Cheeks, your malignancy aint as advanced, you still have time

Does anyone believe that the racial problems in the American South either began with or could be largely defined by local attachments? Surely the localist advocates of the South (e.g. the Agrarians in I’ll Take My Stand) not infrequently defended segregation because it was the status quo and they were fighting to get back to a status quo ante. But race slavery in our country was largely made possible by early forms of a global economy. According to Tocqueville, slavery prevented the South from developing a real society and culture, and the events of the Civil War testify to this. That is, one of the main reasons the Confederacy failed (we all recall from elementary school or Ken Burns or even current scholarship) was that it had developed as a giant factory farm ruled by a narrow high caste. As T.S. Eliot observed many times, it takes classes not castes to create a culture; classes are culturally homogenous and stratified within that culture, while castes are distinct cultures coexisting, wherein one rules over the other.

Had the South developed a complete culture and a complete society it probably would not have seceded, because it probably would have had to have booted race slavery in advance of developing such a culture. So much, in any case, Tocqueville argues.

For my own part, let me second the observation that a) traditional anti-Jewish hatred must be distinguished radically from modern anti-semitism; b) modern-antisemitism clearly has its roots in a kind of anxiety among those seeking to build modern nationalist movements that Jews had already what, say, pan-Slavs did not: an inherited sense of communal identity and loyalty to cultural tradition; and c) modern nationalist movements were not created to stop everyone from falling in love with foreigners and becoming world citizens (though, if that’s your view of Communism, then actually nationalist movements did form against such things), but to break down traditional local attachments and subordinate them to a defined national consciousness generally headquartered in deracinated urban centers. The rooted locals and rooted cosmopolitans both lost out to the rootless nationalists.

If anyone can show me one instance of a truly localist ethos that actually results in some kind of categorical injustice (racism, antisemitism, etc.), I’d be most grateful, as I would also be most surprised. That kind of injustice is to be distinguished from the simple privileging of family and friendship obligations over those of hospitality to the stranger.

OK.

Bottum:

“So what is this problem at the root of localism? Part of it involves the simple philosophical point that all definitions—even self-definitions—require, at some point, an assertion of what the defined thing is not. There is no such thing as an entirely positive definition.”

What is pure sophistry is the implied suggestion that this “problem” at the root of localism is unique to localism.

Replace “localism” with “America”, “Western civilization”, or “the family” — or, for that matter, “Christianity”.

To the extent that Bottum is saying anything at all, he is pointing out that there are moral risks inherent to possessing an identity.

Jews are uber localists throughout the diaspora as are Mormons and all people of Faith. When you seek the divine that is within, you tend to have a certain proclivity toward the essential building block of the local, your very own arse.

Perhaps it is a chicken and egg dilemma…it aint the prejudice against religions or races that is at work…it is the prejudice against the local…the non-National. The Jewish Question is the stalking horse to cover the more basic antipathy against anything questioning the glory of leviathan.

I dare say that our susceptibility to thinking that there is a necessary correlation between locality and racism is a consequence of a certain view of American history. And, if anything, various defenders of localism before, during and after the Civil War severely damaged the case for localism by linking their arguments to slavery and Jim Crow (and it’s a connection that has well served centralizers ever since). But that’s different than suggesting that there is a necessary connection. I believe FPR is a place where the argument can be made in defense of locality that helps the work of disassociating the two.

As for the fine comb approach that helps us get beyond the simplifying language of “localism”: I think Caleb has hit it on the head in his post today – so I’ll simply direct you there, where I’m sure you’ve already been, but others should certainly go.

Well, no, that wasn’t my point at all. I see where you’re going but you veered off into internationalism when I was wanting to talk about localism. In fact, I’m struck by the odd turn that this discussion has taken to a sort of mix between a red herring and a tu quoque (“While localists have, and will continue to, commit injustices, so too have centralizers.”)

First, its a red herring because we are all localizers here. Bottum is from North Dakota, I’m from Texas, etc. We’re in favor of localism. You’re in favor of localism. I think everyone in this discussion is in favor of localism. The debate is not about which is better, localism or centralism (is that the only choices?) but about how do we encourage localism while not glossing over the more unsavory aspects that tend to come along with it.

Second, the focus on anti-Semitism at the national level is the true show-stopper. Patrick, for example, jumps from the idea that “minorities are persecuted at the local level” to “localism was somehow the animating spirit behind the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust.” Whoa. That goes from zero to nuclear in 15 words.

Ironically, it was also the point that Bottum originally made when he pointed out that its easy to gloss over the anti-Semitism (and racism, etc.) that tends to flow from localist attachments. It’s no doubt true that the greatest crimes against minorities tend to occur at higher levels of organization (i.e., the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany). But why does that let us off from having to deal with the issue at the local level?

I think this might be where Evangelicals like Joe Carter are coming from. And it is at this point where debate will be squashed by ad hominem.

Also, the Jewish people, particularly many strands of orthodox Judaism, offer an excellent example of a people who adhere to place. With their strict observance of the Sabbath, they live close to their places of worship so that they can walk. These folks are well rooted in their communities, both religiously and politically.

Further, I think the invectives flowing from the FT crowd is rooted in a superficial and politically correct view of history. If you’re localist, you’re racist fails to take into account a number of racist political actions that have come from our own federal government, like the Fugitive Slave Act, the “imbecil” decision of Oliver Wendel Holmes, as well as just about every minor war we’ve engaged in, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, and the occupation of the Philippines.

While localists have, and will continue to, commit injustices, so too have centralizers. One approach keeps error localized, the other universalizes error, bringing equal opportunity misery.

I may not be able to fully articulate this here, but it seems to me that localism is, by its nature, better at protecting minorities in the area than is the nation-state. Having a preference for “one’s own” is not just a localist tendency, but is a universal and beautiful one. The nation-stater has it; witness the outpouring of love for America and American exceptionalism over the next few days. The difference is that the localist’s love is grounded in reality, in a particular thing, while the nation-stater’s is grounded in ideology. A love for reality tends to open us to seeing good in the rest of reality; genuinely seeing a human face of another and loving it should make us more, not less, open to the humanity of the rest of those around us. Conversely, love of an ideology (in this case, patriotic ideology) creates no such effect in us. Instead, it closes us off to recognizing the humanity in the other precisely because that other does not fit into the ideological picture we’ve constructed and decided is true. Rather than discovering something in the person who doesn’t fit into the ideology, the nation-stater is left to impose his ideology onto that person in the hopes of making that person fit.

There was a fantastic article recently about how the modern military is sui generis in all of history because its members have no real attachments; they tend to be unmarried and spend more time playing video games and looking at pornography than they do writing/calling/skyping home. The author was speculating that this might lead to a better military, since the members have no reasons to ever leave service. My thought was that this was actually a recipe for war crimes, as people with no attachments to other humans are far less likely to see the humanity of those they capture or fight. Local attachments are important because they enable us to get outside the shell; we can only love in the particulars. Otherwise it always descends into ideology.