When you gonna wake up? (II)

(This is a revised version of an entry I posted a few weeks ago and then deleted, as explained here.)

In recent months, the British papers, particularly the Daily Mail, have run an endless series of shock and horror stories about the wholly unexpected flood of Eastern European immigrants that has been inundating Britain. The latest news is that they are coming at the rate of 700 per day, over 250,000 per year—and that’s just from Eastern Europe alone. This has happened as a result of the confluence of two factors: the EU was expanded in 2004 to include several Eastern European countries such as Poland, poorer countries many citizens of which are eager to live and work in Britain; and Britain, though it had the right under EU law to limit the number of EU immigrants, chose not to exercise it.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis of the Conservative party complains: “These statistics betray [Home Secretary] John Reid’s utter failure to get a grip on the chaos in the immigration system. The Government assured us that no more than 13,000 immigrants per year would arrive from [Eastern Europe]. This figure completely blows that estimate out of the water.”

Pretty amazing. They expected 13,000 per year from that source, and they’re getting 255,000. The anguish and handwringing go on and on.

But I say: What is the point of complaining?

The reality is that while Britain has the legal right to set limits to the number of immigrants it receives, it acts as if it doesn’t. On the basis of their belief that to advocate ANY limit on immigration is “racist,” the British have voluntarily given up any say over WHO comes into Britain, and over HOW MANY come into Britain. Thus under Britain’s current moral code, which no one in public life questions, there is no difference between 5,000 a year coming from France, and 200,000 a year coming from Poland. Britain’s position is that any citizen of any EU country can enter Britain. Period.

Anyone who complains about this disaster without discussing WHY it’s happening and what the ONLY solution is, is not being serious.

Here’s WHY it’s happening: Britain decided that having a distinctive nationhood was a bad thing, because a distinctive nation is exclusive and hence “racist,” and so to give up that exclusiveness they gave up the moral right to control who can enter and live in Britain, and thus they gave up a fundamental and indispensable aspect of sovereignty.

And here’s the ONLY solution: Britain must abandon its anti-racist ideology and re-assert its right to be a distinctive and particular nation.

Everything else said about this problem is mental masturbation. It’s like breaking open all the windows of your house in January and then complaining that you’re cold. It’s like burning your house down and then complaining that you’re homeless. It’s like shooting yourself in the heart and then wondering why people are looking through you. They’re looking through you because you’re a ghost, you’re dead, but you don’t realize you’re dead, even though you’re the one who shot yourself. And that’s the way the countries of the West are now. They’ve deliberately killed themselves, or at least killed large parts of themselves, such as their moral authority over who enters the country, but they don’t want to take responsibility for having done this, so they imagine that they’re still alive, and then they wonder why other countries and peoples are walking all over them and treating them as though they’re not there any more. And all they can say in response to all this is to keep repeating in a haze, “But there were only supposed to be 13,000 immigrants. We didn’t think there would be this many.” There are this many because you’re dead. You’ve given up sovereign control over your own borders. Remember?

Liberals complain about the inevitable results of their beliefs and actions, but never question the beliefs and actions themselves. It’s a form of madness, a madness unto death. The madness can only be cured by leaving liberalism, by standing outside liberalism.

- end of initial entry -

Carl Simpson writes:

An interesting point about this that I’ve noticed is that you have some actual complaints from mainstream types (the only folks allowed to speak in essence) about Polish and other East Europeans, who happen to be white and share at least a some common culture with England. One never hears complaints from such mainstream types about Muslims or Africans, naturally, because to do so would get you labeled (and possibly arrested) as a racist.

As I see it, one of the worst aspects of the flood of Poles into Soviet Yobistan is the potential destruction of their fairly string Catholic faith and culture by working and living in utterly putrid sewer of liberalism and nihilist culture such as the one which presently dominates Western Europe.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 18, 2007 03:30 PM | Send