Immigration issue still being short-changed at VFR
A reader writes:
Just a reminder from a regular reader to make good on your promise to cover “other than Muslim” topics, specifically the non-Western colonization of the U.S.
A good place to start is the increasing awareness of Mexican military incursions at the border. That this happens with impunity and neither the gov’t or the MSM cares I believe is a profound and watershed moment in our history.
LA to reader:
Thanks for the reminder. In reply, I’ll tell you more than perhaps you need or want to hear.
Believe me, I have been uneasily aware almost every day that I have not followed through on that resolution. It’s just that the particular items that keep pressing in on me, and that people send me, have tended to be on the Islamic issue, and also that I continue personally to be so interested in it, in the amazing way it keeps unfolding, the contrast between the reality and the illusions that people have about it. For example, the Hamas election, or the latest contradictions of our friend Mr. Pipes.
The thing is, with VFR, I have never sought topics to write about. It’s always been completely unplanned and spontaneous. I have never said to myself, “Ok, what will I write about today at VFR?”, and then gone looking for ideas. Rather, in my own reading and thinking, ideas would pop up which I would then write down and post at VFR. And when particular issues would dominate, like the encomia to John Paul II at the time of his death which I disagreed with, or the London bombings last July, or the Katrina disaster in September, or the Harriet Miers nomination in October, or Mark Steyn’s gleefully defeatist articles about the West and Islam in December, that would become the overwhelming focus at VFR for a while. I’m completely led by what spontaneously interests me at the moment. So if I’m to get better balance at VFR, I will have to make a concerted effort to overcome my now-established pattern of emphasizing Islam too much.
Also, I have been working on something on the Mexican invasion. So I am aware of these issues, I just haven’t done them much at VFR.
Reader to LA:
Thanks. I just reread my own e-mail and it sounded like I was placing an order. Didn’t mean it that way.
I very much appreciate the organic nature of your blogsite. It is, after all, not a topical survey but an ongoing conversation, a meditation even, on the nature of our western identity.
It makes sense that you should gravitate to the Islamic threat. It has always been a big part of European history and it forces us to acknowledge how much we are shaped by our adversaries as well as our trading partners.
It most certainly functions as a stand in for the whole of the first world/third world problem that has persisted since Europeans have begun exploring those lands (at least in our minds. I’ve known many different peoples throughout my life, and loath though I am towards generalizations I never found that much in the way of introspection in non-European people).
The Mexican incursions very much reminds me of the Germanic tribes at the fall of Rome. Of course not in exact parallel, and everyone always brings up Rome (I’ve learned from movies that the ancient Romans spoke with British accents), but still, after having seen what third-world people did to my neighborhood, it gives me the chills. I keep thinking of the combination of moral decline, unthinking mercantilism (say what you will of the old robber-barons but I’m sure they would be aghast at many modern business practices), cultural Marxism and its attending anti-intellectualism and the emotionally candy of savage worship (the culture cult, as Roger Sandall puts it. You should check out his site www.culturecult.com) and I realize that this is one really big hole to climb out of. I don’t think we’re doomed but add to all of the above the unforeseen results of truly eye-popping technology and it’s anyone’s guess as to what the world will look like in a century.
In any case whatever you write I will always check in and see what you’re talking about. Until next time.
LA replies:
Thanks for understanding.
Yes, the Romans spoke with British accents, and their slaves and subjects with American accents, sometimes even with Brooklyn accents.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 30, 2006 06:24 PM | Send