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This week, it’s our good pal Jonah Goldberg for the full hour to talk about his new book, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy (yes, you MUST buy it!). We delve into the book’s argument, the lineage of the title, and what can be done in terms of suicide prevention. It’s a fantastic conversation. Also, Rob’s in Paris and will there be peace in our time on the Korean Peninsula? Mon dieu!
Music from this week’s show: Suicide Is Painless by Ania
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HERE I WILL TEE MYSELF UP.
“The production of dead burnt up animals for food consumes too many resources”
Yeah, but they taste so fine!
Just finished the book. Spectacular. It is a magnum opus. @jonahgoldberg has laid down a marker for himself as a truly important public intellectual. This deserves to be read by everybody.
I thought he had managed that with Liberal Fascism and took it further with his second. But I’ll take that as a strong endorsement.
No mention of race realism. How does a community pass on the lessons of its history when so many of the young people in the grade and high schools are of foreign ethnic groups?
Sorry, not sure I understand your point. What does race realism mean? He certainly talks about the assimilation issue in the book.
the interview focused on the West killing itself by not passing on the lessons and traditions of its culture. Since there are so many immigrants, 50% of the school age population, even assimilation can contribute to the fall of the West. Reason being assimilation can be a two way street. The native born can assimilate the culture of the larger immigrant populations.
Just do not see how the topic of culture can be discussed without being realistic about the differences between ethnic groups.
I still don’t know what race realism means.
All I can do is give you a couple of relevant quotes on assimilation.
”the rest of the melting-pot formula is breaking down in three ways. First, we are now taught that the government should give special preferences to some groups. Second, as a cultural imperative, we are increasingly told that we should judge people based upon the group they belong to. Assimilation is now considered a dirty word. And last, we are taught that there is no escaping from our group identity. Multiculturalism and identity politics ideologies contain within them myriad contradictions and inconsistencies, but as a broad generalization it is impossible to deny that our culture is shot through with an obsession with race, gender, and ethnic essentialness.”
…
”For instance, it is a settled fact of social science that bilingual education hampers English learning and assimilation. 40 But for a politician to say so is to invite charges of racism or “insensitivity” from the anointed representatives of the “Hispanic community.” What better way to prevent assimilation than to foreclose debate on the matter by simply declaring assimilation bigoted? No doubt many advocates believe it, but it’s no coincidence that the bureaucrats and educators invested in the business of bilingual education benefit from censoring any competing point of view.”
Do not listen to this or this.
Ok. Since you told me not to, I won’t.
There’s a difference between “culture” and “race.” Most on the right would acknowledge the importance of assimilating immigrant populations into American culture and values, but the use of the term “race realism” to refer to that phenomena seems odd and, if cultural assimilation is all it’s intended to mean, unnecessarily inflammatory.