David Brooks has a history lesson for Donald Trump (via Steve
Sailer):
The Trump story is that good honest Americans are being screwed by aliens. … This is a tribal story.
Somebody is going to have to arise to point out that this is a deeply wrong and un-American story. The whole point of America is that we are not a tribe. We are a universal nation, founded on universal principles, attracting talented people from across the globe, active across the world on behalf of all people who seek democracy and dignity.
This lovely fiction from
Mr. Brooks is as quaint as it is ahistorical. But it does go back a fair way. Not as far as
our founders, bequeathing a nation 'to ourselves and our posterity.' Not as far as our first naturalization act, in 1790, extended to 'free white persons of good character.'
Not as far as Thomas Jefferson, quoted by Alexander Hamilton:
Not as far as Thomas Jefferson, quoted by Alexander Hamilton:
'The opinion advanced in [Jefferson's] The Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners.
'They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or, if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?
'There may, as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule.'
The idea that the U.S.
was meant to become a League of Nations avant l'heure dates
back to the mid 19th century, when America's first nativist
party, the 'Know-Nothings,' agitated against Catholic immigrants (both Irish and German). They were lambasted by people like George Julian, VP candidate:
'Know Nothingism . . . tramples down the doctrine of human brotherhood. It judges men by the accidents of their condition, instead of striving to find a common lot for all, with a common access to the blessings of life.' (1)
By the 1912 presidential
election, Woodrow Wilson was currying favor with his new electorate by trumpeting:
'America has, so to say, opened its doors and extended its welcome to men who were Americans everywhere in the world. She has invited all the free forces of the modern civilized peoples to come to America where men can be free, and where all free forces can unite and forget all their differences of origins.'
But even a 'proposition nation' man like Wilson wasn't
a true multiculturalist—he did not extend this welcome to Blacks
or Asians:
'The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population out of people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.'
These days, things have
gone so far that we're being told that not
letting masses of Mexicans or Africans into our countries is the equivalent of
turning away the Jews in 1940, or runaway slaves in 1840.
This is an astounding
statement. Forcing a Mexican to be governed by other Mexicans, or a Senegalese
to be governed by other Senegalese, is akin to committing genocide upon them.
What a statement on the governing abilities of Mexicans or Senegalese! Perhaps Jefferson
was onto something after all…
The 'magic dirt' theory,
of course, says that once these foreigners set foot on our soil,
they are suddenly blessed with the qualities that have allowed us to govern
ourselves so successfully all these years.
But we at TWCS suspect that, on the contrary, Jefferson
was right—Governments Are Us. 'That temperate love of liberty, so essential to
real republicanism' has not been equally distributed on Planet Earth.
We mostly rule ourselves now--the age of empire is over. If we rule ourselves badly, that's because we are somehow ill-equipped to handle the running of a large, modern representative state.
We mostly rule ourselves now--the age of empire is over. If we rule ourselves badly, that's because we are somehow ill-equipped to handle the running of a large, modern representative state.
So if we few in well-run countries usher in the many fleeing ill-run countries, what will be the result? Is it possible such people will recreate the conditions they've created in their own countries, right here on our soil? If so, we should be
very, very careful which groups we let in the door.
What is the evidence?
