Self-government versus determinism

Writing at FrontPage Magazine in 2003, John Fonte admirably articulated two sides of the immigration debate:

In one sense, conservatives are divided between those who seriously believe in democratic self-government, that is to say, that a people that wants to limit immigration has the moral right and the ability to do so, versus those who believe in economic or demographic determinism, who tells us that the market requires and demands continuous mass immigration regardless of what the American people want and that there is nothing we can do to stop illegal immigration anyway.

I would add that the economic or demographic determinism of which Fonte speaks is but a modern variation on the Hegelian/Marxist dialectic by which leftists seek to control society. For the leftist (who in some cases may be called a “conservative”), what matters is not the truth of man’s nature and of social and moral order, but the emergent and supposedly irresistible “forces of history,” which the leftist, in the mode of social scientist cum gnostic prophet, discerns, and then, in the mode of dictator, tells us we have no choice but to obey. It is a worldview antithetical to self-government, morality, and freedom.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 17, 2006 04:19 PM | Send