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SIX KEYS TO A LITERARY GENETIC CODE

In essays on the subject of centricity, I've most often used the image of a geometrical circle, which, as I explained here,  owes someth...

Sunday, February 15, 2026

SUPERHERO REPLACEMENT THEORY PT. 2

Earlier I examined the two ethical systems, of conservatism ("Keeping") and of liberalism ("sharing"). in terms of the dynamics of human societies from ancient times onward. The same systems apply equally to the ways in which those societies determine their identities in terms of cultural matrices.

No one ever really knows why a given society, whether of antiquity or modernity, decides to dominantly pursue one cultural course over another: whether to worship one god or several, or whether it's good or bad to seethe a kid in its mother's milk. Even in modern times, pundits can make anterior comments about how some cultural development MAY have come about, but that's not the same as KNOWING how a dominant majority chooses that course. But it can be fairly stated that once the course is chosen, the Ethos of Keeping comes into play, as succeeding members of the culture "Keep Faith" with the decisions of their ancestors. Obviously, minority cultural developments play a role as well, and this can come about from the Ethic of Sharing, as members of a society, often in a metropolitan phase, choose to pursue the cultural matrices of other societies.

Conservatism does rule the roost in most if not all societies when it comes to allowing members of other societies to join the ingroup, and in ancient times there would be zero examples of dominant societies that voluntarily changed to accomodate migrants. Usually minority societies did not manipulate but were manipulated. Such minority groups could be (1) transported away from their native land to some other location, (2) absorbed into the majority culture with various restrictions, or (3) allowed to function in the majority culture as sojourners but remaining subject to random expulsion. The Ethos of Sharing manifested only in religious movements, such as Buddhism and Christianity, which stressed a latitudinarian approach to cultural differences, though one could argue that this ecumenical approach had the ulterior purpose of spreading a particular religious credo through the medium of cultural tolerance.

All of this groundwork in the inherent conservativism of human societies should provide context for the fact that the United States of America, for the first 150 years of its existence, tended to exclude potential immigrants who did not resemble the dominant culture. The Naturalization Act of 1790 specified that naturalization of aliens was limited to "free white persons," and though members of various minority groups did gain citizenship at this or that time, no Ethos of Sharing affected America immigration law. Then in 1963, President John F. Kennedy attempted, but failed, to overthrow the exclusionary strictures. Roughly two years after Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the 1965 Immigration Act, thus ensuring a greater liberalism in terms of making American immigration law less exclusionary.

Now, exclusion on the basis of race was always wrong, so I don't take issue with the 1965 act on that basis. It's demonstrable that human beings of all ethnicities were able to assimilate to the American culture and to become valuable members of the society, while not being as legally restricted as, say, Jews and Christians in Muslim societies. However, buried within the Democratic imperative of liberation was the assumption that immigrants of other cultures would ALWAYS be willing to assimilate to established American culture.

I doubt that Kennedy and Johnson foresaw that Muslims, for all their prevalence in the Old World, would be radically different from the legions of Italians, Irish, and Spanish-speaking immigrants who came legally into the United States. But adherents of Islam do comprise a special case. Irish and Italians might throw their support to this or that Congressman on the basis of what the Congressman promised to do for the Irish and Italians in the US. But with the rise of Muslim immigration in both America and Europe in the 21st century, it's clear that many Muslims are not interested in assimilating to any dominant culture. Whether it's hassling citizens about walking dogs within Muslim-dominated communities, or the 2025 Somali Scandal of Minnesota (admittedly accomplished with the help of traitorous American citizens), there's a clear pattern of an Ethos of Keeping that applies not to the dominant cultures of America and Europe, but to Islamic culture as a whole. Kennedy and Johnson advocated an Ethos of Sharing for all cultures. But this liberalism backfired, creating the perception that it was OK for minority cultures to do what they pleased. And American travails have been minor next to the way this False Liberalism has betrayed countries like France and Great Britain, promoting what amounts to a Second Ottoman Empire through the medium of "tolerance." 

I must admit that this is not the same form of Replacement Theory that promotes the admission of illegals to supposedly make the United States more "diverse," Further, nothing in my screed has anything to do with heroes of any kind, though I would assume that terrorists, like those who committed the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, like to believe themselves heroic. But both legal and illegal forms of minority emigration are defended by liberals who think that they're promoting an Ethos of Sharing, of sharing the wealth of the country with the whole Third World. So I see both forms as springing from a misplaced idealism, one also at the root of Minnesota's sanctuary-based defense of all illegals, even those guilty of serious crimes. But I have no suggestions as to how to allay these social problems, many of which are now protected by legal precedent. All I can do is to say that the Liberal talking-point, that all complaints like mine are mere xenophobia, make the assumption that there exist no cultures which merit a phobic response.         

                 


             

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