fewer startups in the USA every year:

If you look at what’s happened in big cities around the U.S. in recent years, it’s easy to think we’re living in Startup Nation. Thanks to the plummeting cost and increased availability of digital tools, as well as greater access to early-stage funding, we’ve seen what the Economist has called a “Cambrian moment,” with digital startups “bubbling up in an astonishing variety of services and products.” The number of companies in Silicon Valley that got seed funding from investors, for instance, more than doubled between 2007 and 2012. Venture capital funding in the U.S. over the last five years has totaled a remarkable $238 billion, and 200 companies today are so-called unicorns, privately valued at more than a billion dollars each.

Meanwhile, though, a host of economic researchers have been telling a much bleaker story: American entrepreneurship is actually on the decline, and has been for decades. As the economists Ian Hathaway and Robert Litan documented in a 2014 Brookings Institution paper, the percentage of U.S. firms that were less than a year old fell by almost half between 1978 and 2011, declining precipitously during the recession of 2007-’09 with only a slow recovery after. According to the Commerce Department, the number of new businesses started by Americans has fallen sharply since 2000, and so too has the percentage of American workers working for companies that are less than a year old. Indeed, in 2013 Americans started fewer businesses than they did in 1980, when the country’s population was much smaller. This decline isn’t just due to the aging of the U.S. population—Americans of all ages just seem less likely to open new businesses than they once were. And, as Hathaway and Litan put it, the decline “has been documented across a broad range of sectors in the U.S. economy, even in high-tech.”

Speaking as a successful entrepreneur who left the country, who is the son of a very successful entrepreneur who is presently in prison, it’s not exactly difficult to understand why Americans are considerably less inclined and less able to start businesses than they were 36 years ago.

  1. The rapacious and criminal tax agencies. You would probably not believe the shenanigans and outright lies these agents habitually engage in if you did not see it in black-and-white documents right in front of you. Even those who think my father merited an amount of jail time for his actions are aghast when they find out what actually happened, and how absurdly egregious the behavior of the various agencies was.
  2. The increasing regulatory and reporting burden. Why go to the effort of building up a company when doing so is the equivalent of painting a big red target on your chest? As one of my entrepreneurial friends said after shutting down his company and taking a job for a big tech firm, “it’s so nice not having to deal with all that shit anymore.” In the USA, self-employment often feels more like working for the government as a paper-pusher. Just trying to get your head around why part-time external contractors who are clearly not your employees must be treated as employees for various compliance purposes is enough to give anyone a headache.
  3. The criminalization of commerce. These days, it’s more work to file the paperwork required to get paid by a big corporation than it is to do the work itself.
  4. The dumbing-down of the populace. Thanks to post-1965 immigration, Americans are 4-6 IQ points less intelligent than they were back in 1980. Less intelligent people are less inclined to start jobs.
  5. Emigration. Many of the American expats I meet around the world are highly intelligent and entrepreneurial. Few of them have any desire or intention to return to the USA. This is a fairly small group of people, but they are a statistically significant percentage of the entrepreneurial class.
  6. International competition. The Internet and semi-free trade means that one no longer needs to live in the USA to have access to its markets. So, would-be American entrepreneurs are much more likely to be beaten to the punch by foreign entrepreneurs exploiting American markets than was the case in 1980.
  7. The politicization of culture. Why start, say, a bakery, if you know you’re going to be forced to choose between being sued into oblivion and violating your conscience as well as your right to free association?
That being said, the situation isn’t much better elsewhere. The worse the global economy gets, the more desperate the various governments are for tax revenue, and the more intensely they go tax-hunting among the successful entrepreneurial class. The first country to offer legal protection and operational assistance to the international entrepreneurs being preyed on in this manner is going to do very well indeed, and do so at the expense of the other countries.

Just wait, Germany

I don’t think the German leadership has yet understood the lesson of #Brexit:

German Leadership Aghast at a Brexit It Helped Cause

Germans – especially German politicians – are waking up this morning to the Brexit reality, and their initial reactions are predictable.  Shock appears to be the overwhelming emotion, followed closely by sadness, anger, and then subdued panic.

The Social Democratic Party, a partner in the governing black-red coalition, has called for an emergency session of the Bundestag today.  (One wonders what this would accomplish except perhaps to issue a statement aimed at shoring up EU solidarity in other wavering member states, or maybe just express petulance.)  Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of a “sad day for Europe and Great Britain,” while the leader of the Left faction, Sahra Wagenknecht, used the occasion to lambaste the influence of corporations and lobbyists in Brussels (a non-factor in the British vote, as far as I know).

One of the more thoughtful commentaries today is from Torsten Krauel in the right-of-center Die Welt.  Krauel asks whether German Chancellor Merkel is partially to blame for the Brexit and concludes her asylum policy almost certainly played a major role.  And indeed, the spectacle of Germany unilaterally deciding to change the face and future of the European Union by announcing Berlin had opened the doors to all comers – regardless of the wishes of or the impact this would have on other EU states – has been a powerful symbol of elite disconnect with the concerns of average Europeans and an uncomfortable reminder that Germany has come to dominate the union.  Krauel also points out Dover, the British end of the Channel Tunnel to the continent, voted 60 percent to leave.  Maybe this has something to do with the thousands of North African migrants seeking to storm the tunnel and cross to England?

While loathe to admit it, Germans at some level suspect their country’s role in the discontent in Britain.  Speaking to German friends over the past several years, it’s been difficult not to come away with the sense many view the EU as an extension of Germany policy and as a respectable outlet for German nationalism that has been suppressed since the end of World War II.  A new path to German greatness, if you will, camouflaged by warm and fuzzy words about “Europeaness” and immune to complaints of skeptics, all of whom immediately are labeled as right-wing extremists – the kiss of death in German politics.

For me, one of the takeaways from the referendum is the reminder that people care deeply about things other than pure economic interest.

Imagine how surprised the German elites will be when their own nationalists throw them out of power, and if justice is served, put them on trial for their crimes against the nation.

The distrustful youth

The Pew Center fails to note the significant conclusions in its own poll on trust in government:

Historically, there have been only modest generational differences in trust in government. Over time, the trajectory of these attitudes has been similar across generations.

As noted, young people are slightly more trusting in the federal government than older people. Currently, 25% of Millennials (ages 18-34) say they can trust the federal government just about always or most of the time. That compares with 19% of Gen Xers (35-50), 14% of Boomers (51-69) and 16% of Silents (70-87).

In 2009 and 2010, the differences across generations were somewhat larger: In August 2009, the three-point moving average of trust in the federal government among Millennials was 36%, compared with about 20% across older generations.

In the early 1990s, Gen Xers – whose oldest members were then in their early 20s – expressed somewhat greater trust in government than did Boomers and Silents, but these differences have diminished over time. Similarly, there were, at most, small differences in trust between Boomers and Silents in the 1970s and 1980s. Most important, the steep downward slide in trust in government that occurred in the 1970s was seen among both Boomers and Silents.

Look at the chart to the right. Notice the very steep slide that began in 1965 for the Silents and 1970 for the Baby Boomers. What is relevant is not how a very old Silent or an old Boomer’s opinion compares to a young Millennial’s trust in government, but rather how those opinions compare at similar ages.

The Silents’ trust in government peaked at 82 percent, the Boomers’ at 73 percent. The famously cynical GenXers trust peaked at 58 percent, and the supposedly naive Millennials peaked at 62 percent right in the patriotic aftermath of 9/11. The oldest Baby Boomers were 48 years old before they reached the level of cynicism about government that the Millennials have already reached.

This is particularly significant considering that the Millennials are much more racially mixed, so white Millennials are, developmentally speaking, far more suspicious of government than were white Baby Boomers.

Up to 37,500 views!

I expect you will understand why this announcement by McRapey made me laugh:

My piece earlier this week on Clinton and Sanders blew up a bit, with roughly 75,000 views over two days.

Ah, how the most popular blog in science fiction has fallen. Sad! As one might expect, McRapey concludes that his declining site traffic must mean that blogs, while not quite dead yet, are less important than Facebook and Twitter.

What’s amusing is how McRapey considers roughly 37,500 daily views to be blowing up, whereas the traffic here averaged 67,955 daily views in May and is currently running at a rate of 76,166 views per day in June. Whatever’s traffic is now between one-fourth and one-fifth that of VP, and the ratio is steadily falling. I will not surprised if by this time next year, it is one-tenth.

While he’s correct to echo Mike Cernovich’s observations in stating that Facebook and Twitter tend to be more reliable drivers of short-term link traffic these days, what McRapey fails to understand is that blogs have become online community centers that are capable of supporting a broad range of activities.

Such as, for example, this Jobs Wanted notification, before I forget and it disappears too far down the email list.

  • Hiring: Intermediate/Senior Ruby on Rails developer in the Southeast USA. If you have experience working with clients, APIs and know your way around the rails framework and TDD, contact Vox who will forward me your emails. I’ll respond at which point we can talk specifics. Relocation necessary.

Also, if you are a New Release subscriber, you’ll want to check your email tomorrow. Castalia has two new ebooks launching this month, which does not count the new print and audio editions being released. And as both the Production Editor and I have concluded, one of them is right up there with Awake in the Night Land; it’s definitely one of the best books we have published, and possibly even the best to date.

Something has to give

And somebody has to win. Fred Reed sees interracial war on the way amidst “the Shards of America”:

If Latinos become another hostile racial group, Katie bar the door. We face as part of the larger conflict a tricorn race war of, now, low intensity. This makes no sense as most of all races just want to live in peace, but the civilized inevitably get sucked into hostility started by extremists. White nationalists are spoiling for a fight, as are Black Livists and an indeterminate number of Latino hot-heads.

Latinos are key in what is coming. There are at least 55 million in the US–I suspect the numbers are deliberately understated by the government–and most, being legal, are not going away.

Cracking down appears to be beyond the powers of governments whose politicians will temporize, back away, make polite noises, and hope it doesn’t blow on their watch. If we have Hillary, she will do nothing. It is not clear that Trump could change much, though he would try.

There is a large racial element in the social battleground no matter how much we pretend otherwise.

Race is only a part of the onrushing disaster. America is no longer a country, but a riot of hostile races, sexes, and political extremes, of self-serving politicians and extractive corporations of the extremely rich who have no attachment to the US. The mild competition between Republicans and Democrats of the Fifties has given way to hard Right and weird Left who bitterly hate each other. They are irreconcilable.

Somebody has to win.

If the internal stability of the USA depends upon the dedication of the Hispanic population to altruism, tranquility, and sweet reason, we can safely conclude that it is doomed. Those who value civilization and traditional America are going to have to come to terms with supporting the hard Right; better sooner than later. Remember: it takes two to tango, but it only takes one side to start a war.

With whom are you going to side when it comes? More importantly, with whom are you going to be permitted to side?

And on a not-necessarily-unrelated note, I should mention that Cuckservative is not only newly released in paperback, but is already #1 in Nationalism.

Review: This is a sledgehammer book — rigorous empirical analysis, ruthless, relentless logic, historical depth, fearless, muscular rhetorical challenge — better than anything else I have read in capturing the pathetic cultural surrender that has been underway now for the last fifty years in the USA. “Racism” in the US is now what “imperialism” and “capitalism” were in the decaying Soviet Union, empty incantations designed to confuse a demoralized people and distract them from the treachery and incompetence of their masters. This book puts Vox Day and John Red Eagle in the Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s class of courageous writers documenting the dishonesty and cowardice of our entrenched and corrupted ruling class.

Whom the gods would destroy

They first make mad. John Wright observes that the USA has fully embraced insanity:

The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 116-36 Wednesday to legally demolish the notion of biological sex in favor of “gender identity.” A similar bill passed the Massachusetts Senate last month. Gov. Charlie Baker has already said he’ll sign the bill.

    “The Gender Identity Public Accommodations Bill” (H.4343) provides a three-front advance of transgender “anti-discrimination” laws, reports Conservative Review:

  • It replaces the word “sex” with “gender identity” in multiple areas of Massachusetts law.
  • The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination must amend rules and policies to comply with this shift from biological sex to “gender identity.”
  • It allows people to use the restroom or locker room that matches their gender identity.

Victory brought eye-popping hyperbole from the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Byron Rushing. “We are doing the work the founders of our nation intended for us to do,” said Rushing, “This is a great day for us and we should be very proud.”

My comment: Go to confession, get shrived, set your worldly affairs in order, buy firearms, stock the basement with foodstuffs and fuel.

It is that bad. The keel beam of the ship just broke, we are taking water fore and aft, and the crew are busily pumping water aboard as quickly as can be, the pilot steers toward the reef, the engines are roaring full speed ahead.

Personally, I think the crazier things get, the more egregiously awful they become, the better.  All of this will be necessary to steel the civilizationists for the hard work to come. It is getting more and more difficult for the moderates and apologists and churchians to manufacture specious arguments claiming everything is really just fine and things are getting better all the time.

Even tender-hearted women are rapidly beginning to reach the conclusion that “kill it with fire” is the only solution to the sick society we presently endure.

What can have changed?

The US infrastructure is decaying and local, state, and federal governments all lack the wherewithal to effectively replace it. I wonder what could possibly explain this loss of capability?

Guess what blatant reactionary wrote the following words: “It seems plausible to wonder if government can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, mandate the design of cars, run health insurance exchanges, or set proper sexual harassment policies on college campuses, if it can’t even fix a 232-foot bridge competently.”

Stumped? The answer is Lawrence Summers, secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, presidential senior economic adviser in the Obama administration and, in between, president of Harvard, writing in the Washington Post. For more on the fiasco of the rebuilding of the Larz Anderson Bridge, between Cambridge and Boston’s Allston neighborhood, see another opinion article by Summers in the Boston Globe.

As it happens, I wrote a column myself back in 2010 on how long it was taking to fix the Humpback Bridge, a portion of George Washington Parkway which rises about 30 feet above an inlet of the Potomac. From the top of that bridge you can see the Pentagon, still the world’s largest office building, which was built in 18 months. I’ve had occasion also to write columns on how excellent books by Philip K. Howard, Peter Schuck and John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge which illustrate that, as I put it, “gummit don’t work good.” And I’ve written more recently on the tragic deterioration of the Metro, Washington’s “Great Society Subway.”

So even as we hear from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton how government is going to painlessly provide us with free healthcare, free college and free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (uh, just kidding about the last one), we see all around us how government is unable to do things it could easily do 50, 100 and (think Flint water) 150 years ago. What makes anyone think it can take on additional tasks and perform them satisfactorily? Apparently Summers, lifelong Democrat and frequent advocate of more government spending on infrastructure, is having his doubts.

Interesting. “We see all around us how government is unable to do things it could easily do 50, 100 and 150 years ago.” I wonder what changed 50 years ago? When would that have been, 1966, right?

Now, what happened in 1965?

This is the result of losing a mere 4-5 IQ points on average. Imagine what the USA is going to look like when the idiocratic average declines another 5 points.

Mailvox: and this is me laughing at you

I always find it interesting to observe human behavior whenever I put up a music post. In addition to those who are locked in time and can’t pull their ossified preferences out of the 60s/70s/80s/90s through which they lived their formative years, I’m always somewhat mystified by those who seem to think that discussing music is some sort of competitive sport.

I mean, if instead of discussing the example at hand, your instinct is to say “you know what is even better!” (link), then how are you ever going to analyze or understand anything at all? I just don’t get that.

But what is probably funniest is those who appear to sincerely believe that they just happened to be between the ages of 14 and 19 when the greatest music in the history of mankind was recorded. Not only that, but even the young appreciate this when exposed for the very first time in their lives to music they have certainly never ever heard before and now vastly prefer it to the songs they listened to before, and continue to listen to afterwards.

No, Virginia, Journey is not the musical pinnacle of the human experience. Neither, I am sorry to inform you, is Led Zeppelin, even if “Stairway to Heaven” was the #1 request on KQRS for the 42nd year in a row this year.

(I have to admit, one of the unexpected pleasures of my life has been Millennials expressing a genuine appreciation for the various musical innovations of the 80s while snorting in derision at the lack of creativity, poor production, and technical inferiority of the Classic Rock that was repeatedly shoved down our Generation X throats by the Baby Boomers. Don’t get me wrong, I like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Carry On, My Wayward Son” as much as the next guy, but music from that era now sounds as technologically dated now as the music from the 1950s did in the 1980s.)

As Bill Simmons wrote of basketball, you can respect the classic BMW for doing what it did first while understanding that the modern car is simply a much better automobile across the board. Anyhow, in response to some of the comments.

Sorry, Vox, you have no musical taste whatsoever.

I appreciate everything from Wagner and Vivaldi to Babymetal and DNCE and I can tell you exactly why in each case. But how can all of that compare to Skynrd? FREEBIRD!

I would like to commend you on not allowing your musical taste to age as you do. Too many continue to listen to what was popular when they were teenagers and it is embarrassing when these people attempt to foist their taste on next generation.

I understand why so many people age out, and it is entirely normal, but I find it absurd to dismiss music simply because it happens to have been recorded after you passed the age of caring intensely about music. And it’s particularly stupid to say “X is just Y” because it’s not true. In fact, quite often, X is musically influenced by Y, and Y not only recognizes that, but appreciates it.

Ironically, musicians are much more catholic in their tastes and generous in their praise than most of their fans are. I’ll never forget hearing Tommy Lee waxing on about what great musicians the guys in Duran Duran were, at a time when every Motley Crue fan would have dismissed them out of hand.

This is a joke right? I mean there is nothing funnier in the world then seeing the millennials victimized by their own sick twisted thinking and philosophy. The first thing I thought of when I heard the lyrics was that a Section 8 negro or illegal immigrants stole his car stereo haha…

It seems many of you fail to understand that the songwriter should be judged on how well he manages to evoke the emotion he is expressing rather than how you feel about the emotions being expressed. The mere fact that so many non-Millennials reacted so badly to the Millennial sense of loss and the desire to return to “the good old days” of childhood demonstrates how powerful the songwriting is.

You can learn a lot about a generation by listening to the music of its youth, and you can learn a lot about the history of that time too. It’s almost heartbreaking now to hear the optimism of the early 90s; I can barely stand to listen to the wonderfully intelligent Jesus Jones song, “Right Here, Right Now”, because now we know that we woke up from history only to get run over by the bus it was driving. We thought that we could move any mountain and that something good was going to happen, and we were so absolutely wrong.

Great song, it sounds like they couldn’t make up their mind what genre
they want to be in, so they went with all of them (emo, rock anthem,
trance).

Even more than that. They can do anything from country to early 80s to techno. Moreover, they know it and are not above musically flexing their muscles to flaunt it.

All these songs I’m hearing are so heartless
Don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless
Honest, there’s a few songs on this record that feel common
I’m in constant confrontation with what I want and what is poppin’
In the industry it seems to me that singles on the radio are currency
My creativity’s only free when I’m playin’ shows

They say stay in your lane, boy, lane ,boy
But we go where we want to

They may not be confident about much, but they are certainly secure in their musical abilities and songwriting.

That singer is a whiny little bitch. I prefer Sabaton when I’m lifting weights in the gym.

And then I eat red meat, raw, and throw down a couple of brewskis before I go out and slay some pussy!

I still say he needs a beatdown. It would straighten out his thinking a lot.

This is backwards. They are already beaten down. That is why they are looking backwards rather than forwards. That is also why they are so offensive to the Baby Boomers, who can’t help but react to their implicit rejection of Boomer assumptions and ideals.

In my view, those of previous generations who dismiss Twenty One Pilots for being quintessentially Millennial are completely missing the point and failing to ask the salient question. Why do they express such a sense of loss? What is it that they are missing, what is the yearning in their generation that they express so vividly? There is a depth there that is absent in the vapid self-absorption of Boomer music as well as in the optimism turned bitter of Gen X music, to say nothing of the superficial posturings of more than three decades worth of the musical dead end that is rap.

They may not have the answers, but they are asking the right questions. And they may not be the fighters, but they will raise them.

The #MilRight is inevitable

Even Rod Dreher, among the cuckiest of cuckservatives, sees that civilization’s hope rests upon the Alt Right.

Middle-class male culture, at least white male culture, doesn’t know how to nurture a healthy masculinity. The middle-class white American church certainly doesn’t. Eventually, the provocations of Social Justice Warriors, especially when they are race-based, is going to empower the militant whites, especially those drawn to pagan masculinity, and they are going to do what the rest of us would not do: Fight. This, because the best — that is, those who want peace, civility, and tolerance — lack all conviction to defend the conditions under which we can have those things against their enemies.

Trump is a vulgar, crass, alpha-male brute. But he doesn’t care what SJWs and liberals say about him. He fights, and sometimes fights as dirty as they do. That’s not nothing. White liberal middle-class society and many bourgeois conservatives have demonized within themselves, collectively and individually, the instinct that would have given them the strength to fight civilization’s enemies on the Left and on the Right.

Forget the cucks, forget the Churchians, forget the equalitarians, forget the Constitutionalists, forget the conservatives, forget the nice people, and forget the tolerant. They are worse than useless; they are the Sarumans who counsel submission and surrender due to their lack of courage and their fear of being called bad things.

The answer to this racist SJW garbage is not to embrace white supremacy! But without a forceful, effective, unambivalent response to the unhinged militant left, sooner or later the forces of white supremacy are going to organize the dispossessed, demoralized, chaotic white rabble, and the SJWs, as well as the Washington elites, aren’t going to know what hit them. God knows I’m not saying I want this to happen, but I think it probably will happen if we continue on this current trajectory. Slouching rough beasts and all that. It’s Weimar America.

The answer isn’t white supremacy because white supremacy simply isn’t true. Whites are not superior, but whites are the only tribe willing and able to maintain Western civilization because they are the only tribe that truly values it. The answer for those who support Western civilization, regardless of sex, color, or religion, is to embrace white tribalism, white separatism, and especially white Christian masculine rule.

Detroit is what happens when white rule is abandoned. The migrant invasion of Europe is what happens when masculine rule is abandoned. And the EU is what happens when Christian rule is abandoned.

The other tribes have been playing “who, whom” for decades. It is time for whites to understand that the rules have changed and begin playing accordingly.

But don’t get too carried away by Dreher’s post. He’s still a cuck. “I would much rather my kids marry Ethiopians who were believing Orthodox Christians than marry fellow white people who aren’t. I really mean that.”

I believe he does. And that’s why he is still a dyscivilizationist.

The rise of the white tribe

David Marcus is about a decade too late, but his observation that the Left and the various non-white American tribes have created a growing white tribal consciousness is correct, even though he foolishly laments it rather than celebrates it:

White people are being asked—or pushed—to take stock of their whiteness and identify with it more. This is a remarkably bad idea. The last thing our society needs is for white people to feel more tribal. The result of this tribalism will not be a catharsis of white identity, improving equality for non-whites. It will be resentment towards being the only tribe not given the special treatment bestowed by victimhood.

A big part of the reason white Americans have been willing to go along with policies that are prejudicial on their face, such as affirmative action, is that they do not view themselves as a tribe. Given the inequality of resources favoring whites in our society, it is a good thing that white people view themselves as the ones without an accent. Should that change, white privilege (whatever one views that to be) will not be eviscerated—it will be entrenched.

All of this comes at a time when the last immigrants from the great wave of white immigration from 1850-1920 have died off. In the past, most whites identified with their European ethnicity: Irish, Italian, German, etc. As white people gravitate away from such identities, many see themselves as a neutral, “non racial” population. The Left criticizes this refusal to see themselves as “white,” but it is far preferable to the alternative: an American white population that views itself as a special-interest group.

There is no “white nationalism” in Europe. The EU was an attempt to create a merely continental consciousness – as opposed to the white racial consciousness of the white nationalists – and it has utterly failed. The various European nationalists consider each other allies against the continental globalists and the Arab and African invaders, of course, but there is no confusing the Soldiers of Odin with UKIP or La Lega Nord. Italian nationalism is very different than German or Swedish nationalism.

However, due to the replacement of European identities with a generic American one, combined with the anti-white tribalism of the blacks, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and other self-identified tribes, a white tribal consciousness has been created. It falls well short of nationalism per se, but it has strong historical roots, as in fact, no other tribe has any historical claim to call itself American.

Let me repeat that: with two partial exceptions, American Indians belonging to Federally-recognized tribes and black slaves, no non-white tribe has any historical claim to be American. Americans are white, and this is a long-established matter of historical and legal record.

The original United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were free white persons of good character.

Moreover, this remained the rule of American citizenship for more than half of the country’s history. As the Supreme Court unanimously declared in 1922 in TAKAO OZAWA v. United States, to be American was to be white.

In all of the naturalization acts from 1790 to 1906 the privilege of naturalization was confined to white persons [260 U.S. 178, 193], although the exact wording of the various statutes was not always the same. If Congress in 1906 desired to alter a rule so well and so long established it may be assumed that its purpose would have been definitely disclosed and its legislation to that end put in unmistakable terms….

If it be assumed that the opinion of the framers was that the only persons who would fall outside the designation ‘white’ were Negroes and Indians, this would go no farther than to demonstrate their lack of sufficient information to enable them to foresee precisely who would be excluded by that term in the subsequent administration of the statute. It is not important in construing their words to consider the extent of their ethnological knowledge or whether they thought that under the statute the only persons who would be denied naturalization would be Negroes and Indians. It is sufficient to ascertain whom they intended to include and having ascertained that it follows, as a necessary corollary, that all others are to be excluded.

Now, you can argue “progress” and “things have changed” and “dual nationalities” and so forth. But that way lies incoherence and madness, to say nothing of the obvious fact that what has changed can be changed again. The simple fact of the matter is that if you are not white, your nationality is not American and you are not part of the posterity for whom the Constitution was written. (Of course, if you are a white immigrant, or descendant of immigrants, you are not part of that posterity either.)

You may be a United States citizen, you may be a resident of the United States, and you may be part-American in the sense that many individuals are part-German or part-Dutch, but you are not an American in any legitimate sense of the word, regardless of what ideas and ideals and propositions you happen to hold in your heart at the moment.

You may now commence the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Do try to keep two things in mind. First, your argument is not with me, it is with history. The facts are what they are. It’s not my problem if you find them uncomfortable. Second, yes, I recognize that I am only part-American and I have absolutely no problem with that.

Tribalism begets tribalism. The rise of white nationalism, and eventually, white separatism, became inevitable once the minority population of the United States rose beyond a modest level. Once whites realize they have become a minority, they will rapidly become every bit as tribal as every other minority competing for wealth and political power. But neither white nationalism nor white separatism are synonymous with white supremacism, and anyone who attempts to equate the former two with the latter is, at best disingenuous.