Amoral Familism And Baby Formula
Henry McCulloch
Although Phyllis Schlafly doesn't use the term amoral familism, she sees what is at work in the Chinese tainted baby formula scandal Patrick Cleburne has covered for VDare.com. Cleburne also perceived immigration-driven amoral familism at the expense of Americans in the selective persecution of American teenagers by (unwelcome, to this American at least) Korean import and U.S. government lawyer Grace Chung Becker
Schlafly warns of Americans'—actually, all who rely on the Western, Christian tradition as an ethical foundation—need to be very wary in dealing with those whose traditions provide no such moral bedrock:
"The China infant milk scandal, even though it has so far not damaged any American babies, has exposed a major defect in the concept of free trade. It's dangerous to buy products from a nation whose economy is not based on Judeo-Christian morality.
The American private enterprise system depends on honesty as normal and accepted behavior. We don't have or want a policeman on every corner, or an army of government officials to inspect every bottle of baby formula or tube of toothpaste.
We do have regulations and random checks, but the majority of producers and sellers are restrained from criminality by adherence to the Judeo-Christian ethic."[China Poisons Its Infant Formula, By Phyllis Schlafly—Townhall.com, September 23, 2008 ]
Everything Schlafly says here is true. But what she says is incomplete, and one more example of how even the most rock-ribbed-seeming of mainstream conservatives fail to grasp the most vital issues facing our fading civilization.
If, as Shlafly says, it is "dangerous to buy products from a nation whose economy is not based on Judeo-Christian morality", isn't it even more dangerous to import, through reckless and uncontrolled immigration, what amounts to a new domestic economy run by people from nations whose economies are not based on that morality, who as producers and sellers won't be restrained from criminality by adherence to the Judeo-Christian ethic, because it is not theirs?
No doubt immigration enthusiasts will say the natives aren't always restrained from criminality by Judeo-Christian ethics either. True but irrelevant, and nothing more than a reflection of fallen human nature. In fact, a realistic view of man's condition only strengthens the arguments for restricting immigration — if one has to be somewhat wary even of one's countrymen, who are supposed to be restrained by our traditional ethics, how can it make sense to import as our neighbors millions who obviously are not restrained by them at all, and may indeed find them laughable?
Mass immigration has introduced alien ethnic cronyism on a vast scale into America, as any student not only of today's deluge but also of the Great Wave well knows. The whole point of amoral familism is that among many of the world's ethnic groups honesty to those with whom one does not have close kinship ties is not normal and accepted behavior. As it happens, our suicidal immigration (non-)policies endlessly bring millions of members of just such ethnic groups here to be our neighbors. Americans, who in general do not practice amoral familism, are easily driven from entire sectors of our economy by those more conscious of their ethnic interests. To give only one example, when is the last time you saw a motel run by anything other than Indians? Think those Indians will hire your American kid to manage one? Since ordinary Americans seem incapable of acting consciously in their own ethnic interest, what we should do about this appears obvious.
So, many thanks to Phyllis Schlafly for this column, and for fighting the good fight for so long. But I can't give Schlafly more than a B+ for this one, because she fails to reach the obvious conclusion: if Americans can't trust imported products from low-trust societies, it makes no sense at all to import their producers, whose conduct is guided by those societies' ethics. End immigration from such societies. As much as possible, reverse it.
And the next time you drop in to your local Chinese takeout for some cheap dumplings, you might give the Sanlu Group's quality control a thought before you say "no MSG, please."