This is Interesting

An intriguing theory from Ed West, the son of our own Mary Kenny, writing in the Spectator:

My belief about diversity and tolerance is that it is shaped like a Laffer Curve, so that as a homogenous society sees more newcomers it becomes progressively more tolerant until a point is reached at which this process goes into reverse, partly because there are just too many political and social incentives for division. Britain probably went past that optimum around the millennium, and France is therefore even further ahead. As this study shows, people like a little diversity but really dislike a lot of it, and with good reason. I’d strongly bet against Le Pen becoming president this year – and I correctly prophesised Remain and Clinton [a joke, I assume] – but if current trends continue then she must stand a good chance in 2022. Unless capitalism stops her.

Last week I was speaking to an English friend who was very strongly anti-Brexit, and was indeed crestfallen after the referendum. (I received forlorn texts from him in the early hours of that morning.) He's a traditional Labour voter who used to be a member of the Young Communist party. He hates the Tories and he has no time for Nigel Farage. And even he says that there is now too much immigration in Britain.

I've said this in previous posts, but just to repeat: for me, it's not so much a matter of immigration, as of globalisation and homogenisation. I'm not against human beings, but I am against ideologies, and I am implacably opposed to the 'global village' ideology. I'm not interested in DNA (well, not much), but I am interested in heritage and tradition, continuity and identity.

I admit that this is a fine distinction, since genetics and cultural heritage generally go together (you usually, but not always, get your cultural heritage from your biological parents and grandparents), and since an open borders ideology seems impossible to square with old-style ethnic nationalism. (Please note the definition of 'ethnicity' on the Oxford English Dictionary website: "The fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition." No mention of genetics there.) But it's still a distinction I like to make.

And yes, of course, a concern for the preservation of tradition, heritage and continuity has to be balanced with humanitarianism and the inevitable process of social change. What bothers me, and what seems to bother so many others, is the refusal of elites to acknowledge that there is anything to balance in the first place.