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In 2010, Prof. Angelo Codevilla published an influential article "America's Ruling Class- And the Perils of Revolution," in which he argued, essentially, that politicians at the top of the heap would rather ally with their nominal political opponents to fleece the general public than represent the wishes of the general public. Nothing that's happened since then has done anything other than support his arguments; the election of Mr. Trump is widely seen as a giant middle finger to the usual suspects among the conventional elites.
There's clearly a profound conflict between the ruling elites who consider themselves to be "citizens of the world" and ordinary voters who cling to their longstanding national customs and culture. There is also an economic element to voters' discontent, which Mr. Trump has effectively been tapping, but cultural disruptions are far more deeply felt, harder to fix, and more prone to permanent upset.
Many citizens in areas which were only very recently impacted by mass immigration voted for Mr. Trump because they were distressed at having their familiar culture swept away by hordes of newcomers who have no intention of ever adapting themselves to the American way of life. We've pointed out that wanting to preserve your culture is not racism, but that common-sense view goes violently against the grain of the modern politically correct culture of "diversity and tolerance" which is so vocally reviled by Donald Trump and his supporters.
The flood of Third World immigrants into the United States got its start with the immigration act of 1965. It wasn't proposed as a culture-ending measure nor was it believed that it would destroy our national unity, at least not publicly. Senator Ted Kennedy, who chaired the Senate immigration subcommittee, said:
First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset ... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia ... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.
The critics were right, of course, as they usually are: annual immigration increased from about 250,000 to over 1,000,000. What's more, instead of emphasizing European immigrants who shared at least some of our cultural traditions, we were inundated by ill-educated immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. Our ethnic and racial mix changed radically, to the delight of Democrats and to the consternation of conservatives. "Gumball Immigration" is a lecture that shows that most of the liberal arguments in favor of open borders are lies, but that hasn't stopped liberals from repeating them.
For eight years, the Obama administration has been bound and determined to bypass existing laws to accelerate this change by allowing as many non-Americans into America as possible, and the more non-American the newcomers are, the better. Being pretty fond of America the way it's been, we have been appalled at their desire to dilute our familiar, highly successful culture.
Over the course of the Obama years, we've seen that our American ruling elites weren't the only ones who desired to sweep away their national identities in favor of the "new world order." This desire to destroy national consciousness is, if anything, more common among the European elites than among American politicians.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the European leadership elites are determined to wipe out all national cultures by swamping their populations with non-European immigrants and by mixing around the populations of the various European countries themselves. In discussing offering relatively generous terms for Britain's "Brexit" from the European Union:
Senior German officials initially sounded optimistic a deal could be struck, but their stance hardened after Ms. May signaled she wouldn't compromise on the issue of immigration. German and other European leaders insist the free movement of EU citizens is inseparable from membership in the single market. [emphasis added]
European leaders are demanding that any immigrant who gets into Europe be free to move on to England. The English people would just have to suck it up despite having recently voted to leave the EU entirely, in large part precisely because of unsavory and unwanted mass immigration.
That's what our "open borders" elites want for the United States. Referring to them as "undocumented Democrats" tells us all we need to know about the objective in bringing them in.
The Daily Caller quoted German Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Merkel says she keeps an "open mind" when it comes to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, but cautioned that cooperation will be based on "a common platform of democracy, freedom, advocacy for human rights all over the world and championing the open and liberal world order." [emphasis added]
"Open and liberal" means "open borders," of course.
Mrs. Merkel has ignored the massive surge in sexual assaults committed by the million immigrants she's unleashed on Germany over the past year alone, much as it took Donald Trump to shine a harsh spotlight on the predations of some of the immigrants who are not only illegal, but are being sheltered by various "sanctuary cities" in violation of federal law. In mutual comfort, Mr. Obama said that the German people should appreciate her and be proud of how she's handled the migrant crisis. It remains to be seen whether his words will help her any more than his words helped Mr. Cameron's failed "Remain" campaign.
European elites have been tearing down their own nations for a long time. Our article "Tony Blair's Brexit" explains how the Blair administration deliberately diluted Conservative voting strength by bringing in welfare recipients who could be counted on to vote for more spending. By voting to leave the European Union, the majority of British voters showed that they wanted to keep the nation they had instead of letting immigrants make it into something else. Pundits argue over the reasons the "Leave" faction won the vote, but it's clear that many British voters did not appreciate their towns and cities being flooded with foreigners who had no intention of conforming to British norms.
Mr. Blair wouldn't have allowed, much less promoted, his citizens being overrun and replaced if he had placed significant value on British nationhood. Plainly, he didn't possess the traditional British "heart of oak" expected of a Prime Minister. To him, the motto, "There'll always be an England" was a problem to be overcome, not a statement of continuity.
He, like Ms. Merkel, considered himself to be a "citizen of the world", not so much a citizen of Great Britain or a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen, so he didn't see any particular problem with bringing hordes of Muslims into England to cement his voting majority.
Similarly, before he won the 2008 Presidential election, Politico quoted Mr. Obama:
"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he declared, offering himself "not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen, a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world." [emphasis added]
At the time, Mr. Obama was greeted with thunderous applause for claiming world citizenship. Unfortunately for Americans, Mr. Obama meant what he said. In his last State of the Union address, Mr. Obama "laid out a vision of a world filled with truly global citizens." There's even a web site devoted to the concept of everyone becoming a global citizen and leaving national concerns, cultures, and identities behind.
No doubt the jihadis are applauding, because that's exactly what they want - a world full of global citizens, all loyal to the one god Allah, and all subservient to his one servant on earth, the Caliph. If this isn't your version of Utopia, though, then you need to oppose open-borders traitors wherever they are found.
Anyone who differs even minutely from the party line, whatever that might happen to be at any given time, is far better off with a multitude of different jurisdictions to camp out in and if necessary flee to than for all of us being trapped in just the one.
Indeed, that's the way the United States of America was designed to work in microcosm. The men who wrote the American constitution tried to limit the powers of the federal government so that each state could be a "laboratory of democracy." Instead of having all states doing the same things as our federal masters now require, each state could experiment to see what worked and what did not. A citizen who preferred a different way of doing things could move to a more congenial state without having to leave his entire country..
Insofar as they want to annihilate this time-honored ability to flee oppression, the recent crop of leftist leaders are not merely traitors to their own countries, as bad as that is. They're also traitors to the human race as a whole, or at least to any concept of freedom and human rights independent of a political or religious authority. History amply shows that killing anyone who gets out of line is the only way to achieve any sort of uniformity of behavior when masses of people are jammed together regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. What could be worse than that?
The next article in this series examines how the sort of voter discontent that gave our Presidency to Mr. Trump is also increasing all across Europe. There are a few leaders who realize that they must do something to satisfy the discontented or be swept out of office, but most of the elites are clinging to their one-world dream.