Taki's Mag

Psychologists tell us that a sense of control is a key characteristic of a mentally healthy, well-adjusted adult. Whether we actually possess free will can be left to the neuroscientists who study brain processes. The current consensus seems to be: No, we don’t have free will, but we do have free won’t. (Compare Schopenhauer: “You can do what you want, but you can’t want what you want.”) Personal happiness and satisfaction arise from a belief, however misguided, that one is in control of one’s life.

If the same thing applies to nations, there must be some very miserable nations around. Consider Britain. Last Saturday British Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech in Munich declaring that multiculturalism, in respect to Muslims in Britain, had been a bust.

Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.

Fifty years ago a much wiser British Prime Minister told his countrymen that if they wanted moral guidance, they should seek it from their bishops, not their politicians. No such diffidence from Cameron. He’s going to give Britons a vision.

We must build stronger societies and identities at home. Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.

Muscular liberalism! Did I mention that David Cameron belongs to the Conservative Party? Could any notion be more contrary to the classic Tory ideal than “muscular liberalism”?

A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: As long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.

Was there ever such a society? Yes there was, within living memory (just barely).

It stands neutral between different values. A genuinely liberal country does much more. It believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens: This is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe in these things.

So Britain is no longer the home of the British—the people Winston Churchill, in that shamefully reactionary way of his, called “The Island Race.” It is just another “proposition nation”—only a place, really.

There would be no need for David Cameron to threaten his voters with “muscular liberalism” (it sounds even bossier and more arrogant than regular liberalism) nor to tell them that they can only “belong here” if they sign up to a list of poli-sci propositions. (If a native of Madagascar assents to those propositions, does he thereby become British? If a Briton declines to assent to them, will he lose his citizenship?) There would be no need for any of this vapid blather if Cameron and his predecessors had not opened up their country to millions of aliens from radically different cultures.

And that would not have happened if the British people had stirred themselves to stop it. There were moments forty or fifty years ago when they might have done so. Other things seemed more important, though. Their native good nature was easily imposed upon. And the first generation of incomers were meek and hard-working. And so the nation was lost. The aliens brought in their wives and parents and siblings, using Britain’s population policy to their own advantage. A second generation came up, many of them non-meek and not hard-working, many filled with grievance or distaste for things British, a few susceptible to crazy ideologies. British history was out of British hands. Control had been lost.

Or consider the USA. I have been reading John Feere’s report on the issue of birthright citizenship.

Between 300,000 and 400,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States every year. Put another way, as many as one out of 10 births in the United States is to an illegal immigrant mother.…The population of US-born children with illegal alien parents has expanded rapidly in recent years from 2.3 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008; since these figures do not include children who are 18 years of age or older nor those who are married, the actual figure is somewhat larger.

As deplorable as this is in itself, and as expensive to the US taxpayer—40 percent of alien-headed households receive some type of welfare, compared to 19 percent for households headed by native-born citizens—the worst consequence is that we have yielded control of our population to foreigners.

A child born to illegal aliens in the United States can initiate a chain of immigration when he reaches the age of 18 and can sponsor an overseas spouse and unmarried children of his own. When he turns 21, he can also sponsor his parents and any brothers and sisters.

Family-sponsored immigration accounts for most of the nation’s growth in immigration levels. Of the 1,130,818 immigrants who were granted legal permanent residency in 2009, a total of 747,413 (or, 66.1 percent) were family-sponsored immigrants.

We have outsourced our population policy—the policy that determines what kind of nation our children and grandchildren will inherit. The decisions as to the size and ethnic composition of that nation are not in the hands of those whose ancestors tamed the West, picked the cotton, or fought the Civil War. They are not in the hands of those who came lawfully in the Great Wave to a land without welfare or ethnic pandering. They are not in the hands of Americans at all. They are in the hands of border-jumpers and “obstetric tourists.”

Loss of control. Our future population’s size, ethnicity, and confession are not to be determined by us, the Americans. They are to be determined by foreigners. Our role is to sit passively while the transformation proceeds. If you find this objectionable, you are a wicked person with a soul deformed by “hate.” The authorities will deal with you appropriately—muscularly.