You are Left or You are Left Behind; Multicultural Cruelty

The following was printed in American Thinker on April 25th, 2012

Dear Conservative Friends,

Below I have reprinted one of the most painful letters I have ever received.  Sandra and I (as all names herein, this is a pseudonym) were the only two people in our doctoral program cohort for three and a half years.  As a team of two, we took the same courses and endured the same abuse from the same professors.  We would eagerly share gossip and insights after every class and commiserate after every intellectual and emotional hurdle.  Through our frequent meals and shared struggles we became very close.  In the letter below, Sandra tells me that her "integrity as a global citizen" demands that she no longer communicate with me.

After reading the letter below, imagine Sandra's openness on a hiring committee!  The domination of academia's multicultural dogma means that Americans cannot discuss Islam, immigration, or many other vital topics without being called "racist."  I have tried in vain to explain that sustaining the West provides the greatest hope for women, LGBT folk, and freedom of conscience; after the West falls, Western "human rights" values will not predominate.  Protecting the West is progressive.  This chilling letter shows the extent to which multiculturalism is a cult and not system of beliefs open to debate.

You should learn from my mistakes. I stepped down as the head of the Brooklyn Tea Party when two of my oldest friends threatened to never speak to me again if I continued to advocate "culturism" as an alternative to multiculturalism.  Even after I stepped down, one of them immediately disowned me.  Another has remained friends, but we no longer discuss politics.  I had suspected that Sandra would not speak with me due to political disagreements.  As the letter conveys, I greatly overestimated the extent to which people's hearts can override indoctrination.

Revenge partially motivates my reprinting of this letter.  I am bitter at what multicultural dogma has done to my nation and to my friendships.  I hope that in years to come, Sandra will look up this letter and see what a horrid "humanitarian" she was, call me, and apologize.  But I also hope that somehow a liberal will read it and realize how personally cruel liberal dogmatism has made him or her.  Then perhaps we might begin to restore some tolerance for a diversity of opinions.  Our nation, our hearts, and some friendships might get rescued in the process.

* * *

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2012 13:42:25 -0400

Subject:

From: Sandra.multiculturalist@msu.edu

To: pressjohn@hotmail.com

Dear John,

Writing to you having finally finished all the candidacy requirements, proposal defense, and am looking forward to a summer of dissertation writing.  It must seem like a lifetime ago when we were in classes together.  Jack Franklin and Adam are still plugging away as well - although neither of them make it to Jefferson Square all that much.  There is new student in the program - Jim Bernstein, so a warped form of the entering class of Fall 2006 lives on.

I received your facebook request and notice of your publication and thought that I should actually write you back rather than avoid the topic.  As you know, it has been my idea that backing away was a gentler form of conflict than direct confrontation, however I have more recently discovered that the other party cannot read my mind and communication would save years of misinterpretation.

So basically I was approaching our relationship on a very familiar level with the thought that I don't have to approve of all that my family members believe and do in order to maintain relationships with them. I was very fond of you and really felt like we were comrades-in-arm having survivor hazing from historians in all shapes and forms -be they real, would be, or historian of education.

In the process of becoming a doctoral candidate my bubble was burst and I began to realize that the relational framework in which I lived in was not enough and I have begun to take responsibility for the political consequences and social implications of my own thoughts and actions.  This shedding of my more provincial self, therefore, lead to a more nuanced look at my associations and actions. I could no longer approve-by-association your public work to rally against building a mosque downtown, your concept of Americanization, your tea-party work, blog postings, etc.  I had to begin to consider our relationship not fraternally but as colleagues.

So frankly I cannot approve of your politics and maintain my own personal integrity as a global citizen.  I apologize if this sounds hurtful as I do have a tender spot for you.  I feel as if we grew up together in a certain sense - bumping into the sharp edges within this rabbit hole called NYU.  I fondly remember the steps we traveled together; I am grateful for the company at the time; and I wish you well in the future.

All my best,

Sandra

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/you_are_left_or_you_are_left_behind_lessons_in_multicultural_cruelty.html#ixzz1t71zjd4P

Frances Kellor, Citizenship, and Me

I just finished writing my newest book, Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Progressive Democracy.  And the end of this book has occasioned some personal philosophical reflecting. You see, Frances Kellor argued that citizenship required political participation.  Personally, she dedicated her life to designing and implementing social reform.  And, I have lived by these precepts too. But my friends just want to have fun.  Is that okay?

In some ways circumstances call me to action.  If your neighbor’s house were on fire, would you not feel compelled to act?  Well, I believe the nation is going up in flames.  Therefore, I am compelled to act.  Kellor’s impoverished upbringing likely led to her making her first two books about defending exploited women.  My sense of emergency and her despair over injustice provide legitimate motives to social action.

Kellor implicitly denigrated domestic life.  She did not overtly say that women should leave their homes.  But she did descry domestic values that focused more on rumors of fidelity than those of tainted milk and immigrant exploitation.  She sought to shake women out of their private worlds via engaging them in basketball.  Women particularly needed to switch from the private to a public orientations to reach their potential and help America reach its.  

Kellor’s private life is partially obscured.  She lived with her girlfriend Mary Dreier for 47 years.  And they took vacations together.  But her private letters rarely mention activism and her activism only implicitly addressed her lesbian romance. Kellor founded the National Urban League and international arbitration, ran the Americanization program, two Presidential campaigns and more. She had no children as she dedicated her life to public service. And for that she deserves our respect.

But people in my life watch T.V. and never mention politics.  And, without engagement I personally feel useless and unimportant.  Perhaps my constant striving for a cause has a touch of insecurity attached to it; I want to matter.  Writing Founding Mother, and so sharing Frances Kellor, gave me a sense of doing something important for the public. With its completion questions about public life and identity come to the fore.

At what point do we, Kellor and I, let people rest and live as private citizens?  Television is passive. But do I consider all who watch it worthless? How much public activism must one mix with their meaningless private consumerism and family raising to be considered a good citizen? 

John Kenneth Press, Ph.D. is the author of Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Participatory Democracy.  www.franceskellor.com has more information.

Open Letter to Pastorius and the Infidel Blogger's Alliance

Infidel Blogger's Alliance, your globalist, open border, neo-con, and yes – multicultural – ways have failed!  As a contributor, I therefore beg you to change the Infidel Blogger’s Alliance Declaration of Principles.  On the upper right of the permanent IBA page we see the following words:

THE PARALLEL GOVERNMENT 
OF THE ENTIRE WORLD

All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same inalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.

By postulating universal values, you ignore the importance of cultural diversity.  You claim that every person in the world holds the same values and only bad governments holds them back. You sound like a multiculturalist as you tell us that all cultures believe in the same values deep down. If that were true, every Muslim who immigrated to the West would embrace the love of liberty everyone, apparently, wants.

How are those open borders based on universality workin’ out for ya?

Your globalist values back our “everyone is an American deep down” foreign policy.  With this ideal we have sunk blood and treasure in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. “Regime change” for democracy in the Muslim world proves the importance of cultural diversity. Thirty years of imposed tolerance in Egypt and it is primed for fundamentalism.

How is that “breaking skulls” to make Muslim nations leftist workin’ out for ya?

Expensive regime change is bankrupting our nation. And when the West goes broke, “human rights” and the universals you believe in will die. China nor the Organization of Islam Conference will protect them. Why are we quoting the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights anyway? To protect “human rights” we have to protect the West with border laws based on our selfish needs.

How is that membership in the U.N. workin’ out for ya?

Rather than universals, the West must embrace its cultural uniqueness. The easiest way to defeat multicultural globalists is to spread ideas that convey the opposite: “Culturism” and “Culturist.”  So here is our new Masthead.  Vote or contribute now!!

PROTECT THE WEST!

The West has a special vision and a right to protect it. We are not an Islamic nation; we are not a world nation; ours is a Judeo-Christian-Enlightenment nation. Embracing culturism, every non-Western nation from China to Mexico to Saudi Arabia acknowledges their traditional majority culture and designs their border laws accordingly.  We too have a right to be culturist.

Sex, Horror, and Enlightenment

E. Michael Jones, of Culture Wars magazine, writes fascinating conspiracy histories.  They show how sexual liberation has been used to undermine our population’s self-control and make them more pliable subjects.  The tawdry details in his escapades through the sexual madness of Kinsey and the Marquis d’ Sade always entertain.

In Monsters from the ID he locates the origins of Horror films and porno in the Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment, in getting rid of God, leaves only pleasure and pain to guide our morals. In this vacuum, figures like Sade see nothing wrong with cruelty.  When people leave the natural family structure, and pleasure guides men, porn arrives.

Mary Shelly’s was ensnared by Percy Shelly and Lord Byron’s incest  laden escapades.  Her mother, the author of the Vindication of the Rights of Women, had also been abandoned with child in the midst of the French Revolution.  It was within the motif of crossing the boundaries that Shelly wrote Frankenstein.

Frankenstein’s picks up where God is abandoned; he gives life.  Science in the absence of man creates a monster.  This monster represents the nightmares that happen when we take God out of the pictures.  He is a child of lightening, science, and madmen; a product of Enlightenment ethics.

Last night I saw Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Met.  Though Mr. Jones does not reference the opera, it perfectly illustrates his point.  Don Giovanni loves 1000s of women.  He relentlessly lies to get them, mocks love and even kills.  His deceits, as Sade’s, are boundless.  To restore order, a ghost of a victim needs to reappear and take him to hell.

Jones’ claim that porn comes out of a pure pleasure / pain moral landscape, was always a bit elusive.  And, as my deeming him a “conspiracy historian” implies, I have not entirely bought his argument.  But Don Giovanni is a horror opera.  The Ghost in a form of a statue that kills the lead, is as frightening as Freddie Kruger.  As such, the opera provided powerful evidence for and illustration of Jones’ thesis.

www.culturism.us

An Open Letter to Mr. Lawrence Auster

Mr. Lawrence Auster publishes the blog View From the Right.  Recently, he stated his basic credo in an article entitled “Why the Truth About Black Dysfunction is So Important.”  As he has many followers, I think it important that I challenge his racist position with a culturist one.  While I applaud his dedication, his racist suppositions set back our shared desire to defeat multiculturalism.

Mr. Auster's writing focuses on the out of proportion level of violent crimes committed by Black people.  And, he documents the double standard in reporting such crimes well.  He argues that the Western belief in racial equality, leads us to conclude that all differences in attainment and violence must reflect white racism.  This guilt over inequality leads us to “denial of the truth of Black anti-White violence, denial of the tyrannical murderous reality of Islam, and unquestioning acceptance of the mass Third-World immigration” destroying our nation.

As a culturist I agree with many of his premises and goals.  Blaming all inequality on the West has caused our guilt and embrace of multiculturalism.  Multiculturalism does cause us to ignore the perils of Islamic immigration and take the blame for the educational and economic achievement gaps between Whites and Asians and other minorities.  But Auster’s racist premise destroys his usefulness.

By replacing his racist view with a culturist view – by swapping out genetic determinism for a cultural explanation – he can actually help right out nation.  His view offends nearly everyone who reads them and exasperates social divides.

Mr. Auster wonders why people chaffe at his “endlessly repeated stories” of “black criminality and failure.”  It is because the vast majority of Black people are wonderful law abiding and productive citizens.  I am certainly not alone in having many Black colleagues with fabulous work ethics whom I respect and Black friends who I love.  As such, his constant smear can only infuriate and alienate the majority of us who have such relationships.

The dysfunction in Black culture, that which leads to crime, is cultural.  It only occurs in certain pockets of the population.  The Black population was not as violent in the 1950s or before that.  In fact, the Black marriage rate was higher than the current rate for Whites in the 1950s.  Crime and divorce are not genetic.  These changes since the 1950s were not caused by genetic mutations.

As people cannot change their genetic make-up, Mr. Auster's racial lens cannot effect any good policy outcomes.  On the other hand, a culturist lens can allow us to have necessary discussions about the cultural roots of social maladies.  The problem now is that our society calls all judgmental distinctions between ethnic groups "racist."  Therefore, as Mr. Auster is, all who discuss such disparities are immediately and completely marginalized.

From a cultural vantage point, we can discuss the dangers of Islam.  With this vantage point we can work to strengthen both Black and White cultures (the falling off of White culture is missed nearly all of Auster's analyses).  And, the overt cultural reference of the word culturist, can help distinguish this hopeful and helpful analysis from the futile and divisive racist one.  Furthermore, the ubiquity of the word multiculturalism can help its opposite, culturism, spread quickly.  I am culturist, not racist.  And, while I appreciate his goal of defeating multiculturalism, Mr. Auster's racist analysis undermines our progress.

 www.culturism.us

Ken Burns' Prohibition Doc and Culturist Corruption

This Ken Burn's documentary ad has appeared all over NYC.  The tag line "How did a nation founded on rights ever go so wrong?" has deep problems.  Here are some questions / debates it invites.

"A nation founded on rights?"  When does Mr. Burns date the founding of our nation?  Many people confuse the founding of our government with the founding of the nation.  Okay, technically we were colonies beforehand.  But, our national character started well before.

I like to date the founding of our nation with either 1607 or 1620.  The Puritans, who landed in 1620, did not set up a system based on rights.  They came here to found a nation purer than any before.  If you were a drunk, the community would lessen your status.  And, they could even take you children away or publicly punish you.

Jamestown started in 1607.  They had a bit of individualism going.  But they quickly discovered, as the Puritans already knew, that individuals are dependent on the community. If people did not stand guard or work, they would be killed by starvation and hostile indians.  Our nation, was not 'founded on rights.

Well what if you take the 1776 date?  Still, 'rights' did not trump all. Many colonies had official religions.  And, the Founding Fathers did not set up a system of anarchy wherein no one had any limits and everyone had a protected right to be anti-social.  We, again, impact each other.  A democracy or republic is not a system of government if it means the community can never define itself or regulate accordingly.

Prohibition had good attributes.  Perhaps a bit of a spike of crime and corruption, now apparently to be sensationalized by Burns, happened.  But drunkenness went down.  Hospital visits due to alcohol, such as poisoning and drunk driving, went down.  Wife battering went down.  Men spending all their family's proceeds went down.  I am certain deaths from drunk driving went down.

Ken Burn's ad shows that he is a terrible historian.  The ad already announces that he will only engage Prohibition as a nightmare. Real historians debate.    But with 'rights' based thought, all impositions become evil.  Responsibility is restraint.  Everyone has a right and the people can make no rules.

If Burns studied history, he'd note that a law such as Prohibition could only happen in a Puritan-based culture.  That would lead him to see that our nation was not simply founded in 1776.  He might read their writing wherein they say that license without responsibility doesn't lead to liberty; it leads to national suicide. But like most modern historians he probably considers the Puritans "so wrong" too for having violated rights.

We need to reclaim our sense of public good when creating values.  We need to recognize the truths the Puritans told us and not just justify our anti-social mores with 'rights talk.'  We cannot simply subsidize irresponsible behavior due to rights.  We need to proudly reinsert our cultural heritage into our legal system.  One must inform the other.

www.culturism.us

Our Debt is Only a Symptom of Cultural Problems

If we do not address culture, the Debt Ceiling debates are meaningless.  Debt is a symptom of our cultural meltdown.  Perhaps that is an overstatement.  But, if we wish to become solvent again, emphasizing cultural solutions will get us farther than emphasizing economic fixes.  Without such culturist discussions we will never pay down the debt and are essentially doomed.

            Economic forces have an impact.  When the Feds helped foment the Great Depression, people lost tremendous amounts of wealth quickly.[i]  This collapse did not happen because of attitudinal change on the part of America’s population.  And one could argue that economic explanations have new relevance as our nation careens into a black hole of debt.  Yet in truth, economic analyses ballooned our debt and culturist analysis provide the only way of permanently reducing our debt.

            We need a culturist analysis to attack inner-city poverty.  But the fear of being called racist has long kept sociologists from discussing this perspective.  Thus government money and social programs enable, rather than expose the economically unsustainable nature of single parent, low education, drug using, prison-esteeming culture.  The truth is, the long ascendancy of economic explanations and fear of looking at culture have not helped alleviate African – American poverty. And no way forward exists but having difficult discussions about cultural contributors to poverty.  

            For full economic recovery, the long dominance of the economic explanation in our schools must end. Multicultural education refuses to make any judgment on cultures.  Bereft of cultural content, schools’ exclusive focus on economics leads them to call for ‘social justice.’  The idea that all inequality must reflect unfairness leads to constant talk of ‘oppression’ in education theory.[ii]  That this economic multicultural perspective promotes anti-social behavior can be seen in the 2011 National Association for Multicultural Education’s choice to have revolutionary terrorist William Ayers as their 2011 keynote speaker.[iii]

            Teaching ghettoized African-American children that they are oppressed and should rebel and that personal responsibility cannot alleviate their class situation, maintains poverty.   That replacing this economic model’s hegemony will improve our economy can be seen in the high number of Asian students excelling in America and the economic productivity of their home countries.[iv]  Thus a culturist approach will allow us to make every ethnic group feel more responsible for their educational and economic success.  Whereas multiculturalism does not consider the potential negative impacts of culture, culturism can show communities – and our country – the way out of poverty.

In making the rational connection between culture and outcomes, by admitting that culture is important and reaffirming that this is not a racial argument, we may also be able to sanely speak about the borders again.  Latinos have grossly higher teen pregnancy rates and lower educational achievement than average Americans.  Muslim immigrants pose a much higher risk of terrorism than Japanese immigrants.  But our fear of discussing culture for fear of being called racist kills such discussions in their cradle. 

Immigration restrictions made on a culturist basis will give all Americans, of every cultural background, a sense of the connection between cultural rectitude and prosperity that has long defined our public character.  Thus, people refusing entitlements out of shame could once again become a proud moment for Americans.  Structural economic interpretations argue against such sentiments.  Adjusting our attitudes towards responsibility, pride, work and entitlements, is the only way politicians can again take us towards fiscal sanity.

Finally, a culturist analysis can even speak to corporate responsibility to our nation.  Businessmen who undermine our borders and send jobs overseas are putting an economic perspective over a cultural perspective.  We have to remind them that they have a responsibility to the nation that raised them.  Furthermore, when all is said and done, international cultural diversity means our American business leaders will not feel comfortable raising their children, living, and retiring in other nations.  This cultural analysis might help them identify with our nation again. 

I do not argue that economic theory is useless.  We need to understand how the Fed's quantitative easing will cause inflation and thus steals from all of us.  And this article has cursorily addressed the horror of jobs going overseas. And we, of course, need to reduce our government spending.  But long-term recovery requires growth.  Cutting spending will require weening from government.  Neither of those can happen if we do not renew our committments to individual responsibility in the name of sustaining our nation. 

Brave academic sociologists such as Orlando Patterson of Harvard have reintroduced culture as an explanation for explaining African-American poverty.[v]  Schools of education need to follow suit.  And our politicians need to stop calling everyone who discusses culture racist.  We can do our part by demanding that culturist explanations for our current problems get aired by using the words culturism and culturist whenever multiculturalists call our nation racist.

---

[i] Brian Domitrovic, Economic Crisis, Then and Now, Lecture at the Hyatt Regency, Indianapolis, IN, 10/10/09 http://www.isi.org/lectures/lectures.aspx?SBy=lecture&SFor=ec90805d-7af8-4adb-a889-2b7f1b60ba79

[ii] Pedagogy & Theater of the Oppressed Conference, http://www.ptoweb.org/

[iii] The National Association for Multicultural Education: Advancing and Advocating for Social Justice and Equality, http://nameorg.org/ 2011 conference

[iv] Educational Attainment in the United States / Race.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#cite_note US_Census_Bureau_report_on_educational_attainment_in_the_United_States.2C_2003-0

[v] Orlando Patterson, “A Poverty of the Mind,” New York Times, Op-Ed Section, 03/26/10, 

Amy Winehouse Culturist Re-Post

This is a repost of an article published here in November of 2009.  RIP AMY

Today I heard Amy Winehouse heard for the first time. That is, I have seen her many times, but I never saw a performance that grabbed me more than it just illustrated  her tragic wastiness. But her version of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” with Paul Weller of the Jam, was a stunning virtuoso performance. She missed nothing, but remained both vicious and wild, yet controlled to the point of perfection in pitch, with  clever metered vocal fills. And even the fade-outs from her competent co-vocalist happened at the prescribed time. But her final intonation of the chorus, when she went quiet, it was like hearing the subtle twang of Mae West in her prime.

With reason, many could conclude that Winehouse is deleterious to the success of western civilization. She is a role model of potentially disastrous impact. She makes drugs and the refusal to go to rehab sexy. And culturists know that youth follow those with status. That is why we need values leadership from positive and popular role models. I would much rather those who took care of their families and diligently pursued their studies in the name of western civilization getting glamorized. I would much rather see the artistic elite banish junkies for shame's sake. But that would cost us the Rolling Stones, Billie Holiday, and many other artists. It would make the West much more like communist China. And that, I would not like to see.

Winehouse brings a very interesting cultural mishmash to the table. She is definitely Jewish, her music is clearly derivative of African – American soul tradition ala Motown, she has the biker chic that tattoos bring, and – most of all – she embodies that ennobling yet defiling self-destruction, Ziggy Stardust-style tragedy of the burn out and crash of the chosen one, the rising star style. While she presents no role model, she represents a vamp, a type, a trope, that we can all share joy in. In her way, if teachers want to use her for edification, she even ties us back to the 19th century romantic tragedy of the romantic Goethe's Lotte who died for love. She is a sacrificial lamb to our deep cultural longing for bonding through her familiar formulaic romantic cultural mish mash. 


Unlike the more electronic pop idols, Winehouse reminds us of the jewels of western culture and the romance of the individual self. And, perhaps, in a multicultural world where the divided West refuses to see it has a culture to protect and offending Islam may soon become a crime, her drunken iconic presence is a culturist good

BUY CULTURIST JOHN'S NEWEST BOOK !

 In dramatic fiction Prison Wars illustrates the death of society when it contradicts culturist principles.  Watch as charismatic pop spiritualists become social terrorists.  Thrill as men’s desires drive society off the cliff.  Scream as media and government actively take place in our corruption and end.

Fortune Magazine assigned Martin Sanger to profile entrepreneurs.  But Quentin Longus wasn’t like the other’s he had met.  Quentin’s transformative calm taught Martin to relax.  And this calm allowed him to agree to Quentin’s offer to cover Prison Wars.

Prison Wars games pitted teams of prisoners against each other in battles to the death.  And the ratings reduced every other show to irrelevance. The State said nothing as the television proceeds for Prison Wars helped pay off its debts.

Freddie Jackson became the games’ first criminal star.  His winnings allowed him to spend his life sentence in a private mansion with private guards where he’d broadcast shows and film porn.  His contributions to the movement revolutionized consumerism.

The mad philosopher Les Christiansen also emerged from Prison Wars.  As Quentin’s philosophy coach he took the ethics of Prison Wars and turned them into popular movements for democratic reform.  His wicked plots consciously pushed society to the brink and over.

Attracted by fame, power, and raw lust, Martin Sanger took the job of cultural leader and official publicist for Prison Wars.  Along the way he came to peace with many aspects of his masculine power.  And ultimately Sanger wrote Prison Wars in order that future societies might not follow ours into apocalyptic destruction.

In the year 2023 John Kenneth Press’ investigations led him to a copy of Martin Sanger’s manuscript.   As a culturist and the author of the book culturism, as a proud American, and one who mourned the destruction of Western civilization, he thought it his duty to publish Martin Sanger’s manuscript.

Save Western civilization.  Follow Martin Sanger and Quentin Longus as they embark on a rock star life style that ultimately engulfs all of society in explosive popular mayhem and decadence.  Find out first hand, what it is like to party your soul into oblivion.   Learn of the wages of sin before it is too late for all of us. 

PRISON WARS IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AT

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097857771X

The Veil Ban and the Academic Study of Nationalism

            Culturism, the opposite of multiculturalism, holds that traditional majority cultures have a right to define, defend, and promote themselves domestically. This article will explore culturist theory’s relationship to several academic positions on nationalism.  And it will ultimately use the example of the French ban on veils to do so.

This week France began enforcing a ban on face concealing veils. Violators must pay a fine and take a citizenship course.  The easy point to make is that, despite one woman’s claim that these laws were “racist,” they have nothing to do with race.  These laws address culture, they are culturist.  And while racism is ridiculous, if cultural diversity is real, culturism is rational. 

              Liah Greenfield and others have created a paradigm wherein nationalism starts in England as Civic Nationalism, which incorporates individual rights.  By the time nationalism spreads to Germany, we have Collective Nationalism, which tends to be authoritarian.  And in between the two we have France’s mix of both types.  And since the West exported nationalism, and many nations are built upon resentment of other nations, many are anti-Western.

            Greenfield’s approach denies the impact of thought in culture. China’s Confucian background goes further in explaining its willingness to adopt deference for leaders than it’s being supposedly created after England.  The humanistic thought of Shakespeare and the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as Jefferson’s writing, display cultural paradigms that manifest in Civic Nationalism.  The Civic Nationalism is not due to England being first.  It results from cultural thoughts.  Rather than reflecting an absence of cultural influence, Civic Nationalism is the product of a culture. 

            The term ‘nationalism’ should be supplemented by the term ‘culturism.’  Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith debate whether nations are largely new or grow from earlier cultural precedents.  Most scholars side with Anderson concerning newness.  Whereas nations, defined as direct overlaps between state governments and cultures, may be newish, such debates rob us of the ability to include the histories of civilizations.