November 08, 2010

Liberty is in our genes - but so is slavery. Our environment and that of our ancestors and descendants can promote one or the other: which is OUR choice.

In my weekly commentary on the news for the week of 31 October to 6 November 2010, I discussed briefly the breeding (intentional or unintentional) of traits and characteristics in human populations, specifically that the American Black Population, as a whole in the 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries, has been bred to dependence on government - as a substitute for the master-slave relationship which much of that population had been bred to between 1650 and 1867. And as the remnants of the North American Indian tribes have been similarly bred and trained to be subservient and dependent on government between about 1865 and the present, but especially between 1880 and 2010. In both cases, the populations have been culled in various ways, again intentionally or unintentionally: wars, opportunities which remove them from the traditions and cultures of their people, relocation, and government policies.

Keep in mind that breeding, of humans or mammals, is NOT your traditional macro-evolution garbage. It is at best a form of micro-evolution, seen virtually in every day life. Two great examples are American cattle and horses. Neither animal existed in the Americas before the Spanish brought them to Mexico in 1520 or so, but by the 1850s, easily recognized and stable breeds had developed. The Longhorns of Texas, New Mexico and Nuevo Leon was one; and at least two breeds of horse developed: the Appaloosa of the Northwest, and the Mustang of the Southwest. In England, in the 1700s and 1800s, distinct breeds of various winged insects flourished due to environmental conditions - the soot of coal smoke - and then virtually vanished in a human generation when the UK dealt with its smog problem in the mid 20th Century. The speed is based on two factors: the length of generations and the control exercised in allowing (or encouraging) the breeding. People aren’t much different: you want a population of redheads, you keep marrying redheads to each other for five or seven generations (100-130 years more or less), and you’ll be breeding 80 or 90 percent redheads. Same for mental as for physical: you want super mathematicians, you get folks who are good with math to marry each other, and you teach their children both math and the importance of marrying someone who is really good at math, and after five or six or eight generations, you’ll have a star line of mathematical geniuses.

Looking at a millenium or more, we see the same thing in Europe. Indeed, the history of the last 600-1000 years can be seen as the cause and results of a vast breeding effort, which we can assume to be unintentional, at least in its overall scope and influence.

Understanding that various environmental factors, including government policies, religion, outside influences (violent and peaceful, including war and trade), have direct and indirect bearing on the traits of human populations as a whole, it is fairly easy to see how history, modern societies, and the future all are impacted by those traits, through the actions of individuals singly and in concert, whether planned or not.

Is it any wonder at all that Europe, and the United Kingdom (indeed, the British Isles) is so far gone into socialism and other related sins? For four centuries, since those dates of 1492 and 1609 and 1620, Europe’s best and brightest, its most independent and stubborn and maladjusted have, generation by generation, hied themselves to someplace else - or gotten killed off. Yes, sometimes it WAS being transported as a convict (to Georgia or New South Wales or Siberia), but most chose to go (even if running from or being chased by someone). For the most part, no government or church or other organization suddenly said, “we need to send a million people to some #$#%!@*& wilderness to get rid of them.” People did it in pairs and families and clans and sometimes a village or two, or a couple of church congregations or three. But when they did it, they sorted and divided themselves as surely as they did when God confused the languages at Babel 5,000 years ago. The killing off may or may not have been done at the behest of organizations, but it happened anyway. One way or another, you removed the best and brightest and most independent from the gene pool of that area .

But breeding human populations for specific traits hardly started in the 15th or 16th centuries. For centuries before that, Western Europe had been conducting its own breeding program, courtesy of the Roman Catholic Church and feudalism.

The best and brightest, including some of the most peaceful and moral) of the hundreds of tiny nations of Europe had been sucked into the chastity or outright celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church. The good ones (those who kept their vows and demonstrated that they lived in accordance with their stated morality) did not reproduce: their genetic heritage was lost. The immoral best and brightest in the RC Church DID reproduce, but not in the numbers that they might have: much of their genetic heritage was lost.

On the other hand, the aggressive (non-peaceful), regardless (or even in spite) of a lack of intelligence, became warriors and raiders and pirates and eventually knights and barons and even dukes and kings, and scattered their progeny across Europe. From the time of the fall of Rome to the discovery of America, Europe’s average intelligence declined at the same ratio, likely, that its aggressiveness and potential for violent behavior increased. This was not particularly wise or beneficial to the thugs that ruled Europe. Yes, they did pass on their aggressive nature to their legal children and recognized bastards, and continued to breed for those traits (while culling off the peaceful and intelligent, if not moral, to the church), but since aggression in Europe from 500-1600 or so was done in the traditional methods (kill, pillage, burn, and rape), they also had a lot of unrecognized bastards with those traits, which often turned into peasant rebels, and not just cannon fodder. (Yes, I know the old joke about the proper order for doing these things, but remember that the targets of each are different: you kill the men and boys, pillage everything you want, burn what is left, and then, I suppose, take time to do the last one to the remaining population, which is (of course) mostly the fairer sex.),

And this European breeding system was not helped in the least by its enemies, such as the Huns and Mongols and Arabs and Turks who sought to conquer Europe and instead culled its weaklings and the most stupid (or least cunning) while adding a certain amount of hybrid vigor to the Goths and Celts and Nordics and the rest. It was no wonder at all that a tiny little continent produced the four nastiest cultures/societies in world history that then proceeded to conquer about 85% of the rest of the world: British, Russian, Spanish-Portuguese, and French. For the Russians, it was the Mongols and Turks; for the British it was their own climate and wave after wave of invader (as it was for the French), indirectly; for the Spanish and Portuguese it was the Moors and 600 years of warfare to regain their own land. (The Germans, including the Austrians, also went through a similar culling process, by both internal European foes and by the external Turks, but were mostly land-trapped and slower: their imperial efforts were 300 years behind the rest.) Russia expanded to the east and the vast Siberian and Central Asian regions: Spain, Portugal, then France and England exploded across the oceans and around the planet. And then exported their troublemakers, their best and brightest and most ambitious, and to some degree their most aggressive and adaptable. And sucked the same sort out of the rest of Europe: Germany, Poland, Italy, the Lowlands, and Scandinavia, sending them to North America, to South America, to India and South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, to the East and West Indies and finally back to the Middle East.

Now, you may notice that these two breeding operations (again, probably unintentional - I’m not advocating conspiracies here) are somewhat at conflict with each other (which leads me to argue still more that they are not really planned). On the one hand, European society is breeding compliant, rather stupid, hive-workers who stay in their niche in society. On the other hand, they are breeding aggressive (and since the Reformation, at least) and intelligent and often religious people. The culling program works on both of those: ship ‘em overseas to fight for king and country and to build new homes and create lands of liberty and opportunity, and the ruling classes (who DID start specific breeding programs) can have Europe with all their willing little servants and peasants and a good sprinkling of middle castes to provide soldiers and cops and technicians and teachers.

After 400+ years of exploring and conquering the world, with a reasonable amount of bloodletting at home to keep the stock virile and relatively free from unwanted traits, and shipping the malcontents and adventurers and excess sons and daughters of the ruling classes, you have modern socialist Europe. What was left at home were the compliant, the settled rich, the stupid, the unaggressive, and unambitious - and the old ruling class, still the product of its breeding: sheepdogs always able to become wolves. The wolves today have evolved a way of sustaining their flocks of sheep (or so they think) - it is the socialism which replaced feudalism.

But things don’t always work out the way that they should. Either they didn’t take all the factors into consideration, or the lack of a proper plan finally ran into trouble. It seems that the last 130 or so years - again that pesky seven generations - weakened the old bloodlines too much, both of the ruling class AND of the lower castes. There are at least three problems:
1. The bloodletting of the last of the imperial expansions (when Africa and much of Asia finally were gobbled up, 1850-1910), were too quickly followed by the hideous civil wars of the Great War and the Second World War.
2. The Great War of 1914-1918, and its attendant and following wars, really DID spill a LOT of blood. And unlike the French and Napoleonic War of 1787-1814, or the 30 Years War of 1618-1648, there was no long period of peace IN Europe to follow. Civil wars in Russia and Eastern Europe and Spain were followed in only 20 years (a generation) by the pogroms and even more bloody Great European/Great Patriotic War that we Americans call the European Front of WW2. Everyone started to run out of folks. Too many of the old aristocracy, at least that part that had not gone more camouflaged and subtle, were bled dry, together with the last of the ever smaller class of best and brightest were killed off. There weren’t enough people to keep the rest of the world under European control, even with the full assistance of the predominantly European-descended daughter nations (US, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Sud-Afrika, etc.)
3. Technology and its impacts on society kicked everything into turmoil. The new control mechanism of socialism (replacing feudalism and its close cousin mercantilism) reached its peak, but at the same time, created the conditions for its own destruction - and that of its societies. There is a lot more; the metastasizing of the Protestant Reformation, the development of effective medical treatment, rapid communications, and other factors all let things get way out of hand. And frankly, Europe just bit off too much.

1950 was the peak - the zenith - of European civilization and world dominance, when it controlled, directly or through its daughter states, easily 90% if not 95% of the planet’s lands and populations.
1. Russia through its Soviet empire stretched from west of Berlin across the globe to the 38th Parallel in Korea, including its (temporary) client state of China.
2. The sun never set on the (Second) British Empire and its daughters, including the United States of America. From Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, India, much of the Middle East, a third of Africa (including its daughter South Africa), and across to Guyana and Belize and Canada and Newfoundland, and a thousand islands, Great Britain’s King and Parliament ruled. And of course, its eldest daughter, the United States, stretched across North America and the Pacific to its new conquests of Japan and Korea, while still holding sway in reality over the Philippines and occupying more of the European Continent than the British themselves ever had. London was Rome and Washington Constantinople.
3. The Spanish and Portuguese had lost most of their empire, at least as far as direct control and government. But they and their daughter states from Brazil and Mexico to Argentina, shared a common culture and religion and even government forms. And the African colonies still remained in the control of the Mother Countries. So the Iberians still covered much of the globe.
4. Though a hollow shell at home, France ruled over most of western Africa and was calling the shots in most of the Middle East not ruled directly or indirectly by the British, and the French sister states of the Lowlands had big chunks of central Africa (the Congo or Zaire) and the East Indies, while the French still owned Indochina.

In 1950, the independence of India, of Pakistan, of Indonesia, even of Canada and Australia, was more de jure than de facto: Europe and its daughters ruled the world. What was left? Antarctica? Tibet? Afghanistan? Turkey was as close to a European society and power as it would ever get, in the second generation after Ataturk. The Saudis were tolerated by ARAMCO and the Brits and Americans, who ruled Iran through clients. The Russians controlled more inside and outside Europe than ever in history: many of the areas nominally independent of their old colonial masters were at least in the partial control of the Russians.

The ruling class, at least, in such random bits of the Earth as Ethiopia, Thailand, and such were Europeanized. Europe ruled the world.

Briefly.

But there was no time to recover. The cataclysm of the third phase of the Great European Civil War - the Cold War and the related decolonization - was already underway: Europe could not remain at peace with itself. It became, as in the later days of Rome, necessary to withdraw and consolidate and allow more and more power to drift to the outer territories. Europe, had never shared even the brief unity of Rome of old, its power centers would not and could not cooperate to keep control - even with the US as the new Eastern Empire, and even with London and Paris and Moscow (and to a lesser degree Madrid and Lisbon) replaced by Brussels as “Newer Old Rome.”

The solutions tried have failed, and created their own messes. Like Rome of old, Europe (and the US) invited the barbarians in to meet the economic needs: Rome invited the tribes across the borders, Europe brought the best and brightest of their now-cast-adrift colonies but worse, the barbarians which the Europeans had only controlled for a very brief time (being more successful more more short-lived than Rome’s empire): the Muslims of Asia and Africa. (The US isn’t much better off - the melting pot has been replaced by a salad bowl, with rotten veggies being tossed in at random, and the lettuce already stale.)

Already having exported intelligence and drive and morality and vigor, Europe now appears to be easy prey to the barbarians, just as Italia and Greece and Hispania and Africa (the old Roman Province) were. Europe (or at least its core) has faced (and failed) the same challenge that the Romans did: you can’t breed both sheep and wolves (or sheepdogs) from the same population. Europe has bred sheep, and they are now dying out, while wolves are already moving in. And not just Muslim wolves: the rest of the world: Asia and Africa, and even South America are sending THEIR malcontents and best and brightest and aggressive/adventuresome people to Russia and the EU and the US. Because there is no frontier right now - but they (their ruling classes) have to get rid of the troublemakers, and can’t use the Cambodian or Bosnia solution. Not yet.

Of course, the above is a very simplistic view. Not ALL of European Civilization (or if you prefer- Euro-American Civilization) has been bred to sheep. There is still a lot of wolf in the gene pool, but perhaps mostly in a few concentrations, and even there, conditioning and upraising (environment) has skewed things. Neither Russia nor the United States have the same shallow end of the gene pool that Europe’s core does, although the US is in a better position than Russia. For one thing, the US did not (overall) bleed out as much as Russia did in 1939-1945, or so totally swallow the medicine-show tonic of socialism, and does not have the depopulation problem that faces Russia, nor the intense paranoia which is the classic Russian genetic heritage after centuries of invaders. For another, up until about 30 years ago, the US did a MUCH better job of integrating its invaders - much more like China over the millenia than Russia of the 20th Century. As a result, and because it is a much younger nation, the US has far more genetic AND cultural diversity and flexibility than Russia. But there are similarities (which are contrasts to core Europe): both are religious, both have frontiers of some type left, both face a primary threat that is clearly identifiable (Muslims in Russia, Hispanic border jumpers in the US), both are unified (at least as compared to Europe), and both have a LOT of wolves and sheepdogs.

There are people - many people, including those represented by and controlling the current administration in the US from behind the scenes (and possibly the same in the Russias), that want the breeding program to continue - to cull the populations of Russia and of the United States as Europe’s have been. They THINK that one way to do that is to use the barbarians, especially the Chinese (yes, I know, THEY don’t consider themselves such) and their close relations (Vietnamese, North Koreans), and of course, the Ummah (Islamic peoples of the Middle East and South Asia and Africa), to handle the US and Russia (just as they are doing with Europe); after which they will deal with the Chinese and Muslims in some way. But what if they have miscalculated? What a choice - under the hegemony of the Middle Kingdom or in the Worldwide Caliphate! But so far, the tearing down of Russia, and of the US, seems to be on track right behind that of Europe.

I don’t think that the wolves will be bred out of existence quite so easily as the powers-behind- the-curtain think. Not in the US, and not in Russia or some other parts. And even in those parts where the strain of bloody-mindedness and savagery has been papered over by conditioning (I’m thinking Canada and Australia and maybe even New England and California), the old ways are too bred into the bone to be wiped out. We ARE a product both of environment AND heredity. Sooner or later, that cussedness that makes a lover of liberty will not be able to be controlled, and we’ll go out and make our own frontiers if we have to - not that it may be pleasant. We can talk about Space or about under the oceans, or even Antarctica, but remember, for the last 4,000 years or so, the various frontiers haven’t been unpopulated before the human wolves and sheepdogs moved in - just somewhat underpopulated and underdeveloped: whether the original owners are AmerInd or Cossacks or Mongolian tribesmen (remember, the descendants of the ones who DIDN’T invade Russia and set up an empire in China) or bushmen or the debased descendants of ancient Zimbabwean empire-builders. I fear that if Space is not the frontier, that future Americans and Russians may decide to MAKE someplace like Europe or the Middle East or South Asia into a “new” frontier by speeding up the decadence of decaying empires and societies.

And I have hope of another thing, also. Looking at Britain at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Britain was an integral part of that Empire: not as populous or developed or “civilized” as Gaul or Iberia or Italia, but still a part. And it had hybrid vigor in its population - a mix further flavored by centuries of invasions of Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans. Yet, although France, Spain, even Germany and Russia, even Turkey, ALL claim to be the heirs of imperial Rome, it is only Britain, and the British Empire with its Commonwealth and American daughters, that can really support such a claim. It was a combination of many things - not just location and heredity, but faith and love for liberty and the God that gives us that, that let Britain, even for a short time, become that heir and bequeath that heritage to the United States (which thus far isn’t doing too well in upholding it). But maybe here in the American West - the West that could include Canadian provinces and Mexican states as well as American ones - the next heir to Rome and Britain - and the next effort to further purify that dream of liberty and freedom that started in the mountains of Ararat and continued in the hills of Judea and the islands of Greece and the mountains of Italy and the hills of England and Wales and the mountains of the Swiss and our own beloved mountains of Appalachia and New England and swampy forests of Texas, continue in the deserts of Arizona and Sonora, the mountains of Wyoming and Utah and Alberta, the plains of Saskatchewan and Montana and Texas, and the hills of Dakota and Nebraska. To liberty.

Because, we are NOT just our genetic heritage, and we are NOT just our environment. We are more than both combined, because we are HUMAN and God made us this way. We CAN transcend what we have been given, just as countless others in the past have. The more we KNOW about our heritage, the more we can change our future. This is the moral of this history, the point of this article.

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Nathan Barton is writing this from somewhere in the West, where whatever freedom and liberty we have left in this nation can still be found, despite the efforts of so many haters of liberty.  Feel free to contact him through The Price of Liberty.