Tribalism and the Future of America

I recently posted an item about the Congo, and its horrific civil war.   Obviously, too, I've posted many times about the Sunni-Shia conflict that dominates the Middle East -- in Syria, for example, it matters a lot that Assad, an Alawite, is allied with Hezbollah and Iran (Shias), against the "rebels" (Sunnis).   Both are instances of the persistence of tribalism -- the ethnic/race/religion based divisions between man and man that have been the source of violence in human affairs for all of time.

Which is why some of us, conservatives mostly, worry so much and complain so much about the "tribalizing" effects of the multicultural creed preached by our so-called elites in the media, government and academia.   When large groups of Americans are divided into smaller groups -- African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Christian Americans (defined pejoratively by the elites), Islamic Americans, etc. -- the potential for tribal conflict and, ultimately, civil war, is increased, not decreased.   The homilies for us to "all get along" or for us to "celebrate difference" are the second and less important step... the first and more powerful step in the logic of multiculturalism is to divide us acccording to those differences.   And that's dangerous.

How dangerous?   Consider this map of America's counties, color-coded for the ethnicity of the majority:

There's a lot of interesting things here... I don't know that I would have guessed that Germans were the dominant ethnicity across the Midwest, and it also gibes with the history of a significant German diaspora throughout Europe.   It also seems a little interesting to me that the English and Irish seemed to stay put in the northeast.   But the key point of interest ought to be the obvious divisions of the country into what are essentially tribal homelands.   The Anglo-Irish northeast, the Germanic midwest, the Hispanic southwest, the African-American deep south.   That's not a good recipe for a lasting republic, if the ideology of the "nation" as taught by its elites is to emphasize those differences rather than preaching assimilation to a common heritage of history and thought.

Those divisions may not mean that much today, in a country sated with material wealth and consumer goods -- we are One Nation Under Play Station.   But, if the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial whirling air mover... well, does anyone want to bet that in 2050 Germanic Wisconsinites are going to want to pony up their tax dollars to support a leviathan welfare state for the state of Mexifornia?