I'm optimistic - I am. Reading Jerry's thoughts on immigration, however, gives me the mopes.
What do you do when your culture seems determined to shoot itself in the foot?
Under currently proposed legislation, we will import up to 100 million -- that's 10^8 people -- legally and legalized illegals -- in twenty years or so. I do not believe that the Melting Pot can deal with that dilution to the American character.Not because I think he's wrong. Because I fear he is right.
In fact I do not believe that we can assimilate the number of illegal immigrants we already have. The legal immigration program already admits too many people at the bottom end of society if you count families: elders imported to be on Social Security because the Old Country doesn't have decent pensions. And so forth. Add to that the illegal immigrants and the very character of the American Experiment in Self Government is at stake.
Democracy is a dangerous form of government. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide. The Framers opted for a federal republic, a Nation of States, an experiment in ordered liberty with variants. That has endured for a long time. It was transformed into a more unitary state by the Civil War, but even that did not destroy the fundamental character of these United States. I know there are those who argue that the Civil War ended the American experiment; I remind them that despair is a sin, and that in fact as late as 1938 Washington, DC was a small town in Maryland, "Don't make a Federal Case of this" was a meaningful expression, the FBI office in a major city might have half a dozen Agents and as many clerical staff, and so forth.
Since the Civil War the US went from Federal Republic to National Democracy, but it did so slowly, and until Earl Warren and his Imperial Judiciary it ran up against limits. Now we are going further down that axis toward a French-style Centralized Bureaucratic Rule. We are becoming a national democracy.
There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.
But even those who have long advocated democracy have always known that a democracy is not a form of government compatible with cultural and linguistic diversity. The Swiss Exception is instructive: Switzerland is a democracy, and it is diverse in both language and confession -- and it is not unitary. Few Swiss can name their President although most can tell you the name of the Canton and Commune officials relevant to their lives. A national democracy cannot endure as a culturally diverse society with cultural, linguistic, and religious diversities. It cannot. Ours will not.
The American Melting Pot model of assimilation to a single language, and a wide-based Judao-Christian ethical and religious culture, might be able to endure nationalization. Might. That would be an interesting experiment. But it is 100% certain that the Melting Pot cannot handle great dilution, and that it takes time for it to work. Adding tens of millions of illegals plus larger numbers of legal immigrants will destroy the model and force our national democracy into the typical defects of a large national democracy, and thus to extinction. This is about as certain as anything we know about history.
Apparently no one in Washington understands this.
If they did, they would close the borders NOW, not in 2008.
As to how, it's simple: call it 2000 miles of border. At $1 million per mile that is $2 billion/year, a drop in the Budget. Hand that money on a per/mile basis to each border county sheriff, with provision that it must be spent on border control -- apprehension and confinement. Now hand every border city $20 million a year for the same purposes. Hand each Border State $50 million a year, again solely for border enforcement. The whole program will cost less than the illegals cost us now.
And yes, there are details to be worked out, including rewards for performance and penalties for non-performance, and I took the numbers out of the top of my head; but it would work a lot better than sending 6,000 Guardsmen down to the border for TWO WEEK SHIFTS. The present plan will do nothing. It won't even LOOK as if it is doing something, which is its only purpose anyway.
Close the border now. Deport all illegals who come to the attention of the police courts. Insist that any legalization program includes instruction in English, Civics, American History, and such, and have a zero tolerance policy regarding crime including DUI, speeding tickets, driving without a license, drunk and disorderly... IN other words, deport those who volunteer for deportation. And hope that we can assimilate the rest. And do that NOW.
Apparently no one in Washington understands what is at stake.
Daily we sow the wind.
What do you do when your culture seems determined to shoot itself in the foot?
