April 07, 2002
In 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson maneuvered through Congress and then signed into law a measure which was a dramatic break with the past history of this country. This was the Immigration Reform Law of 1965. In doing so, the floodgates were opened allowing ever greater masses of people from Third World cultures to flow into the United States. This was done with deceptive statistics and assurances from politicians and the liberal press which totally ignored (or covered up) all considerations of the problems inherent in such mass incursions of those with absolutely NO background of self government or freedom into our society. And here we are speaking only of LEGAL immigrants!
Whether the liberals like it or not, this country was founded by people who were almost entirely European in origin. ONLY in Europe had the concepts and ideas of individual worth and freedom been painfully developed and put into practice, haltingly and slowly over 2000 years of effort and, often, with loss to some old authoritarian idea presented with a new name.
Our Founding Fathers were astute students of history. While absolutely rejecting the then existing monarchical forms of government, they recognized the indisputable fact that the sources of such fundamental ideas as the rule of law, equality before the law, free enterprise, the rights of private property, individualism and, most especially, LIMITED government were uniquely European in origin. Over that same 2000 years of human history in the entire rest of the world, the old idea of the "divine right of kings," the concept that the ruler, whatever his title might be, could do no wrong and that the common man had no rights at all, remained in force.
Without its European foundation, the United States would have no Constitution, no Bill of Rights, no individual freedoms or, even, the idea of limited government. However, note that if our nation's way of life was based on a cultural inheritance from Europe which was common to the vast majority of Americans, then the PRESERVATION of that cultural heritage is dependent on the continued existence of that European based majority.
Lawrence Auster, the author of several books on the effects of immigration has written: "If in some experiment in mass migration, 50 million Chinese exchanged places with 50 million French— and even if the Chinese learned the French language and immersed themselves in French culture— the new society they formed would no longer be France in any recognizable sense. France, as we know it, would have ceased to exist."
Despite the politically correct gibberish of "multiculturalism" now being programmed into the minds of our young people in government schools, history clearly shows, with extremely rare exceptions, that nations, ancient and modern, in which the majority of citizens share only diversity, suffer social tensions, recurrent upheavals and chaos which can ONLY be restrained by recourse to tyranny.
As essayist Samuel Francis has pointed out: "The late Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the dominions of the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, among others, all presided over a kind of rainbow coalition of nations and peoples, who for the most part managed to live happily together because their secret compulsions to spill each others blood were restrained by the overwhelming power of the despots and dynasties who ruled them. Political freedom relies on a shared political culture...and when the common culture disintegrates under the impact of mass migrations, only institutionalized force can hold the regime together." (This, big government politician Lyndon Johnson understood!)
Prior to the 1965 law, immigrants from Third World countries were allowed to enter this country in very limited numbers. During the 70's and 80' and 90's ever larger numbers of Third World people poured into this country. Granted that most of them sincerely desire to improve their economic status. Granted that most may have great ambition and even business ability. Granted that the vast majority of such people are law-abiding, as they are able to understand our laws.
However, the vast majority of these people have little or no knowledge of the cultural and religious basis of our society. Tragically, instead of assimilating into our culture as the waves of immigrants from European nations did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these new arrivals regard themselves as members of "new minority groups," often with the encouragement of our politicians who are eager for their votes. Many of these groups are using organized efforts in the courts or legislatures to attack the very American religious and cultural traditions which produced the country they were so eager to come to.
We will continue our discussion of the impact which the influx of Third World peoples has had on our nation in our next column.