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The Pursuit of Knowledge

The Importance of Culture

By from the September 2011 issue

It is culture that creates economics, and not the other way around.

I first visited Greece 50 years ago, hitchhiking with a school friend from England, in search of the glorious world of Homer, Plato, and Thucydides. Of course, we didn’t find that world. But we found something almost as remarkable, which was a place where the church and the priesthood dominated rural life, where villages were self-contained communities, where local saints enjoyed their festivals and where the old dances were still danced in the village squares, men in groups, and women in groups, dressed in the costumes that survived from Ottoman days, and rehearsing the old drama of the sexes with marriage as its eternal dénouement. It was a country that had yet to enter the modern world. Its rhythms were those of the village, where debts and duties were local, and where sun, sleep, and surrender managed the day. It was inconceivable to a young Anglo-Saxon visitor that such a country could be judged in the same terms as Germany or France, or that it could play a comparable role in an economy that included all three countries as equal partners.

At one point, running out of money, I joined the queue at a hospital in Athens, where you could give blood and be paid in drachmas. The presiding doctor leaped up to welcome the tall red-haired youth, and turned away the two small men who preceded me, judging their blood to be useless. The names of my unsuccessful rivals were Heracles and Dionysus. It was the only sign offered to me during that first visit that these people were descended from the Greeks to whom our civilization is owed.

I have no desire to return to Greece, dreading what the tourists and the property speculators have done to it. But I know that, whatever the changes, it is inconceivable that Greece should have developed in the same way and with the same rhythm as France or Germany. Of course the country has been modernized. Roads have been built and towns expanded. The tourist trade has wiped out the gentle manners of the villagers. Sexual intercourse has begun — somewhat later than 1963,  which is when Philip Larkin famously dated it, but nevertheless with the same devastating effect on marriage and the family. No doubt the old modes of the folk songs have been forgotten, and no doubt the multinational brands have slapped their logos on shop fronts across the land. But for sure the culture of local obligation has remained. For sure people still regard leisure as more important than work, and debts as less important, the further away the creditor lies in the network of human relations. If you don’t know this from visiting Greece, you could learn it easily enough from reading Kazantzakis, Ritzos, Seferis, or any other of the writers in that great moment of literary flourishing which succeeded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. You could even get it from Louis de Bernières and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Anybody with his eyes open and his heart in place would know that Greece is the product of a distinctive culture, and that this culture, however it develops, will always take the country in a direction and at a speed of its own.

YET THE ARCHITECTS of the euro did not know this. If they had known it, they would have known also that the effect of imposing a single currency on Greece and Germany would be to encourage Greece to transfer its debts to Germany, on the understanding that the further away the creditor the less the obligation to repay. They would have known that if the Greek political class can use sovereign debt to pay family, friends, and dependents, and to buy the votes needed to stay in office, that that is what the political class will do. They would have recognized that laws, obligations, and sovereignty don’t have quite the same meaning in the Mediterranean as they do on the Baltic, and that in a society used to kleptocratic government the fairest way out of an economic crisis is by devaluation—in other words, by stealing equally from everybody.

Why didn’t the architects of the euro know those things? The answer is to be found deep within the European project. For it was a project with a secret agenda, and that agenda was to destroy, and meanwhile to deny, the reality of nationhood. And since nations are the carriers of culture, this meant denying that culture matters. Cultural facts were simply imperceivable to the Eurocrats. Allowing themselves to perceive culture would be tantamount to recognizing that their project was an impossible one. This would have mattered less if they had another project with which to replace it. But—like all radical projects—that of the European Union was conceived without a Plan B. Hence it is destined to collapse and, in the course of its collapse, to drag our continent down. An enormous pool of pretense has accumulated at the center of the project, while the political class skirmishes at the edges, in an attempt to fend off the constant assaults of reality. But this pool of pretense is a festering wound at the heart of things, and one day it will burst and swamp us all with poison.

Thus we have to pretend that the long-observed distinctions between the Protestant north of our continent and the Catholic and Orthodox south is of no economic significance. Being a cultural fact it is imperceivable, notwithstanding Weber’s attempt to make it central to economic history. The difference between the culture of common law and that of the Code Napoléon, between the Roman and the Ottoman legal legacies, between countries where law is certain and judges incorruptible and places where law is only the last resort in a system of bribes—all these differences have to be put out of mind. Times and speeds of work, and the balance between work and leisure, which go to the heart of every community since they define its relation to time, are to be ignored, or else regimented by a futile edict from the center. And everything is to be brought into line by those frightening courts—the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights—whose unelected judges never pay the cost of their decisions, and whose agenda of “non-discrimination” and “ever-closer union” is designed to wipe away the traces of local loyalties, family-based morality, and rooted ways of life. Not surprisingly, when you build an empire on such massive pretenses, it very soon becomes unstable.

IT WAS MARX WHO ARGUED that the foundation of social order and the motor of social change resides in economic structures, and that culture is merely the by-product—the assemblage of institutions and ideologies—that rises from the economic foundations and keeps them in place. Hence it was to Marx that we owed that first and disastrous attempt to organize society on economic principles alone, and to assume that culture will look after itself. In fact it is culture that creates economics, and not the other way round, and if any proof of this is needed we need only look at the result of the Marxist experiment. Better still, we might look at the successful economies in the modern world—the American for instance—and note the extent to which they have depended on a respect for law, on honest accounting, and on individual responsibility, the ethic of family life, and the forms of social interaction. To analyze all the strands that have been woven together to form the American capacity for long-term economic probity you would have to trace the culture of this country back to the founding and beyond. You would have to take account of Protestantism, the common law, the tradition of private colleges, and the little platoons of a society of volunteers. You would have to understand the frontier spirit, the deep local loyalties, and the cultural miscegenation that gave rise to jazz, Hollywood, and the Broadway musical.

Of course, I share the belief of many American conservatives that this culture is being lost, and indeed that America has taken fatal steps in the European direction. But this change has itself been initiated at the cultural level. Left to itself the American economy would not have incurred the truly fantastic debts that have been heaped on it by the maladministration of Bush and Obama. In each case cultural factors have driven the leadership to hold the country hostage to ideological goals. And the same is true of Europe. It was not economics but culture that engendered the euro—a culture of a ruling class at war with the people of Europe, wishing to establish trans-national government at all costs, and hoping to wipe away yet another trace of nationhood. By destroying those ancient currencies through which the people of Europe had expressed and managed their apartness, the European elite hoped to make a decisive move toward the goal of Union. Instead they have burdened the continent with new debts, new resentments, and a looming disaster that was not foreseen only because it had been ruled out as impossible. 

About the Author

Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, has just been published by Oxford University Press.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (50) |

rssg| 9.19.11 @ 6:47AM

This is correct. Culture (loosely, language, religion, values/customs) create not only economics and politics as well.

We can see this is the growing divide between native born Americans (mostly Caucasian, since the nation was basically about 90% Caucasian up until the mass immigration of the past 30 years started) and the "new Americans" - mostly not Caucasian, often not Judeo-Christian, with little or no history and knowledge of English language and the overall English/European Enlightenment that the founding of our country was based on.

Change the population and you will change it's politics and it's economics. We are heading to collectivism, group think, group rights, mob rule.

canuckistani| 9.19.11 @ 10:37AM

I would also make the consideration that the federalist victory in the North was the deciding factor for the US's success. If we had adopted the feudal system of the south, we would be another Mexico?
There is recent writing on this, but am not sure if there is a direct connection without more debate.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 5:24PM

Canukistani,
America has no culture of any sort whatsoever - its value are commercial- even arts and religion. are commercialized.
There is hope for Canada- but not America, save for commerce.

Game Over.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 5:46PM

I would also make the consideration that the "federalist victory in the North was the deciding factor for the US's success. If we had adopted the feudal system of the south, we would be another Mexico?"

They wont listen, Canuckistani; it isn't that they are racist- however they want to keep minorities down not merely for zero sum reasons but also because of creative destruction-- no one can accuse them of not being hard-nosed.

They are ultra-Darwinists with a veneer of religiosity to cover themselves with.

Quartermaster| 9.19.11 @ 7:06PM

Nah, we just need the cheap labor. Since the Yankess took away all the, shall we say, lesser beings we used to do our work in places like Massachussets and New York, we need the beaners to take their place.

Canuckistani, Brooks is just a tool of the left trolling because he doesn't have a life and must find some way he can "make a difference." On the internet, no one knows your a dog fits Brooks to a "T."

If the Hamiltonians (vice Federalists as even federalists couldn't stomach Hamilton's program) had not won, the US would have been a far different place. The North desperately needed the south as an economic colony, which the real reason New England industrialists prevailed upon Lincoln to start a war. Alas, Davis and his cabinet didn't listen to Toombs and walked into Lincoln's trap. The war nearly destroyed the country, and the US still has no recovered from that mess. In fact, Obama and his minions are a direct result of the Hamiltonian victory in 1865.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 7:19PM

Quartermaster is an eastern-seaboard wingnut wrapping himself in the flag. His day will come, and it will be worse than he can imagine- he will lose everything he believed in- he will find it was all a house built on sand.
Look what is happening now; soon you will lose your position, Quartermaster, the writing is in on the wall.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 7:22PM

"Davis and his cabinet didn't listen to Toombs and walked into Lincoln's trap."

So good Davis and his grand dragons were so careless. Now your day is coming.

PolishKnight| 9.19.11 @ 8:00PM

Indeed, it's amazing really that more illegal immigrants and even leftists don't go there. Why? Can someone answer this?

When I lived in California, the joke was that only an idiot would be homeless in NYC when for a few days panhandling, they could get a greyhound (or even airline ticket) and come out to Santa Monica with great weather all year round, fantastic homeless benefits, and great panhandling rights.

The average illegal could go to Canada and clean up. And also, with all the leftists saying how great Canada is and how they hate living in the states, why are they here? I hear them make excuses such as "I want to make things better for fellow Americans because I'm so caring" but it's clearly hollow. They don't go for some selfish, shallow reason. Why?

Melvin| 9.19.11 @ 7:59AM

Humanity would best be served by leaving others the hell alone.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 5:47PM

Then give up your power!

Timothy L. Pennell| 9.19.11 @ 8:55AM

Culture is smoothing from a bygone era. Like the Vinyl Record and the Phonograph. It's something we can all look back on, endearingly.
Is there anything ENGLISH, about England, anymore? When your CAPITOL CITY is referred to as LONDONISTAN, then you've probably got a problem.
How many MINARETTES are in Paris? Can the Muslim Call To Prayer be heard, 5 times a day? Is SHARIA, also, the Law of the Land?
It is the same in Holland, and Italy and as far north, as Sweden.
The "Culture" of the WEST has a VIRUS. It has been INFECTED, and it is DYING.
The Tyranny of the Minority, has led us down this suicidal path. Only the WEST tolerates their own destruction, from within. Only the WEST assists in in its own demise, by stressing DIVERSITY and INCLUSION, and MULTI-CULTURALISM, in a kind of Death Dance, for all of it's supposed SINS of the past.
It is the same, here. Political Correctness, Multiculturalism, Touchy, Feely, Blame America First. It has all led to the DESTRUCTION of the American Culture. Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie?
How about: Single Parent Household, Soccer, and Falafel?
Gee. Who woulda seen that coming?

Dan Hirsch| 9.19.11 @ 12:42PM

Timothy,

I'm not so sure that you could call it a "virus."

I think that a virus is just trying to replicate - whether it considers the host to be the great Satan or just a convenient breakfast buffet is meaningless to the virus. The mosque builders seem to have pretty specific desires for the demise of anyone not actively on their side...

Don't Tread On Me!

PS There is a website out there "Don't Tread On Me." I am not a part of that; I am a part of the continuing American Revolution and the principles reflected in the phrase, "DTOM!"
DH

Franco| 9.19.11 @ 4:45PM

Hey, I like falafel.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 5:26PM

The business of America is business; the culture of America is business.

scythe| 9.19.11 @ 9:32AM

Bravo Bravo - a thousand times. We in America are experiencing Cloward Piven immigration to the same end. Our Marxists want to overwhelm our culture by the deliberate import of foreigners adversarial to it, our societies, and way of life. They will overwhelm and break asunder unless we have the guts to tell them we know what you are doing and we no longer stand for it. Marxists always look at people as products of MONEY and they are the first to deride the idea of capitalism, calling it lust/greed for more and more financial reward at the expense of many. And yet their entire edifice of Marx was constructed on the pursuit and receipt of financial remuneration. How ironic. The truth is Karl Marx was a greedy jealous individual who was filled with anger at his own lack of financial well being. Das Kapital is an attack written by one whose personal pain and outrage needed to be assuaged by forcing personal misery on the rest of the world. All the EU has done is highlight what those of us with wisdom and common sense have always known: countries are but a collection of the personal beliefs of its citizens - culture. And it is from those beliefs that economic systems develop. If economies can be imposed then the world would be a far different place. But the conceit of the Marxist/Socialist will never allow them to admit that Socialist Man can not be created out of thin air.

Doctor Right| 9.19.11 @ 9:54AM

And of course, the fact that most of our immigrants, illegal or otherwise, now come from 3rd-world kleptocracies will have NO effect on our economy, right??

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

A friend of mine whose family originally hails from Cuba once remarked that the left-driven agenda of "re-taking" the American southwest from the "plunderers" (that would be us) and returning that land to it's "rightful owners" (that would be the illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America) was bound to fail?

Why? "Simple," he replied.

"Because unlike my parents and my family, these people aren't assimilating. They come to America, but they still want to be in Mexico, so they make very little effort to be 'Americans'. The end-result is that even if we gave them all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Texas, within 10 years they'd be trying to cross the border into Colorado, or Minnesota. That's because what makes Mexico a disaster are the people. They're not bad people...They just don't have a culture that succeeds economically, and without assimilation, that will NEVER change."

rssg| 9.19.11 @ 10:12AM

Exactly right. If we "gave" latinos a state (or two or three), before long they would be crossing the border into the neighboring "American" states. It's latino culture; it's the people, their values, customs, language, religion, race, etc.

But we are never allowed to discuss this, at least in "polite" society.

canuckistani| 9.19.11 @ 10:53AM

Ther e is one place where this is being discussed: inside the Latino community. When clean candidates like Rubio start emerging, you know change is happening. The emergence of protestantism is also a signal the work ethic debate is being waged, and the liberation theologism is now being seen for what it is - an excuse for bad behavior.

I have a close muslim acquaintance from Pakistan that has worked in Saudi, Dubai and now the US for about a decade. He's in mainstream marketing and very good at it, and has a healthy disdain for Islamic countries and their ability to get their acts together commercially.

We had a discussion about why the muslim world continues to trail the west in innovation and overall progress. I pinned it on the protestant work ethic that imbued the west for the last 400 years as the point where the divide between the old and new worlds began. Islamic and Catholic/Orthodox hegemons typically trailing protestant countries in commerce, innovation, productivity and capital investment.

When asks what the protestant work ethic was, I suggested to him that piety can be attained through work and that there is a time for prayer and a time for work, but neither is subordinate if the virtues of each are to be examined effectively. He was surprised that it could be as simple as that. I went on to suggest a strong system of laws - made by men, and not some mystical interpretation - forcing rules on commerce was also necessary. Things like tough laws about fraud, corruption, bribery and an independent judiciary pretty much sealed the deal for Western success. The realization that no man is above the law means the royal families of these backwaters need to go, and using religion as an excuse for bad behavior has to end.

We have (or did) have a trustworthy system of contract law and a government backer that made sure the capital and law enforcement was available to all who risked their investment.

If we lose that for good, we are no better than Mexico or Pakistan.

Dan Hirsch| 9.19.11 @ 11:17AM

The debasement of the work ethic can't possibly have anything to do with the annihilation of the nuclear family built into our welfare state system. Can it? Actually, the sky IS falling!

DTOM

DH

rssg| 9.19.11 @ 12:08PM

Yes, I think the Protestant work ethic , along with basic Judeo-Christian values contributed greatly to the success of the West (including the USA, Canada, etc.).

I have great concern over mass importation of Latino and Muslim peoples - Latino for their sheer numbers and Muslim for their very antithetical belief systems, which is being transplanted into our nation, via accelerated "mosque building" - I believe in order to "mark terrritory" for Islam.

Our nation needs an immigration time-out, period. Deport illegals, stop ore greatly reduce legal immigration. Turn the country back to Americans, not the world.

Clint| 9.19.11 @ 12:22PM

Your Anti-Catholic Agenda forgot to mention:

Irreligious & Atheist Countries:

Countries with the greatest proportion of people without religion (including Agnostics and Atheists) from Irreligion by country (as of 2007):

Japan 64–88% (76%)[84]
Sweden 46-85% (65.5%)
Denmark 43-80% (61.5%)
Macau 60.9%[47]
Czech Republic 54–61% (57.5%)
Hong Kong 57%[38]
France 43-64%[85] (53.5%)
Norway 31–72% (51.5%)
Estonia 49%
Netherlands 39-55% (47%)
Finland 28–60% (44%)
United Kingdom 31–52% (41.5%)[85]
South Korea 30-52% (41%)
Germany 25[86]-55%[87] (40%)
Hungary 32-46% (39%)
Belgium 42-43% (38.75%)

Dan Hirsch| 9.19.11 @ 12:36PM

Good grief, Clint.

Anti-Catholic? Martin Luther (Protestant number 1.) first tried to save the Catholic Church and gave up only when it was seen that they didn't want to change their statist status quo.

DTOM

PS
Look out, Clint!

There's a spider in your hair!!!!

PPS-

Hey AS, why the heck don't you add the word 'statist' to your online spellcheck dictionary. It's not not a word...DH

Clint| 9.19.11 @ 2:02PM

Get Bent, Israel-Firster Bagel Boy.

James Solbakken | 9.20.11 @ 4:10PM

WTF? "Bagel Boy?"

Wow. Just plain wow. And I thought Alan Brooks was bad...

James Solbakken
Just call me "Lutefisk Boy," I suppose...

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 6:23PM

"Martin Luther (Protestant number 1.) first tried to save the Catholic Church and gave up only when it was seen that they didn't want to change"

Luther was an outright antisemite worthy of Goebbels. To HELL wih Martin Luther. And one might add that Clint himself is not antisemitic, I visited his site, there was no indication of any sort of racial or antisemitic tendencies. He just doesn't like Israel, which is extremely common.

No, don't bother to complain to me about the way Israel is treated!

Since Clint and I are not exactly close friends to say the least, this is not apologizing-- it is fact.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 6:16PM

"When clean candidates like Rubio start emerging"

It is changing at a snail's pace, Canuckistani. you are not optimistic- you are gullible on this.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 8:15PM

"Since Clint and I are not exactly close friends to say the least, this is not apologizing-- it is fact."

Not to write Clint likes Jews, he just doesn't love them. But the treatment of Obama by the Right proves they don't love blacks; so blacks no longer have to kiss Whitey's pretty little read end anymore.

Alan Brooks| 9.19.11 @ 8:17PM

ANYMO'!

One way or another the jig is up.

Dan Hirsch| 9.19.11 @ 12:43PM

I thought we already gave them California...

Petronius| 9.19.11 @ 10:00AM

That settled culture of rural Greece had a an antecedent in once rural America which is still to be found in the agricultural states until the subject turns to commodity prices, farm subsidies, and or the current regulatory headache inflicted by the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service. Not mentioned is that the addiction pushed by government officials has set in owing to the passing of the last generation born before the Second World War. The other is the onerous inheritance taxes that wiped out so many family farming operations and which were instituted to bring these independent people to heel. But while there are still county fairs and close communities the sons of once prosperous farming and merchant communities ruined by government regulations and fines have turned to cooking meth. The Greeks in the hills are left to themselves because they have nothing for the government poobahs in Brussels to take. And their customs won't be interfered with. But the intellectual snots in Brussels and D.C. want control of all resources with an eye toward rationing for the entire populace. Their "vision thing" is to prescribe attitudes, appetites, and consumption by law; themselves excepted. The ultimate goal is a command subsistence economy imposed on us at a level high enough to keep us working and paying taxes but without any disposable income to travel and enjoy life or accumulate anywhere near enough wealth to quit and drop out short of a Powerball jackpot. Cultures die either of neglect, conquest, or in our case assassination. Here, Our Tea Party stands alone in defiance. When is impoverished Europe going to get a clue?

Al Adab| 9.19.11 @ 11:38AM

It is the culture of Western Civilization with its concomitant Christianity which promotes the value of the individual over the state or collective. It is the reason the West has prospered while other cultures remain locked into other status. Thomas Sowell in his "Race and Cultures" makes the point that not all cultures are equal and not all provide the best for those within. Cultural relativism, like moral relativism, is a false vision of the world. That is why freedom has emerged in the West or in the few which chose to follow the model.

Pelligrino| 9.19.11 @ 2:04PM

I agree, AA, with you as we seem to on most things.

Another tremedous aspect of Judeo-Christian culture/mores: Forgiveness.

And restoration.

Individually, for sure. Collectively, too. Against our stubborn inner egos, we know that it is right to bury the hatchet. To allow for restoration. To allow second chances. And to admit that "Yes, I am surely forgiven for a multitude of failures and ills in my own life. How can I then fail to forgive others?"

This is not present in many "cultures."

There are many examples. But I will pick out one that underscores American greatness and American exceptionalism: The forgiveness -- over time -- of sins, atrocities, betrayals, killings, etc. in our Civil War.

I am not sure there are any examples of this from the Middle East, any islam societies. Even in former Yugoslavia? Northern Ireland? Parts of Spain? Asia? Greece-Turkey?

Yes, all cultures are NOT created equally. There is good and much better. Thus, to preserve the good, it is imperative to keep the bad out.

In a practical, present-day matter: No muslims here. None.

Those who don't see this and advocate it are just like those Northern Europeans and Germans who advocate for including Greece (Portugal, southern Italy, Turkey) in EU plans. Just as Greece, Spain, mafia-run southern Italy, and Portugal will undo Europe, so to0 -- in a far more sinister way -- will the muslim incursion destroy America (and Canada).

Al Adab| 9.19.11 @ 4:10PM

Petronius:
Westerners in general do not understand that for most of the world clan or tribal loyalties trump any concept of national identity. As you note, that is one reason a coherent immigration policy needs to cull those who cannot set aside such considerations to hold all alegience to the nation. The oath for new citizens requires that they do so. The nation-state and national identity is a western concept not a universal.

Indeed we seem to be on the same page often, as we do with several others. I enjoy the commeraderie.

Petronius| 9.19.11 @ 9:18PM

I didn't crack that compartment on this thread, but over the past half century culture got shifted, shafted, and relegated through blind egotism. Where it was comprised of heritage, religion, learning, and taste, it was eschewed by the boomers who adopted the Roobism of the lower middle class worker ants. Their halcyon cry is, "I don't like it!" And it follows that the object, people, or pastime which is so disliked must then be prohibited. But you're on to something. The left has been unable to totally destroy traditional American culture by themselves and advocate open borders to dilute our votes and eventually run us out of Our own country because they refuse to compete heads up with us in the labor market. And if you read Dr. Roger Price's book, The Great Roob Revolution, he states emphatically these people don't want to compete at all. They want the baby life with everything given to them. And they gleefully send us the bill, which will condemn us to serfdom for generations because they control all the cultural institutions as well as the IRS. And now that they control the armed services, we're in real trouble. During the weeks following hurricane Katrina, Oklahoma National Guardsmen obeyed an unlawful order from Mayor Nagin and confiscated privately owned firearms. That is an absolute violation of their Constitutional Oaths, but they never read it, or don't properly understand it. After almost a century the America of the founders is a tree with only one remaining branch not yet strangled by ivy and kudzu. And we aren't giving these worthless parasites any more. It's us or them!

Al Adab| 9.19.11 @ 4:43PM

Pelligrino:
My 4:10 should have been adressed to you. Sorry.

james wilson| 9.19.11 @ 12:29PM

Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that human beings are very much alike, but in fact any one able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behavior differs from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another--
Orwell

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people--
Benjamin Franklin

JP| 9.19.11 @ 1:37PM

I'm not sure what culture the author is referring to. The US was best known for its civic culture, as most immigrants assimilated (ie left the Old Country behind).

rssg| 9.19.11 @ 2:45PM

JP, in the past, immigrants assimilated to the "American standard" of behaivor. But they did so with "gentle" encouragement in the public schools, the workplace, popular culture. Today the practice is to teach immigrants not to assimilate.

Also, the sheer numbers matter. As long as immigrants are ten percent or less of the population, they will often assimilate as they must in order to survive but when their numbers rise to 15 or 20 percent, they begin to amass political power and influence over government, over laws and push for laws that benefit their tribe.

For evidence, see the spreading of Spanish language to all corners of the US today. See the push not to enforce immigration laws by Latinos. Why? Because many, many Latinos are either illegal or have relatives who are illegal. Vast numbers.

It's gonna happen all over again now with Muslim immgirants and their persistent mosque building.

Numbers matter.

Sheila| 9.19.11 @ 2:51PM

Excellent column, but once again Mr. Scruton carefully avoids making the final point: economics is a result of culture, but culture is a product of RACE. That is the reason that the wholesale population replacement that has occurred since the 1965 immigration act has debased what used to be considered "American" culture and the protestant work ethic. Diversity equals chaos. Decline and fall.

rendite| 9.19.11 @ 2:58PM

Any time a motorist plows southward from Northern Europe usually through the Alps (the tunnels -- going over might be scenic but is too time costly) and is embraced by more sun, fewer clouds, warmer days (and less rain!), one sees the immediate differences that climate and topography make.

And the differences are equal in the humans that inhabit the spaces.

The author is correct. Any Euro traveling bum/Eurrail college kid can see in a matter of weeks wide-ranging cultural differences when crisscrossing the borders and regions.

A moderately good looking college-aged girl will garner looks or stares but no more in the countries where skies are predominantly doomy gray. Yet same girl will be propositioned five times daily before the sun hits its apex in the sky in the ones with Mediterranean coastline. Those doing the wooing? Often plenty old enough to be her father, married, with kids, etc.

Travel in certain countries as a well-dressed, clean-cut male who looks to be a young professional and you'll have parasitical men first with annoying attempts to ingratiate, then begging for job offers in the ensuing days of your stay.

Don't know where this is? Go to the coastlines of the Med.

In the Ouzo partying world of Greece (where no one goes to church) and things don't getting really shaking until just before midnight -- and no one is up and about doing anything before 10 a.m. -- "mañana" is a way of life in families, villages, towns, public services, and national governance. Think only the under 30 set is shaking it in those all-night discos, lounges, and bars? Think again.

Does this mix with "Teutonic virtues?" A smart 14 year old would laugh at such a notion.

As long as the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and England have fates lashed to serial failures like Greece, the demise is on.

Similarly, as long as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Belgium (and many others -- the list is L-O-N-G) unfathomly admit illegals, Africans, muslims of all stripes, human failures from the former USSR, etc. the demise is "on."

In our hands, feet, toes, eyebrows, toenail hues, eye colors, and hair shades we are all equals.

Those things are inconsequential.

Ideas, mores, habits, patterns of behavior, character traits, ethics, things esteemed? Completely and forever unequal.

rssg| 9.19.11 @ 5:51PM

Well said. And Barry's goal is to European-ize the USA. High unemployment, adults moving back to live with their parents, forever unemployment compensation - all signs of the decline of the historic, traditional United States, of limited government and maximum individual sovereignty.

cicero| 9.19.11 @ 4:37PM

The European debt crisis is not merely a matter of north vs south culture. The debt at issue is soverein debt. That means government bond debt. Just who do you think has been buying up all those Greek bonds? Behind every economic crisis, you can bet that the big banks, and their handsomely remunerated officers are there. Up until now, every time the big banks bet wrong, the taxpayers of the various countries have been handed the bill, on the presumption that if they didn't bail out the country (Greece), something terrible would happen. All that really happens is that the taxpayers give the country (Greece) enough money to redeem the last issue of bonds, thereby bailing out the last big bank to bet wrong, and allowing the country to issue new bonds.
If the country were to be told to default, the big banks would have to eat their bad bet. The banker responsible for the bad bet would lose his job, and probably be named as a defendant by the shgareholders of bank stock. Nobody would then buy anymore of the country's debt, and they would have to find a way to live within the means of their own taxpayers.
What is so hard about that. When the bankers first started to finance the kings in the Middle Ages, they were financding wars. If the king lost, or could not repay the debt, guess who would not get anymore money loaned to finance any more wars?
Countries do not disappear from the face of the earth. The people remain. B ankruptcy will only bring fiscal responsibility back in vogue. Perhaps some governments, and some banks will disappear, but that may not be so bad.

Dipesto| 9.19.11 @ 6:11PM

Re happy Greek villagers singing and dancing; Lord Byron went to Greece in search of the golden Greece of Sophocles and Pindar and found Greeks of the 1820s living like Somalis. Everyone was a thief and the main reason to kill Turks was to grab the bag of coins and coffee beans the dead Turk was carrying. If you can find a tape of the '60s movie America America, about a peasant kid in Ottoman Greece who wanted to get to the US, the whole cultural of the levant was a cesspool of corruption c. 1900.

POST American| 9.20.11 @ 1:25AM

-------------------BOTTOM LINE-----------------------
"REAL culture celebrates creation.
FALSE culture celebrates production
--and creates a living human hell."
-JEAN PAUL SARTRE

And even beyond the standardization op
that is, er, was consumer culture ---it might
be even more valuable to consider EUGENICS
culture ---which celebrates demoralization,
self destruction and death generally.

-----ALLLL very 'benny violent' of course.

SO, --instead of pulling the usual chains, Scruton should be fearless,
drop whatever Rockefellow et al 'bennies' he's clued in on
----and face the reality of just what's happened to culture,
ALLLL culture, worldwide, post WWI.

"Understand the Globalists are, on every
level, everywhere, in every way, at war
with the REAL culture, the REAL economy.
This IS the third world war
-------'The War Against the World'."
-ALAN WATT
(essential online coverage)

-------------------------AMEN----------------------------

Dan Mathewson| 9.20.11 @ 6:31PM

You're making this up.

amanda | 9.20.11 @ 12:51PM

I like Asian culture, it's customary to send a positive effect on health.

Dipesto| 9.20.11 @ 7:41PM

A commentator in one of the weekly newsmags several years ago opined that for a culture to be considered viable it must have decent sewers, a movie industry (to reflect in drama the nations's cultural attitudes) and Soap Operas (more refections of the nation's cultural attitudes in extreme dramatics) every afternoon. With the dying of soaps on TV in the US are we losing an important cultural reflection of us?

POST American| 9.20.11 @ 11:40PM

---------------BOTTOMLESS LINE---------------------

Putting aside for a moment the Globalist media
cover up of the greatest world nuclear disaster
of ALLL time ---FUKISHIMA---

---speaking of culture, has no one caught on?!

POP culture ----gives way to
DE---POP and NO culture.

Told ya' they love word play.

-------------------------------TOLD YA'

Stephen MacLean | 9.27.11 @ 11:11AM

Professor Scruton’s essay has reminded me of a passage from Leonard Read’s Government — An Ideal Concept:

‘As specialization cannot occur without the market, it is a basic human institution. It is the foundation stone of society.’ (FEE, 1997, p. 31)

More Articles by Roger Scruton

More Articles From The Pursuit of Knowledge

The Noble Savage

January 14, 2013 | Matthew Walther

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Paying the Price

December 14, 2011 | Roger Scruton

Curiouser and Curiouser

November 18, 2011 | Roger Scruton

Riots of Passage

October 11, 2011 | Roger Scruton

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/19/the-importance-of-culture

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