7/18/2014 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
To observe the decades-long paralysis
of America's political elite in controlling her borders calls to mind the insight
of James Burnham in 1964 -- "Liberalism is the ideology of Western
suicide."
What the ex-Trotskyite turned Cold
Warrior meant was that by faithfully following the tenets of liberalism, the
West would embrace suicidal policies that would bring about the death of her
civilization.
The crisis on our Southern border,
where the left, and not only the left, is wailing that we cannot turn away
desperate people fleeing wicked regimes and remain true to our liberal values,
is a case in point.
To assert that we cannot take all these
people in, that we must send them back and seal out border for our survival, is
to be called a variety of names -- racist, xenophobe, nativist -- all of which
translate into "illiberal."
But as we continue our descent to Third
World status, perhaps we should explore more deeply the "diversity"
that has of late come to be regarded as America's most treasured attribute.
In 1960, we were not nearly so diverse.
Nine in 10 Americans professed a Christian faith. Nine in 10 Americans traced
their ancestry back to Europe. E Pluribus Unum. We were one nation and one
people.
Since then, we have become the Brazil
of North America, a multiracial, multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural
"universal nation" unlike any that has existed in the history of the
West. And if we look abroad at those Western nations traveling along this
perilous path with us, we can see clearly now our future.
Before the 1960s, Europe never knew
mass immigration. And after the terrible ethnic cleansing of Germans after
World War II, most of Europe's nations were ethnically homogeneous.
Several were not. Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, the USSR. At the end of the Cold War, with freedom, all three came
apart. Where we had three nations, suddenly we had 24 and such sub-nations as
South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.
Now Scots are seeking to break away
from England, Catalans from Spain, Corsicans from France, Venetians from Italy
and Flemish from Belgium, though these peoples have lived together for
centuries.
Crimeans have gone back to Russia,
while Chechens and other peoples of the Caucasus are fighting to break free of
Russia. The roots of these secessionist movements may be traced to economics,
ethnicity, history, religion, language, culture and borders.
Then there are the rising millions of
Muslims in Europe who are not assimilating, as Catholic Irish and Catholic
Germans did in a Protestant USA, but are replicating within the West the
countries and cultures whence they came. They are separating themselves, by
ethnicity, culture and faith, from the Western societies into which they have
migrated.
Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans,
Somalis and Arabs in America also build replicas of the countries and cultures
whence they came. Thus, we take on the aspect of an empire. And empires fall
apart.
The melting pot, rejected by our elites
as an instrument of nativist bigots, is history.
Libya, Syria and Iraq are coming apart,
as did Sudan and Ethiopia. The Kurds seek to carve a nation out of Turkey,
Iran, Iraq and Syria. A Sunni-Shia sectarian war impends.
Christians are being persecuted,
martyred and expelled from Islamic nations. In Myanmar, Muslims are brutalized
by Buddhists. In Western China, ethnic Uighurs resort to terrorism in a war of
secession to establish a new East Turkestan.
Disintegration, separatism and
secessionism, for racial, religious, and cultural causes, are a phenomenon
common now to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Are we somehow immune?
The world is boiling with racial,
tribal, cultural and moral conflict. People carry in their hearts the seeds of
these conflicts. The notion that they will come here and be converted into
Ozzie-and-Harriet Americans may be a bit utopian.
America is becoming a microcosm of a
world on fire.
Why are we doing this? Why are we inviting
the world into the USA? Was there some grievous flaw in the America of Ike and
JFK that must be expunged? Some sin for which we must do penance?
What is coming is predictable, and has
been predicted.
By 2042, Americans of European ancestry
will be a minority in a country built by Europeans. "Anglos" are now
a minority in California, New Mexico and Texas. Hispanics will soon be the
majority in all four border states with Mexico.
And should Hispanics decide not to give
their electoral votes to any presidential candidate who does not promise to
erase the border with Latin America, that would mean the end of the United
States as we know it.
Americans are already deep in a culture
war over morality -- marijuana, abortion, same-sex marriage. We are already
racially polarized over affirmative action and income inequality.
And when we have ceased to be an
English-speaking, Christian country and become instead an
Asian-Hispanic-African-American-white nation, with large Jewish, Christian,
Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist minorities, and no defined
borders, or common faith and culture, what holds us together?
And when did we
vote for this future?
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