"Luxury is more ruthless than war"

Dreher: "Have we become so accomodated that resistance is futile?" Ho, hum, I guess we're gonna be Borg'ed. How about just saving ourselves all the trouble now by ceding away California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and creating from them a new nation called Republica Del Aztlan? (After, of course, we first have made profuse apologies for that nasty business that occured back in 1846 to 1848) Next, what's left of the Rump of the U.S. will provide relocation credits for those Anglophones living in Republica Del Aztlan who really don't prefer living in a rehashed version of Mexico, which will have its similar share of rampant corruption, ultra-violent drug lords, and all the other stuff we see south of the border.
Oops. What border? My bad. There is no border. Anyhow, there's still plenty of room in places like North Dakota, Montana, or Wyoming for all the refugees escaping from Republica Del Aztlan. In the future, "Little House on the Prairie" will take on a whole new meaning. I'm being semi-facetious, of course. But my point, Rod, is that you need to fully understand just how angry people are starting to feel about this whole mess, and furthermore they don't really care about all the fancy intellections which claim to prove how inevitable it is and that we should just sit back, bleet like sheep, and be absorbed.

I, too, have often thought it funny that well educated Americans will decry the spoliation and, yea, even the pollution of a foreign culture but treat similar concerns by Americans as embarrassing or even offensive. Go figure.

My point was a little different. Globalization kills off traditional cultures. Some of those cultures I'll mourn. And some of them, frankly, I won't.

If the kid seriously reveres Santa Anna, he's an idiot, or his teacher's an idiot. In Mexico's long list of damaging, incompetent leaders, Santa Anna's pretty much at the top, and that's saying A LOT. Of course, it's not really about admiring the self-titled "Napoleon of the West", but sticking it to the Man.

To go in an entirely different direction: if luxury is indeed more ruthless than war, will Americans look back 60 years from now and see the militant Islamism of the early 21st century as a doomed rearguard action by a culture that was in the process of being successfully seduced by globalizing consumerism? ScurvyOaks | 05.24.07 - 3:42 pm | #
Hm, or is it more likely that our great democracy will be conquered by a combination of interior and exterior factors because we valued luxury and security more than our own values, and that without those values we could offer no defense against those who held theirs so tightly, however misguided their beliefs?
We no longer comprehend honor. THEY will kill their own daughters and sisters for it. We no longer hold great loyalty to extended family. THEY identify more closely to their tribe or sect than to any nation-state. We no longer require or expect our young men (and women) to give up their freedom for a few years for the common defense. THEY are ready and willing to give their lives (and the lives of any standers by) to their cause. We no longer respect the teachings of our elders, religious or otherwise. THEY will follow the guidance of a fatwa of death. We shiver and tremble at every new segment of the 24 hours stations, announcing death and doom from child molesters, the West Nile virus, and terrorists from abroad. THEY will stop at nothing and claim only to fear God.
I guess my point is, there is far more to the issue of terrorism than border security. And far more is at stake than a few illegal fruitpickers if we no longer have the courage and determination to equal honor with honor and selfless service with selfless service, and to answer the twisted moral logic of suicide terrorism with the our Constitution values of justice and equality and unalienable rights to life and liberty.
As far as the Alamo: I have mentioned I have Mexican forbears. They are fond of saying that the border crossed them, they didn't cross any border. They are citizens by birth, and have been since shortly after the movement of said border. All of them who were able served in World War II, and quite a few in Korea. They are as patriotic a bunch as you will ever chance to meet, but will claim until their dying day that the Alamo was a great victory.
Go figure. ;)

It's easy for people like me to wonder why others are so bent out of shape by the illegal immigration problem, because we just don't see it. Then why are you so bent out of shape? Also, I think you completely misread the thoughtful reader's piece (though it speaks well of you to have posted it). Excepting the Foucault, I could have written what the thoughtful reader wrote, though not so well. And had you asked me to sum it up, I would have said this: Borders are artificial constructs, and enforcing them (at least to prohibit the movement of peoples) is a recent phenomenon. But the right to seek work in a new place is neither recent nor artificial: it is God-given, as I think both your former Church and your new one both teach. Therefore, trying to stop Mexicans from moving here and seeking work is not only immoral, it is historically without much precedent. For both reasons, we shouldn't do it. If your response to that is to list all of the negatives that illegal immigration brings (crowded houses, changed perspective on history, lower wages for the working man, etc.) and to set against these only good food as a positive, I think you're not being fair. Nor are you considering the points made in this thread and others, by me and by others, that the last wave of in-migration (from Southern and Eastern Europe) was viewed with just as much horror as you view this wave, and had the same negative effects, but these were temporary and were outweighed by the positives of immigration.

"Borders are artificial constructs."
Well, maybe. They often follow well-defined geographical markers (seacoast, along rivers, etc.) and/or the limits of a nation's ability to defend its territory. In terms of historical boundaries of a nation or empire, you can go back several centuries to Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall of China to highlight clearly defined boundaries (obviously, many boundaries change over time due to changing military power, etc.)
We are more mobile now than at any time in the past, which I think makes it difficult for us to understand the past reality of most people staying in the same geographical/cultural/ linguistic place. There were people who moved in search of greater economic opportunities, but not on a scale we see today (in my opinion).
Additionally, I am Protestant but somewhat aware of the Catholic and Orthodox perspective I assume is referred to in the "God-given" "right to seek work in a new place." Huh? Is there actually a theological position that one has a God-given right to economic/vocational mobility? I've never heard of such a thing. I'm in favor of people having the ability to improve their situations in a manner consistent with law, but I don't think you can support it as a matter of faith.

For Catholics, there is. See 2241 and 2433 of the Catholic Catechism. There's also an injunction in that catechism for migrants to follow the law. The overwhelming majority of the people were talking about aren't fleeing from a murderous tyrant, or even a serious famine.

Joe, what about separation of church and state? What about it? The Church doesn't give politicians marching orders; it simply proposes a set of general principles. One of those is "fight only just wars," and you won't hear the Church as such declaring which are just and which aren't. Another principle is "welcome the stranger." As long as we agree to make that one of the guiding principles of our immigration laws, the Church will keep her mouth closed. The overwhelming majority of the people were talking about aren't fleeing from a murderous tyrant, or even a serious famine. True, but we owe them a welcome all the same. The Catechism doesn't limit the duty to welcome immigrants only to those who have it really, really bad. Nor did Christ say that our neighbors are limited to the strangers for whom we feel pity. There's also an injunction in that catechism for migrants to follow the law. True enough. But: a) there's no obligation to go hungry at home out of obedience to a law that facially contradicts the Catechism; especially when b) our enforcement of the law winks at would-be immigrants and tells them to try again. Hey, it's a post-9/11 world, and you'll hear no objection from me to any plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and check closely anyone who crosses it. But you will hear me object if we prevent people who only want work from crossing it.
My point in everything I've written here is just that a desire to prop up American working-class wages, or a desire to keep telling the story of the Alamo Texas-style, does not trump our God-given duty to welcome the stranger. But if we have other reasons, just reasons, to discriminate against foreigners -- like security concerns -- the Church won't say a peep against such discrimination.

I will hopefully be able to post a full reply later...it's getting way past time for me to be asleep at this point, and unfortunately, that's when I do my best reading and thinking. It's regrettable because I really don't have time at that (or, if one is to be honest, this) point to completely develop all of the ideas and arguments I have, and by the time I do, it's at a time (i.e., morning) when I am essentially not at my best. I am admittedly a pessimist, and generally see American and Western culture as a whole as essentially unsustainable against the tide of Eastern and Islamic culture that is much less flexible and which is increasingly exerting its considerable pressure against "us." Northern and Western European culture, and its derivatives such as the United States are by nature somewhat flexible in what they admit into the fold. However, what "we" admit sometimes does not fit within the overall mold. This is not to say that what is introduced is always bad; quite to the contrary, it is often beneficial, as Rod points out in this posting. Be that as it may, I have to agree that nationalism or any idea of a "nation" of any sort at all is at this point completely obsolete. We have no nations anymore, only languages and corporations, save for Islamic states. These have a definitive culture. The rest of us have business and consumerism. This is not to say that I would prefer something analogous to Sharia law. Far from it. But the simple fact is that in industrialized countries, culture has essentially been reduced to language and food--little else, regardless of how anyone might try to fight against the tide. Globalization has already taken over. I would recommend the novel Jennifer Government by Max Barry, to say nothing of his earlier work Syrup--about the marketing industry--though I have yet to read his latest story. The "future" world depicted in Jennifer Government is in reality little different than the world today, only in sharper relief. Culture in the world today is frequently another form of a corporation. Actual culture and nationhood has been killed by business and beauacracy long ago in many cases.

This post is the most thoughtful thing I've read on the immigration debate yet. It's too late for me to get a good night's sleep, much less comment, but thanks for the excellent interchange of ideas.

Michael wrote:
Of course, when the minority becomes the majority, doesn't their culture become the norm? In 50 years, will El Presidente Sanchez talk about the preservation of quaint Anglo customs?
Well, of course if Hispanics become a large majority, their culture would be the norm. I doubt Senor Presidente, who probably won t feel guilty about his cultural heritage like today s liberals, will be so generous. We would be lucky if he allowed Anglos to secede from the country they used to think was theirs.

Joe, we don't have a God-given duty to welcome the stranger. We have a parental duty to keep strangers out of our house. It's corrupt to sell out that obligation in exchange for cheap labor.

Yes, but that declaration wasn't binding on Catholics. I had written something snarky, but I have retracted it. I would caution you that your view is an anomoly in the Church. It is more a question of how the authority is bound than whether it is bound. The most recent book by Pope Benedict explicitly says it is not binding. This is rather exceptional.

If Christ was an American citizen, he'd welcome those coming to find work so as to make a better life for themself. I can't reconcile anything that Jesus said with fences, fines, prison, deportation, etc. Christ didn't come to teach political economy. In my private capacity I try to turn the other cheek, bless them that hurt me, and so on. But I would be shocked and angry if a judge, having a thief who stole a robe up for arraignment, ordered the victim to give the thief his cloak also. In my private capacity I've done a lot of charitable work with illegal aliens. I don't kid myself that is the beginning and end of public policy, however.

John Savage: Rod, I thought that in your book you endorsed a Benedictine populism . What changed? Just because you have a white-collar job doesn t mean you have to consider yourself part of the cultural elite, and you sure don t seem rootless . Why not be a real populist and identify with the social class whose values you share? As for me, I can have a conversation with a patriotic working-class European and find lots of common ground, but have to keep my beliefs to myself whenever I m speaking to a wealthy pro-globalist American. It s called political correctness. John, I should clarify: what I'm trying to do in this post is to own up to the aspects of my own character that have been formed by the times, and that I wish to overcome. I think there's something really wrong with the fact that I can, on balance, have an easier conversation with someone in my professional class who comes from Europe than I can with the mill worker from my hometown. I have to admit that it's true, though; it would be false if I pretended otherwise. But like I said, there is something wrong with that. And my book is about my discovery in the early middle part of my life that I was essentially rootless -- like many, many other people in our mobile nation -- and that there was something wrong with that too.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to be honest about where I am, and where I want to be.

I would caution you that your view is an anomoly in the Church. Not so. While Catholics can (and some, like St. Ignatius Loyola, do) follow every papal statement as if it were binding on pain of sin, in fact very few papal statements carry that level of authority.
Mr. Forrest, I would guess that you are troubled by neocons (like Fr. Neuhaus) who draw a distinction between issues on which the Church issues rules that one must obey (e.g., abortion) and issues on which the Church proposes a moral framework which can be applied by different people in different ways (e.g., death penalty, just war, immigration). If so, your caution was unnecessary: I protested the Iraq War before it began, even marched against it, and I don't like how "conservative" Catholics claim moral high ground when they oppose abortion but avoid following the hierarchy on the war or the dealth penalty. Nevertheless, they are right in theory. Bishop John Michael Botean instructed members of his diocese (Romanian Catholics) that service in Iraq was sinful. To my knowledge, no other Church leader has done the same, even though many oppose the war.

Rod, I really appreciate your response. I think you re really being too hard on yourself, feeling guilty that you don t find yourself a perfect exemplar of a populist crunchy con. I still don t understand why you think you have that much in common with a European professional. The average European professional wouldn t understand your crunchy conservatism at all. They wouldn t understand your obedience to a traditional form of faith. They wouldn t understand your concern about the results of collapsing birthrates and demographic change. Your (laudably) backward-looking positions on homeschooling, gun rights, abortion, the sexual revolution, and two-income couples, would mark you out as a Christianist analogous to the Islamists. You would be beyond the pale of respectable discussion. On the other hand, American populists might be somewhat skeptical of your education and experience, but they re with you on fundamentals. It s fine to own up to the occasional elitist aspects of crunchy conservatism, and to criticize the frequent irrationality of the Republican base. However, you clearly have little in common with the real cultural elite in this country, which almost unanimously places personal freedom far above virtue. You re much closer to the average heartlander than you might be willing to admit. One final note: I have also traveled abroad, and even spent a semester abroad during college. The conventional wisdom is that studying abroad is supposed to convince the student that human similarities outweigh human differences. For me, it did the opposite. Although it was a very intellectually stimulating experience, I no longer want to live abroad again. It convinced me that different nations need to be able to hang onto their differences, and that we need to join with foreign patriots in keeping globalist elites at bay. For the first time, I began to appreciate the roots that I did have. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Culture involves all the habits and practices of everyday life.
Here follows a concrete example of cultural difference. 8o% Hispanic Santa Ana,Ca (pop. 353,000) led the nation in mail carrier dog bites in 2006 with 96. All of NYC (pop. 8,000,000+) had zero. Santa Ana is the most heavily Hispanic of the nation's fifty largest cities. Source:http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070517/biting
Based on what I've heard these dogs are probably mostly the pitbull and pitbull mixes that are typically abused and neglected by Hiispanic gangbangers.
: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070517/biting_mail_carriers.html?.v=1

Erich, I m not going to try to put words in Rod s mouth, but I ll answer for myself. Your post points to the paradox that conservatism has traditionally been an elitist worldview, but has been drifting away from that for the last 50 years. I don t have a fundamental problem with being elitist if the traditional assumption of elitists is met that the elite s superior education and experience has given them superior wisdom. On balance, though, crunchy cons would argue that the average heartlander is wise (although perhaps misled into red-state fascism on foreign policy issues), while America s present elite is off the deep end. Today s American elite is largely succeeding in pushing through a radical One World program, and doesn t care if the prudish, nativist, racist masses oppose what they are doing, so long as they can pass their program anyway. They are determined to have open markets and open borders, while deciding questions on social issues by judicial fiat. I can think of three reasons that the comparison to the Renaissance or Enlightenment is inapt. First, elites back then really were wiser than the masses. Few were proposing revolutionary change in the traditional customs, moral standards, religious outlook, or ethnic composition of the commoners. Those who did usually deserved, and got, determined opposition. (Think of the Luddites in early 19th century England.) Second, their internationalism may have been positive, because it was not so extreme, and may have limited the scope of wars. It did not seek to render national governments obsolete by obstructing their ability to regulate trade and population flows. It did not seek to move whole businesses to other countries to hire cheap exploited labor and avoid environmental standards. Third, those elites were often very determined to pursue their self-interest, individually or collectively. Many of our own Founders, for all their democratic rhetoric, didn t really want commoners to have a voice in government. Voltaire was no democrat; he famously said, I would rather be ruled by one lion than a hundred rats. Most Renaissance thinkers were even more antidemocratic. This voicelessness for common people is not a tradition most of us want to continue. Most contemporary intellectuals who want to revive the ancients contempt for democracy have become Straussians, closely tied to the neocons. Finally, although this may be irrelevant, today s elite is a vulgar sort it does not speak Latin, prefers rap to classical music, takes the canon out of school curricula in favor of politically correct authors, and generally behaves as if teenagers have the most refined sense of taste, so that their elders should imitate them. In short, today s elite deserves to be opposed not because it is an elite, but because it seeks the destruction of people s traditional way of life. Crunchy cons want to protect people s ability to carry on their traditional way of life. It is perhaps possible to imagine a society where crunchy cons are aligned with the elite, but that s not what we face.

John Savage, nicely put. I have just one bone to pick with you, and that's your characterization of the "ancients" as anti-democratic. I think the contempt elites acquire is valid; it's not the blanket condemnation you seem to make it out to be, but a recognition of reality: democracy carries the overwhelming danger that common self-interest will in fact be common self-destruction. I believe the term is "bread and circuses". Our founders were democrats. They were also very smart and very willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. They saw that a republic was a reasonable compromise between their high ideals of individual rights and self-determination without tyranny, and the very accurate observation that the vast majority of "citizens" do not have what it takes to make a democracy work. The larger a nation, the greater the need for a protective buffer between their eventual focus on bread and circuses to the detriment of national security and the like. The problem is that there is no such thing as a perfect defense against tyranny. History shows us that republics are just as vulnerable to it as any other form of government. All of which, if you will, is a perfect description of the present debate over immigration.

The US established, from the beginning, the notion that a political philosophy can replace religion, culture and ethnicity as the glue that binds us. Flatly disagree.