Narcissistic Altruism

One of the great unanswered questions of our age is why Western rulers are obsessed with importing tens of millions of unassimilable foreigners into their lands. In the US, the conventional wisdom among immigration patriots is that one side of the political class wants cheap votes, while the other side wants cheap labor. In Europe, the theories range from female hysteria to poorly conceived economics. The one common thread is that across the West, the ruling elites appear to be trying to crash their cultures.

The trouble with these reductionist theories is they do not make much sense at the individual level, so they cannot very well scale up. For example, the cheap labor argument does not hold up very well when you examine it. Helot labor is great for the business owner, just as long as he is the only guy doing it. When every landscaper is using Aztec workers, there’s little benefit to the landscaping companies. That is not to say there is no benefit, but does it warrant the suicidal drive to import Mexico into the US?

In Europe, the cheap labor argument makes less sense. Depending upon who is counting, between 80% and 90% of migrants are on public assistance. Even if these migrants wanted to work, there is little demand for low-IQ unskilled workers. Even if there was some demand, the labor laws in Europe would make it impossible to hire them. One of the vexing problems the Euros have are restricted labor markets, which prevent the sort of labor mobility we have in the US. There’s just little demand for cheap foreign labor.

The cheap voter argument is a better one, but even so, the returns are spotty. In the US, Latin voters have been unreliable. They have low turnout numbers, relative to other groups. Unlike blacks, they are not easily agitated into rushing out to stage big protests or shoot white people. There is also the fact that they tend to cause the white vote to coalesce around white candidates regardless of party. That or it results in white flight, as we see in California. So far, open borders have been a disaster for white Democrats.

A similar result has been seen in Europe. The Brits are the example closest to the US for obvious reasons. Open borders have destroyed the party that advocated for it. On the continent, the anti-Euro movements are entirely driven by the immigration waves triggered by Merkel. Even docile countries run by cat ladies and cucks are starting to see the rise of nationalism and anti-immigrant parties. Exactly no where is immigration helping the political class. Yet, the ruling class is universally in favor of open borders.

The fact is, there are no good political or economic arguments in favor of mass immigration. In some places, the arguments have some plausibility, but even the best nuts and bolts arguments in favor of elevated immigration levels do not justify the high political and cultural costs. Yet, our political classes have an unshakable loyalty to foreign migrants. In every Western nation, the smart political play is to oppose high immigration levels. In many countries, banning all immigration is overwhelmingly popular.

There must be something else at work, beyond money and power. Even if we extend the bounds of the ruling class beyond the elected class and their attendants, there is no upside for the elites. Why is Mark Zuckerberg berserk for high immigration? He is even in favor of importing Muslims. The same is true for Hollywood people. They get nothing from open borders, other than fewer job opportunities. Ditto the mass media. About the only thing the self-actualizing classes get from open borders is domestic labor.

That may be the key to it. I’ve pointed out before that the self-actualizing class may prefer Spanish landscapers, as it avoids them having to see blacks raking leaves, while singing old fashioned negro work songs. It also avoids seeing downscale whites, who remind them of the tenuousness of their position. Asian and Caribbean domestics not only avoid those problems, but everyone can pretend they make better workers in those roles. The Korean nanny is like a tiger mom for hire. It makes the deception more palatable.

The underlying cause here may be narcissistic altruism. It is generally assumed that altruism is selfless, while narcissism is selfish. That may not be the correct framing, as lots of people do charity work because it makes them feel good. Similarly, lots of self-absorbed people commit public acts of piety because it makes them look good and elevates their status. The guy funding the museum and demanding his name be over the front door is not acting from pure selflessness. He wants glory too.

It has always been known that men often become more religious as they grow older, often returning to the religion of their youth in a serious way. The pattern is not as obvious with women as they are much more likely to stay in their church as young adults. Young mothers will often get involved with their church for family services and socializing with other mothers. Men, on the other hand, often have a religious awakening in their middle years and not only return to their religion but do so with vigor.

George Vaillant was a researcher at Harvard and did a 50 year study on men, tracking them from their teens to old age. One of the areas he studied was altruism and he found that as the men aged, their altruism increased significantly. This was not simply due to selflessness. Helping others becomes increasing rewarding as we age. Neuroimaging has revealed that helping others brings pleasure to the person providing the help. Altruism activates brain centers that are associated with selfish pleasures like sex.

Organized religion, obviously, provides a ready made structure into which this selfish desire to help others can flow. Not only does organized religion have structured charity, but it also comes with a spiritually rewarding purpose and generations of others who have followed the same path. The female desire to provide charity is funneled into activities that support the community the church serves. The late onset male altruism follows on providing money and intellectual capital to society-strengthening altruism.

Again, this is not pure selflessness. When you volunteer at your church, you feel good about it, because the pleasure centers of your brain are stimulated. It could simply be that as we age, the vanity of youth is no longer effective. To get the same pleasure from life, that desire for selfish pleasure (sex, wealth, status), is redirected into other areas like church participation and charitable giving. Doing good makes the person feel good for having voluntarily done a good work on behalf of their fellows.

The collapse of organized religion, particularly among the Cloud People, is leaving them with no structured outlet for this normal human impulse. The reason a Lyndsay Graham cares more about Dreamers, than his fellow South Carolinians is he feels like he is helping those who need help. It is why John McCain spent the last three decades chanting about “causes greater than yourself.” Without a structure into which his narcissistic altruism could flow, he searched around for causes and purposes, most of which were destructive.

143 thoughts on “Narcissistic Altruism

  1. Sorry, I don’t agree with this post.

    Elites believe global corporations are the future; that is:
    1. AI will replace work as we know it.
    2. There’s no way to pay back the debt, which will eventually lead to economic collapse.
    3. Western culture is an abomination to the rest of the world because colonialism, resource usurpation, racism, barbarous war.

    The solution is no countries, world government, IMF SDR’s to replace local currencies as they become worthless; just print money and distribute as needed and provide a living wage to everyone on the planet. Picture a more sophisticated Woodrow Wilson solution.

    Value for work? No longer needed. Armed conflict? Well, it’s really a legal and policing action, just like the Left thinks of domestic terrorism now.

    This solution has the happy consequence of keeping the elite in power in perpetuity. But they can finally usher in the socialist utopia on earth without trashing the planet in economic collapse and banish war at the same time!

    And American open borders has the twofer benefits of moving the country left while lowering the standard of living to correct for past theft from the world. Whites need to guilt trip and lay down once and for all.

    The simple analogy is that western culture and USA in particular is to the world what South Africa was to Africa. South Africa’s riches will now be redistributed fairly and become the socialist paradise it always would have been if only the Dutch wouldn’t have raped the place.

    The only messy part of the plan right now is that the leftist plebes are somewhat out of control and starting to eat their own, including at the bastions of leftist intellectual thought called our universities. Which is somewhat alarming. The elites didn’t foresee just how stupid and dependent their future nirvana culture would become, so quickly.

  2. Have to say love this site . A lot of very smart people here. Including of course our host Z-man.

    I lack the obvious advanced education most people seem to possess here although do enjoy reading the comments

    Liberal , lefty narcissistic altruism
    One group over-represented in news , entertainment and politics.
    And of course the new world order = globalism.

    All great points of view. Will continue researching trying to find an answer.

    One sole group responsible for this out of control invasion or just a buoillabaisse of various groups contributing to the downfall of white people ?

    • I agree that there is a movement among many who would like to see an end to white dominance, but that means killing all white people. Why? Because white people seem to always rise to the top, like cream. Why? because we are innately curious, adventurous, brave, smart, hard-working and we like to employ logic and reason to our lives so we can be successful.

      For that we must all die so the monkeys can run the planet.

  3. G Edward Griffin would tell you in his book “The Creature from Jekyll Island”
    (all about the Fed Res board) that WAR is the name of the game and all
    profits to them come from conflict so creating conflict becomes the raison
    d’etra of the uber elite.

  4. Yeah, huge mystery. Nobody can possibly figure it out.

    It’s almost as if there’s 2% of the population that is parasitic toward the West, hates Christianity and hates/fears whites even as it tries to pass as white when it’s advantageous.

    It’s almost as if that tiny group of people wields power and money far in excess of its numbers and uses it to influence politics, media, and academia to bring down the host cultures.

    Nah, that couldn’t be it, could it?

    Surely not.

  5. One must differentiate between immigrants and refugees. Both, according the law, have a legal right to apply for citizenship or asylum.

    Whether we like it or not, refugees are entitled to protection under the German (and most European) Constitutions and they have the right to have their asylum case heard in court. I believe this is also true in the US and Canada.

    When the subject of refugees was established as part of the new German Constitution after WW-2, we were only thinking about how the Jews were unable to find refuge as they fled Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland and everywhere else Nazis were rounding them up. Even the U.S. Government turned away thousands of Jewish refugees as in the case of the German ocean liner St. Louis in June of 1939.

    The first real test occurred during the Kosovo conflict when Croatians, Serbians and Cosovo-Albanians fled to Germany by the thousands. And when the conflict ended, almost all of them returned to their home countries. Unfortunately, no one could have ever anticipated the 1.5 million people that came here in 2015. And like it or not, Chancelor Merkle was bound by the rule of law and our constitution, not by narcissistic altruism or some conspiracy against the German people.

    However, even our Constitution is not a static document. Things are changing. Due to the current refugee crisis, Germans and other European countries are reconsidering how to effectively deal with such a crisis on such a scale.

    Now, if you want to talk about legal immigrants who are displacing the demographics of white-European populations – that is a completely different topic. And one we have known about for over 60-years.

    • Refugees have to apply for asylum in the first country that is safe.
      It’s hard to see how a Syrian can claim that in the case of, say, Germany of Sweden.

  6. Skimmed the comments and re-read the essay by Mr. Z. There is a dog that didn’t bark in this: the Tribe. The two World Wars of the twentieth century were fought probably to get the Tribe its homeland back. Ensconced there they permit NO non-Tribe immigration but since 1948 (to pick a year) an avalanche of Brown & Black hordes have been streamed into Western Europe and White America for what? Google Barbara Spectre on youTube. Examine the career of Emanuel Celler. Read the trilogy of The Culture of Critique Series by Kevin B. MacDonald.

  7. The white man’s sense of justice. It’s not fair in a cosmic justice sense that the white people who built western civilization are so successful and leaves other civilizations behind. Success then leads to guilt which leads to remorse which leads to doing penance.

  8. For someone who describes psychology as “crap science” you seem to post a lot of theories based on it (just busting your chops). I think you are onto something here though. It is underpinned by a feeling that the person doesn’t deserve their status, so they seek an outlet (yoga, altruism, charity, etc) which is really an ego prop. It just means these people are vacuous pricks.

  9. Zman is on to something here.

    If the elites have formed a seperate culture
    above and beyond borders, then an affinity group coda, a religion, will also form.

    Yup, that coda is of post-scarcity values.
    The signaling is the currency.

  10. I think the narcissistic altruism argument is true. Progressivism as many have pointed out is a religion, and open borders is a tenant of the faith, making those who adhere to it feel morally superior. On a side note, having worked with immigrants in my profession, it is not that they are cheap, it is that they are reliable and work hard, with a respectful attitude. Ask anyone who is more reliable, an American black or a Phillipino or Indian immigrant. There is no comparison.

  11. Interesting notion. I sort of buy it. But there is a very big selfish angle as well.. Take the LAUSD – if all the Hispanics who came here were removed. There would be a massive layoff of teachers and administrative personnel. The same applies to state welfare workers of various stripes. Police would be downsized as well. Hospital ER’s would become near vacant. Dialysis clinics would be shuttered all over the state, etc.

    The point is government loves population growth because it ensures growth of government to take care of all the new parasites.

    Cities love growth because it means increase in sales taxes and utilities and other services.

    Even higher ed is hooked on it. They love importing Asian students because they can make so much money off them as well as encouraging dim witted Mexicans to sign up college even though some 90% drop out.

    None of these people care one iota about the cost to society at large or whether or not it’s sustainable(it’s not).

    Business loves them for similar reasons. They all are consumers and they buy stuff, even though it’s with welfare money.I see illegals with Ipods and Galaxies all the time. Business execs don’t care.

    As as far as the landscaper using Aztecs – all of them here in Southern CA, use them. And I see them driving around in $30-50,000 pickups. And they all charge a pretty penny. Want your yard xeriscaped? It’ll cost $12 grand.

    One other thing, nobody thinks the party is going to end.

  12. Anyone who can ask & answer this question without using the word “Jews” is being willfully stupid.
    Who truly & honestly wants immigrants? Jews.
    Why? Because nonwhite immigrants help thwart straight white male power. I don’t think it even happens consciously. I think that their outsider position creates a predisposition to support other outsiders & underdogs at an intuitive level.
    Who creates our nation’s moral code? Universities.
    Who disseminates that code to the masses? Media.
    Who tells politicians what to say & do? Donors.
    All three groups & institutions are more or less completely dominated by Jews who all share this intuitive pro-outsider bias. They create the moral codes, propaganda supporting those codes & change the laws of the land to fit those codes.
    To be fair, it’s not 100% Jews. Other outsider groups — blacks, Mexicans, gays, ugly women, weak men — all respond to this message too. But Jews articulate it, push it & legislate it. So I’d say it’s 75% Jews.
    Not zero like your explanation would suggest.

    • You make a point worth pausing over. Are there enough Jews to control journalism, Hollywood, most media and the Universities? Why don’t the gentiles, much larger in number, push back?

      • Whites have pushed back. Many times, in many countries.
        History is full of white people finally getting fed up with Jewish behavior & getting rid of them (one way or the other).
        The reason that the Alt-Right has gotten the Press & Universities & Politicians into such a frenzy is that it is among other things an example of whites pushing back against Jews.
        But as for why push-back is so rare, here are some ideas:
        1) Whites are naturally universalist & individualist. It doesn’t occur to us to work as a team like it does with more clannish people. That gives us an immediate disadvantage when competing against a unified, cooperative tribe.
        2) After hundreds of years of living amongst other people, Jews have learned to figure out their hosts’ psychology & hack it. In our case, our weakness seems to be our desire to do whatever behavior is considered most moral by society. Once we could be convinced that taking our own ethnic interests was immoral & low-status, we stopped doing it.
        3) Jews are fucking smart. The difference between the Ashkenazi IQ average & the white IQ average is about the same as between whites & blacks.
        There are so many more whites that the number of high IQ whites is higher than high IQ Jews. So we could effectively fight back. But to do that would require an organized and deliberate effort to identify high-IQ whites, concentrate them & mobilize them.
        That used to be what our Ivy League did, and they used to be Jew-wise enough to keep the number of Jews low. But then their universalism & idealism & sense of fair play got the better of them & they opened the gates in the 1920s.

          • Stop buying their framework.
            I am not antisemetic.
            I’m just not Semitic.
            They have their group, I have mine. They are interested in doing things that benefit their group. I am interested in doing things that benefit mine.
            Sometimes there is a conflict & when it is, I take my side. Just like they do.

          • “I’m not antisemetic”.

            But you are – sometimes. I suspect you don’t like feeling antisemitic either. When another group threatens your group, you become antiother. Which is perfectly natural. What is unnatural is NOT preferring your own group.

            Life is competition. I like the Red Sox, you like the Yankees. When our teams play, I am antiYankee. Beating your team makes me happy. As it is in sports, so it is in sociology?

          • i agree with you more than i sounded. antipathy towards other groups depends both on how much they threaten my group and how much I find their characteristics disagreeable.

  13. >It’s why John McCain spent the last three decades chanting about “causes greater than yourself.”<

    Reminds me of the line from the Hound on Game of Thrones: "Lots of horrible shit in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves."

  14. Re: “There must be something else at work, beyond money and power. Even if we extend the bounds of the ruling class beyond the elected class and their attendants, there’s no upside for the elites. Why is Mark Zuckerberg berserk for high immigration? He’s even in favor of importing Muslims. The same is true for Hollywood people. They get nothing from open borders, other than fewer job opportunities. Ditto the mass media. About the only thing the self-actualizing classes get from open borders is domestic labor.”

    ZMan, you are certainly on the right track regarding narcissistic altruistism, at least as far as the psychological piece is concerned. However, you are missed the proverbial boat when it comes to the end game, namely that many of the most-prominent members of the western ruling class are globalists.

    The globalists know that ordinary people do not want to swallow the bitter pill – world government and the erasure of national borders, lanbguage and culture – they have in store for them, so they are working on ways to force the issue. Specifically, social engineering on a massive scale.

    By force-feeding, as it were, immigrants (the more difficult to assimilate, the better as far as the social engineers are concerned) into their respective nations and societies, the globalist elites are destroying social cohesion, elevating mistrust, and ultimately creating the conditions for the Balkanization of western civilization. The shock troops of this effort are the Muslims, who take with them wherever they go the violence, chaos and bloodshed of jihad.

    By fracturing social cohesion, sowing discord and otherwise creating chaos, the elites at places like the European Union are banking on a breakdown in social order which will give them the perfect pretext to ride in on their proverbial white horses and save the day, in return for ordinary people in places like Germany and France surrendering a few more of the dwindling civil liberties they still possess.

    A larger, more-powerful and more-centralized European government is the desired result for the elites. They’ll get it via classic Hegelian dialectics – create a crisis, provoke a reaction, supply a solution you have wanted all along.

    The Muslims are the means to an end for the trans-national elites of the West, but they are more than that – many western political elites and others in positions of power have already converted to the one true faith. This is only logical, since the western elite respects nothing more than power and the will to rule, and Islam has always been about these things.

  15. Progressives flood the country with immigrants for the same reason Hollywood actresses collect african orphans. They are writing their own hagiographies in human flesh.

  16. Can’t really comment in the general, but can on the local brand around here. Think they’ve latched onto immigration because in a very wealthy NYC suburb it is an abstract. I think we have exactly one, maybe two ME refugee families that all the Progs cooed over on Facebook when they showed up. But they are parked over on in the “poor” corner of town, out of daily sight. Everybody got behind a “sanctuary village” proposal because they could feel good, but not really have to worry about MS13 gangbangers roaming in their neighborhoods. Though when there was a momentary discussion of redistricting the elementary schools so that some kids from the wealthy 3/4s of town might have to go to the one elementary school that services the poor kids, suddenly the world was about to come to a fucking end. These people are simply about signaling virtue so long as it costs them nothing.

  17. I truly believe that the left is currently resurrecting communism in the form of a new “radical egalitarianism” based on race rather than class. Seriously, this all ties together: their obsession with racism/sexism along with the mandatory erasing of borders and forcing you to LIKE IT. Just like Orwell pointed out, true totalitarians are not happy with merely holding all the power in the way of a garden variety authoritarian; they insist that you must OBEY and BELIEVE, you must “love Big Brother”. In our case we must love Diversity, we must import Diversity, and you must profess to bow down before it. Also the phenomenon of virtue signaling ties right in to this – it is a form of public worship.The question I have is “why now”? All this crazy social justice fanaticism took off around 2015 or so it seems. It is like a bad mania, one our leaders (globalists, all) have bought into. I think the atheist attribute of liberals is SO key to all of this. They are trying to remake the world in their own image because they don’t like the one God made (the one where genders, races, nations, etc. still exist). Globalism is the new communism, just packaged in a new “altruistic” package.

  18. http://blog.chron.com/immigration/2009/04/greenspan-to-testify-on-immigration-reform-today/

    Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said allowing more skilled immigrants to work in the U.S. would help keep the income gap from widening.

    Inequality of incomes is the “critical area where capitalist systems are most vulnerable,” Greenspan said today in Washington at a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets convened by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “You cannot have a system that we have unless the people who participate in it believe it is just.”

    Allowing more skilled workers into the country would bring down the salaries of top earners in the U.S., easing tensions over the mounting wage gap, Greenspan said.

    “Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world,” he said. “If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income.”
    Here’s Greenspan on the broader picture of immigration:

    I think that immigration has been very important to the success of this country and I fully support it. I’m not sure I would want to give the reason that we’re creating immigration to support our Social Security system. I think we ought to do it on the grounds that it is good for the country but not because it helps the Social Security fund — because that then suggests that if we find other means to solve the Social Security problem that we shouldn’t be expanding immigration and I would not support that.

  19. IMO, it’s neither narcissism nor altruism. It’s simply Cloward-Piven: destroy the country by overloading every system until everything crashes, thus necessitating a strong government solution. They’re not sure exactly what the replacement system will be, only that (they hope) they’ll be in charge.

  20. Ask myself this question almost daily. Why would a nation commit this sort of suicide ? . The ” feel-good ” factor ?

    Church groups ? Sure, they run on pure emotion and really think helping these future terrorist is a good idea.

    But the rest of the country inviting hostile, murderous backwards cavemen that do nothing except suck up free social services. How does this benefit anyone ?

    Just feels like some kind of evil is going on. ( and yes I am a conspiracy theorist )

    Then again Germany and France re-elected their politicians. Maybe they just like being hacked to death in the street.

  21. We conservatives are guilty of missing the key, underlying motivation of the globalists. We believe democrats are consciously trying to destroy western civilization while GOP/corporatists are trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the productive classes by importing more, cheaper versions. If you talk to these people, one on one, you’ll find both groups truly believe they are doing what is “right”. They believe their paths both lead to to a more virtuous, prosperous America. The truth is they are both wrong.

    Third-world immigration may have been a boon to America when we needed hands and shovels. But in today’s age, they are no more than hands that shovel taxpayer money into the mouths and wombs of the untermensch.

    Yet, as conservatives, we continue to fight their motives. This is a mistake. You will not change a man’s opinion by impugning his virtue. Instead, we might be better served by doubling-down on the real world, negative impacts of globalism and its effects on our own neighbors, sons and daughters. This data is freely available via Google. There are further arguments to be made with regard to the negative impact our immigration policies have by sucking the “best and brightest” from these counties that frankly, need them most.

    Our best bet, if there is one, is to fight emotion with logic – not more emotion. The former is a psychological dead-end. If our notion of nation states and culture (western civilization) is to win out in the end, it will be by appealing to the greatest of all “virtues” – self interest. That self-interest lies closest to home in the future of our own offspring and communities. This is both logical and ironically, emotionally compelling.

  22. It has always been known that men often become more religious as they grow older, often returning to the religion of their youth in a serious way

    An excellent reason not to allow Mohametans to immigrate. When a Christian returns to the faith of his youth, he resumes a relationship with Jesus Christ, King of peace.

    When a Mahometan returns to the faith off his youth, he resumes a relationship with Mahomet a psychotic jew and christian-hating killer.

  23. ZMan,

    You miss the most obvious rationale for the self-actualizing class to want to import labor — control. For the same reason that businesses love the H-1B the SAC prefer the undocumented. If said maid or gardener becomes uppy or problematic a simple anonymous call to ICE has them disappearing tut-sweet into the woodwork, never seen again. Rinse and repeat.

    • Who knows? The only people with the balls enough to react are for the most part Leftists (Nazis and Commies) and Muslims.

      The Right is still clinging to stockpiling weapons and hoping we can vote our way out of mess. I won’t say the later is impossible but its increasingly unlikely

      In any case its going to require a clear idea of what people want and will to make it happen. Guns and gear help but aren’t a magic talisman

      if the Right, .Alt Right or whoever can figure out what kind of society they want, at that point they can make change. Until then, we are all just pissing in the wind and praying for a collapse to save society for our lazy asses , mine included

      • Letting Hispanics cleanse blacks from neighborhoods is low grade race insurgency but unlike a real race war doesn’t actually solve the problem just move it around

        And as for White Genocide , we could end and reverse it by simply having 3 White kids each for a few decades. That would require learning to cooperate shutting off the fracking social media and deciding its a priority though .

        Its certainly not mine and as an aware person, if I’m not biting I can’t see why others would

        White people aren’t being killed off, they just decided they no longer wanted the life of consumers and that maybe the West is too crowded . Our elite being well how they are, despite wanting a smaller population a few decades ago are just desperate for social signaling and people to rule

        In truth while people want to be consumers for a little while, anyone with an IQ average of 90+ is getting lower fertility. The TFR for immigrants is only a margin higher than natives after a few years everywhere. Rootless life means no future,

        Anecdotal I used to see Hispanic kids everywhere and pregnant women a go-go. Now I’m seeing a lot less and many of them White.

        I’m glad, Unlike a lot of Right wing people I do think there is massive overcrowding and if we can get a homogeneous society , less people will be good for everyone

        Well other than the elite and big organizations but all of them kind of suck

  24. The manipulation of Americans’ tendency toward Narcissistic Altruism is a means to an end.

    The real answer is Globalism. Of course, most (or all) globalists believe their own propaganda.

    Narcissistic Altruism (excellent phrase-coining, btw) is the means by which voters are induced to support this globalist open-borders policy. “Tugging on the heart-strings” of individuals with an overriding need to appear (n.b.: “appear” and not “be”) morally superior to others, is money in the bank as far as propagandizing others for support of any agenda. Fortunately for the globalists, the vast majority of Americans are just such individuals.

    The first step toward the globalist end is the collapsing of nation states.

    This is done, in part, by dilution of citizenship. Additionally are the overlapping agendas of the destruction of principles and philosophies underpinning the foundations of individual nation-states; the erosion of social and cultural cohesion; “wars and rumours of wars” (i.e., fear-mongering); and, debt.

    It is a “scorched earth” policy in reverse that will be used to argue that there is every reason to move “forward” to globalism, and that there’s nothing left to “go back” to.

    The motivation is the same as the motivation behind the unification of Europe, and the unification of the former British colonies into the United States. That is, the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. The same motivation that inspired the expansion of empires since time immemorial. The difference being that it is no longer done by force of arms, but by propaganda; the undermining of any potentially unifying (read “resisting”) society or culture; claims of greater security from internal and external threats; and, ultimately, debt.

    Armies of bureaucrats and politicians manning twin siege engines of foreign and domestic policy; media/entertainment miners and sappers to bring down the walls of culture and society; academies for the training of new troops — the efficiency and effectiveness of which would make the Spartans blush; and, a wagon-train of banksters in charge of logistics and tasked with the ultimate goal of starving us out.

    That’s just my uncle Frank’s opinion.

  25. I’m not so sure immigration does not help the Dems. I read a study after the Obama defeat of Romney that showed if the country’s demography was the same as under Reagan, Romney would have won by 3 points.

  26. Not completely related, but your analysis of Christian Altruism reminded me of the book “Christian Hedonism” by John Piper. Might be an interesting read for you.

  27. The other thought on this post which comes to mind is how Trump is putting to lie the idea most of the General Operating Policies of the government party. Namely, that we cannot enforce immigration law without “comprehensive immigration reform”.

    Another one, as evidenced by this bleeding heart report from the NYT today? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/world/middleeast/islamic-state-reconstruction.html

    That we cannot win wars. I was dead set against Trump getting us deeper into the war on ISIS…let the Russians have it. But that was on the principle that the Government Party would deny Trump the ability to prosecute the war and actually do what he said he would do: destroy ISIS.

    That appears to have been accomplished. What rises from the rubble remains to be seen…but he got more done in 5 months over there than Obama/Bush did in 13 years.

    That’s the kind of stuff that has the Government Party in full-on meltdown mode.

  28. Not altruism, but pure, unadulterated self-interest. It’s all about receiving positive reinformcement from one’s reference group, which includes such “benefits” as being on boards, attending fundraisers (i.e., celebrations of self-love), riding oneself of guilt (real or imagined), and being “special.”

    As for myself, the older I get, the less altruistic I become. I also feel better about myself. It’s everyone else who has a problem.

  29. When the Boomers smashed the hierarchical social order, they did it so they could sneer at the hoi poloi too. A hundred years ago such arrogance was allowed only to a vanishingly small portion of the population, now many can indulge in looking down their nose at the lumpen proletariat.

    Snobbishness is a great motivator.

    • I agree that snobishness, navigating, gaming, and tending the pecking order, is a great motivator. Against my earlier comment, I’d agree that snobbishness, in the form of what we’re calling narcisstic altruism, might account for most of the craziness we see. But how did a large part of the population become afflicted with this anti-kin form of craziness in a short time?

      That’s where I’d look to cui bono and follow the money.

  30. As always, this is a very well-written essay. But it doesn’t seem to increase my (admittedly poor) understanding.

    I’d suggest two related things for analyzing this topic. (1) Cui bono. (2) Follow the money.

    I’m guessing that at the root of cui bono, it becomes more substantial than altruistic narcissism.

  31. Not completely OT…Spam and other canned meats are being stolen in Hawaii for quick resale by drug addicts. Hence this story:
    https://cdn.relaymedia.com/amp/www.civilbeat.org/2017/10/denby-fawcett-why-spam-is-now-under-lock-and-key-at-oahu-stores/
    A discussion at a board meeting last month…ladies told me that the back pack food packs being given to poor kids so they won’t go hungry over the weekends? The parents are grabbing the packs and selling the contents to heroin and meth dealers. These aren’t conservative ladies either.

    How’s that for a burst of altruistic goodness?

  32. I think the general point of the article is the “Signal Economy”. I view it like this: in a wealthy post-Industrial society economic status signals have simply lost their value, because cheap consumer goods are easy to come by. Hence we now have an economy built around status signals. PC status signals can be purchased at other people’s expense. Open Borders proponents may only be marginally affected by mass immigration if at all, while the cost is spread across the culture or society at large. So the benefit (the status that accrues to pro-open-borders signaler) is concentrated (on the signaler), while the cost is distributed to society at large. Similar to how pork barrel bills benefit a few people at the cost of a few dollars per citizen.

  33. “Sefish pleasures like sex”

    Love you Zman and enjoyed the article, but… you’re doing it wrong.

  34. Altruism gone astray? Perhaps, but I have a hard time imagining that politicians have an altruist bone in their bodies. They do seem to display a Santa Clause complex at times, e.g. bringing home the pork-barrel projects, but that is usually just a form of buying votes.

    I certainly have wondered why the enthusiasm for invasion, myself. A few other possible explanations:

    1) Opposition for its own sake: if the benighted dirt people hate something, politicians must love it. This tendency is shown by feminism for example, which supports Islam even though Islam is hostile toward women. Dirt people hate Muslims, so Islam must be supported no matter what – that’s what the feminists think. It’s almost commonplace to see people change their tunes, just because their opponents change theirs in the opposite direction.

    2) Divide and conquer: the cloud people are looking toward the massive debt-fueled crash on the horizon. They want the dirt people fighting each other rather than looking at cloud people with a hangman’s noose in their hands. Religious strife isn’t that big any more, but Islam is aggressive enough to get the pot stirred again.

    3) Stupidity: now and then one gets the impression that a lot of cloud people are just plain stupid, and can’t see the consequences of their policies.

  35. How is this insanity different from all the other prog/leftist insanity? Everything they think and do is insane. Maybe modern life just produces massive amounts of human insanity, for a number of reasons.

  36. Japan does not follow the model of promoting high immigration. Yet they still have the problem of low birthrates and they are attempting to address that problem by developing robot technology. US politicians cannot even muster the will to deport criminal illegal aliens (murderers), so their motivations are more likely to be a form of psychosis rather than misguided idealism. We are not electing the brightest minds among us, we are electing people who are seriously psychotic. This death wish is of our own doing.

    • “We are not electing the brightest minds among us, we are electing people who are seriously psychotic. This death wish is of our own doing”.

      Examples?

      • Read the speech that George Bush just gave in NY and then tell that he doesn’t have a loose screw in his noggin. Extreme stupidity is also know as clinical retardation.

        • I think it’s more that the power elite who are globalist are trying very, very hard to stem the tide of the revolt of the Dirt Peoples and can see that they are failing. Nationalism is resurgent in the Anglosphere and Europe, and they are trying desperately to fight against this. There is no doubt there is sociopathy inherent in the elite unhealthy desires to control the commoners. I think they are quite fearful of these uprisings, if the full light of day truly exposes their schemes as it seems to do more so over time and in increasing measure.

  37. One very real explanation that has been overlooked is the unmitigated stupidity of the political and cultural elites. They see a situation, misdiagnose the problem, apply a fix to the non-problem, a fix that only makes things worse, then fail to see the problem they have created. Because they are just plain stupid.

  38. An alternate theory. I’ve seen more than once in print that every time American pols came close to closing the valve on Mexican illegal immigration, Mexican elites would start aggressively engaging their counterparts in the executive branch, Congress, academia, etc., with some pretty focused messaging: if the U.S. didn’t continue to allow unrestricted illegal immigration, then a Marxist insurgency would brew up in Mexico and that the U.S. would be “fighting a Vietnam in its backyard.” Could the same sort of back channel/track two diplomacy be ongoing in Europe? Could the elites in MENA be whispering a similar message in Merkel’s ear? After the melt downs in Syria and Libya, the MENA elites had a pretty good argument in favor of Europe becoming the “safety valve” for their dysfunction. The flows from Sub-Saharan Africa were unintended consequences.

    Interestingly, the East Asian elites have not yet opened the doors to mass migration. That could be because (using Z’s theory) that not coming from a charitable culture, they don’t have any deep seated altruistic need to help the poor huddled masses of Bangladesh and Indonesia. Or using my theory, maybe the pols in South Asian basket cases haven’t been able to present a credible case to the elites in the northern economic powerhouses that southern dysfunction is a threat to northern vital interests.

    The roots of the birth dearth are easy to understand compared to this problem. I would argue that the problems have different roots since the birth dearth seems universal so far and the Zeroeth Amendment hysteria seems more selective.

  39. I have to say I think the main impulse motivating our lovely SJWs is not a burst of altruistic pleasure, but good old fashioned hate. They hate the other with unrefined passion, and in case you hadn’t noticed, readers of this blog are part of the other. They want to replace and crush their enemies. Tim

  40. The leftists could have achieved the same ego-boost by importing paupers from busted southern countries like Greece and Italy, with almost no backlash. Many of us northern Europeans have a real soft spot for the feckless but always cheerful Latin who spends his days tending goats and lounging on the beautiful square in Tuscany. No, there is something really poisonous going on.

  41. You are writing as if the elites think as a single brain. They don’t, they need to be led. Perhaps you could consider the motivations of the small leadership element who have the ability to propagate ideas.

    • Great point. And funny, too. Elites are (to borrow Z man’s term) the “self-actualizing”. Yet what self-actualization is evident from a whole upper stratum of übermenschen who say exactly the same things, in the same words, with the same patterned tone of ‘outrage’? One might draw the false conclusion that shoe-shine boys like Kimmel and Matthews decide how the ‘rulers’ will express their ‘thoughts’.

      Can it be that we’ve actually jumped to the Romulus Augustulus point, or beyond? Barbarian chieftains running the scam just a little longer, if you see what I mean.

  42. We do it because DNA demands it. The great mixing. Been going on from the beginning, and who knows where it goes. Trying to assign a reason to it is as hopeless as trying to understand the mind of God.

  43. I think the description of Narcissistic Altruism in the article is missing a few pieces. I would add that Narcissistic Altruism is solely focused on the good feelings generated by “helping” with no regard for whether or not anybody is actually helped and a callous disregard for the collateral damages caused by the so-called help. Another part would be maximizing the feeling of helping while minimizing the personal investment in that help, for example using other people’s money.

  44. C.f.: Mencius Moldbug on “nonempathic altruism”, which he also dubs “callous altruism”:

    Once you learn to recognize the distinction between empathic and nonempathic altruism, you’ll see it everywhere. Empathic altruism – charity – is simply good. Nonempathic altruism – communism – is simply evil. There’s not a whole lot of gray area between good and evil. Evil motivations can certainly, by coincidence, produce good results – but this is an accident, which has little or nothing to do with the supposed “good intentions.”

  45. Immigration has moved into holy sacrament territory. They’re for it, because their religion is for it. And there are few things more satisfying than parading their sanctimony around.

  46. “No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher than the interests of the right of nations to self-determination.”
    Vladimir Lenin

    “Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.”
    Joseph Stalin

    I do not think that it’s a coincidence that just about all open border zealots are lefties, liberal progressives or communists. Their goals are not economic nor political, their goals are purely (pseudo-religious) ideological.

    Zuckerberg of Facebook , Tom Steyer (the hedge fund manager) , Soros, et. al., billionaires all, are no less ideological than Obama (or Lenin, Trotsky or Marx). They all share contempt of “evil” capitalism (despite achieving their wealth within its economic system.)
    There is no contradiction here (in their minds) that they have achieved fabulous wealth within a system they abhor. They are self anointed intellectual elites who appoint themselves at the vanguard leading the masses towards a utopia..

    (Recall the Hollywood, multi-millionaire, Steven Spielberg, commenting on his personal visit with that great humanitarian, Fidel Castro; ‘The best seven hours I ever spent was actually with Fidel Castro.”
    Think about this; Spielberg, a Jew, fully cognizant of the horrors inflicted upon Jews over the last 5000 years, consorting with a killer, a murderer, and proclaiming that he had a great time with Castro; a Cuban version of Hitler. Spielberg is just further evidence that socialism/communism is a deeply held religious belief.)

    To up-end capitalism and install aUtopian nirvana (a utopia led and directed by these self-anointed elites) you must destroy those societal norms and values that help maintain traditional values.
    And one way to do this is to import hordes of illiterates from the hell holes of earth who have no shared values – moral, political, historical – with those who share and believe in the values of those who created and shaped a nation.

    If you think I am totally FOS, just read the lyrics to Lennon’s “Imagine.” Karl Marx and Lenin could not have said better what defines a communist utopia. And Lennon had the extra talent of putting the words into a song. (Oh, did you know that Lennon was a multi-millionaire?).
    Lennon’s lyrics are the goal of the open borders folks. Open borders is simply one of the tools to be utilized in achieving that utopia.

    Ann Appelbaum, the author and visiting professor at the London School of Economics, is one of the very, very few “intellectuals” that has devoted research into the crimes / mass exterminations that took place in the USSR under the terror of Lenin and Stalin.
    And some of her critics have said (I paraphrase here) ” why are you resurrecting this old history.” As if she was just wasting everybody’s time.

    Contrast this to the reception given a historian (or author, movie maker, etc) when recounting the crimes of Hitler (or Mussolini, or Pinochet or Franco or Batista)?

    Why no criticism of the historians documenting the crimes of Hitler?

    Because for the leftist/socialist/communist/Utopian, the religious quest for societal perfection permits, if not encourages, the breaking of a few eggs to make an omelette. Stalin’s crimes must be rationalized because, well, the ultimate goal was a utopia; so if he went a little overboard, no big deal. The end justifies the means.

    Open borders, unfettered immigration of illiterate and violent hordes into the USA and Europe are the eggs from which the leftist intellectuals (Obama, Merkel, the EU, Steyer, Zuckerberg, Pelosi, Schumer, etc), hope to make their omelette.

    The efforts of Lenin and Stalin to create their nirvana totally destroyed the economy of the USSR.
    They did not care.
    There were no good political and economic arguments for the implementation of collectivism and any arguments favoring such implementation were soon found to be totally wrong; MILLIONS died from starvation as a result of collectivization.

    But hey, no cost is too high in the RELIGIOUS pursuit of a socialist nirvana. Can’t implement collectivization?? Let’s try open borders !!!!

  47. the cheap labor argument does not hold up very well when you examine it. Helot labor is great for the business owner, just as long as he is the only guy doing it. When every landscaper is using Aztec workers, there’s little benefit to the landscaping companies.

    Even if literally every employer hires helots, they are still made better off by continual imports of newer helots. This remains true so long as the wage that newer helots demand is lower than what older helots demand. Marx identified the “reserve army of the unemployed”; this is pretty much that.

    But perhaps more politically pertinent, some employers actually want to employ Americans and/or obey laws against employing illegals. Obviously, the lower that wages can be held, the more these guys are ruined since they need employees to do “jobs that Americans won’t do”. These employers and their hoped-for employees tend to be deplorable. Both are hurt by immigration. So, it’s a win/win! Plenty of new Democrat voters and the legacy population impoverished!

  48. Altruism coupled with rage.

    I’d love to know what brain center lights up when revenge is achieved. An emotionally stunted, leftist wet-brain dream?

    Pat myself on the back AND get revenge on those I hate.

    Or am I overthinking this?

  49. “When every landscaper is using Aztec workers, there’s little benefit to the landscaping companies.”

    I see individual landscapers running crews of Aztecs. One man can increase his profits this way. Maybe you’re assuming that the market will drive down the price to reflect his cheaper wages? Maybe over time it will, but it doesn’t appear to have worked it’s way through the system

    We see this same phenomenon in construction too, Aztecs everywhere. There is an increase in PITA for dealing with the communication barrier. Obviously it’s still worth it at this time. Maybe over time this benefit will disappear.

    • A friend was having something built recently. Talked about how hypocritical it was for all these “buy local” people to talk about hiring local companies. He went to locals to get stuff done and they took his contracts and subbed them out to other companies using Mexicans. Said he had go to the worksite all the time to beg them to work because of his deadlines.

      Just found this out for myself. Hired a local company to do something and vanloads of Mexicans showed up to do the work.

      Next time I get anything done I’m going to a real small local company and ask about their crews first.

      • Doing a lot renovations on the house to sell, and getting bids on the house we’re buying. Some of the obviously Aztec ones are just as high lately in my area (midwest). I always try to go with someone who comes recommended like a Ronnie, or Casey or Steve, and when I ask about their crew I’m comforted when they say “It’s just me and my son” or “me and Justin.” Those guys are almost always similar in price or sometimes less than the Aztec brokers. I’m happy to give them my money for good honest work.

    • We saw that in the west.
      Once one farmer started cheating, they all ‘had to’ start cheating.

      Bracero programs took off when the Okies left to fight WWII.

  50. The “elites” governing the West are merely reflecting their deeply held belief that Western Civ, and the Christian Ethic that underlies it, are the greatest threat to humanity that ever existed. We overlook this motivation due to its inherent insanity. Nevertheless, their actions, which on the surface appear illogical, are all explainable by holding this idea up to them.

    • Not the greatest “threat to humanity”; but the greatest threat to the globalist, oligarch “New World Ordure”, and the so-called “elites'” desire for their One World Government”.

    • Considering that one man in the USSR Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov is the only reason there even is a Western Civilization , there is much truth in that

      No one else is crazy and smart enough to invent hydrogen bombs or nearly make genetic engineering for the common man or research AI and robotics that could quite literally result in human extermination

      And while China and others are joining in the doomsday rush , they didn’t invent it , we did. So yeah in a broader sense, we are a threat to everyone else

      Worse any culture we allow our Cathedral to touch, dies basically and drops below replacement fertility

      I honestly can’t blame the Leftists or any other culture for being angry about it, its lunacy

  51. Z Man;
    Yours is as good an explanation as I’ve seen. As you say, once you look at the phenomenon dispassionately, the madness of it jumps right out. Hence it’s time to look at the evidence that it’s largely emotionally driven.

    But you seem to be ignoring stupidity as a driving factor. I.e., you may be overestimating the intelligence many of the open boarders crowd, particularly their economic intelligence. Based on the ‘refugee resettlement’ folks at our church, I’d vote for both. They really enjoy the good feelings from helping individuals and brush off any and all concerns about the mass effects of their actions. If they had a motto. it would be, “Smugness is our strength.”

  52. Over here in Europe it might be the economic reasons in addition to narcissism. True, migrants in Germany do not work but they still need housing and government handouts. All this is beneficial in the short term because it keeps the economy artificially growing and elderly might get some domestic help. And a lot of people have really swallowed the open border / blank slate mantra.

  53. As to the open immigration thing, I think one element of it is that immigration, similar to unfettered abortion and “voter rights”, has become an unthinking response, not a thought-through position, for many of those who think the world is a nasty place and doesn’t need to be, if only people thought like they did.

    As a knee-jerk response for those in the Liberal club, the notion that they might be damaging their own lives by supporting all of this just doesn’t register. There is a big disconnect, because many supporters of unfettered immigration do not live lives that directly and immediately suffer from such a policy, but the dots can still be connected that the poor ghettoes and the people’s suffering in them are a direct result of this open immigration. But that is called the fault of Trump and the Right for not embracing all this stuff. Nice way to avoid responsibility, right there.

  54. I think as Christianity burns out in the West, a few half-remembered embers temporarily glow brightly before going out. Self-denial is something people vaguely remember as a good thing. Without any coherent structure to put it in its appropriate place, it takes over so that we see people doing suicidal things while congratulating themselves on their virtue. They can’t remember anything else of their old religion, so they cling to the confused idea that God is happy when we destroy ourselves.

  55. Why don’t any of these explanations apply to Australia? The Australians understand that immigration would lead to colonization by Chinese. In the US, nobody is afraid of colonization by 5’4 Mexican immigrants. Germany fears immigrants but Poland and Hungary know that they are always in danger in being occupied (it’s happened in recent memory). So a large part is complacency mixed with the immigration illusion ie immigrants will always stay at 15% and nothing will change.

  56. I would probably lean towards the another concept I think disappeared with the collapse of Christianity: forgiveness. The progressive cause is devoid of forgiveness (at least as far as any ‘privileged’ class is concerned). So they find themselves sinful within a religion that is deeply intolerant of that sin.

    So in this situation the progressive wants to conceal his sins and do great things in the name of his religion. They want to be a ‘good white’ in a similar sense that they might consider being a ‘good Nazi’. The basic mentality is that their virtue is framed as that of the turncoat of an unjust cause. The underlying hope being that, if you do enough damage, you may find forgiveness from the righteous (the ‘unprivileged’).

    So the monuments these idiots erect may not necessarily be for their pride so much as it is a public reminder of the goodness of that person.

    • Yes, fantastic. Americans in general have a difficulty in understanding forgiveness because of our Calvinists heritage.

      We tend to think of things in terms of ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ because of Calvinism’s dichotomy between the saved and unsaved: early colonies required people to present proof of salvation in order to be citizens. We’re still looking for proof of salvation!

      • You see the lack of forgiveness every day. It has morphed into an intolerance of anything that strays from the “party line”. I try to tell people to accept that others think differently than they do, and that is an OK thing, and that we all need to leave space for other people to find their own answers. They look at me like I have three heads or something.

        Finally, I tell them that people hate to be told they are wrong, that it is a human thing to hate it, and that no one’s thinking has ever been changed by being scolded that they are wrong. The reactions are incredible, you can see the wheels turning, and then the “proper-think” kicks in and they treat me like I am a disease or something.

        • Forgiveness is revolutionary in it’s depth and simplicity.
          I think it’s the secret strength of the Christian mystery, why they are such a positive force.

          To contemplate the weighty command of forgiveness requires profound contemplation; one must truly try to walk in another’s shoes.

          Early training and a lifetime of this effort reinforce empathy.

          (Note that that genocidal mercenary, Calvin, instead advocated ‘beating the Hell out of them’. Pilgrims, appalled by Puritan abuse, sang “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as part of an anti-Puritan ditty in 1644.

          In the OT, the mewcar- scepter, slang for a scroll- is for children.
          The cane or rod for fools is for adults- dammed if I can remember the Hebrew, a tip of the toungue thing.
          A bit of mistranslation that makes many Christians, delighting in cruelty, hated.)

    • We saw this very premise on display last week, when H Weinstein vowed to redouble his efforts to bring down the evil NRA. It’s the proven escape pod for goodthinkers with big money and big connections.

      Cash payment for the remission of sin… hmm, I’m thinking 16th century here. Remind you of anything that happened around 1517?

  57. I think you are right. The demand for more and more immigrants from ever more random locations has reached a level of hysteria that isn’t explainable by reasonability.

    However there is one policy reason for pro immigration that no one ever discusses. Especially the pro immigration types.

    That is the declining population of young people on one hand and aging dependent population on the other. The problem is that without young people the social security that old people demand won’t be paid, the companies whose shares they own won’t have employees or customers and the bonds they hold will be useless. Without young people working and spending there isn’t an economy.

    The reason there aren’t enough young people is that the sexual revolution encouraged by the elites has destroyed society in one generation by setting men and women against each other.

  58. So basically one man’s virtue signaling is another man’s actually being virtuous. I think the story checks out. Everyone is the hero of their own story, as Yudkowski said.

  59. Nail head Z Man. But I think the connection/ correlation to the diminishing influence of religion is problematic. The LDS community is a case in point. Most Mormons are well educated, financially secure and the church is almost fanatical on the concept of serving others from top to bottom. They however support immigration both morally and financially and not of the educated European variety. This drive to import low IQ morally challenged non-Mormons is certainly not do to a lack of religiosity. Amazingly they would prefer to facilitate the import of non-believers or Muslims than sponsor fellow Christians who truly face genocide in the middle east.
    One factor that I believe has at least a partial effect is cultural. Prior to the Boomers the “everyday joe”, salt of the earth was a good thing to be. Politicians and Actors and actresses made efforts to demonstrate they were just like John Q Public to gain favor and avoided the appearances of being elite or hoiti toiti. Post 60s the admired and idolized are rich rebels or well to dos who reject traditional norms. That model to a small degree and narcissistic elitism are the controlling factors.

    • To me Mormonism is like a Christianized Judaism. They keep themselves apart, infiltrate, subjugate, etc. The difference is in evangelization. They’ve had a lot of success in the Third World, so importing it is just another kind of missionary work.

      • Being in loose touch with some members of the local Mormon community, I am guessing that the discipline that they demand of their membership is assumed to be transferable to those brought in from abroad. I am skeptical. I think some of the membership may be skeptical as well, but the Mormons are tightly a “top down” organization, so if it is coming from the top, then it will be followed.

        • A detail- the Book of Mormon purportedly details two Hebrew colonies in Central America.

          Oddly, it does correlate with the time of the Zapotec and Mixtec cultures.

          This was the original reasoning behind interest in Latin America.

          Every Prot then discovers the necessity of saving island paradises, the LDS are no different, excepting that Pacific Islanders are a big presence in Utah, along with Kona Gold in the 70’s. The Samoan gangs couldn’t make any money due to lack of customers, so they left. Culture matters.

          Utah is getting spooky again due to the Diversity. BYU and the upper crust went Blue under Bush, I hope they’re not seeing Muslims as new fertile grounds for evangelism, but they might join the Prots in that also.

          I do think Zman is on to something here. The economic reasons are likely justification or speculation after the fact.

          If the elites have formed a seperate culture above and beyond borders, then an affinity group coda, a religion, will also form.

      • Sure the separatism, evangeliztion, I don’t know about the subjugate but the question is why import the least likely to turn into good “saints”. The LDS is strong on financial independence and tithing. Muslim third worlder’s are not the pool of converts to provide church-going tithe paying members; there are other prospects. The church knows they will be a drain on the church are likely damaging to the country in toto yet they focus the import those most destructive to all. I think the church leaders envision themselves the elite (like the other cloud people) and perceive they are more holy to work with those who common sense say are not going to convert, will not earn a living and are a threat to Christians if not the country at large.
        i.e. Narcacism, eliteism drives them not lack of faith

          • Very responsive to traditional authority structures, strong classical patriotism. Heritage of traditional modes of morality, less likely to be addicts, perverts (debatable).

  60. Looking at my own situation, I think the male return to church in later years has many roots. You get the kids raised and the financial house in order, and you step away from the work treadmill just a bit. You come to realize how hard it is to accomplish positive change in large and abstract ways, and how easy it is to do in the small and specific things. You also have a practical skill set that may not be particularly valuable any more in the workplace, but that can do wonders with the bevy of small skilled tasks that a church or community organization requires. Finally, you tend to add greater value to the small things and little social moments that church or community participation provides. But you do need to get off the couch and turn off the Netflix, and get out there and make things happen. Quite a few people seem to never get off the couch as they get older.

  61. Target, McDonald’s, Exxon Mobile, Procter and Gamble, SC Johnson, etc, and F.I.RE see them as customers. Whites have everything, except maybe some positional goods, like true elite education. They’re post consumerism, at least they should be. Apparently, the elites and most proles are too lazy to THINK post consumer. I don’t think we know how, or at least have the will. So we stay the course and dupe new entrants.

  62. I think this is one of the few times that I’ve been unconvinced by your argument. I hear the problem about scaling down to individuals and the political class, but that doesn’t strengthen the narcissistic altruism bit which seems a stretch.

    As with most problems, it’s almost certainly a confluence of several issues. Leftist votes certainly accounts for some of it. And another good direction for thought would be the “Feminine Imperative” (to put it simply, gynocentrism writ large). But this one needs a bit more time in the oven.

  63. It has been written in many places that the urban globalist elite feels more kinship with other urban elites in foreign countries than the do with the non-urban people in their own countries. To these people, their own countrymen are just as much “the other” as immigrants are. In addition, immigrants aren’t in competition for power with the urban elite the same way flyover country is, which is why flyover country is the enemy while immigrants are not

  64. This altruistic impulse would most naturally towards family. Many of the leaders in the West, and many of their supporters, are barren. Ipso facto.

    • They are tribal for lack of a better definition. Tribal people put their people first and foremost.

      Or maybe a high ethnic cohesion co-efficient. IOW they stick together.
      ‘ll give you a real world example among Central Americans here in the U.S when one of them opens up a store or eatery, all the other Central Americans in town patronize it – they support each other. The Chinese ex-parts do the where ever they go as well.

      Oh yeah their cultures are still relatively intact compared to ours. That helps a lot. Their elites to a large extent haven’t been poisoned by contemporary Western thinking and education.

      Our ruling class or cloud people are the opposite. They have no real cultural or ethnic cohesion. They loathe their own kind and are engaging in a form of ethnic and economic warfare against them because of it. Some is a result of class hatred which has been around since the wealthy isolated themselves from the rest of society over a century ago. The other aspect at play I suspect is their abandonment of their cultural legacy and values in favor of a more modern and progressive set that has been called the culture of death.

  65. There is nothing at work except money.

    Immigration is encouraged since the locals don’t have enough children to satisfy the demand for endless growth of the economy – Not at any rate that history got forecasters accustomed to assuming. The immigrants also, by definition, have to be poor people as well, as that is the only way to be sure that the economy has categorically grown rather than simply been expanded by importing the newcomers’ spending power from Europe, or latterly, Japan and China. As this extract illustrates, this has been going one for a long, long time.

    “…IN THE LOBBY OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
    commerce building a giant “clock” is running which brings joy to
    the American marketers who watch it ticking. It is one Washington
    frill they heartily endorse. Every seven and a half seconds a
    blue light flashes, as on a pinball machine, to indicate that a new
    baby has been born somewhere in the United States.

    Much more slowly, a purple light flashes-every twenty seconds
    -to indicate that some unfortunate American citizen has died.
    Another flashing light indicates the occasional arrival of an
    immigrant.

    The key light is the white one, which shows the net results of
    all these changes. It flashes every eleven seconds to indicate
    that in that period one more human being has been added to
    the total United States population. Thus every eleven seconds
    marketers have gained one new prospect who will need food,
    clothing, shelter, and later on toy pistols, motorcars, hi-fi sets,
    powerboats, mixers, and casket. A large sign beside this clock
    during the late fifties read:
    MORE PEOPLE
    mean
    MORE MARKETS
    A soft-drink party was held in. the lobby in October, 1958,
    when the tote meter flashed past 175,000,000. Heady predic-
    tions were made about the prospects opening up to marketers
    as a result of the fantastic population explosion in the United
    States.

    U.S. News & World Report, which is read primarily by
    businessmen, stated: “America’s greatest boom is in people.
    Business, workers, government will be kept busy providing for
    an exploding population.”
    Actually, the United States population was exploding much
    more violently than that publication realized when it forecast
    in 1957 that the nation would have “Sixty Million More U.S.
    Consumers in 19 years.” Later census estimates indicated that
    nearly one hundred million more consumers might be added to
    the United States population in the next twenty years. People
    were living longer and longer. Couples were marrying younger
    and younger-and setting their sights on larger families. Girls
    now approaching the marriageable age expected to have one
    more child than their mothers did. The bumper crop of babies
    born after World War II would soon be marrying-in the mid-
    sixties-and were expected to produce a prodigious increase
    in the population.
    The nation’s growing population was widely perceived by
    exultant businessmen as a built-in guarantee of long-term pros-
    perity and as a main prop of the expanding economy. And to
    some extent they sought to promote the idea that having big
    families was a fine, wonderful thing.
    Americans were prone to deplore population expansion in
    faraway lands. The fact was, however, that the United States
    was going through one of the greatest population explosions in
    the history of mankind. Its rate of population increase was as
    high as that of India and Italy, if not higher. Nearly three
    million people already were being added to the United States
    population each year, and that rate would grow. This was
    equivalent to adding annually a dozen brand-new cities the
    size of Omaha. If current trends continued, quite likely the
    United States population by the end of the century-or within
    the lifetime of most of us-would more than double the present
    population.
    All this was viewed as progress. Babies by the millions would
    eliminate the possibility of serious depressions and serve as a
    backstop against possible miscalculation in overexpanding
    the capacity of factories. A few weeks after the stock market
    went into a slump at the beginning of 1960, financial analysts
    advised nervous investors to be of good cheer: with the popula-
    tion growth in prospect, stocks just had to go up in the long run.
    The Advertising Council took the lead, appropriately, in
    spelling out the happy implications of the baby boom. To put
    consumers in a mood to step up their spending-and stop
    worrying-it organized a multimillion-dollar pepping-up campaign.
    One of the advertisements it prepared showed the picture
    of a stork-symbolizing population growth-on its nest. The
    caption read: “THIS BIRD MEANS BUSINESS.”…”

    Vance Packard – “The Waste Makers” (1960) – Current US population is 325 million, so the prediction was wrong, but not that far off.

    • In a world that’s projected to have fewer jobs due to technology and automation, how is any immigration at all justified? What kind of consumers will low-IQ, unskilled people make? They’ll be supported by our taxes. If they work, their wages as well as the wages of most citizens may be so low as to not be taxed and therefore do not contribute to our system. So what then? How does this help businesses to even stay open, never mind grow or start new ones? Tens of millions of unemployed people who all need to eat and pay rent (many of whom hate the European-American culture that the U.S. was for a long time) plus dwindling tax base plus overburdened social/govt services equals …? Civil strife? Government collapse? Third worldom? State secessions? All of the above?

  66. I think you’re bang on that much of it is altruism looking for an outlet in the absence of religion. But supporting that is a section of the population who absolutely detest the society they are from and wish it destroyed, and remade to their satisfaction with them in charge. This is exactly what the communists tried to do, but communism failed and so they turned to whatever weapon they could lay their hands on – and mass immigration is one way to go about it. So the behaviour we are seeing might be as much to do with the collapse of the USSR as the collapse of the churches.

  67. I think overwhelming and destroying native / western culture has more to do with it. It may damage the pro-immigration in the short-run. In the long-run it annihilates conservatives.

  68. I think it is a combination of all of these factors with different players all getting something a little different out of it.

    Part of the problem of Europe, and increasingly here in the USA, is that social democracy doesn’t create enough of an increase in population to keep the benefits flowing and lowering benefits is political suicide. So gradual societal suicide is the answer. And you can feel good about it while gassing your own country.

    • True, but the political class has a clear choice. Even if there is no immediate downside to going along with high rates of immigration, there is no upside. If tomorrow the Democrats did an about face and embraced restrictionism, they would sweep the 2018 elections. They can’t even bring themselves to like about it and they will lie about anything.

      Theirs is an emotional position, purely emotional.

      • Wholeheartedly agree. Modern progressivism is all about feelings. It’s going to get worse with schools teaching kids that feeling bad is likely because the person who beat you beat you only because of privilege. They have it. You don’t. Then add on to that the whole micro-aggression culture and it only goes downhill from there.

        • Matt you are spot on my lefty friends when asked can’t describe what Pres Trump has done to make them “hate” him. They say he has “made people feel bad for who they are.” Feminization in action – I feel bad so it must be someone else’s fault.

      • The Dems are playing the long game. Coming out for restrictions may help them in 2018, but new free-stuff voters in 10-20 years helps them even more.

      • Sorry, this is probably TL;DR

        The ruling elite is made up of strivers and non-strivers. The strivers unquestioningly adopt whatever opinions and ploys entry and position require of them. They are purely mercenary (or easily persuaded true believers). The non-strivers have position, power, wealth, influence, and can distribute largess to strivers. Most have attained positions or wealth that no longer challenge their spirit or have particularly growing scope.

        George Soros lives for what purpose? To see his vision of the Open Society come to pass? He’ll be dead, and he knows it. So what tickles his endorphins? Clearly, not religion nor greater wealth (though he stays in the Game). His jollies come from controlling and directing the strivers. Being the Deacon of Church Soros and doling out its beneficence.

        But the Z Man’s question: why the push for absurd outcomes to a host society by a cosmopolitan ruling elite remains. Such people have a conscious and unconscious desire regarding their lives.

        Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, you see TV and news reports about how all these religious people have put together holiday dinners for the poor and homeless. They show the lines of people behind tables or counters happily doling out food full of smiles, shining eyes, utter delight in the great good they’re doing for the less fortunate (I know. I’ve volunteered in soup kitchens). But they never ask if what they’re doing is simply enabling very criminal, self-destructive, lazy, and selfish people to skate through another week of irresponsible and harmful behavior.

        It’s called cheap grace. Feeling good for being easily generous with no follow up or requiring penitence or amendment of any kind such as: here’s a field that needs weeding. Then you get fed.

        If you truly love another human being, even if it’s any human being, you desire that which is best for him. Helping someone remain in the sewer by freely feeding them (or giving alcoholics new livers) is not what’s best for them. And yes, letting them die by their choice, by natural consequences, is what’s best for them and for you.

        But the ruling elite want cheap grace and have a vision, too.

        They have a pretty good idea of how empty and meaningless their lives are, and so they are desperate to do good in some way. The problem is that emptiness and meaninglessness creates hatred of life. That manifests unconsciously as a Death Wish. All becomes projected onto the external, their society.

        That I am empty and meaningless means society is just so. If I fix society, I fix myself. How do I fix society? First I have to destroy it, then it and I shall arise like a shining phoenix. All will be well.

        How do I destroy my empty society? Anyway I can.

        Marx, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Soros, Schemer, Pelosi, Bush I, Bush II, Obama etc, were or are people with a classic Death Wish.

        But wait, Bush II was a religious convert! He was a drunk, who became a dry drunk. The death wish never left him because all he got from religion was sobriety, not wisdom and insight.

        Societies have death wishes because their ruling elite are spiritually insane, and insanely effete.

    • I don’t believe politicians or voters know/care about a Social Security deficit that will manifest itself in 20-30 years.

      • I often wonder whether the political and media firestorm we live in, is actually cover for the systematic looting of the system by certain politically and economically powerful entities. They could care less about the next 20 years, or even the next 20 months. Getting while the getting is good, from their perspective.

        • Yes I found it hilarious that Michelle Bachmann, when retiring from Congress, arranged Swiss passports for all of her family (N.Z. would have been better). She obviously knew what is coming in a few years in the U.S., but waited to get her own bailout until she no longer had to worry about offending voters with her “treachery,” etc.

          • Much calculation went into that decision and I am not at all sure NZ would have been a better choice, The Kiwis have far more immigration than is commonly realized.

            At least, the Bachmans will be reliable voters for Christoph Blocher! Her children’s claim to Swiss citizenship came through her Swiss-American husband. Michelle herself is basically Norwegian.

      • It is going to manifest itself (to all but the blindest politicians) a lot sooner than 20-30 years.

      • They know but there is nothing that will be done,

        Take The perfect example, the affordable care act . The Republicans are happy all day and night to vote to repeal so long as President Obama was in office and nothing would happen but once they have a President who supports repeal and you know, maybe something better, well he thinks so anyway , suddenly they just can’t do it nope nope

        Same with every other tough call, mostly they just want to get the goodies with as little work as possible

        It also doesn’t help that the average member of Congress will be dead of old age by the time the butchers bill comes do. The average age for the House is 51, the Senate 61 and we’ve had octogenarians and nonagenarians in office as as well

        Trump having a huge family is one of the few exceptions, he does think long term since he has a young son . Heck the real goal of his administration is to leave an America the kind of business his people do can happen in. This mandates a stable country with a strong middle class otherwise no Trump empire

        Fundamentally we need a new elite , new institutions and a uniform expected code of conduct

        No easy to way to get that and in fact most solutions basically require a lot of lead

        No one other than the stupider elements of the Far Left (Commies and Nazis basically) want that so everyone kicks the can in some way, well let the next guy deal with the budget , maybe Generation Zyklon will fix things and so on

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