Originally published at: The State Department Published A Substack Manifesto On ‘Western Civilizational Heritage’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo
The case against “mass migration” and in favor of “Western heritage” sharply echoes the ideology of many extremist and even white nationalist groups.
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If you ever wondered what America would have looked like if the Confederacy won the Civil War, wonder no more.
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“Embracing Christian nationalism, therefore, results in a propensity toward consequentialism, where the ends justify the means. Half-truths, shady practices, and authoritarian measures, if in service to realizing a more “Christian” nation, are deemed necessary to ensure the “right” group stays in power.”
― Andrew L Whitehead, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
“Jesus calls us to be a light, not a wildfire.”
― Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church
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I’m a retired but still scholarly active classicist. I should be all for this, right? But no. The “West” and “Western Civilization”, whatever the hell that is, was the product of too many threads that entered from the South and East, from China and India to Persia and Ethiopia. People who are adamant about their resistance to this most obvious of facts (Bonjour Victor David Hanson!), are simply willfully ignorant.
The Greek kore? Came from Egypt. The Gothic arch? Arabian. Algebra too. Moveable type that enabled the Reformation? Chinese. The infusion of Greek learning into the ignorant Latin West? Look to Baghdad, then to Arab Spain. Frescoes? Came to Crete from Egypt. Sailing technology? Also Arabic.
As for the values of Greece and Rome, I would not want to have been a part of either society. The willful brutality and rapaciousness of the Romans, the almost constant state of rage among the Greeks one against the other and their built in prejudices . . . you are welcome to them.
Particularly risible is the notion that the West is the sole source for “virtue, freedom, and human flourishing” . . . one wonders what was virtuous about the systematic sexual abuse of women and children in Greece or the serial mistresses of the French kings, what was free about the institution of first slavery in Greece and Rome then serfdom in pre-modern Europe, and what was flourishing about the Roman Empire (urbanization was counter-intuitively a detriment to human health) or Medieval Europe. Good grief.
Yes there is a grand patrimony of art, literature, music, but it’s horribly complicated, the result of many threads. The State Department seems determined to find a great way to make history reductive and absolutely dull, rather than the complicated discipline it is, which helps us understand our place in the story of humanity for good and ill . . . .
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That determination to bowdlerize and mythologize history seems to be a trademark of authoritarians: it masks complexity but also serves as a justification for coercive acts; a mask for tyranny. Like inquisitors, these people bury their dark motivations in superficially higher purposes; the kinship with theocracy is not accidental.
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Western civilizational heritage…such as habeas corpus?
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This reads like one of those dystopian novels written in the 1930’s about government takeover.
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“On both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come,” Samson wrote.
In keeping with other posters, for preservation:
These people wanna pick and choose to flatter themselves.
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“Our culture is dominated by passions, of pursuit for the sake of good feelings and satisfaction,” Samson wrote. “Activity is reduced to binge streaming, social media scrolling, face stuffing, and chronic porn watching.”
He says that like it’s a bad thing.
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So, like, dude is a neo-realist when it comes to brown-nosing Stephen Miller.
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"That document reportedly describes the Office of Remigration as a “hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking” aimed at facilitating “interagency coordination” on “removals/repatriations.” It also reportedly details using State Department funds to help advance “the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status.”
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there is “an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself” that includes “digital censorship, mass migration, [and] restrictions on religious freedom.”
Yeah, and if you believe that, I’ve got some great atrocities for you to commit.
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Sounds so much like what Hitler would have done!!!
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Jama and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” the US health secretary said on the Ultimate Human podcast. He accused the publications of being controlled by pharmaceutical companies.
Instead, Kennedy outlined plans to launch government-run journals that would become “the preeminent journals” because National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding would anoint researchers “as a good, legitimate scientist”.
The three publications Kennedy targeted are among the most influential medical journals globally, established in the 19th century and now central to disseminating peer-reviewed medical research worldwide. The Lancet and Jama each report more than 30m annual website visits, while the New England Journal of Medicine claims more than 1 million weekly readers.
Kennedy has similarly accused the agencies he now oversees – including the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – as “sock puppets” for the pharmaceutical industry."
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Riiiight.
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Marco Rubio, the son of immigrants, follows the rethug standard: “I’ve got mine, fuck you. Pull up the ladder boys.”
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I don’t have a “common culture” with you, Donald J. Trump .
Wonder if any non-white people will march in his Big aBominable Birthday Parade.
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“American Moment,” which was founded in 2021, is designed to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy.”
“Designed to identify.”
Vote Democratic. Choose privacy, and get government out of our lives.
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As Gandhi may or may not have said, “That would be an excellent idea.”
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Plus, these idiots promote the ridiculous notion that somehow every thinker “in the West” agreed and promoted the same stuff. …The simplistic notions of intellectual history that they want to shove down everyone’s throat are ludicrous and just a way for them to brarinwash people into following the white-men-currently-on-top as if they somehow embody some transcendent wisdom so everyone else should now absolutely stop thinking and shut up.
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