This post on Marginal Stasis got a ton of comments and so did the Sailer commentary on it at his site. What makes this interesting is not what is said in the comments or even what’s in the source article. The comments are mostly people reworking their favorite cheers with regards to immigration.

The libertarians chant about riding unicorns to their castles in the clouds. The patriots chant about the cultural collapse that would be an inevitable consequence of transporting the world’s peasants to your neighborhood. Then a fight breaks out and before long someone is calling the patriots racist.

That’s all fine, but why does everyone assume America would remain a country as currently constructed? More important, why is it assumed that immigration would play out the same everywhere? California has had a vastly different experience with immigration than Texas. Virginia has had a much different result than Maryland or Delaware.

A great book to read, if you like reading this blog, is called American Nations. It covers the history of the people who settled the Americas, breaking them into unique “nations” that have ties back to the old country. New England, for example, was founded by Roundheads mostly from a handful of towns in England. They imposed their culture and new arrivals were forced to assimilate. Later, Yankees migrated west settling in what is now the Midwest.

The neat thing about the book is he ties this together with the country’s history, so we get to see how those old regional differences played out in the Civil War, for example. I like the book primarily because it jives with my view of history, but it is a great read and very good introduction to understanding the HBD view of history. For the record, I doubt the author would agree with it being HBD history, but that’s my take.

Anyway, wholesale immigration to America is not going to play out the same everywhere. It has not played out that way so far. New England has been far more welcoming to Irish immigrants than Hispanic immigrants. The town system allows them to pack people they don’t really want into ghettos away from everyone else. This puts a natural cap on immigration from places that are too ethnically different from the natives.

California, which has always been split between a mild and tolerant south and a Yankee influenced north has largely been overrun by Hispanics, but mostly in the South. Northern California is getting whiter while the state gets browner. Similarly, Virginia has absorbed a lot of Hispanics, while West Virginia has absorbed very few. Those Appalachian Mountain people are not friendly to outsiders of any type.

I think if we ever go for open borders, we’ll see three things happen. One is the native populations will begin to move around with a sense of urgency. Yankee transplants living in North Carolina will find a way to move back. We’re already seeing Midlanders who migrated to California heading to states like Colorado fleeing the Hispanics. I think the American nations will consolidate back into their natural zones again.

Another thing is each region will adjust to make sure the native population maintains control of the local power structure. This is something you see in California. The state looks like Mexico, but the state’s political leaders look like Vermont. In New England, this means a compulsory assimilation which will serve to scare off immigrants. In the Old South a return of the highly stratified caste system will make its return. The South will look a lot like South America or the Caribbean.

Finally, I think we would probably see the country break up. New England, most of New York and New Jersey, big chunks of the upper Midwest will either leave for Canada or become a separate country. The South and the Tidewater would most likely welcome it, breaking off as their own country. The Northwest would probably join Canada, but I could argue they would follow New England and the upper Midwest. The middle part of the country and states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia are hard to figure, but they could band together with Texas and Oklahoma or join the South.

The reason for thinking the country would break up is it has come close over much less. In the 19^th century New England was close to leaving the Union, but the end of the War of 1812 put a halt to that. The Civil War is the best example. If the South had not attacked Fort Sumter, the North would never attacked. Instead, the South would have been permitted to leave.

We are currently unified as a country only because Yankee culture dominates the political, cultural, and financial high ground. One reading of American history is that it is the fight for control by Yankeedom. If the Yankee north can no longer dominate the rest due to massive immigration, they would look to leave and that would cause the rest to break apart too. The result would be four or five countries, maybe in some sort of federation to modulate trade, borders, and defense.

A specter is haunting the West — the specter of immigration. All the powers of the old establishment have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Liberal and Conservative, democrat and aristocrat, college radicals and billionaires.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as fascistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of racism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Obviously, I’m having some fun here by reworking the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto to fit our current age. I’m fond of pointing out that Marx was not wrong about everything, and he made some useful observations. In the 19^th century, he noticed that the real fight was between the rising new ideology against the old ideologies tied to the previous economic era. The Industrial Revolution was reshuffling the deck.

It’s also important to note that he got most everything wrong about how the world would look after the revolution. He was also stunningly wrong about human nature and the human condition. The followers of Marx murdered 100 million people trying to prove Marx right with regards to the nature of man and the making of the egalitarian society. I’m throwing that out there so my new readers don’t think I’m a Marxist.

Anyway, the thing about the rise of international communism in the 19^th century is it scrambled the normal feedback loop between the public and the rulers. All of a sudden there were conversations about how to best organize society that did not include the people currently in charge. What was most frightening to the people in charge was that in the ranks of the ruling classes were people secretly enamored with communism and sympathetic to the arguments.

That whole vibe keeps coming to mind reading the increasingly unhinged rants from “conservative” writers with regards to Trump and immigration. A couple of days ago Brit Hume was humping this article on Twitter. Hume is sort of the neo-con emeritus these days, so he has a lot of stroke with the rank and file chattering skulls. Today National Review’s Kevin Williamson has a rewrite of that article up under his own name.

In both cases you have allegedly conservative writers calling immigration reformers racists and fascists. Not long ago, these writers were excoriating Progressives for using such language against George Bush and the neo-cons. That’s quite a transformation and a revelatory one. The question presented by the issue of immigration to the people in charge is “which side are you one?” We are seeing the answer in the response to the rise of immigration parties.

That’s what has me thinking about old Uncle Karl. Communism in Europe was an existential challenge to the ruling elites because it challenged the spiritual framework holding the old guard in place. That’s what made it so dangerous and why the people in charge reacted so violently to anything that smacked of communism. The Reds were a virus that had to be wiped out completely.

It’s a similar problem with immigration today. The people in charge have drawn long and hard from the well of egalitarianism. They believe it with the intensity of the fanatic. Therefore, they lack the intellectual toolkit to address the concerns of the people seeing their towns and neighborhoods overrun by foreigners. The people of Dresden, for example, are demanding answers to a question the rulers of Dresden cannot answer.

I think most people understand why Progressives demand open borders. It’s not just the practical matter of cheap votes. There’s a spiritual element. The Left is always looking for grace on the cheap. Inviting the world and putting them on welfare lets Progressives pretend they are doing the Lord’s work without actually having to sacrifice anything. The peasants are packed into your neighborhood, not theirs.

Professional conservatives have a similar thing going on with immigration. Conservatives have always struggled to answer the charge of racism from the Left. They have always struggled to square the founding myths of America with the founding realities. Immigration is how they could square that circle. By championing the little brown guys, they think they are washing off the stink of racism.

It’s why the reality of Hispanic voting patterns have never left a mark on the thinking of modern conservatives. It’s also why they keep yapping about how they must win over these “natural conservatives,” even though all the data says otherwise. They are sure they are on the side of angels. They have the right answer to the Great Question. Facts will come around soon enough.

Now all of a sudden, the bad thinkers are drawing massive crowds and mocking the complaints of the anointed. If you were a good thinker, sure you were just about to crest the last hill before the promised land, the horror of coming upon Trump hosting 30,000 people at an anti-immigration rally is something like Moses descending Sinai to see the Golden Calf. There can be no intellectual response, only an emotional one.

The great divide in the West is now immigration. On which side of the issue you fall, determines where you are on the political spectrum. If you have been paying close attention over the last two decades, this has been increasingly obvious. If you have just started paying attention, it may be a bit of mystery. After all, politicians in both parties dismiss the issue. The press is unwilling to cover it, other than perfunctorily. In polite circles, the “I” word is close to being the “N” word.

Even stranger, particularly in America where the never ending election season is boiling like never before, is that politicians are allergic to the topic. Donald Trump has made immigration his central issue and risen in the polls, yet his competitors refuse to discuss it. When asked, which is rare, they get a frightened look as if they have been asked about their desire for young boys. There’s real fear in their eyes.

What’s going on?

Rich people have always controlled our politics. That was true long before we had politics and no one should be shocked by it. Big business, unions and large issue groups have vast resources to lobby government so they have a big influence on policy. This is not a bad thing. It’s just a reality of life that often gets forgotten as we swim in a sea of Progressive nonsense about the power of democracy.

This was never much of a problem as there were lots of big business types who disagreed with other big business types. Unions opposed business and special interest groups opposed all of them. Plenty of money poured in from all sides so that the money game was just a reflection of public sentiment. A man could buy a legislator or even a few of them, but no one could buy all of them.

That’s changed a lot in the last few decades. The technological revolution and the technocratic revolution has unleashed a new force in politics and that’s the global elite. Mark Zuckerberg’s company makes money all over the world. Apple makes more in China than in the US. Countries are no longer places to global business. They are markets. Consequently, the super-rich are no longer citizens of a country. They are citizens of their class, the global elite.

What’s different about these rich people is they are untethered from their host countries. Their first loyalty is to their class. As a result, they coordinate their efforts across borders, parties and cultures. George Soros is a citizen of where? Who knows. He finances the looting of Ferguson Missouri and he backs pro-immigration parties in Europe. He has no national interests because he has no nationality.

The political and media class are the servants of this global elite. They fly on their jets to Davos and they rely on their largess to finance their think tanks and media companies. The American Enterprise Institute, for example, has no customers and conducts no commerce. Yet it has offices in Washington and 150 people on staff. Who pays for that? Donors, of course, and those donors are not school teachers and shop keepers.

The result of globalization is that a smaller class of people than the former ruling classes has a bigger impact on the national affairs of every country. The old way had rich people trying to buy influence with elected officials. The new way is elected officials trying to curry favor with the rich people, in the hopes they will finance their campaigns.

When the cost of running a campaign for Congress is over $10 million, you have to raise $15,000 every day to keep your office. Hillary Clinton will spend one billion dollars in her presidential run. The only way to raise that sort of money is to have the global elite on your side. Thus we see the Golden Rule: The man with the gold makes the rules. In politics now, it means the donors are the only constituents that matter.

That’s why everyone involved in politics panics whenever the “I” word comes up. Immigration is the one subject where the vision of anointed is revealed. On the one hand, global elites wish to get rid of citizenship and national governments because they are a nuisance. On the other hand, they imagine a world where the masses beneath them live in enforced equality. Their solution to inequality is to make everyone a peasant.

That last part is what no one discusses. The elites imagine a world like the college campus. At the top are the trustees who hire administrators to culture and cultivate the undergraduates who live communal lives. The new definition of socialism is the redistribution of happiness and self-actualization by a cloud people who rule as if they are gods.

This explains the gasps and shrieks from all quarters over the uncouth rantings by the novus homo with regards to immigration policy. Trump is a billionaire. His stance on immigration and his presentation make him a class traitor. That’s what’s triggering the irrational and emotional response to Trump. It’s why Progressives went bonkers over George W. Bush. It’s one thing to be mistaken. It is another to turn your back on your kind and side with the peasants.

There’s something else. The unhinged response to Trump by guys like Kevin Williamson is not really about the “I” word. It’s fear that the old Red Team – Blue Team song and dance is no longer going to play with the crowd. This is not just a Conservative Inc problem. The pearl clutching by Ezra Klein over Bernie Sanders rejection of open borders has the same source. The pajama boys fear they will be dragged into a discussion they can’t have because they can’t win.

One last thing before I end this foam flecked rant. In Europe we’re seeing old Left and old Right locking arms opposing immigration. On the other side are the kept men of the ruling class. A similar thing is brewing in America. Look at the sympathetic, if somewhat bemused, coverage of Bernie Sanders by the Dissident Right. Something similar is happening on the Left with regards to Trump.

In a multi-party proportional system like you see in Europe, this sort of fluidity is easy to accommodate as there are minority parties where voters can migrate to when the main parties are lacking. In America, with our rigid two party system, everything is invested in the status quo.

The media, financial arrangements, lobbying efforts are contingent on the Red Team – Blue Team purse fight. The “I” word threatens the whole thing because it scrambles the loyalties. If all of a sudden blacks are more concerned with the “I” word than the “N” word, Blue Team has a problem. If suburban white people stop listening to promises about shuffling commas around the tax code because they care more about immigration, Red Team is screwed.

The “I” word put everything at risk so the people in charge are putting everything they have into make the “I” word more taboo that the “N” word.