Reply to Charley Reese on State Chauvinism
The Charley Reese quotes on this page are from his editorial, State Chauvinism.
Charley Reese:
...At one time, most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of the states in which they were born and were very proud of them.
Even as late as the 1950s, I listened to a very angry black civil-rights advocate say, "These people are first of all white, second of all Southern, third Alabamian or whatever state they're from, fourth American and fifth and finally a (expletive deleted) human being." Bitterness aside, there was a lot of truth in his observation.
While ditching the racist part, we ought to go back to that....
Why the exception for the "racist part"? There is no good reason. Mr. Reese isn't an ignorant man. He must be aware that racism isn't something caused by racists, but by the natural tribalism that evolution put into the genes of primate species, including all extant forms of hominid.
There is more reason, not less, to identify oneself by race than by culture, since race is what you are while culture is what you do, which is a subset of what you can do, which depends on what you are. Since culture depends on race, race is the more fundamental distinction.
There is much more reason, not less, to identify oneself by race than by region or country. Where we were born has nothing to do with what we are. A White man is always born to White parents, never to parents of any other race. He may be born in Africa, or he may be born in China, but if he is White, then necessarily he had White parents, and they had White parents before them.
The ideal of Chivalry that "Thou shalt love the country in which thou wast born," was written down in an age when people did not travel or migrate nearly so much as they do today. Naming your country strongly correlated with naming your race, and so geography did become confused with biology. But since the Middle Ages, the correlation between race and country has largely broken down, and the confusion that was once harmless can today cause serious trouble unless it is straightened out.
An "Englishman" is a detail of racial type. Most of the north Europeans—English, German, French, Swiss, Dutch, Norweigians, Finlanders, Swedes, Danes, Russians—are biological sports (look in the dictionary) of each other. They are not simply people who live in their respective countries; nor are they people who hold citizenship in those countries. If you aren't born an Englishman you can't acquire the status through any sort of legal process or religious ceremony. If state or church tell you differently, they are lying to you.
You can only be an Englishman if both of your parents were English. However, if that were true, then you'd be an Englishman no matter where you were born—the location of your birthplace does not matter.
As I said, Mr. Reese isn't ignorant. But he said something ignorant. Why? Probably, he knows that he must appease politically correct editors and publishers, for whom ignorance about the significance of race in humans is a central part of their quasi-religious beliefs. If he doesn't do that, he might have trouble.
Charley Reese:
We've had our revolution. Now we need to start devolution and return both the power and the money to the states. To do that, we have to focus our attention on our homes, our communities and our states. Overseas, we are Americans; within our own borders, we should be Georgians or Iowans or whatever state gave us birth.
No state gave me birth. My mother did. And Georgia didn't birth her, either. My grandmother did. Is Charlie Reese being careless here, or underhanded? I declare: Reese's notion that states give us birth is so easy to mock that I can't bear to do any more of it.