Ethnic Harmony

Ethnic Harmony

Thomas Allen

    In The Natural Law of Race Relations (1993), Laszlo Thomay presents his natural law of race relations. Based on ethnical relations in various multinational countries, he derives this law. (He uses race in the biological and national sense. Except when quoting from his book, “race” in this article refers to a biological race, such as the Negro race or Turanian race. “Nationality” means race in the national sense, such as Slovene, Basque, Sioux, or Zulu; all people of the same nationality are of the same biological race. “Ethnic” is used in a broad sense to include both race and nationality.) He states the law as follows:

People of different races, nationalities, languages or cultures can not live peacefully and harmoniously within the confines of the same state if the minority exceeds a certain proportion of the total population. Exceptions may occur by virtue of reducing the effective size of the minority when the minority lives in a geographically separate area with full autonomy, and/or the minority is willing to be, and capable of being absorbed into the majority, and/or the minority is very small and avoids any action deemed to be provocative to the majority.

A shorter, but less exact, stating of this law is, “The larger and more noticeably different a minority is, the more relations between majority and minority deteriorate.”

    Maintaining good racial and ethnic relationships requires maintaining the minority below a certain percentage of the country’s population. The percentage varies, but it usually is below one to five percent. The more noticeable the minority, the more it threatens the majority; the lower the percentage is, the less it threatens the majority.

    The noticeability can be visual or audible. People of different races are visually different. They cannot overcome this difference. People who speak different languages are audibly different. If they are of the same race, they can overcome this difference, at least by the following generation, by the minority learning to speak fluently the language of the majority.

    The United States offer an example of where audible differences are overcome, but not visual differences. People from the many national groups of Europe have come to the United States. They are of the same primary race, so any visual differences are cultural, which they can change, and not biological, which they cannot change. Most of them learn to speak English. English becomes the primary language of most of their children. By the second or third generation, they are part of the majority.

    However, Blacks have been unable to fit in. Although most of the majority will deny it, the majority perceives Blacks as a threat. Audibly they are indistinguishable from the majority. Except for some recent immigrants, Blacks have spoken English for generations. However, their visual differences are highly noticeable. Being biological, these differences cannot be overcome.

    The recent onslaught of Mexican Indian and mestizo immigrants shows even more striking differences from the majority. They display not only visual differences that are biological; they also display audible differences. Spanish is their primary, and for many only, language. Most have no desire to replace Spanish with English as their primary language.

    A few multiracial (or perhaps more correctly multiethnical or multinational) countries with good relationships do exist. The primary example is Switzerland. The four different nationalities are of the same race. They segregate themselves geographically. Whenever a person of one nationality moves to an area dominated by a different nationality, he is expected to adopt, and he usually does, the language of the area into which he moves.

    However, strife exists in most multiethnical countries even when the people are of the same race and segregate themselves geographically, essentially, according to their nationality. Examples of these countries are Canada, Belgium, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and India.

    The way to reduce ethnic strife is to reduce the effective size of the minority. This reduction can be achieved by territorial separation, assimilation, or a cooperative attitude by the minority.

    Territorial separation within a country would require segregating minorities into definite geographical areas with definable political boundaries. Such areas should have full autonomy over domestic matters. Territorial separation explains in part the success of Switzerland. However, that the unusual conditions that account for Switzerland’s success exist elsewhere is doubtful.

    The United States have tried internal territorial separation. The result, however, has been a failure. Indians were segregated into reservations. Instead of giving them independence on their reservations, the United States government reduced them to wards. Blacks have, in the North at least, been largely segregated to the inner parts of the large cities. They have been denied domestic autonomy. As it did the Indians, the United States government has made them wards. Furthermore, they are forced on the majority via various integrationist programs, thereby defeating the purpose of geographical separation.

    Assimilation can only work if the minority is biologically the same as the majority, i.e., of the same race unless the majority wants to destroy itself. Assimilation has worked in the United States as far as European immigrants are concerned. Europeans are of the same race as the majority. Moreover, they are of the same basic Christian culture of Western Civilization. These immigrants desired to adopt the language and the way of life of the majority. However, the Negro differs biologically from the majority and has not been assimilated. Unless the majority, as well as the minority, are willing to destroy themselves, assimilation of different races cannot occur.

    A cooperative attitude by the minority can go a long way toward creating ethnical harmony. The minority must make no special demands. It must not complain or seek a dominating role. So, the less noticeable the minority, the better the relationship. A cooperative attitude by the minority seldom occurs unless the minority is extremely small. Nearly all minorities in the United States abhor a cooperative attitude.

    Several actions can be taken to improve ethnical harmony not only in the United States but also globally. These actions are territorial separation and independence (the break up of empires) with border adjustment where appropriate, repatriation, and restrictions on immigration. The objective is to reduce the size of the minority until it no longer matters and the majority no longer considers the minority a threat to its existence.

    Where practical each nationality should have its own independent nation-state. (About 170 countries would be required to provide each nationality of the Aryan race of any significance to its own country.) The division of empires into nation-states has recently occurred with Czechoslovakia, which divided into a state for Czechs and one for Slovaks. It has occurred to a limited degree with the break up of the old Soviet Union. (To finish this process, many more nationalities in Russia will have to receive independence, and many Russians will have to be repatriated to Russia from the new nation-states of the old Soviet Union.) This solution would eliminate strife in Canada between French Quebec and English Canada, South Africa among the Afrikaans, Zulus, Xhosas, etc., Belgium between the Flemish and Walloons, the multinational countries of Europe, and just about every country in Africa where political borders were drawn for the benefit of the imperial powers with little regard for the various African nationalities. Independence is the best solution and the solution that should be used whenever possible. (The major difficulty with creating independent nation-states will be overcoming the lust for power and empire of the governing bodies of the empires of the world. An empire is a country containing more than one significant nationality.)

    In the United States, Indian reservations should be granted complete independence — at least on domestic and economic issues, if not in foreign relations. Furthermore, the United States empire should be divided into several independent federations.

    A possible solution to the Negro problem would be to create independent states similar to Indian reservations for Blacks. Political boundaries could be drawn around areas inhabited predominately by Blacks. These areas would include a large fraction of the major cities and parts of the rural South.

    Once nation-states have been created for each nationality, some border adjustments may be necessary. Such adjustments are likely to be needed in Europe and Asia where historical provincial and regional boundaries often encompass minorities who are the majority in the adjacent state. The map of Africa would have to be completely redrawn. The objective is to create a separate, homogenous state for each nationality without any minority.

    Once each nationality has its own independent nation-state, it would have to take steps to prevent future minority problems. Severe restrictions would have to be placed on immigration. Immigration should be limited to nationalities that the receiving country can assimilate. The number of immigrants should be restricted so that they can be assimilated.

    Recent arrivals (any post-World War II immigrants and their descendants) who have not been assimilated should be repatriated. Repatriation could be used on older unassimilated minorities who have identifiable homelands to which to return. Since World War II, several countries have resorted to repatriation to protect their majority. These include Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania expelling Asian Indians. In North America, some Indian tribes have expelled from their reservations non-Indians who have been living there for years.

    Liberals, neo-conservatives, libertarians, shallow thinkers, and far too many theologians would object to restricting immigration. They would argue that people have a right to move to any country to which they desire, to retain their religion, language, and special culture, and to transmit these values to their offspring. Their objection to immigration restriction rests on a false premise that people have a right to go wherever they please. People have no such right. No one has the right to enter and occupy someone else’s territory unless he is invited and accepted. This principle is as true of a collective national domicile as it is of an individual private domicile. The people of the receiving country have the right to decide whom they will invite
.
    When immigration is not controlled, the majority risks losing its territory to a minority, who supplant them as the new majority. A classic example is the United States and Canada where Europeans supplanted the Indians. Albanians have replaced the Serbs as the majority in the former Serbian region of Kosova. Fijians are on the verge of losing their country to Asian Indians, who are now the majority. (Fiji presents an interesting situation where the minority would have to repatriate the majority to regain its country.) Uncontrolled immigration can destroy a people.

    When a minority race or nationality exceeds a certain fraction of the population of a country, ethnic strife erupts. Ethnic strife can be lessened by internal geographical separation, assimilation, and a cooperative attitude by the minority. Assimilation is not practical or possible when the majority and minority are of different races. Geographically separation does not work in countries that promote integration. Minorities abandon their cooperative attitudes once they exceed a certain fraction of the population. The only long-term solution to ethnical strife is for each nationality to have its own independent nation-state. To prevent future ethnic strife, these nation-states need to restrict immigration to those nationalities that they can assimilate and to such numbers as can be assimilated. Keeping minorities to a very small number will eliminate ethnic strife.

Copyright © 1996, 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Slavery Not the Reason

Slavery Not the Reason

Thomas Allen

    The protection of slavery was not and could not have been the primary reason for the Southern States seceding. Slavery was protected in the United States and would have continued to be protected had they not seceded. Even if their secession were successful, slavery would have been less protected in a free South than if the Southern States had remained part of the United States. The preservation of slavery must have been a minor reason for secession.

    If the Southern States remained in the Union, Southerners could emigrate to the territories of the United States and settle there with their slaves. The Compromise of 1850 allowed slaveholders to settle with their slaves in the territories of Utah and New Mexico. (These territories along with California were taken from Mexico in 1848 as a result of the Mexican War.) The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed slaveholders to settle with their slaves in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Congress would not decree whether these territories would enter the Union as slave States or nonslave States. The people of each territory would decide that when they applied for statehood. This act also repealed the restrictions of the Missouri Compromise; thus it opened the northern territories (Colorado, Dakota, Montana, and Idaho) up to slavery. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in the Dread Scott case that slaveholders had the constitutional right to carry their slaves into the territories and that Congress could not deprive them of this right. Thus, by 1860 Southerners had won their right to emigrate to the territories and settle with their slaves.

    Outside the Union, however, Southerners would not have this right. If the Southern States were an independent country, a Southerner carrying his slaves into a State (even a slave State) or territory of the United States would have been in violation of the law. The importation of slaves into the United States was illegal. If, as often claimed, slavery needed to expand into the territories in order to survive, then secession would have surely destroyed slavery without war. With the Southern States outside the Union, slavery would have been practically nonexistent in the territories. If slavery needed to expand to survive, then slavery would have died with an independent South. For there would have been no place for slavery to expand.

    If the Southern States remained in the Union, the federal government would apprehend runaway slaves and return them to their owners. The federal government had enacted fugitive slave laws with efficient provisions for their enforcement by federal officials. If the Southern States were an independent country, slaveholders would lack this guarantee. That the United States would have entered into a treaty with the Confederacy to return runaway slaves was doubtful.

    The remarks made by the Republican Party leaders between the election and the outbreak of the War indicated that the Republicans were not going to abolish slavery.

    The platform of the Republican Party stated that the Republican Party did not intend to abolish slavery. The platform declared:

The maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially of each State, to order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend.

    Emancipation was a decision that each State should be free to make for itself.

The platform did state a desire to prohibit slavery in the territories, which was contrary to the Supreme Court’s ruling. However, Southerners gave up their right to emigrate to the territories with their slaves when they seceded. With secession, this plank became a nonissue.

(On December 20, South Carolina seceded.)

    In correspondence to Alexander Stephens dated December 22, 1860, Lincoln wrote:

Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and I still hope not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.

(On January 9, Mississippi seceded. On January 10, Florida seceded. On January 11, Alabama seceded.)

    In January of 1861, Congress adopted a resolution declaring that it recognized:

Slavery as now existing in fifteen of the United States, by the usage and laws of those states, and we recognize no authority, legal or otherwise, outside of a state where it exists, to interfere with slaves or slavery in such states.

(On January 19, Georgia seceded. On January 26, Louisiana seceded. On February 1, Texas seceded.)

    In February the House of Representatives adopted a resolution declaring:

that neither the Federal Government, nor the people, have a purpose or a constitutional right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any of the states of the Union.

and

that those persons in the North who do not subscribe to the foregoing propositions are too insignificant in numbers and influence to excite the serious attention or alarm of any portion of the people of the Republic.

This resolution was passed by a Republican-controlled House.

    Congress, with both Houses controlled by the Republican Party, adopted and sent to the States for ratification the following as an amendment to the United States Constitution:

Article 13. No amendment shall be made to the constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish, or to interfere within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state.

    The House of Representatives passed this amendment on February 28, 1861. The Senate passed it on March 2, 1861. Lincoln expressed his approval of the amendment.

    On March 4, 1861, in his inaugural address Lincoln declared:

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

    On April 12, 1861, South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter in response to Lincoln’s provocation to re-enforce the fort. On April 15, 1861, Lincoln called for troops from the States. Following Lincoln’s call for troops was when the Upper South seceded.

(On April 17, Virginia seceded. On May 6, Arkansas seceded. On May 20, North Carolina seceded. On June 24, Tennessee seceded.)

    For the Upper South, the immediate cause of the War was Lincoln’s calling for troops to carry out his illegal act of suppressing the right of the Southern States to secede and form a new government.

    The protection of slavery could not have been much of a reason for the Upper South — or the Lower South, for that matter — seceding. Slavery was a protected institution in the United States. Base on the remarks and actions of the Republican leadership in the months preceding the War, it would have continued to be protected.

    In a resolution adopted on July 22, 1861, the United States Congress expressed its purpose for waging the War. The resolution read:

This war is not waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; that, as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease.

    Not only was the abolition of slavery not even considered at issue, but Congress stressed that it would be preserved.

(On October 31, Missouri seceded. On November 20, Kentucky seceded.)

    So much for slavery as the reason for secession and the cause of the War.

Appendix 1
    In an address to the Confederate Congress on April 29, 1861, President Davis summarized the reason for secession and the ensuing war as follows:

By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as majority to govern the minority. Without control, they learn to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will, and so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind that, in the inaugural address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts a maxim which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires, in all cases, that the majority shall govern. And in another memorable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between States and the United States to those which exist between the county and the State in which it is situated, and by which it was created.

This is the lamentable and fundamental error in which rests the policy that has culminated in his declaration of war against these Confederate States.

Appendix 2
    The following is an excerpt from an editorial appearing in the January 15, 1861, issue of The Daily Picayune commenting on the absurdity and hypocrisy of a war to save the Federal Union:

The favorite form of expression in which these resolves are clothed is that, it is the first and highest duty “to maintain the Union.” But a Union upheld by a war, which is made necessary by the revolting of many large and powerful States from an unfriendly and oppressive Government[,] is condemned at once by the act. When armies and fleets are employed to keep a confederation of States together, it is a mockery to send them forth as messengers of union. It is for the subjugation of the minority section to the will of the majority, and every element which makes it a circle of consenting States in a harmonious Union disappears under the crushing process. To talk of war, therefore, as the means of perpetuating a Union is a mockery. It might perpetuate a Government, but that Government will cease to be a federative one, and will contain within itself essential traits of a military despotism — the retention, by superior force, of an unwilling people in political bondage, to a Government which they had unanimously risen to throw off. The Government so established, if such a monstrous thing could ever be established, would have no principles remaining in common with those which make the true theory of the constitution of the present Government, a departure from which has brought on the present convulsion. A war to “maintain the Union” is simply, therefore, a war to extinguish the Union, and to maintain a Government such as was never contemplated by any of the States which compose it, and which would not be tolerated by any State now, if there were a question of creating or restoring a Government.

Appendix 3
    Commenting on the Gettysburg Address and the Battle of Gettysburg, H. L. Mencken wrote the following:

Think of the argument in it [the Gettysburg Address]. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States: The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country — and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in-the penitentiary.

Copyright © 1988 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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