Yuval Levin says that the nation needs a new vision, and we don’t have a lot of time to come up with it.
[Update a few minutes later]
This explains the plight of the blacks (and to a lesser extent, some other minorities):
Human societies do not work by obeying orderly commands from central managers, however well meaning; they work through the erratic interplay of individual and, even more, of familial and communal decisions answering locally felt desires and needs. Designed to offer professional expert management, our bureaucratic institutions assume a society defined by its material needs and living more or less in stasis, and so they are often at a loss to contend with a people in constant motion and possessed of a seemingly infinite imagination for cultural and commercial innovation. The result is gross inefficiency — precisely the opposite of what the administrative state is intended to yield.
In our everyday experience, the bureaucratic state presents itself not as a benevolent provider and protector but as a corpulent behemoth — flabby, slow, and expressionless, unmoved by our concerns, demanding compliance with arcane and seemingly meaningless rules as it breathes musty air in our faces and sends us to the back of the line. Largely free of competition, most administrative agencies do not have to answer directly to public preferences, and so have developed in ways that make their own operations easier (or their own employees more contented) but that grow increasingly distant from the way we live.
Unresponsive ineptitude is not merely an annoyance. The sluggishness of the welfare state drains it of its moral force. The crushing weight of bureaucracy permits neither efficiency nor idealism. It thus robs us of a good part of the energy of democratic capitalism and encourages a corrosive cynicism that cannot help but undermine the moral aims of the social-democratic vision.
Worse yet, because the institutions of the welfare state are intended to be partial substitutes for traditional familial, social, religious, and cultural mediating institutions, their growth weakens the very structures that might balance our society’s restless quest for prosperity and novelty and might replenish our supply of idealism.
This is the second major failing of this vision of society — a kind of spiritual failing. Under the rules of the modern welfare state, we give up a portion of the capacity to provide for ourselves and in return are freed from a portion of the obligation to discipline ourselves. Increasing economic collectivism enables increasing moral individualism, both of which leave us with less responsibility, and therefore with less grounded and meaningful lives.
Moreover, because all citizens — not only the poor — become recipients of benefits, people in the middle class come to approach their government as claimants, not as self-governing citizens, and to approach the social safety net not as a great majority of givers eager to make sure that a small minority of recipients are spared from devastating poverty but as a mass of dependents demanding what they are owed. It is hard to imagine an ethic better suited to undermining the moral basis of a free society.
Meanwhile, because public programs can never truly take the place of traditional mediating institutions, the people who most depend upon the welfare state are relegated to a moral vacuum. Rather than strengthening social bonds, the rise of the welfare state has precipitated the collapse of family and community, especially among the poor.
Go to Detroit or my home town of Flint, Michigan, to see it in all its inglory.
Welfare states are affordable, but only if welfare dependency is limited to a sustainable proportion of GDP – that it does not grow. Presumably there is an optimal level.
The problem that is I think destroying much of the western world is that the welfare sector is growing unsustainably. This is not a simple problem to fix, it is tantamount to maintaining survival of the fittest while enabling everyone to survive – fooling with evolution has consequences.
Placing a percentage of GDP cap on all government welfare might be a good start. Replacing retirement with an age independent directly accessed disability payment would I think also help.
Continual population growth is another trick, grow faster than welfare dependency. Apparently doubling the size of a city increases per capita income by ~15% (and patents, crime, etc. – economies of scale). However conversely, presumably population reduction can lead to economic collapse.
The main problem is that the initial issue of ‘welfare’ was based on the assumption that the people receiving these benefits actually wanted to work and provide for themselves. The idea that people would become addicted to this assistance wasn’t considered. I heard a great, simple explanation the other day as to why welfare has been the worst thing to happen to “blacks in America” – welfare has taken the role of the father out of the family. Instead of having a provider need to stay and take care of the family, the state becomes the provider and the males are free to come and go, while the women/families now get their money/food/shelter from the government. As most good economists will tell you, if you subsidize something, you will get more and more of it.
Problem: Constantly increasing productivity rates (products produced/man hour) have allowed the essentials of life for a given population to be produced using much less than full employment.
Solution 1: Increase taxes on the remaining employed and employ the surplus workforce as government nannies and regulators to “improve the quality of life”.
Advantage: A holiday for the power hungry, fascists and puritans.
Disadvantage: Enormous availability of money for political graft, empire building and funding Utopian experiments.
Solution 2: Institute a 4 or even 3 day workweek.
Advantage: Freedom and likely economic growth in the leisure market.
Starves the state of funds (the reason it was killed in Europe)
Disadvantage: Fiscal self responsibility for generations ill educated to enjoy it. Would likely require increase in union power for some income normalization.
This is the entire purpose of much of Feminist policy. Welfare, subsidized childcare, no-fault alimony, abortion/choice, “deadbeat dad” laws, etc. are all methods for extracting resources from men who aren’t fathers or husbands. It’s a way for women to get the thing they really crave (resources for their children) without engaging in the traditional bargain between the genders (marriage).
And of course these same women offer sex at the drop of a hat (“I’m empowered!”), so men have no real incentive to marry anyway.
And that is why even the white single-parent rate is now greater than the black single-parent rate was just a few decades ago. The Black community isn’t “special” – it is just a few decades “more advanced” than the rest of America.
Of course, Black America also shows us why this system is unsustainable. Married fathers (who have access to their wives, home and children) work hard to provide for their families, but men who have no relationship with the community’s children (other than as potential taxpayer) can slack off (or choose criminal work over legal work) to the point of destroying the taxbase.
And suddenly there’s no tax money for welfare moms! Holy crap, how did that happen?
____________________________________
As for the point of the article, we don’t need to discover a new national model. We already have one. It’s called “America or England as originally envisioned two centuries ago.” Whether republican or parliamentary, the system works just fine as long as basic “negative rights” are respected, property and contract are protected, regulators are minimal, taxes are low, each citizen takes pride in paying his own way and each man has a home, wife and children that cannot be taken from him on a whim.
@Brock: Ah, but you overlook the demographic and cultural changes that have occurred since 1789. Any attempt to restore “America or England as originally envisioned two centuries ago” would require a return to the demographics and common culture of the America or England of two centuries ago.
Today’s Americans place little value upon the values and moral code common among the inhabitants of “America or England as originally envisioned two centuries ago”. America is no longer one nation, ethnically or culturally, and the tighter we clutch the pieces in order to hold America together, the more social cohesion will be squeezed through the gaps.
My own opinion: only a return to small, sovereign ethnostates, with freedom of movement between them guaranteed by an Emperor of some sort, will ultimately ameliorate the problems we face today. Utopia is of course impossible, and should not be sought in any case, but I think E.F. Schumacher was right — “small is beautiful”, especially when it comes to government.
I am not sure that it is children growing up without fathers that is the primary problem, ideally fatherless children or unmarried mothers should not be punished for it – not everyone has a family. It is people intentionally having children they can not afford without government subsidization that worries me. Where welfare becomes a life style choice not a safety net. There are also some good reasons why society has moved on from the rule of family/religion/husband, I am not sure that going back is the best path to responsibility.
In this day and age, sexual intercourse only very rarely has anything to do with procreation, but prison populations are full of accidents. If, via technological development (more robust his and hers contraception), we could make procreation an easier and direct conscious act on behalf of both parents, then I suspect this problem would be greatly reduced. Currently, those intent on sexual intercourse are being confused with those intent on procreation. Better separate those with game from those with parental game and I suspect parenting would become much better and more accountable. Those intent on becoming teenage mothers would still be a problem, but I suspect cash/tax incentives for those who delay might help this.
I see Pete’s still not ready to give up the dream.
Andrea, if we do not bias our procreation towards productivity evolution will cull for it. Culling entails a lot of death and destruction.
Indeed. He really doesn’t get it.
Oh? And those reasons are? I’d like to know.
Wait, I do know. So women can have sex with anyone they choose (aka, the jerks, rock stars and quaterbacks), have children with thugs and traveling salesmen, and force non-husbands to support them. Or to allow women who grow “bored” of their husbands to make him leave the house and his kids but still keep half his paycheck. Then they can “Have it all”!
Culture yes, demographics no. People can adopt a universal culture, and have done so. That’s how the melting pot has worked for the last two centuries. And no countries are better at it than America and England.
“I am not sure that it is children growing up without fathers that is the primary problem,”
You should be. Why do you think there are programs like Big Brothers and the Boy Scouts? There are statistics galore showing how poorly children without a good male role model succeed compared to those that have one.
Much of the ‘need’ for AFDC would disappear if there was a rule stating that NO money will be paid to the baby momma, unless she identifies the baby daddy. Then the daddy gets a gig and pays child support, instead of drifting around scott free, like they do now.
But what if she’s slutty and has numerous partners, you say, and maybe doesn’t know, who it is. DNA tests are getting cheaper all the time. She can either finger the father or she can do without!!
But what if she doesn’t take care of the baby, because she couldn’t find out who the father is. Then, DSS can truck their happy @$$es out to her house and take the child(ren). Fix the Foster Care and Adoption Systems and in ONE generation we can turn this happy horse $hite around.
Tough problems require tough decisions and often, tougher fixes.
“Andrea, if we do not bias our procreation towards productivity evolution will cull for it. Culling entails a lot of death and destruction.”
That doesn’t even make any sense. Are you from this planet?
In this day and age, sexual intercourse only very rarely has anything to do with procreation, but prison populations are full of accidents. If, via technological development (more robust his and hers contraception), we could make procreation an easier and direct conscious act on behalf of both parents, then I suspect this problem would be greatly reduced
What, a million abortions a year for the last 35 years hasn’t been enough? Sheesh. Want to actually reduce the number of lives wasted (and criminals trained) in prison? Decriminalize marijuana.
“Andrea, if we do not bias our procreation towards productivity evolution will cull for it. Culling entails a lot of death and destruction.”
That doesn’t even make any sense. Are you from this planet?
It means there is no cheating evolution.
…how Social Darwinian of you.
That said, there is a point, there, but leaning on it too heavily requires the assumption that man is but an animal, like any other, and cannot and should not be treated with any fundamental difference.
I tend to think of humanity as better than that–and by humanity, I mean the individuals that comprise it, not their “betters” who would organize them from above.
@Brock: People can adopt a universal culture, and have done so.
At the point of a bayonet. Non-Westerners will cling fiercely to their native culture unless forced at “act white” at bayonet point. And we now consider it immoral to use the bayonet.
That’s how the melting pot has worked for the last two centuries. And no countries are better at it than America and England.
With respect: There is no “melting pot”. We had one, once, back when the WASP majority in each country was willing to use force to ensure assimilation. (Note: I am not a WASP). They no longer have the will in either country. As a result, America and England are currently in the process of splintering into a number of competing and incompatible cultures, held together only by good manners. When the good manners evaporate — as they are beginning to in England, and will soon here — the multicultural power structure will attempt to act as the WASP majority once did and enforce “unity in diversity” at gunpoint. At that point, all bets are off.
Multiculturalism does not and cannot work. In the end, only “separate but equal” works. But to even suggest it makes me a racist, of course.
It’s too late for politics. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are about to limp up and explain it again.
Ideally people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge should not be punished for it. Unfortunately, that reich-wing, knuckle-dragging phenomenon commonly known as “reality” insists on turning the precious snowflakes who do so into street pizza.
Oh I get it. Pete thinks that all babies should be planned — even “bred” — to strict specifications, and that anything else is a “useless eater.” Gosh, that viewpoint sounds so familiar! I wonder where I’ve come across it before…
So basically, Central Planning is a modern idea in a post-modern world.
The world is too small for that now. Distinct cultures and languages will evaporate over the next dozen generations as the future mobility of bodies and ideas makes today’s air travel and internet look like (heavy lift) Conestoga wagons and screw presses. Do not lament that your fellow countrymen cannot summon the will for another Final Solution; you’d be swimming up a waterfall.
These statements have zero correlation with my observed reality. I see non-Whites adopting American and English culture every day, with nary a bayonet in sight. I’m married to one of them (born halfway around the globe from where we live now) and you will find no greater Yankees fan or stronger defender of the American way.
Are there people who come to America or England and choose not to assimilate? Yes. And they need to be shown the door. That doesn’t mean we have to each retreat to our respective ethnic ghettos. Those of us who willingly and freely adopt the manner of England can live together in peace, no matter where we were born or what we look like.
This isn’t some idealistic b.s., starry-eyed nonsense on my part. It is merely the conclusion I have reached after seeing this happen every day with my own two eyes.
@Brock: I think the reality you see with your own eyes is the exception rather than the rule. It does not match what I see in day-to-day life in the USA. England is splintering into a collection of warring ethnic and religious groups; America is not far behind. Right now the peace is kept through retreat. White folks (for lack of a better term) still have the option of escape to the hinterlands rather than knucking under to other cultures. When that escape becomes impossible; the gloves come off. At that point diversity will be enforced at bayonet point, until one culture comes to dominate the others.
I wish the world were as you describe it. It just isn’t. Almost every conflict in the world can be traced to a clash of cultures within an artificial nation-state: Fleming vs. Walloon, Israeli vs Palestinian, Shiite vs Sunni, “Asian” Briton vs. Christian Briton, Orangemen vs. Irish, Hindu vs Muslim, ghetto blacks vs. bourgeois whites. This is a fact. And I hate that fact.
Cultures cannot coexist in peace. Only separation — or the imposition of a global common culture — will keep the peace.
“sexual intercourse only very rarely has anything to do with procreation, but prison populations are full of accidents”
And full of non-accidents. Most illegitimacy isn’t accidental these days, unfortunately. Lower class women have internalized our societal separation between marriage and children. And there are still significant welfare benefits to having kids, especially for teens, even after the 90s reforms. And lots of women in low-class circumstances just want a baby to love.
“Want to actually reduce the number of lives wasted (and criminals trained) in prison? Decriminalize marijuana.”
A pipe dream. Or maybe a bong dream.
Decriminalization is probably a good idea, but it won’t significantly change the prison population, especially the long-term prison population.
Titus said, in response to calls for separate-but-equal: “Do not lament that your fellow countrymen cannot summon the will for another Final Solution; you’d be swimming up a waterfall.”
Final Solution, when capitalized, does not involve equality. And as the heroes of the civil rights movement have pointed out countless times, separate-but-equal doesn’t involve equality either.
But moreover, after all the lecturing you’ve done on the evils of Fascism, Titus, it is pretty stunning to hear that we should not “lament that your fellow countrymen cannot summon the will for another Final Solution” because of pragmatic obstacles.
Heh, perhaps you should use that greater context you allude to for something more than crafting outrage. In the meantime, I’ve another one for you: I was going to make a withdraw at the bank today, but I was out of bullets.
Titus, you said “the world is too small for that now”, talked about the internet, and made a joke about heavy lift Conestoga wagons. Yes, I might have missed something — what was it? What greater context did I miss?
Multiculturalism does not and cannot work. In the end, only “separate but equal” works.
For most countries, this does seem to be the case. However, I learned on a recent visit to Singapore that an exception is possible. Singapore in a small island/nation/city of about 5 million people. They’re about 75% ethnic Chinese, with about 12% ethnic Malay and 11% ethic Indian and 2% “other.” They use English as their official administrative language and it seems everyone speaks it quite well in addition to other languages. Singapore is quite prosperous and everyone seems to get along well. They appear to be an exception to the rule about multiculturalism.
Oh Titus, he’s obviously missing a gene necessary to understanding what you are saying. Don’t hold it against him. He was born that way.
Oh I get it. Pete thinks that all babies should be planned — even “bred” — to strict specifications, and that anything else is a “useless eater.” Gosh, that viewpoint sounds so familiar! I wonder where I’ve come across it before…
I am not sure that “I get it” means what you think it means.
Social welfare/charity in the Western World has become a centrally planned selective breeding program – it is not evolutionary sustainable and we are playing God.
Within the evolutionary model, individuals compete for survival, they also compete for procreation. If we wish to survive we have to play the evolutionary game, to opt out is to go extinct. We do however perhaps have some free will in how we play that game. If we can bias evolutionary competition towards the act of procreation, then less people will have to die.
I am specifically not advocating Social Darwinism or playing God, but I am advocating perhaps shifting the field of play. Mostly I am trying to point out that humanity has an unpleasant evolutionary choice – we can either compete through procreation or through death. Those who deny the former are in effect supporting the latter, we are morally damned either way. With the level of modern charity and welfare, which I think is well intentioned, there is in effect no limitation on procreation. If we do not find a way to make welfare/charity sustainable, people will die.
Using DNA testing and charging all fathers for their offspring would be one way of limiting procreation. But presumably that would be considered Social Darwinism/eugenics/playing God.
Bob…
…you’ll figure it all out when you get the bank joke.
The heart of your “joke” is that segregationists can’t understand moral imperatives, so they have to be provided with pragmatic reasons?
Larry J, you wrote:
They’re about 75% ethnic Chinese
That, by itself, means that Singapore isn’t very multicultural.
K, you wrote:
Problem: Constantly increasing productivity rates (products produced/man hour) have allowed the essentials of life for a given population to be produced using much less than full employment.
Solution 1: Increase taxes on the remaining employed and employ the surplus workforce as government nannies and regulators to “improve the quality of life”.
[…]
Solution 2: Institute a 4 or even 3 day workweek.
Note that the “problem” doesn’t actually exist (at least as of now) and neither :solution” solves it, even if it did exist.
Solution 3: Remove government obstacles to employing people such as Social Security, overly bureaucratic labor laws, minimum wage, employer health insurance mandates, etc. Then remove the obstacles to creating and expanding businesses.
Advantage: Solves the actual problem, that there are too many obstacles to creating or expanding a business and imposed obstacles and costs to employing people.
Argh! No, they aren’t. Multiculturalism always fails.
Ethnicity ≠ Culture.
Singapore is multi-ethnic, mono-cultural. Just like every other successful large nation. Even 19th century Britian had English, Welsh, Scots, Irish and immigrants from all over Europe (and that was before it welcome Blacks, Indians and Orientals from its many colonies); but all one culture.
Singapore just proves the rule that skin color and ethnicity simply don’t matter for building a cohesive, prosperous and peaceful nation as long as said nation has a strong culture which imprints and converts the immigrants (and especially their children) of different ethnicities that immigrate there.
Multiculturalism fails. Multi-ethnic societies are fine. Or they can be, with the right culture (which America and England have, but countries like Germany, Korea and Japan do not).
Brock, I agree that culture does not equal ethnicity, but why are you and others saying “culture”? Wouldn’t political ideology be more precise? Culture indicates what’s for dinner. In the USA and the UK (and other democracies), we have ideological differences in our politics (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Tory, Labour, etc) but we are united by our belief in certain political ideologies involving freedom & democracy. When our ideological differences are too great, the country splits (for example, the American civil war). When there are are many cultures (different music, food, style of dress, language), there is no problem, as long as people share a common political ideology — in the USA, this conviction is expressed largely via the US Constitution, which is why the amendments are so important.
Larry J: Your point about Singapore is well taken. I have visited there myself, and found it to be as pleasant as you have described.
However, the multicultural peace of Singapore really isn’t multicultural at all. Singapore is a police state in which the values and behaviors of a single “global” culture (a mix of British colonial reserve and Confucian deference to authority) are imposed upon everyone, ultimately at bayonet point. Any cultural group within the population which might attempt to impose its value/belief system upon Singapore as a whole is ruthlessly suppressed. Case in point: Singapore’s attitude toward Islam. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s “Minister Mentor” ( = retired President-for-Life) said in his recent book
I think Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are better models for our current situation than is Singapore. We live in a world of Yugoslavias and Czechoslovakias: artificial “nations” each composed of incompatible cultures, each maintaining its “national” integrity by the boot-on-the-neck of a strong central power in the form of its “national” government. Since such central powers are defined by paper, not culture, and are maintained by force instead of cultural ties, they can’t last forever. And when they go away or diminish in power? The “nation” devolves into incompatable cultures — the only true nations that exist.
This devolution can take two forms: the Yugoslav model or the Czechoslovakian model. I propose the Czechoslovakian model — the voluntary, peaceful separation of cultures — is superior to the Yugoslav model.
We have a slow-motion civil war going on in both the U.S. and Britain right now. Only the presence of “Tito” in Washington and in London keeps the lid on. When that “Tito” collapses, or when one of the warring cultures becomes Tito, look out.
Let’s be Czechslovakia while we still have the choice.
That’s the umbrella term, and it’s correct in that context. What’s on your dinner plate or iPod is sub-cultural.
“Tree” is more precise than “forest”, but misses a lot. The premises of culture create flow-down requirements for political ideology and other sub-cultural elements (e.g.: Western culture permits tasty lamb kabobs but not stoning to death for infidelity.)
Titus (or Brock et al), can you think of any society-killing cultural difference that isn’t political in nature? To examine your example: punishments for infidelity (or responses to it at all) might be religious in nature, or might just be culturally idiosyncratic, but the problem with stoning someone to death is always going to be political.
The particular political problem depends on the circumstances of the stoning incident: maybe it involves lack of access to due process, or maybe, in the case where the legal system is part of the decision to kill someone, it involves denying someone their freedom of religion. Or maybe something else you can think of: think about why “stoning someone to death for infidelity” would be a society-killer in the USA and I think you’ll come up with a political reason, or at least if you list one, I bet I can reframe it as a political reason such that you’ll find it an acceptable reframing.
Not to bury you with under-statements today, Bob, but I think you’ve missed the point. Most broadly, politics is the conflict (and resolution) of who-gets-what. But simply focusing on political ideology without considering the larger cultural premises thereof (e.g.: the metaphysical assumptions) will lead you to suffer from the Inventor’s Paradox when trying to figure a way to make everyone hold hands and sing.
Titus, I think your answer does a disservice to the genius that American government, and to a slightly lesser extent, the genius of the government of all free and democratic societies. The innovation in America was to say “you are free – nobody gets to say what you do culturally as long as you adhere to certain political values involving power and freedom.” We don’t even care what individual people believe regarding political ideology – we just care about their behavior – but society will fall apart if a large majority of people don’t believe it as well.
By the way, I’d say politics isn’t about ” who gets what”, it is about power – the distribution of power, the limit of power, etc. Freedom of speech, for example, isn’t about wealth distribution.
There are exceptions to my grand claim about America: for example, homosexual marriage remains illegal, and unsurprisingly, libertarians, to their credit, respond by saying “government should get out of the marriage business altogether – it should be a religious matter that doesn’t concern government. And sure enough: homosexual marriage is an example of a cultural difference that isn’t a society-killer.
Yeah, no cultural premises there, what with laissez-faire growing on trees and such…
What informs human behavior?
What kind of power? Wattage? Or do you mean power over other people and, consequently, their stuff?
Oh, I see. The correlation between freedom of ideas and broader creation and distribution of wealth is just coincidence. The fact that autocrats consider speech/thought-control a prereq for maintaining power is neither here nor there; it’s a fluke, like leisure suits. Got it.
Yeah, it’s almost as if the pro and con side each have different ideas regarding the very nature of mankind and thus make different deal/no-deal decisions based on those premises… /headscratch
tl dr; Bob, you’re the fish that doesn’t know it’s wet.
Yes, laissez-faire, when taken literally meaning “let us do”, is quite prevalent in America – more than almost anywhere else on Earth, and that political belief is one of the things that keeps us together. Another belief – that all men are created equal – is an antidote to supremacists. And so on — any cultural difference that would be a society-killer for America is political. That leaves a lot of room for non-political cultural diversity. In other words, today America is perfectly healthy when it is multi-cultural, so long as it is relatively politically uniform, at least when compared to the greater world’s variety of tyrannies.
Not multi-cultural, sub-cultural. There’s a high-level mono-culture that hangs like an umbrella over it all. Elements of a sub-culture which conflict with the higher level mono-culture must be culled for stability.
Could you suggest an example of a (sub)cultural element that isn’t political yet is worthy of being “culled for stability”?
That depends on what you mean by “political”.
I’ve got to go. Brock, I hope you’ll consider what I wrote.
Titus, I didn’t want to play word games – I wanted to present an alternative to B. Lewis’s segregationist vision that still took into account the concerns of people like Brock. I have to admit I find it hard to figure out what you’re really saying Titus — it sounds like you’re using the Inventor’s Paradox as an excuse for ethnicity-based bigotry at best, and Fascism at worst -but I don’t actually believe you think that way, so I’m perplexed. What do you want to “cull” and how do you want to cull it?
@Titus Quinn: [Different cultures have] different ideas regarding the very nature of mankind and thus make different deal/no-deal decisions based on those premises… There’s a high-level mono-culture [in the USA] that hangs like an umbrella over it all. Elements of a sub-culture which conflict with the higher level mono-culture must be culled for stability.
(I hope I have represented your position fairly in this quote. If not, please let me know.)
Thank you for summing it up succinctly. America was a nation when the core values/behavioral norms of the “high-level monoculture” ( = WASP hegemony) were backed by law and custom. With the weakening and collapse of the “high-level monoculture”, the cohesion of the nation weakened and collapsed. When it is gone completely, there will be no “nation”, only a political entity. Whichever group gains control of this entity will then attempt to impose its own culture as the new “high-level monoculture”. At that point, enter Hobbes.
I repeat: America (Britain, Belgium, et al) are “nations” in the same sense Yugoslavia was: a “nation” united only by a boot on the throat. Take away Tito’s boot, and “Yugoslavia” dissolves, leaving only a fistful of incompatible ethno-cultural groups. As in Yugoslavia, each of the ethno-cultural groups in the U.S.., Britain etc. will at that point carve out its own territories. As with Yugoslavia, this will mean ethnic cleansing, genocide, rape camps, and the whole nightmare scenario of civil war, may God forbid.
Or we can agree to an amicable separation without fighting it out, as did the Czechs and Slovaks. We still have time to choose which option we prefer.