For Memorial Day: on nationalism and patriotism
[NOTE: The following is a repeat of a previous post, slightly edited and updated.]
The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book – as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers – that I was assigned in school.
It was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad – and unfair, too – that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students – au contraire.
Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades.
I think this feeling gathered more adherents (at least in this country) during the Vietnam era, and certainly the same is true lately. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were thought to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, coupled with a lot more than nationalism itself. But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.
Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:
If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…
A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which a particular type of amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response at the time, one that many decades later helped lead to the formation of the EU. The waning but still relatively strong nationalism of the US (as shown by the election of Donald Trump, for example) has been seen by those who agree with Mann as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.
But the US is not Nazi Germany or anything like it, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. There’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores or tramples on human rights (like that of the Nazis), but one that embraces and strives for and tries to preserve them here and abroad, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but has been a good country nevertheless, always working to be better, with a nationalism that traditionally recognizes that sometimes liberty must be fought for, and that the struggle involves some sacrifice.
So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those lines from the anthem express a hope that has been fading. But even though things had been looking dim for both liberty and courage in recent years, it is not over.
When I looked back at my original, longer version of this post, I saw that it was written on Memorial Day in 2005, not that long after I began blogging. Seems longer ago than that. This is another portion of what I wrote then, and although I was describing my post-9/11 thoughts, I think it’s especially appropriate now [updates in brackets]:
I’d known the words to [our national anthem] for [over sixty years], and even had to learn about Francis Scott Key and the circumstances under which he wrote them. But I never really thought much about those words. It was just a song that was difficult to sing, and not as pretty as America the Beautiful or God Bless America (the latter, in those very un-PC days of my youth, we used to sing as we marched out of assembly).
The whole first stanza of the national anthem is a protracted version of a question: does the American flag still wave over the fort? Has the US been successful in the battle? As a child, the answer seemed to me to have been a foregone conclusion–of course it waved, of course the US prevailed in the battle; how could it be otherwise? America rah-rah. America always was the winner. Even our withdrawal from Vietnam, so many years later, seemed to me to be an act of choice. Our very existence as a nation had never for a moment felt threatened.
The only threat I’d ever faced to this country was the nightmarish threat of nuclear war. But that seemed more a threat to the entire planet, to humankind itself, rather than to this country specifically. And so I never really heard or felt the vulnerability and fear expressed in Key’s question, which he asked during the War of 1812, so shortly after the birth of the country itself: does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
But now I heard his doubt, and I felt it, too. I saw quite suddenly that there was no “given” in the existence of this country–its continuance, and its preciousness, began to seem to me to be as important and as precarious as they must have seemed to Key during that night in 1814.
And then other memorized writings came to me as well–the Gettysburg Address, whose words those crabby old teachers of mine had made us memorize in their entirety: and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Here it was again, the sense of the nation as an experiment in democracy and freedom, and inherently special but vulnerable to destruction, an idea I had never until that moment grasped. But now I did, on a visceral level.
Nationalism is a virtue, but the socialists-communists who drive our Democratic party believe in globalism, no borders, and derivative corrollaries. Remember that Marxist communism seeks to rule globally, forever.
The Man Without a Country goes toward generating today’s anti-nationalisms. I found it offensive decades ago in its implied condemnation of patriotism. I am, or perhaps was, glad to be an American.
I bet only a small minority today know America the Beautiful.
There’s a difference between love of country and jingoism.
Jingoism = “Extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy.”
It should be possible to love one’s country and still work toward friendly relations with all other nations. Unfortunately, there are forces or beliefs that militate against that. Tyrannies usually don’t welcome democracies on their borders. Having a democracy next door could undermine the tyrant’s grip on power. (Russia and Ukraine.)
Then there are the globalist ambitions of an intolerant religion like Islam. They will not be satisfied until they have converted or killed all the infidels.
We have tried to export democracy and free enterprise to other countries because we believe it’s a superior system. It worked in Japan, South Korea, and Germany, but at great cost and may not be reproducible again.
We presently are facing the threat from leftist tyrannies and Islamic jihadis who mare making common cause. We would be naive or foolish to believe we don’t need to stand up for freedom and democracy. It’s not jingoism to want to be left alone by these aggressive ideologies. Superior military power seems to be the only thing these assailants understand. Peace through strength is not jingoism. It’s common sense.
The definitive thing about Nazi Germany was not Nationalism, but rather Racism, in the form of anti-Semitism. Anne Frank’s father Otto served in the German Army in World War I, and indeed was promoted to officer rank. Under the Nazi regime, he and his family were thrown into concentration camps. Runaway nationalism can indeed be destruction, as the example of WWI demonstrates; runaway tribalism/racism is worse.
Here’s an interesting video from Claire Lehmann: Nationalism is the Antidote to Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpmoAnvnbTw
IMO, what was salient about the German regime after 1932 was not nationalism but revanchism (whose objects included the Jews) conjoined to a perfectly madcap imperial ambition (recall lebensraum).
==
We’re learning what the implications are of a professional-managerial element devoid of patriotism (national, provincial, or local). Mann was not insightful.
re Globalism…Edward Porter Alexander was a Confederate general (he was Lee’s artillery commander at Gettysburg) who after the war became a railroad president, and offered some revised thoughts on the subject of State’s Rights:
“Well that (state’s rights) was the issue of the war; & as we were defeated that right was surrendered & a limit put on state sovereignty. And the South is now entirely satisfied with that result. And the reason of it is very simple. State sovereignty was doubtless a wise political instution for the condition of this vast country in the last century. But the railroad, and the steamboat & the telegraph began to transform things early in this century & have gradually made what may almost be called a new planet of it… Our political institutions have had to change… Briefly we had the right to fight, but our fight was against what might be called a Darwinian development or an adaptation to changed & changing conditions so we need not greatly regret defeat.”
I think a lot of the belief in unlimited globalization is implicitly driven by an extension of Alexander’s argument, with the jet plane, the container ship, and the Internet taking the place of the railroad, steamboat, and telegraph.
See my post What Are the Limits of the Alexander Analysis?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54565.html
Subsidiarity of power, authority, and control [hopefully coupled to applicable responsibility and accountability] is intended to bring those factors down to the lowest level where they can be most efficient and effective. The Articles of Confederation were not sharing the required powers as well as the reconstituted version of the Constitution ended up doing. It also forms the basis or restraining power, from city to national levels.
In our modern world of much global commerce, governments still need to have the ability to restrict international corporate power in turn. But the nation-state appears to be a necessary level to collect groups of people to some version of a common cause and outlook, plus I suspect provide a level of competition among them to foster challenge and growth, and thereby progress in a general, legal, and economic sense.
We see the failures of the EU as the inability and unwillingness of the partnering member nation states to relinquish enough sovereignty to a semi-continental entity. But they also did not share enough common culture among them vs. what the American colonies did in 1787. Did things start to come apart when they instituted a common Euro currency?
As we honor those fallen protecting our liberties and rights, we still have to wonder why more of those 193 countries are not following our structural and legal example. I think we can understand how GWB hoped that all peoples shared the same goals as we do, even if we also wonder how he could have been so naive and wrong in attempting “nation building”. Perhaps it really did/does take around 100 years of localized colonial assembly legislative control, coupled to a tradition of Magna Carta and English common law. A Judeo-Christian culture, augmented with the Enlightenment may also have been nearly essential?
“The definitive thing about Nazi Germany was not Nationalism, but rather Racism, in the form of anti-Semitism.”
Nationalism was involved, there’s no way around that.
Like any other basically healthy thing, nationalism becomes destructive and immoral out of its proper place and degree. Many vices are twisted virtues.
In the 19th Century, nationalism became a replacement religion in Europe (and to a degree elsewhere), to the point where it would probably be fair to say that it became an instance of idolatry in many cases. As H.G. Wells once pointed out, in the late 19C you would be more likely to start a physical altercation on a tram by denouncing your Nation than by denouncing God.
That kind of _idolatrous_ Nationalism, nationalism with a capitol N, so to speak, did indeed contribute enormously to the advent of the World Wars, and to how they played out.
I also believe that the West’s intellectual class has never yet recovered from the failure of the Age of Reason. To many in the intellectual class in the late 19C, advancing science, logic, and Reason (capitalized again because it too reached idolatrous levels) would end war, sickness, poverty, hatred, all the human horrors of history, the Enlightenment had brought a New World.
Instead, the vast power of the new science and industry was mobilized on a grand scale in World War I to produce death, suffering, and destruction on a scale never seen before in the history of the world. Science was harnessed to create mustard gas and tanks and combat aircraft.
Tennyson wrote Locksley Hall in 1835, it captured the spirit of the Age of Reason as seen by the intellectual elites of Europe in the 19C. It’s still routinely quoted by advocates for the eventual peaceful union of the world.
But in 1886 Tennyson wrote _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_ , in which the protagonist of the first poem, now an old man who knows he won’t live to see the sun rise, muses on his youthful folly and more or less repudiates the utopian vision he pursued in the first poem as he converses with his grandson. For Tennyson the Vision had already failed even by 1886. The Great War, IMHO, was a shock that his overall social/intellectual class never recovered from, and still have not.
Which is part of why I think patriotism remains alive and well at street level, but is either ignored or denigrated in most of the media institutions and academic centers that are controlled by the intellectual, and sometimes literal, descendants of those earlier intellectuals.
That class of mind can be very intelligent, but instinctively wants an _intellectual_ philosophy of life, morality, and human affairs. They are drawn to abstract principles, while the conservative mindset (as opposed to libertarian) knows viscerally that there is no escape from the a-rational, organic realities of life. The abstract principles, when they conflict with those realities, shatter on them like fragile boats smashing into granite rocks.
Nobody can escape who they are. Biologically you are the sum of the genes you inherited from your parents and the experiences of your life, which also depend on who your parents are. You’re a citizen of a particular nation with a specific culture, specific languages, specific national virtues and vices that you inherit and can not readily escape. The abstractionists desperately want to escape, but if they could do so, they would have to literally leave _themselves_ behind.
The disdain for patriotism is just one aspect of that overall phenomenon.
“I think a lot of the belief in unlimited globalization is implicitly driven by an extension of Alexander’s argument, with the jet plane, the container ship, and the Internet taking the place of the railroad, steamboat, and telegraph.” — David Foster
Absolutely. And what’s more, the application is completely valid and accurate. The advance of communications and transport technology over the last two centuries is indeed driving the world, with considerable force, toward eventual political unification, certainly _de facto_ if not necessarily _de jure_ .
But the hard reality of incompatible faiths, differing languages, differing cultures, ancient identities and sometimes ancient ingrained hatreds, along with conflicting economic interests, has not gone away and induces a counter-pressure of its own, and one of enormous force.
Baghdad and Moscow are closer to Washington D.C. and Chicago, in terms of travel time, in 2025 than Washington D.C. and New York City were to each other in 1800. As recently as 1900, it tooks weeks to cross the Atlantic, any significant military threat from the Old World would take months at minimum to make itself felt.
Now ICBMS can reach out and crush someone in 30 minutes or less, from around the world.
Dreamers saw this trend as driving peace and world unity. It does drive toward world unity, but world unity is by no means guaranteed to be pleasant. Also, that same reduction in travel and communication time that stitches economies together also puts peoples who can’t stand each other in each other’s faces all the time.
Re: Mann / Hesse / “Demian”
“Demian” was one of those books which changed everything when I was young.
I just reread Mann’s introduction, which neo references. Mann is making an argument for Hesse as a true, pure, German — not the twisted Nazi version.
Mann wishes to redeem the Germanic spirit, as well as push Hesse forward for the Nobel Prize. (Successfully. Hesse received the Nobel for Literature in 1947.) Mann writes:
________________________
German? Well, if that’s the question, [Hesse’s work] … is indeed German, German to an almost impossible degree … German in in the old happy, free, and intellectual sense to which the name of Germany owes its best repute…
________________________
Hesse was 47 years-old when he wrote “Demian,” a book oriented to youth. (And not surprisingly seized upon by the American counterculture in the 60s/70s). He published it under the name of Sinclair, the youthful narrator of “Demian.”
But eventually Mann and others recognized the true master behind “Demian.” By the tenth printing Hesse’s name was on the book.
HC68…but consolidation & centralization have limits of their own. Connecting things together can make them vulnerable and brittle. See my post Coupling:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/73917.html
Of course, globalism has shown itself, like perverted nationalism, to be just another, if extremely effective, potential route to (“benign”?)totalitarianism….
In any event…
Related? (From a former Trotskyite…on the latest, greatest, most persuasive “Save-the-World” ideo-theology…)
“Witness to Jihad;
“I never met Elias Rodriguez, the accused murderer of Lischinsky and Milgrim, but I know his world.”—
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/381690/witness-to-jihad/
https://jewishjournal.com/author/kathleenhayes/
Key phrase:
“…but I know his world.”
Thanks huxley for reminding me that reading-a-Hermann-Hesse-book is high on my to-do list. I always assumed it would be Steppenwolf. Should it be Demian?
Whenever I read The Gettysburg Address, I keep in mind Sam Waterston’s reading of it in Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary.
Sam’s high pitched voice conjures the vision of Lincoln, but when he gets to the last sentence, he places the emphasis not on the prepositions, the way we all memorized it in school, but on “the people.” He even lets a small beat pass between the preposition and “the people,” maybe to remove the lyricism of the phrase to turn it back into a declaration.
Reading that short, sweet magnificent speech, so envied by Edward Everett for its brevity, restores it in my mind. And makes it more bittersweet. The people. That’s supposed to mean us. I don’t think the government is of us, by us, for us anymore.
See my post What Are the Limits of the Alexander Analysis?
==
I don’t know that economies of scale in the provision of specifically public services are of such consequence that you’d benefit from investing authority in supranational institutions. In regard to civil aviation, international shipping, postal delivery, telecommunications &c., we seem to get along passably with international conventions (commonly made explicit by treaty) which are entered into voluntarily by formally sovereign states.
well Reason in itself, take Kant as a gateway, leads no where, I’m taking Popper’s analysis, of same as a template, so no natural rights, there he atrocities,
the savagery of the Great War, inevitably led to the devourings of Russia and Germany,
so what does the West hold dear, they are willing to defend, freedom of speech, pass, freedom of assembly, only for some, same with freedom to express your own faith,
for people in the East and the Global South, which ostensibly operated under Western Rules, from Indonesia to Morocco, well older traditions were in play, but they were dissolved by modernity, so there is a return in the East Bloc as well to the old forrms,
Qutb, who is the standin for the former group, is said to have been enraged by the racism, but also the loose morals of that church town, the leap of that to jihad still escapes me, it’s just pretext, for what he wanted to do, I could say Qutb in the same breath I refer to Fanon, the secular anticolonialist who explains much of why the Third Worls is where it finds itself
It’s the old “using [so-called] higher motives (and humanistic labels), to defend one’s own perverse depravity” trick…
…refined—brewed? Distilled?—to perfection.
As usual my comment comes from another subject. Sorry, to be so intrusive, but the Democrats are now claiming that the number of illegal immigrants has been greatly exaggerated. What if any resource do you have to provide as well established as possible the actual number of illegals? I know that we cannot account for them all–but, we need to get a well reasoned and verified number to the public–and to me! Thank you for your suggested resources
Re: Steppenwolf vs Demian
Mike Plaiss:
Demian is my sentimental favorite, but I will argue for it as well.
* Demian is basically a romantic coming-of-age story with insights on an adolescent discovering the shades-of-gray complexities of the adult world.
* Steppenwolf concerns the murkier plight of an alienated middle-aged man — an archetypal Outsider in Colin Wilson’s sense. The story is rather dreary for the first half then veers off into outright fantasy for the second.
* Steppenwolf inspired the name of the greatest 60s Canadian-American rock band.
* Demian is 40% shorter.
You be the judge. 🙂
“I think we can understand how GWB hoped that all peoples shared the same goals as we do, even if we also wonder how he could have been so naive and wrong in attempting “nation building”.” –R2L
It wasn’t naivete.
The Democrats were so successful in rewriting the history of the post-911 period that even a lot of Republicans misremember it.
We didn’t invade Iraq to nation build. Ditto Afghanistan. We invaded Afghanistan because that was where 911 was planned and executed from, it was to remove a power base to prevent another 911. We were _already_ entangled in Iraq due to the botched previous round and Clinton’s endless dog-wagging in the 90s, and the WMD issue had become pressing because of 911.
Everyone thought Hussein had WMDs. Including the people who said they didn’t believe he had them. Hussein set out to fool the world, and he paid the price after 911.
Now we _could_ have simply pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq once it became clear that the Taliban were defeated and the WMDs weren’t there. The trouble is that we had _already tried that_ . In the 1980s, after the USSR was driven back out of Afghanistan, we just left, washed our hands of the place, and the result was 911 and thousands of deaths.
What was needed was something America had done successfully before, to establishing functioning _states_ in those places. Not necessarily democracies, though that would have been nice if doable, but _states_ . Not nations, not whole new societies, but states. Governments that could keep some kind of order and which would be depending on American backing (and so tractable) for a while. No soaring moral abstractions, just America acting in America’s interest.
But Bush is a Boomer and part of a Western elite that is fixated on abstractions, so he allowed that straightforward task to get _hijacked_ by a nation-building project, trying to export Western hyper-secularism and individualism. That’s been a pet project of our elites since Cold War ended, albeit in left-wing and right-wing versions, but it simply doesn’t work. A lot of what they’re trying to export is controversial at home, it’s utter anathema outside the West.
This effort failed in Russia post Cold War. It failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It failed in South Sudan. It failed in China (open trade was going to make China into a ‘modern’, meaning Westernized society, remember?).
In Afghanistan, just months before the American surrender, the American embassy was publicly celebrating ‘Pride month’. In a fundamentalist Islamic society.
When Westerners ignore things like that, they guarantee failure.
What the West said to Afghanis: “We want you to have personal freedom, individual autonomy and security, wealth and prosperity.”
What the Afghanis heard: “We’re perverts who are a threat to your sanity and the souls of your children.”
But neither Afghanistan nor Iraq _started out_ as nation-building exercises. That came later.
“HC68…but consolidation & centralization have limits of their own. Connecting things together can make them vulnerable and brittle” — David Foster
No doubt of that. The technologies probably do make at least a _de facto_ world government inevitable, eventually. Well down the road (the farther down the road the better), but right now such a world state would be a disaster at best.
As usual, the Democrats are lying.
We know this because their lips are moving.
(We also know this because if it were the truth THEY would provide the numbers…and they also would have made the “argument” months ago.)
“Of course, globalism has shown itself, like perverted nationalism, to be just another, if extremely effective, potential route to (“benign”?)totalitarianism….” — Barry Meislin
Yes. And for somewhat similar reasons.
Communism/Marxism had tremendous appeal to Western intellectuals (and still does) precisely because it’s theoretically divorced from all local traditions, from religion, nation, tribe, family, etc. It’s conceit is that it is ‘scientific’, that it will eliminate the inescapable problems of human state by logical and Reason.
The excesses of Mao and Stalin muted that for a while, but now, a generation and a bit past the end of the Cold War, the old appeal has reappeared and for the exact same reasons. The usual line is ‘the problem wasn’t Communism, it was that it was executed badly’. Which is nonsense, of course, Communism is not human-nature compatible. But real, genuine, warped, tainted, broken human nature is precisely what the Western intelligentsia longs to escape from.
I’ve seen the speculation that one reason that the Communist movement in the West drew so many highly educated Jewish supporters in the early 20C was that it had an appeal to highly secularized Jews who saw it as a road to a society where they would no longer be double-outsiders (outsiders in the Christian West as Jews, outsiders among other Jews because of their secularization).
Of course actual existing Communism turned out to be intensely anti-Semitic.
One of the warning signs of a movement rooted in that Western elite intellectual mindset is that it’ll often promise to produce a ‘new man”. New Soviet Man. A purified Aryan superman. New Socialist Man. Whatever. It’s a promise of an escape from Fallen human nature.
Your last point made me chuckle.
Well yes, but it would, I think, be more accurate to say that Communism excited the Jews’ seemingly—culturally/theologically—innate struggle for JUSTICE (also self-interested, as a—too often—distressed minority) together with an equally innate, if misguided, MESSIANIC IMPULSE.
Not only the Jews, mind you (and not only Communism) but the Messianic impulse CAN lead, alas and slack, to some pretty strange/perverse/horrific results/dead ends….
Note too the oft-studied Rabbinic (Mishnaic-Ethics of the Fathers) injunction to “pray for welfare of the city/place/country where you reside”… and you have a recipe for trying to improve, where possible, the general welfare…though one could argue, perhaps rather uncharitably, that this could also be placed under the rubric of “self-interested” behavior….
(Once again, all this can be perverted by abstract rationalization….)
Anne:
I find ChatGPT 4.o Deep Research reliable for such queries:
___________________________________________
Summary of Key Findings and Trends (2020–2024)
Total Numbers: The unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. was roughly 10.5 million in 2020, and has increased to an estimated 11–12 million by 2023
ohss.dhs.gov
cmsny.org
. This growth reverses a prior declining trend; however, the 2023 total is still below the mid-2000s peak (~12 million in 2007–2008). Different credible sources converge on ~11 million for 2022, with some variance by 2023 (e.g. DHS and Pew ~11.5 million vs. MPI up to 13.7 million)
epi.org
. All estimates indicate a net rise in unauthorized residents since 2020.
Trend Drivers: The post-2020 increase was driven by a rebound in migration after the COVID-19 lull. Border enforcement data recorded unprecedented numbers of migrant encounters in 2021–2022 (e.g. 2.2 million in FY2022, a record high)
bipartisanpolicy.org
. This surge, along with ongoing visa overstays, led to a modest uptick in the resident unauthorized population. That said, net growth was much smaller than raw border encounters, due to expulsions, repeat attempts, and other factors
cmsny.org
. Annual net additions on the order of a few hundred thousand per year have been observed (e.g. +650,000 in 2022; +800,000 in 2023)
cmsny.org
. By 2024, unauthorized migrants likely make up on the order of 3.5% of the U.S. population (up from 3.0% in 2019).
Origins and Demographics: The composition of unauthorized immigrants shifted dramatically in this period. Mexicans, while still the largest group, no longer comprise a majority. As of 2022, Mexico accounted for roughly 37–44% of the unauthorized population (around 4–5 million people)
ohss.dhs.gov
pewresearch.org
, down from ~55% in 2010. In contrast, the share from Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador) and from other regions (South America, Caribbean, Africa, Asia) rose significantly. There was a particularly notable increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil, Colombia, and other Latin American countries outside Mexico’s immediate region
ohss.dhs.gov
bipartisanpolicy.org
. By 2023, unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are more diverse in national origin than at any time in recent history. This reflects broader global migration patterns and multiple crises driving displacement in the Western Hemisphere.
Data Credibility: All figures cited come from authoritative, nonpartisan sources. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics produces the official estimates (e.g. 11.0 million in 2022)
ohss.dhs.gov
. Independent demographers using similar methods (Pew, MPI, CMS) generally corroborate these levels, with minor differences due to methodology (for example, how to account for recent surges or undercount adjustments). The Pew Research Center confirms that unauthorized immigrants consistently represent about 23% of the U.S. foreign-born population
pewresearch.org
. While one should be cautious of any single estimate, the data presented here collectively indicate a reliable range for the scope of illegal immigration in 2020–2024. All sources affirm the same fundamental trend: after a decade of stability or decline, the unauthorized population is edging upward again in the first half of the 2020s
ohss.dhs.gov
cmsny.org
.
Sources: This report drew on U.S. government publications (DHS reports, CBP statistics), research by the Pew Research Center, Migration Policy Institute, Center for Migration Studies, and analysis by the Congressional Research Service and others. Key data and documents are cited in-line above for verification
ohss.dhs.gov
bipartisanpolicy.org
cmsny.org
. These sources provide a factual, nonpartisan basis for understanding illegal immigration trends. Overall, the period 2020–2024 has seen a renewed increase in unauthorized immigration – a development documented by multiple credible estimates – alongside a notable broadening of the origins of unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
huxley; Mike Plaiss:
In 2023 I wrote this comment:
I wasn’t keen on the rest of Demian. But I recommend that first part very very highly.
I wasn’t keen on the rest of Demian. But I recommend that first part very very highly.
neo:
Agreed. The second half of Demian suffers the same fault as Steppenwolf, It heads off into romantic mysticism with Frau Eva, Demian’s mother, as a magical maternal femme-fatale.
It’s largely forgotten that there was a proto-hippie movement in Germany called the Lebensreform movement (“life reform”) (1890-1930), which was back to nature, vegetarian, nudist, free sexuality, anti-technology, anti-bourgeoise and early New Age. Hesse in his way was part of that movement.
It wasn’t a coincidence that the sixties counterculture picked up on Hesse.
Nonetheless, the first part of Demian describes a young person’s journey from a child’s world to the adult very well. Fritz Perls recommended it highly in that regard.
Germans were convinced that their country was created by force and war and that might made right. There was some truth in that for Germany and for other countries as well, but while other countries wanted to get beyond that knowledge, the Germans reveled in naked power worship. It wasn’t that the average German wanted to take over Europe or the world, but German leaders could count on obedience from the public.
Germany also had the misfortune of coming to greater power than they could handle and coming into it at a time when war was becoming more destructive and governments more dictatorial. If they were as big as Belgium or Latvia, “national individualism” and love of the “Fatherland” might not have been so disastrous. Germany’s rise also happened at a time when traditional and religious constraints were in decline, so religious or regional loyalties couldn’t constrain nationalism.
Agreed that the first half of “Demian” was better than the second. Maybe Hesse had created an intriguing situation but wasn’t sure how to resolve it. I felt something similar about “Steppenwolf.” Maybe the turn to drug-induced fantasies happened because the problem of modernity couldn’t be solved.
I’m no expert on Hesse, but I was thinking of him when I picked my screen name. I didn’t have anything demonic or satanic in mind. I was going for mysterious and enigmatic.