Heinlein, National Borders, Liberty and the American Republic

Folks,

I received this reply to my post on Heinlein's "The Republic will always have need for heroes.":


Anonymous:

Heinlein didn't study the game theory on this one. Valuing a group of 30 of your own genetic kin more than yourself is 'behavior that tends towards survival'. Valuing a group of 300 million more than yourself does not have the same payoff in genetics or social networks. Not even close.

Please consider the "race baiting whigger" post and the Heinlein essay together, and see how they contradict one another. In these large group scenarios, what's the strategy difference between a "racial division" and a "national border"? Both are merely yard lines and jersey colors on a game field whose rules and goalposts are set by Socialists.

Truly liberty, true lack of "racism", means no national borders, no green cards, no immigration control. It also means none of this silly loyalty to the State's standing army that Heinlein is selling.

I'm being hammered right now by THE Deadline on Absolved, and so I sent this on to my intellectual brother for his comment and analysis. Here it is. I couldn't do better.

MBV
III


Mike:

It is an argument by false analogy. “…what's the strategy difference between a "racial division" and a "national border"?” Truly liberty, true lack of "racism", means no national borders, no green cards, no immigration control. It also means none of this silly loyalty to the State's standing army that Heinlein is selling.”

I think I understand the distinction the commenter is making, but the argument fails the test of history, as well as conflating different criteria.

Short answer: Just because you are not an advocate of racist group identity doesn’t mean that you are necessarily required to advocate or adhere to international socialist collectivism, such as the “no borders, no green cards, no immigration control” crowd would have you assume.

Long answer: First, Heinlein was an evolutionist and did not adhere to the Natural Law theory, so for him, “behavior that trends towards [group] survival” defines both ethics and normative behavior. That said, Heinlein was also a patriot – an adherent to American Exceptionalism. The key here is defining the group. In his day it was easier as he did not have to contend with the post-modernist destruction of Western civilization…. Heinlein was loyal to family, to community, and ultimately, to the United States of America, as the defining group worthy of [his] sacrifice to ensure [‘group’]survival – his normative ethical principle requiring action (think ‘duty’). Funny, although a non-believer, his normative ethic exactly comports to the very Christian ideas of duty and sacrifice. His loyalty and duty were not to a race, but to an idea. Heinlein was not a racist (so far as I can determine from reading his works – re: Farnham’s Freehold, specifically).

But the key is defining the ‘group.’ Whereas the millennial ideal may be a society wherein people aren’t affected by boundaries and there are no longer nation-states, the historical reality is different. The assumption that people’s focus of action should be global or international is deeply wrong. The reality is that human societies always display two characteristics: humans are tribal (or call it ‘particularism’), identifying with some cultural or ethnic group - of which they have something in common beyond mere ‘humanness’; and, second, mankind is flawed (selfish in a state of economic scarcity; sin-nature – both explain it), so even if the ideal would posit that there ought to be no nation-states or borders or different groups owning our loyalty and sacrifice – it doesn’t work out. Although I would agree that the current idea that humanity can get past nation-states is a “game field whose rules and goalposts are set by Socialists.” Of course that is true – it is the very essence of Marxism!

True liberty is resolved within a culture that adheres to the Natural Law. Western Civilization has codified that fairly well through the amalgam of British Constitutionalism, leavened by the Judeo-Christian ethic, the Saxon Common-law, and the Hebrew law code, with a smattering of Greco-Roman (mostly ‘how not to’) influence and a little bit of the Enlightenment. We cannot experience “true Liberty” while on this pre-millennial earth in either some anarchic state of ‘self’ or in some international, collectivist experiment in mass –leveling. The first leads to narcissistic debauchery, the second to serfdom, penury and slavery – in everything but name.

But let us get back to the phrase “some cultural or ethical group, of which they have something in common” beyond the mere fact that they are people… The important fact is that civilizations have a specific qualities, evidenced by the development of a recognizable, distinct culture. We naturally adhere to that culture. We do not have the same loyalty, and therefore the same sense of duty or obligation, to other cultures… particularly to any racist culture (la Raza, Black nationalism), or to any manifestation of statist collectivism, by whatever form. So when the internationalists, collectivists and statists argue that I am not ‘moral’ because I adhere to “language, border, and culture” as a defining characteristic to determine the outer bounds of my moral, self-sacrificing action, they are on the wrong-side of history. Some young, vibrant culture will rise up (militant Islam; xenophobic Chinese nationalism; even possibly revanchist Russian nationalism, …) and kick them in the teeth.

Western Civilization and, more specifically, traditional American Exceptionalism are worth identifying with and dying for. Like Heinlein, I am proud to offer up my unworthy efforts in their defense. Cultures based on brown, black, white or yellow racism are not; neither is the statist collectivist ideal.