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They Are Not Going Home
I recently completed Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe and The War on the West. Taken together these books amply document the changes in America both past, present, and future as a result of internal and external forces. It is sobering and depressing if you are a lover of the Enlightenment and the animating philosophy of the American founders.
The important takeaway is that America (anymore than Europe) is not going back to earlier times. The people chanting “Death to America” in Michigan are not leaving, nor will they be removed. President Biden and the Democrats will certainly not remove any illegal aliens while in power — now or in the future. President Trump will remove some, but certainly not all. That President Trump will remove some will be an improvement. Those targeted will be violent criminals and/or gang members. The Chinese “immigrants” will no doubt come under some scrutiny by Trump to determine whether they are actually foreign agents of the CCP positioned here either as part of a specific plan or giving the CCP some “options” in the event of harsh treatment by a future administration. But wholesale deportation is not in the cards.
Thus America will have absorbed millions of migrants in some fashion. Will that result in increasing “no-go” zones for domestic law enforcement? Will that result in acceptance of cultural and religious practices not heretofore countenanced by American law? It has in Europe, so why not here?
But more than that, the entire conception of what it means to be an American is changing. It doesn’t matter what you want, the transforming power of the surging tide will modify the terrain. How can it not? We can rail and complain, but what are we really going to do about it?
Murray’s book clearly identifies a major human weakness: We only see clearly what is coming after it arrives. We assume our leaders either anticipated it and did not act, did not anticipate and failed us, or anticipated and wanted it to happen. So we always know who to blame — feel better? No, I didn’t think so.
It is incumbent upon us to adapt to changed circumstances. That doesn’t mean just accepting what happens. But it does mean focusing on practical steps to salvage as much as we can of the America we want.
Don’t get me wrong, there are bad actors. There are politicians, academics, and NGOs that need to be dealt with in some fashion to address their malign creation and support for American “transformation” away from our constitutional order. But the important task is to do what we can to bolster the reality and significance of citizenship, and its most important attribute: consent of the governed. We must not let the migrant crisis divide us, and by “us” I mean those of us who share a view about constitutional order without regard to agreement on a given fixed set of policies.
We need to focus on our own geographical communities and its leaders. What do they know about illegal immigrants where you live? What are their plans for integrating them into the community and providing civic education to help them understand what their neighbors expect of them, what is tolerable and what is not? Does local government actually have the means of communicating with these illegals? Are there NGOs operating in your community that are acting against the community’s interests and what can be done to stop them or redirect their efforts away from your community? Are community leaders communicating with surrounding communities to share information and strategies?
The federal power is not going to help. We are on our own. The sooner we accept that reality, and the reality that it is in our own hands to preserve our communities as close to the “before times”, the more quickly we will develop the network and strategies that best serve us.
Published in General
Get a second passport so you can bug out if/when things get too much for you to handle. Estonia’s a pretty good option.
Contrary to the stereotype of the patriotic American, Americans are actually more likely to have a second passport than any other nationality.
I’ve noticed a small flurry of articles about obtaining a second passport lately (largely based on the CNBC article):
If people truly love America, they will not leave it to the commies. Move from a blue state to reinforce a red state. Push back as long as you can. If life becomes intolerable, red states need to edit the Declaration of Independence and resubmit it then grab the flag and Constitution and save the red states. There are no other choices once life under authoritarians becomes intolerable. The entire western world is under assault.
Civilization has to be defended every damned day. Some days it takes more work for longer. I think those days are here.
I think we need to think differently about everything from now on.
I was just watching this video about the “protests” at Yale this past week and today:
Riot police at Yale as hundreds of students hold anti-Israel protest (youtube.com)
About a minute into the clip, Brian Kilmeade asks the Jewish Yale students who these protestors were, if they were students. Both students said that it was impossible to tell.
That raised my curiosity about the schools my kids attended. I looked them up to see if there were any anti-Semitic riots there. Nope. Then I looked at some other schools their friends went to. Nope. I am curious to know if other readers on Ricochet who have connections with colleges that are not Ivies are seeing the same thing I am–no anti-Israel riots.
This is what I think is happening: These are Antifa types of professionals who are entering these campuses and stirring up the students and a lot of violence. They are probably a mix of U.S. citizens and immigrants. The point is, Americans haven’t changed. These are domestic terrorists who, like all terrorists, are looking for the maximum amount of press coverage. The University of New Hampshire is not going to get global attention, but Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and MIT will. They are not bright people, but they know the names of the Ivies, and so that’s where they are going.
People who hate the United States have been infiltrating our country now, coming through within the sea of immigrants let in by Obama and now Biden, some legally, some not, for almost fifteen years. Poorly controlled or completely uncontrolled immigration was the number one issue in America in 2016.
Larry Kudlow always cites the number of illegal immigrants as being somewhere between 10 and 40 million. The size of that unknown range is just mind boggling in and of itself.
I don’t know how we can get this situation under control.
We think the anti-Israel riots are bad. Wait until Trump deports the first hundred people.
But aren’t places like Yale also more likely to want people like AOC and Tlaib as students to promote their “diversity?”
In other words, 20 million +-3dB. That’s pretty normal isn’t it?
I think Kudlows numbers reflect lax enforcement borders, visa overstays going back decades. Pre-Trump enforcement was bad but not as absurd as under Biden. At least the 20+ million from decades were at least partially assimilates. The Biden “newcomers” are arriving with minimal expectations of assimilation.
Yes, which means that these professional Antifa types of rioters have people they can connect to immediately.
Part of living in the world that exists is acknowledging the failures of utopian ideologies like “Magic Dirt” and “Nation of Immigrants” and come to terms with a wholistic view of Nationalism – as in people of birth.
Years ago, I mentioned that the problem with defining America as a nation of ideas is that once the idea dies, so does America. Rome lasted from tribal chief to monarchy to Republic to Empire because it was tied to the people, not some ephemeral idea. And so it was able to adapt to changing political structures without being destroyed for a millennium .
If America’s political structure changed, America would be dead. And that’s why we likely won’t make it to 400 years.
I, for one, wouldn’t take the “over” in your over/under bet.
It’s an AND proposition. The destination colleges have been admitting foreign, especially middle eastern, full tuition paying students for 20 years. Graduating them as pseudo scholars with PhD’s who have been teaching, joining administration in all the bureaucratic departments and spreading their totalitarian ideologies all over the place. They attract more of the same, no civil law respecting young people, and the admissions offices admit them and their full fee paying friends. AND those individuals are associated with and known to the Soros and other anti American NGOs – the same ones who initiated Occupy Wall Street and its subsequent cousins. AND many college students now are just dopes and just like their predecessors just want to go along with the crowd and not study at the end of the spring semester. AND none of them have any experience with consequences for bad behaviour – they expect to go home and hang for the summer like nothing happened. Nothing probably will, except for the Jewish students.
Let’s start calling it the Biden Invitational.
In Milwaukee, at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Campus, there was some vandalism at the Golda Meir Library but nothing remotely to what is being seen at the Ivy’s. I think you’re right and that certain schools/schools of “The Elites” are planned targets.
On the plus side, if they destroy those elite schools… might not be so bad.
I think it is: Complete the destruction of the elite schools. The faculty and (possibly more important) the administration has been doing that for decades.
Actually destroying them, rather than leaving them as leftist indoctrination camps, seems like a better outcome overall.
The protests are apparently spreading into nearly all of the colleges now. My theory does not hold up. :) :)
“Liked”, but not liked.
Provocateur-aided mind virus.
Tax the endowments.
I think it does – it’s just timing and scale. Substantially all colleges are populated with radical left bureaucrats and teachers and have admitted similar students for years who have formed anti-American and anti-faith clubs and organizations. I think the sponsors of the anti American and Islamic campus activities just went to the low hanging and very ripe fruit at Columbia and Yale to start the campaign. Never forget how much money the Ivys and other destination colleges have – it supports a lot of terrible activity aimed at dopey college age kids. I think these activities are as sponsored as all the other destructive campaigns of the last 12 -15 years.
I’d like to say: where are these kids’ parents?! But I suppose many of them support those who are actual college students and not interlopers. They don’t expect them to graduate in 4 years with a marketable degree anyway, so what’s a lost semester if they are suspended? I doubt any student expects this activity to show up on a transcript or come up in a job interview.
They asserted that in that linked news story but really only referenced The Ivy’s and Boston/NY Blue City colleges.
This looks to me to overlap with the BLM/defund the police,Blue City chaos.
At the moment it does to me too. I just didn’t want to mislead anyone. :) The craziness is definitely spreading to non-Ivy colleges.
Ron DeSantis blames the administrators and said yesterday about the riots in the Northeast, “Up there, the inmates are running the asylum.” :)
Definitely not a bad idea. Scott Yenor also has good ideas to punish universities obsessed with DEI stuff.
Here is the answer I was looking for yesterday: Who Is Behind These Protests?
‘Fox & Friends’ reveals groups, funding behind anti-Israel protests (youtube.com)
The Fox News teams always seem to want to know the same things I do. :) :)
Go Team! :) :)
Wespac demonstrates there is no hatred of something stronger than that of someone who used to love it.
Just like in the spring of 1971. Do you know what replaced it? Streaking. Just saying.
Dark money from the usual suspects.
A lover of the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment is what got us in this mess. The Enlightenment rejected God (see the French Revolution), diminished and degraded and deprived humans of their humanity, and has perpetrated murder and mayhem in the guise of Enlightenment philosophies. The Age of Reason it is not. Sure there were a few decent thinkers (Locke, Newton, Kant, Leibnitz, the Levellers), but most were bizarre and unhinged and highly destructive (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Hume and his disciples, de Sade, Francis Galton, all the British Fabian Socialists, including the irredentist socialist, Ron Coase, vile Eugenicists like R. A. Fisher, Heidegger, Rorty, Pinker, Hahneman, Sunstein, Foucault, Yuval Harari, Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, Utilitarians like Pete Singer, and etc.
The Enlightenment went after religion with hammer and sickle (and tongs). The Enlightenment has given us Communism, Fascism, Progressivism, Secularism, Eugenic forced sterilization, Abortion, Euthanasia, Behavioral economics, Existentialism, totalitarianism of every sort, Leviathan, Sadism, masochism, transhumanism, the delusion of Homo Deus, and post modernism, and made humanity a quintessence of dust.
We are experiencing Enlightenment ideas, and experiencing them good and hard.
The French enlightenment is not the totality of the enlightenment. The Scottish enlightenment seemed cool with G-d.