Wilder: They Broke The Deal...

John Wilder's latest--"They Broke The Deal: The Economics Of Loyalty And Patriotism"--delves into why so many Westerners are no longer willing to fight for their country. 

    What changed?

    Well, I think the deal that I had has been broken so completely that they simply don’t see a country worth fighting for anymore.  At all.  Why?  Because the economics and culture I grew up in have evaporated, been swallowed in a sea of foreigners, or been the subject of a leveraged buyout.

This is another example of Robert Putnam's research showing that greater ethnic diversity leads to lower social capital. Michael Jonas provides a good summary of Putnam's study and conclusions in his article, "The Downsides of Diversity" published by Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. An excerpt:

    It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

    But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Or, as John puts it in regard to willingness to fight for their country:

The teeming cesspit of India (76%) and the perennially unemployed Armenians (96%) are much more willing to fight than the United States (41%) because India is filled with Indians, Armenia is filled with Armenians, and in America, at least 29% of the people in the country are illegal, on visas, or are first or second generation immigrants with little tie to the country. 

Read the whole thing.