The Uniqueness of Western Law

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The Uniqueness of Western Law Page 5

by Richard Storey


  Of course, I am proud of Western civilization for developing modern capitalism and an overwhelming number of other great innovations, just as I am proud of the association I have with my beautiful, bright daughter or the successes of a close friend. These things are a social benefit, however remote, to me, and so I feel a natural desire to celebrate them. However, my nationalism is based purely on my subjective values, derived from simple, socio-biological facts; not some superficial notion of ‘white pride’ — you know, Aristotle and Mozart were white etc.

  First, nationality does not necessarily refer to the legal citizenship of a nation-state.

  Eminent libertarian scholar, Murray Rothbard, noted, ‘Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange.’ Therefore, any talk of groupings, such as nations, is considered as collectivist as statism. ‘They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions.’60 This is the original meaning of nation — effectively, the extended tribe.

  So, why do I favour homogeneity among European-origin groups? Simply, there probably wouldn’t be a libertarianism without it. One proposed socio-biological characteristic which gave rise to libertarianism in the West is high-trust society. Studies show that the societies with the highest levels of trust are characterised primarily by ethnic homogeneity, such as Japan, but especially the Nordic countries.61 Entire empires have fallen because of the ethno-nepotistic desire to look after one’s own. The Ottomans stole millions of European children from our shores for centuries in order to indoctrinate them and create Janissaries — an administrative class with no biological ties to any group apart from the state. For the same reason, the Romans posted their infantry to far-flung parts of the Empire, removing all regional ties.

  As Nima Sanandaji explains in his book, Scandinavian Unexceptionalism, pre-existing cultural (particularly Christian) norms are responsible for the low levels of poverty among Scandinavians, both within and without Nordic countries, before and during the harmful socialistic policies adopted since the 60s and 70s. Of course, a higher average IQ, a propensity to hard work and a cultural respect for private property rights are important, but you need trustworthiness for healthy, regular trade. Without a high trust society, you won’t have a significant development of trade and prosperity; without that, you can kiss the manifestation of libertarian institutions good-bye. In short, if you love freedom, you’ve got to love homogeneity.

  What makes this talk of national groups individualistic?

  Just because Westerners organise into societies with distinct cultures, doesn’t mean those cultures are collectivist, like those of East Asia. I subjectively value libertarian society, for myself and for my loved ones; the more libertarian — the freer the people — the better. I therefore value those groups which most manifest libertarian cultures and principles, and Western civilization alone has done so. The incentive, then, for my white nationalistic streak is the libertarianism of largely homogeneous European societies. Simply put, if libertarianism is to become more than an intellectual theory of law, if it is to manifest and grow in the future, it must become nationalistic.

  Chapter 6

  Folk-Right Versus Multiculturalism

  To most Westerners today, the words ‘nation’, ‘nationality’ and ‘law’ seem only to mean the state, citizenship and legislation enacted by the state. But there are other meanings to these words, which were their primary and even sole meanings in the past. The nation was once the ethnic group, the tribe at large — nationality being one’s ethnicity. Likewise, in Europe the law once meant the customs of the kin-group. So how is it that kinship is not only ignored by Western states as the criterion for citizenship but is even unheard of to most? And is there a future for the original understanding of these words?

  Historically, nations (in the truest sense of the word) decided personhood and rights-exercising ability based on their being a member of the kin group, not according to whomever the state decided was welcome to citizenship of that nation. Prof. Ricardo Duchesne rightly points out that even the rise of Western nation-states, including the US, was not based on civic nationalism, noting their ‘White-only’ immigration policies. He writes,

  The nations of Europe were not mere ‘inventions’ or functional requirements of modernity, but were factually rooted in the past, in common myths of descent, a shared history, and a distinctive cultural tradition. While the rise of modern industry and modern bureaucracies allowed for the materialization of nation states in Europe, these nations were primordially based on a population with a collective sense of kinship.62

  Aliens have always been granted special rules — notably, being treated according to the law of their own people; this wasn’t because they had the wrong passport, but because they were simply not of one’s nation. Many today will presume that this was just ancient tribalism, fuelled by irrational xenophobia. However, as Prof. Duchesne notes elsewhere, the modern liberal democracy of the West denies the biological impulse to protect one’s own and mistakenly assumes that this denial and even the individualistic, libertarian ideals of the West, are shared by all the peoples of the world:

  Humans are social animals with a natural impulse to identify themselves collectively in terms of ethnic, cultural and racial markers. But today Europeans have wrongly attributed their unique inclination for states with liberal constitutions to non-Europeans. They have forgotten that liberal states were created by a particular people with a particular individualist heritage, beliefs, and religious orientations… They don’t want to admit openly that all liberal states were created violently by a people with a sense of peoplehood laying sovereign rights over an exclusive territory against other people competing for the same territory. They don’t want to admit that the members of the competing outgroups are potential enemies rather than abstract individuals seeking a universal state that guarantees happiness and security for all regardless of racial and religious identity.63

  This liberal ignorance of racial impulses only really became institutionalised in the 1960s, with the rise of cultural Marxism. Of course, it became more fashionable to distance oneself from ethnic and racial discrimination as this became increasingly associated with the defeated nations of World War II (as though they were the only ones with such considerations). But, as with much of classical liberalism, the basis of this anti-racialism was inspired by the same hyper-individualism which grew out of the Enlightenment and has since reduced Westerners to mere economic units, void of any meaningful cultural identity.

  With the demonisation of those who sincerely take racial and other socio-biological considerations of social order into account, Western nations were primed to accept universalistic and civic notions of citizenship.

  Right of Blood

  The law of citizenship around the world is based on the two Greco-Roman legal concepts — jus sanguinis (right of blood) and jus soli (right of soil). The latter grants citizenship if one is born within the national territory, as is presently the practice in the U.S. (birthright citizenship). Typically, the right of blood, that is, citizenship granted to children of citizens, is not really a radical alternative, as this most commonly goes hand-in-hand with jus soli.

  The Constitution of Liberia, which limits citizenship to ‘persons who are Negroes or of Negro descent’, and the original United States Naturalization Law, which limited naturalization to immigrants who were ‘free white persons of good character’, are examples of jus sanguinis. However, most Western nations have adopted the ‘proposition nation’ idea of civic nationalism in which citizenship is only a matter of accepting principles like democracy and constitutional government. Only a few decades ago, the term ‘British’ still had a primarily ethnic meaning but, today, the civic meaning is dominant by far.
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  This is an unsustainable mistake which leaves the ethnic groups of Europeans vulnerable to those aliens who are conscious of their ethnic loyalties and are willing to take advantage of a democratic system which pits all conceivable groups against each other in competition to wield political power. We cannot ignore the fact of ethnic nepotism — we are all, as individuals, in competition with others over resources in order to achieve our aims, whatever they may be. Moreover, stoked by the identity politics of the left, group membership continues to function as an important source of identity. Competition therefore becomes between-group competition which whites will lose in the long run as the demographic tide turns against them.

  The concept I propose, that of folk rights, takes these matters into account to identify the natural order. To achieved it, we must begin by repealing birthright citizenship and thus re-institutionalise the right of blood. How can this be justified?

  Biology draws a line within which it is rational to extend our altruism. Ordinarily, we only make significant sacrifices for our immediate family; what sort of parents wouldn’t put their child’s interests before those of another? But Frank Salter, in On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, argues that groups who share a greater percentage of their genes form ‘ethnies’ — biological populations which will act for the welfare of the group in times of need. Thus, when endangered, individuals extend their protective impulses to the ethny (ethnic kinship), as a natural extension of familial kinship.

  Biology therefore sets natural boundaries around whom we are prepared to extend our individual recognition of kinship to. This not only makes the ethny the most practical focus of self-interest, but it also explains why human societies have near-universally done so as matter of intuition. Members of our ethnic/racial in-group should be seen as family, albeit less related than biological families, but definitely far more closely related than people from different races. Naturally, such interests are best protected with laws of jus sanguinis.

  Those who point to vague boundaries between groups should recognise that our nations have been largely ethnically homogeneous throughout their history, until the very recent onslaught of non-white immigration into European-dominated areas. Population genetic research has conclusively shown genetic discontinuities between the major human races.64 The Japanese, as one of many other examples, do not have a problem identifying their own.

  As a strongly libertarian lover of Western civilization, to which such individualism is unique, I believe it is important that the natural, socio-biological order of the European civilizations be maintained. It is indeed in our self-interest to do so, but self-interest is the prime law of nature, and the individualism so loved by libertarians could soon be a distant memory as our societies are increasingly dominated by groups that are not so inclined at all. Living now in the post-migration, multi-racial West, composed of competing groups defined on the basis of ethnicity, we must realise that our legitimate self-interest aligns with furthering the interests of our racial group and European civilization.

  Part Two

  Socio-Biology

  Chapter 1

  In Search of Non-White Philosophers

  Philosophy students from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London, have demanded their syllabus comprise a majority of Asian and African philosophers. In an attempt to ‘address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism’, they have shown themselves to be completely ignorant of the history and indeed the nature of philosophy itself.65 As Sir Roger Scruton rightly put it, ‘If they think there is a colonial context from which Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason arose, I would like to hear it.’66 Nevertheless, I don’t even think one can study a legitimate philosophy course with a minority of white philosophers in the course material. A mere glance at non-white philosophy is enough to prove my point. The post-colonial world of African philosophy is simply reactionary and ethnocentric and so, as a school, hasn’t contributed anything new or substantial to the body of philosophy in toto. Well then, what about the pre-colonial world, going back to ancient times?

  Surely, Africans have contributed enough to warrant at least a semester?

  Of course, the Egyptians! They lived on the African continent and so, logically, we must conclude that their nobles and kings were all black. Not at all. Tutankhamun’s mummy has well-preserved fair hair and facial features, as do his grandparents, and he has Western European DNA — just one example, supported by other archaeological evidence besides.67 The Pharaohs were white until around 800 B.C. and again later, when Ptolemy ruled Egypt in Alexander’s wake, making Cleopatra et al. white too.

  Yet, many will still insist that we don’t know this for sure, and will dismiss the evidence with accusations of ‘scientific racism’. More than this, however, many black youths embarrassingly assert the much-derided statement, ‘We were kings!’ due to the deliberate ambiguity introduced by leftist academia. There is no evidence that the great thinkers of Egypt were black; rather the opposite is true.

  But St. Augustine of Hippo was African; he states he is African in his writings, doesn’t he?

  Augustine was African, yes, but he was undoubtedly a Caucasian. His mother was a Berber and his father, Patricius, was of the upper-class and could not have held that name or that position if he was anything other than a white man. Kings, blacks have been — but major Christian philosophers? No.

  So then we’re left with Yoruba and Bantu — the former, a primitive form of spiritism; the latter, another religion with a belief in a supreme being, the philosophy of which views beings and forces as synonymous or at least thinks primarily in terms of the forces which bring things into existence. But this is hardly something overlooked by all of the various competing schools of thought in Western philosophy.

  Let’s move into Asia for our course material, then.

  The Islamic world produced some great thinkers; surely we can get some great non-white thinkers from here? Alas, no. If it’s white philosophers you want, you’ve come to the right place. The Persians were Indo-Aryan peoples — kinsmen of the nomadic white people who migrated West into Europe — but who chose to travel South-East instead. Yes, Zoroastrianism was developed by white people. Furthermore, the greatest Islamic philosophy was produced by brilliant Iranians, despite Islam, and their work was based heavily on Plato and Aristotle — yet more white men.

  Many have recently complained that the upcoming biopic of Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic, should not star Leonardo DiCaprio as the poet, because Rumi wasn’t white. But, as Jason Reza Jorjani explains, ‘When [Rumi] was born in 1207, Khorasan was still ethnically white.’68 Khorasan was a hotbed for esoteric interpretations of the Qur’an, being a former strongly Zoroastrian area which produced a large number of important Persian scientists and poets.

  Well, what about the Chinese?

  Just as today, Asian governments seek to remedy their so-called creativity deficit, so too in history, the East Asian people have been superior at assimilating received knowledge, but not innovating new concepts. So, whilst I find classical Taoism quite beautiful, it is apparent that the Chinese made no distinction between the sacred and profane in their philosophy and so they simply accepted whatever was written by some previous sage, and only ever concerned themselves with adaptation or preservation. Duchesne notes the contrast with the West in The Uniqueness of Western Civilization:

  The West, I believe, has always embodied a reflective sense of self-doubt about what it knows and what remains to be known, a kind of restlessness that has been both destructive and productive of new literary styles, musical trends, visual motifs, and novel ideas. By contrast, the intellectual and artistic order of China has remained relatively stable throughout its history.69

  Truly, philosophy is the creation of the restlessly rationalising mind of Western man, a unique trait of our civilisation, as noted by many scholars. We alone have welcomed competing schools of tho
ught, such has been the Western hunger for knowledge of the unknown, both inner and outer.

  So, there can be no philosophy course without much-maligned, dispossessed and disenfranchised white men. This sort of racism, foisted upon us by fellow white people no less than any other group, must cease. Thankfully, in the study of those faculties largely developed by white men, the natural limits of this racism are manifest. Truly, in European civilisation alone, philosophy lives, moves and has its being. If you want a course on mysticism and primitive religions, the world is your oyster. But if you want a philosophy course with no white philosophers, you have a better chance of finding a course about rap music with no black people or a course about Kung Fu with no Asians, because at least there are significant white figures in those fields. All this may sound harsh, but sometimes naughty teenagers, like the SOAS student union, need to be spanked to remind them they still have some growing up to do.

  Chapter 2

  Why There Are No Successful Black Nations… Yet!

  There is an assumption I would like you to make: I am white and not racist.

  Who am I kidding? I’m writing about Africa in biological and economic terms. How dare I impose myself? Haven’t white people done enough damage?

  Actually, that’s precisely what I contest: I don’t think we’ve done anywhere near enough damage to warrant blaming white and Arab slavers for ‘the painful fact that most African and Caribbean nations have either failed or are about to collapse’. This quote comes from a Foreign Policy magazine article by Prof. Chigozie Obioma, titled ‘There Are No Successful Black Nations’. Rather, I think that blaming white people prevents blacks from finding the right solution.

 

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