I have a lot of weird interests. One of them is to imagine, as best I can, what it was like at some crucial moment in history, wondering if it was possible to know you were at a crucial moment in history. It seems to me that smart people, for example, would have known that the attack on Fort Sumter was ushering in war. In fact, lots of Southerners knew this and warned against it. Still, even the smartest did not foresee the bloody mayhem that was to follow. If leaders on both sides could have foreseen Antietam, would they have gone to war?

But what about the average guy? The people running ports, shipping operations, teaching school and so forth had access to newspapers. They knew about the world and the events that were happening in their country. Did they know, when news of Sumter got to them, that their world was about to be convulsed? That everything they knew was about to change and that in a decade they would live in a foreign country?

A good test of all this is World War I. The Austro-Hungarian government waited three weeks following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, before issuing its formal response to Serbia, which comprised a harsh ultimatum that could never be accepted. The men in charge of European affairs knew perfectly well what would happen if war broke out in the Balkans. Even the dimwitted Kaiser understood the enormity of the situation immediately after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Yet, the ultimatum was issued.

The leaders of Europe also had the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War as examples of the bloody madness of modern warfare. They knew war in Europe was suicide, even if they did not fully understand what was coming. The Franco-Prussian War had close to a million casualties. Simply adding in the machine gun and the howitzer had to mean millions of dead. They had to know this, yet they moved ahead with war anyway.

The Great War is so interesting because it is full of examples where it is nearly impossible to understand how the actors could be so stupid. Obviously, hindsight prejudices us, but even accounting for that, it is hard to understand many of the things that were done by allegedly smart people. The example that always comes to my mind is how the French dressed up their officers so they were easier to see on the battlefield. They wore red pants and white gloves.

It’s hard for us to understand these things because the people of 100 years ago believed things about the world we no longer believe. In fact, we no longer remember many of the things they believed. The Kaiser was ruler of a new country and he believed Germany was ready to take its place atop the world order. National pride drove the Germans, but it also drove the response to the Germans. This is unfathomable to us today, but its inverse is all around us.

The Muslim invasion of Europe is irrational in every way imaginable. The obvious answer to this problem is for France and Germany to come to the aid of the periphery, particularly those countries in the south and south east. This is not the Mongol Invasion of the 13th century. These are economic migrants sensing weakness so they are making a run for the border. A modest amount of resistance would end the flood.

Such a move by France and Germany would do wonders for the strained relations within Europe. This is a common issue that could show the benefits of working in concert to solve continental problems. Instead, the Germans are trying to commit suicide and demanding everyone else join them. The result is new strains to an already strained relationship. Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks are not awash in blood guilt so they see no reason to follow the German lead.

Doing the sane thing would require self-respect and that is as alien today as the national pride of a century ago. Angela Merkel’s popularity in Germany and Europe is due, in large part, to her ability to express national shame better than anyone else. It is an integral part of her appeal as the German leader. Elites all over the West envy her ability to figuratively grovel on behalf of the rest of us at the feet of the third world.

Nationalism is usually the blame for the two world wars. Excessive national pride, filling the void of religion, drove sensible men to slaughter each other by the millions. There was simply no other way to beat that belief out of them. The sin of nationalism could only be cleansed by the blood of the nationalists.

What about the sin of excessive, compulsive all-consuming shame? That certainly seems to be driving otherwise sensible people to the brink of madness. Germany is a country of 80 million with about 2 million Muslims. They are taking in another million and history says that these millions will anchor another four to five million through family reunification. Will that be enough to satisfy German shame? Or will it take tens of millions more?

The answer, of course, is there is no number high enough that will lead the Germans, at least the German elite, to say the sins have been paid. For the German elite, the sins of their ancestors can only be cleansed with the blood of their countrymen. The invitation of tens of millions of Muslims to settle in Germany is a slow motion human sacrifice. What’s unknown is if the German people will go quietly.

The 2016 election is essentially about whether America will remain a country. You can’t be a country if you lose control of your borders, but that’s fixable. If you lose control of who is populating your lands, there’s no coming back from that mistake. The ruling class loses all of its legitimacy and the fracture society divides itself along ethnic lines with its own leaders and borders.

The public is finally coming to terms with what’s happening as stories like this become common.

Multiple buildings and vehicles in Loudon County, VA were vandalized with graffiti tags bearing the moniker of a notorious El Salvadorian street gang early Tuesday morning.

According to WUSA9, several vehicles on Gatwick Square and Wintergrove Drive were discovered with “MS-13″ spray painted on the exteriors.

Additionally, walls, pillars and two parked school buses at nearby Trailside Middle School were also found bearing the gang tags.

MS-13 is known as one of the most violent gangs in the world, and has been connected to a string of murders on both the East and West coasts.
They are so feared in El Salvador, prison officials have allowed a detention center filled with 2,500 known members to essentially run itself.

Trailside Middle School is located roughly 8 miles from Parkside High School, where recently murdered 17-year-old Danny Centeno-Miranda attended classes.

Centeno-Miranda was shot twice on Sept. 4 in Sterling, VA by 20-year-old Henry Dominguez-Vasquez, 18-year-old Juan Aguirre-Zelaya and an unnamed 17-year-old.

All four men were in the country illegally.
Dominguez-Vasquez and Aguirre-Zelaya were charged with possession of a firearm by a person who is not a citizen of the United States and accessory after the fact, and the juvenile was charged with 2nd degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

For those unfamiliar with the area around the Imperial Capital, Loudon County is an upscale area with loads of SWPL-ville types. The median household income is $117,000 which makes it one of the richest counties in the nation. Million dollar homes are not uncommon there. To have a Salvadorian street gang operating there is like having The Black Guerrilla Family operating on Martha’s Vineyard.

This is ¡Yeb! Bush’s America. MS-13 has been operating in Northern Virginia for a long time now. The press has ignored it because they were more afraid of the bad whites and their hate thoughts than the gangsters. Now that the gangsters are showing up in the neighborhoods of the ruling class, the stories are showing up in the press. My guess is the majority of the managerial class is wondering if open borders is such a hot idea after all.

One of the great mysteries of the modern age is why the people in charge of Western countries are so determined to fill up their lands with foreigners. The greed explanation implies a level of coordination that seems implausible. The Machiavellian angle is similarly flawed. Left wing parties gain some benefit from mass immigration, but it comes at a price. That and right wing parties are just as enthusiastic.

There’s also the fact the current voters are wildly opposed to immigration. Polling for years now has made it clear that opposition to immigration is a winner. As long as you avoid sounding like Taki commenters, you can win a lot of votes by opposing mass immigration. This recent poll shows that Trump, with all his faults, is being carried to the top strictly on opposition to immigration.

Immigration: When Donald Trump proposed mandatory deportation of illegal aliens, pundits and politicians on both sides of the political aisle were appalled. But on this issue it looks like Trump has the public on his side.

The fire from the right was almost as fierce as that from the left. “It’s not conservative and it’s not realistic and it does not embrace American values,” said Jeb Bush.

Sen. Lindsey Graham called it “absolute gibberish.”

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer called the idea “crackpot” and “morally obscene.”

But the prize for overheated rhetoric goes to Hillary Clinton, who said Trump wants to “literally pull people out of their homes and their workplaces, round them up, put them, I don’t know, in buses, boxcars, in order to take them across our border.”

So what do these folks say about the fact that the majority of Americans back Trump on this?

The latest IBD/TIPP Poll asked 913 adults coast to coast if they “support or oppose mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in the U.S.” Not surprisingly, 87% of Trump supporters back the proposal.

What’s surprising is that 59% of the overall public does as well. Mandatory deportation gets majority support in all age groups except 18-24, every income group, among both women and men, at every level of educational achievement, and in rural, urban and suburban regions.

More interesting still is the fact that 64% of independents and 55% of moderates support deportation.

Even among Hispanics, the poll found 40% backed mandatory deportation — although the sample size is too small to make much of that number.

Trump’s other proposals don’t do as well. Just under half the public favors building a wall along the southern border (48%) or an end to automatic citizenship for children born of illegals (46%). But a majority of independents (55%) back building the wall.

What’s going on here?

The tone and the wording suggest the answer to the puzzle at the top of this post and the question in the article are the same. The people in charge have turned open borders and mass immigration into a sacrament. Instead of looking at it like any other public policy, they view it as the modern equivalent of opposing fascism or slavery. There’s simply no room in the mental space to consider any other option. You are for open borders or you are evil.

This article ostensibly about how immigration is the defining issue of the age illustrates the bizarre lunacy of the managerial class with regards to immigration.

This, incidentally, is why I am convinced that there was no way that the GOP could have precluded the Donald Trump moment in American politics by passing comprehensive immigration reform two years ago. The movement of people from country to the city, from poor nations to richer nations, from the Global South to the Global North, may be the great political problem of the next age in global development. Just as the building of trade routes and the maintenance of empires defined the mercantile age, then the construction of a political economy (capitalist or socialist) became the major problem of the industrial age, the mass movement of people may be the defining issue of whatever we’re calling the information age.

Let that sink in for a minute. The solution to the great revolt over immigration was to pass legislation effectively eliminating the nation’s borders. Put another way, if the people are upset over immigration the solution is more immigration. If it rains too much, the solution is more immigration. If it rains too little, more immigration!

What seems to be happening here is the beautiful people have made open borders the star on their belly. They don’t think about. They don’t even believe in it. It’s all about displaying their piety. The West is experiencing a version of the Lace Curtain Irish versus the Shanty Irish. One group of people, in this case the managerial class, defines itself purely in opposition to the other people, in this case the middle class.

Compounding this is the deeply held belief by the beautiful that they are pulling the wagon and the middle class is freeloading on them. Immigration is a form of spite, revenge upon people our betters see as their burden. It’s how allegedly conservative chattering skulls find it so easy to mock the supporters of Donald Trump. They have never cared for the hoi polloi anyway, so this is a convenient excuse to make that point.

The future is always battled out in the streets. Scenes like this one are becoming more common in Europe and much worse is on tap as the tide of migrants promises to flood European cities. The people in charge face a choice. They can roll the tanks over their citizens in favor of their new charges from abroad. Or, they can yield to the demands of the people. The only question left is just how much blood will be spilled over this suicidal lunacy that has gripped the ruling elites.

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.

The dominant issue in the West is immigration. The ruling elites are obsessed with filling up our lands with people from other lands. It’s nearly impossible to get members of the elite to discuss the matter, much less explain their reasoning. A politician or party that embraces immigration reform, even mild reform, is treated like a Holocaust denier. Even climate change, which is pretty much a religion at this point, is more open to debate than immigration.

Wholesale, uncontrolled immigration has become a spiritual good. It’s not a means to an end, as is often argued by critics. There’s no doubt greed drives some of it, but money is the not the goal for most open borders fanatics. Across Europe and now in the US, immigration is scrambling the political calculus, hamstringing the major parties as fringe parties surge. Yet, they refuse to debate the topic. Yet, the topic remains a taboo.

There’s an old line about fanatics that they cannot change their mind and they won’t change the subject. A corollary to that, with regards to immigration, is that immigration fanatics won’t change their mind and will never permit the subject to be raised in their presence.

That’s what comes to mind when reading a story like this one if the Imperial Capital Gazette:

In a gesture of German goodwill, the administration in this medieval city leased a newly renovated apartment building here to humanely — even comfortably — house dozens of desperate ­asylum-seekers. The newcomers from Syria and other war-
ravaged nations would enjoy freshly redone floors, cute balconies and shiny, modern appliances in a cheerful building near a timber-framed pub.

Then Meissen’s goodwill went up in smoke.

On a cool night six weeks ago, suspected right-wing arsonists struck the building, scorching its interior and rendering it uninhabitable days before the ­asylum-seekers were to move in. The attack added Meissen, a gothic castle town of 30,000 on the Elbe River, to a string of German cities caught up in an escalating rash of violence against refugees.

The acts include an ugly spate of arson targeting refugee centers as well as physical attacks on refugees themselves, marking the return of what critics say is an unnerving brand of xenophobia to Western Europe’s most populous nation.

A normal person would look at this and think, “Maybe it is not such a great idea after all to import tens of thousands of aliens and plop them into unsuspecting neighborhoods.” Of course, normal people would wonder why the locals never got a say in this great social engineering program launched by their government. What good is democracy if you don’t get a say in who is and who is not allowed into your country?

Immigration is one of those issues that exposes the big lie of democracy. There’s nothing more important to the life of a nation than deciding who is and who is not permitted to settle in the nation. The whole damn point of having countries is to keep the other people out. If the people are going to have a say on anything, it is the question of whether or not a country is going to remain a country.

Yet, the elites say that is not permitted. The rubes can vote on who gets to move some commas around the tax code. The rubes can vote on who will run the regulatory state. You can pick your own breakfast cereal, but the people in charge run the store, set the hours and decide what’s on the shelves.

The reason for all this is the people in charge believe, with the fanaticism of a convert, that they have a moral obligation to help the poor on your dime. This interview of Bernie Sanders is revelatory:

Ezra Klein: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing …

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. …

Ezra Klein: But it would make …

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me …

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn’t it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

In other words, open borders is about getting grace on the cheap by, on the one hand, bringing in the world’s poor, but avoiding the cost by dumping them into the proletarian neighborhoods. Sanders, for all his faults, should be lauded for leaving his religion in the synagogue and sticking with the economics.

You see this in the Post article:

The attacks are undercutting Germany’s image as the country leading the effort to aid a record flow of refugees into Europe, highlighting the rising social tensions in the region amid the avalanche of asylum-seekers. At the same time, the violence has ignited a heated national debate over what pundits here say is a rise in overt racism and intolerance — in a nation highly sensitive to both because of Nazi-era atrocities.

All this is happening as Germany takes in more asylum-
seekers than any other nation in Europe — a number set to reach an estimated 500,000 this year alone — while quickly running out of places to house them. As a result, the national government in Berlin is turning to insular and almost wholly white enclaves to take in the newcomers, who are mostly from the Middle East and Africa.

The creepiness here is that they don’t give a damn about the immigrants getting the business from the locals. What matters is the goodthinkers in Germany are being embarrassed by the conduct of the bad thinkers. Again, it’s a spiritual exercise, not a political or economic one.

The mistake immigration patriots make is in thinking the motivation behind open borders is simply monetary. There’s no doubt that greed-heads like Mark Zuckerburglar are in it for the cash, but most of these people are in it for salvation. They no longer believe in God, but they still believe in salvation and their brand of salvation is communal. To save themselves, they must save the world, however much it cost you.