History has not been very kind to countries that enter a state of multicultural chaos.

The United States is currently the world’s oldest democracy.

But America is no more immune from collapse than were some of history’s most stable and impressive consensual governments. Fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and many of the elected governments of early 20th-century Western European states eventually destroyed themselves, went bankrupt, or were overrun by invaders.

The United States is dividing as rarely before. Half the country, mostly liberal America, is concentrated in 146 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties — in an area that collectively represents less than 10 percent of the U.S. land mass. The other half, the conservative Red states of the interior of America, is geographically, culturally, economically, politically, and socially at odds with Blue-state America, which resides mostly on the two coasts.

The two Americas watch different news. They read very different books, listen to different music, and watch different television shows. Increasingly, they now live lives according to two widely different traditions.

Barack Obama was elected president after compiling the most left-wing voting record in the U.S. Senate. His antidote, Donald Trump, was elected largely on the premise that traditional Republicans were hardly conservative.

Red America and Blue America are spiraling into divisions approaching those of 1860, or of the nihilistic hippie/straight divide of 1968.

Currently, some 27 percent of all Californians were not born in the United States. More than 40 million foreign-born immigrants currently live in the U.S. — the highest number in the nation’s history.

Yet widely unchecked immigration comes at a time when the country has lost confidence in its prior successful adherence to melting-pot assimilation and integration. The ultimate result is a fragmenting of society into tribal cliques that vie for power, careers, and influence on the basis of ethnic solidarity rather than shared Americanness.

History is not very kind to multicultural chaos — as opposed to a multiracial society united by a single national culture. The fates of Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia should remind us of our present disastrous trajectory.

Either the United States will return to a shared single language and allegiance to a common and singular culture, or it will eventually descend into clannish violence.

Does the unique American idea of federalism still work, with state rights and laws subordinate to federal law? We fought a Civil War that cost more than 600,000 lives in part to uphold the idea that individual states could not override the federal government.

Yet sanctuary cities declare that they can freely nullify federal immigration law. The California Senate passed a bill earlier this month that would prohibit the state from contracting with any firms that work on the federal government’s wall at the border with Mexico.

States such as California vow that they will ignore Washington and work directly with foreign nations to promote their own policies on global warming. Read carefully what some prominent Californians are saying about the federal government: It is not much different from what influential Confederate South Carolinians boasted about in 1860 on the eve of secession.

The national debt has almost doubled over the last eight years and at nearly $20 trillion is unsustainable.

Entitlement spending rose even as new taxes increased. The have-nots claim the haves make far too much money; the haves retort that they pay most of the income taxes while nearly half the country pays nothing. All Americans need to take a deep breath, step back, and rein in their anger — and find more ways to connect rather than divide themselves.

Most Americans agree that the present levels of borrowing and spending cannot continue. But many believe that the tough medicine to cure the disease of chronic annual deficits and mounting debt is unacceptable.

America’s infrastructure and military are vastly underfunded, even though some voters want more subsidies for themselves and apparently want others to pay for them.

America’s once-preeminent colleges and universities are fatally compromised. Universities charge far too much, resist reform, expect exemption from accountability, and assume their students must take on huge amounts of debt. Yet campuses can’t guarantee that their graduates are competently educated or that they will find jobs.

Illiberal attempts to end free speech, to sanction racial and gender segregation, and to attack rather than argue with opponents are disguised by euphemisms such as “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and various -isms and -ologies.

Behind the guise of campus activism and non-negotiable demands is the reality that too many students simply are unprepared to do their assigned work and seek exemption through protests in lieu of hard studying.

America barely survived the Civil War of 1861–65, the Great Depression of 1929–39, and the rioting and protests of the 1960s. But today’s growing divides are additionally supercharged by instant Internet and social-media communications, 24/7 cable news, partisan media, and the denigration of America’s past traditions.

All Americans need to take a deep breath, step back, and rein in their anger — and find more ways to connect rather than divide themselves.

They should assume their opponents are not all sinners, and that their supporters are not all saints.

Things are bad now. But our own history suggests that if we are not careful, they can get even worse.

--Victor Davis Hanson

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Poster's note: I fear greatly for America, and the civilized world in general. As Hanson says above, "The two Americas watch different news. They read very different books, listen to different music, and watch different television shows. Increasingly, they now live lives according to two widely different traditions." I don't see how there is a way to mend this, do you?

Here is the link.

quote:

Currently, some 27 percent of all Californians were not born in the United States. More than 40 million foreign-born immigrants currently live in the U.S. — the highest number in the nation’s history.

Yet widely unchecked immigration comes at a time when the country has lost confidence in its prior successful adherence to melting-pot assimilation and integration. The ultimate result is a fragmenting of society into tribal cliques that vie for power, careers, and influence on the basis of ethnic solidarity rather than shared Americanness.

History is not very kind to multicultural chaos

What we call "Western civilization" is under attack.... not just here in the US, but even moreso in Europe.
The attack is coming not just from foreign invaders but from the enemies and enablers within:

Are Pope Francis & Angela Merkel Enemies Of European Civilization?

Two of Europe’s greatest contemporary enemies recently got together to compare notes and discuss how they were going to further undermine and destabilize what remains of the Continent’s civilization. Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on June 17, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to discuss the issues which will be raised at a Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, from July 7-8.

The Vatican said that Frau Merkel and the Pope discussed the need “for the international community to combat poverty, hunger, terrorism and climate change.” Ms. Merkel, in an obvious swipe at US President Donald Trump, said that “we are a world in which we want to work multilaterally, a world in which we don’t want to build walls but bring down walls.” The reference to “walls,” of course, was to President Trump’s promise to construct a wall on the Mexican-American border. The pope, too, has been critical of Mr. Trump’s proposed plan.

Ms. Merkel also lamented about the Trump Administration’s decision to opt out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Pope Francis urged President Trump to remain in the accord and gave him a copy of his encyclical, “Praise Be,” when they met earlier this spring. The encyclical elevated “climate change” and protection of the environment as “moral obligations” while it criticized “perverse” economic development models that “enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.”

As has been the case since the Second Vatican Anti-Council (1962-65), popes have spent most of their time on secular concerns in which they have little competency and less on matters of the Faith. Pope Francis has taken this to a new level and rarely preaches on doctrine. This, in one sense, is good because when he does speak on religion, he usually spouts out some heresy or falsehood which scandalizes the Church. His many blasphemies and heresies, plus the fact that he was never ordained as a priest in the traditional Catholic rite or traditionally consecrated as a bishop (neither was Benedict XVI), makes him ineligible to be a true Catholic pope.

The latest fraud that these two cretins are now pushing is the supposed threat of global warming. The idea that “climate change” has had some nefarious effect on the environment has long ago been debunked by legitimate scientists and scholars. Climate change is a ruse used by global elites to further tax, regulate and enslave humanity.

Facts and sound theory, however, do not bother the collectivist minds of Pope Francis and Angela Merkel. What they are interested in is power and control and they intend to keep it through lies like global warming and by coercive massive migration which will fundamentally alter Europe’s demographics to their New World Order masters’ advantage.

Had it not been for the likes of Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel, it is unlikely that Europe would be under a deluge of mostly Mohammedan “asylum seekers.” The claim that the invasion was “spontaneous” due to the turmoil in the Middle East from US and Western nation-states military intervention is implausible. The region has been unstable for decades. Why all of a sudden is there a mass exodus and why it is mostly of young single Muslim men?

The invasion of Europe was carefully orchestrated and planned by the world’s power elite whose goal is to eliminate what is left of the Continent’s white Christian heterogeneous male population. Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel are the New World Order’s puppets carrying out their marching orders.

While the outlook for Europeans may currently appear grim, it is not hopeless. While Pope Francis and Angela Merkel cannot at present be deposed for their crimes, they can be defeated in the court of public opinion. For Europe to become once again the center of human civilization, the ideals of multiculturalism and the fraud of global warming must be slain on ideological grounds.

This is the duty that confronts those that seek a return of Europe’s previous glories. While the task appears monumental, it must be remembered that the pagan Roman Empire was eventually converted by the teaching of twelve men and one indomitable former Pharisee from Tarsus.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...uropean-civilization

We had a higher percentage (not total numbers) of immigrants from around 1860 to 1910 than we do today but the trend right now is up.
Our immigrants are mostly from a different part of the world than European immigrants.

A very thoughtful article. The question might be how do we abort half an infant or confiscate half a gun?

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
We had a higher percentage (not total numbers) of immigrants from around 1860 to 1910 than we do today but the trend right now is up.
Our immigrants are mostly from a different part of the world than European immigrants.

The problem with "today's" immigrant is that they think they don't have to assimilate to their "new" country...that's what the immigrants (European majority) did in the 19th and early 20th century; assimilated.

As an example, Muslims want to immigrate here and enact Sharia Law. Guess what? It's against the U.S. Constitution, to which the muslims should be adhering to in their "new" country. If you want Sharia Law, stay the fuck over in your 15th century shit hole sand box and stone all the women wanting an education on a daily basis for all I care. Couldn't give a popcorn fart what "they" do over there. Just don't bring that shit over to MY house!!!

Point is, if I immigrated to Mexico, I would learn Spanish and assimilate to their culture. These fuckers coming over now have the exact opposite approach...they want to assimilate US into the culture from which they're fleeing.

I don't mind immigration...LEGAL IMMIGRATION. You want to come to the land of milk and honey? GREAT!!! But just be prepared to learn English (why do I see street signs in fucking Vietnamese), get a job, DON'T suck off the government teat, pay taxes, contribute to our society, and APPRECIATE your new-found freedom.

It's really that easy...

We have factions instead of a merged citizenry for two reasons, IMO.

1) We let the temperature get dialed down on the melting pot years ago, and

2) one of the two mainstream political parties decided to focus on ethnic differences and generate outrage based on them, and so oppose solutions to the first issue.

Reversing both of the above, over the long haul, would address the divide.

The second could be achieved by either the party itself changing its messaging and policies (has a one-trick pony ever changed tricks?!) or by it continuing its slide into policy-making irrelevance at the polls. And that change (one way or the other) would resolve the political opposition to resolving the first.

I totally agree with era pilot. The democratic party's constantly looking the other way in their attempt to buy votes is largely responsible for much of this.

The estimable Steve Hayward at Powerlineblog.com has posted the following regarding a new article in The Atlantic Monthly by liberal Peter Beinart:

quote:

Civil War on the Left, Part 41: Democrats and Immigration

Peter Beinart, a smart center-left writer once affiliated with The New Republic before it went crazy, nowadays is at The Atlantic, and he has a barn-burner of an essay out today on the subject, “How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration.” It is a long article, but very much worth reading the whole thing.

The point is, Beinart honestly confronts the craven partisan political calculation behind the liberal line on immigration, and he goes through the serious substantive economic and social reasons why liberals should be in favor of managing immigration in the interests of American workers—as they did not that long ago.

Some excerpts:

In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”

The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.

I had no ideas these leading liberals were such xenophobic racists. Worth quoting back to your liberal friends.

Why did liberals change their mind? It doesn’t take Captain Obvious to know, but Beinart risks his liberal street cred anyway:

A larger explanation is political. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”

As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism. While Obama was running for reelection, immigrants’-rights advocates launched protests against the administration’s deportation practices; these protests culminated, in June 2012, in a sit-in at an Obama campaign office in Denver. Ten days later, the administration announced that it would defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and met various other criteria. Obama, The New York Times noted, “was facing growing pressure from Latino leaders and Democrats who warned that because of his harsh immigration enforcement, his support was lagging among Latinos who could be crucial voters in his race for re-election.”

From here Beinart recalls how Bernie Sanders was forced to backtrack on his immigration skepticism in 2015 (Sanders called open borders “a Koch brothers idea”—heh), and goes through some of the serious scholarship—much of it from prominent liberals like Harvard’s Robert Putnam—that assesses the economic and social costs of uncontrolled immigration. For entertaining these taboo subjects, Beinart is sure to get hammered. Especially about his conclusion:

In 2014, the University of California listed melting pot as a term it considered a “microaggression.” What if Hillary Clinton had traveled to one of its campuses and called that absurd? What if she had challenged elite universities to celebrate not merely multiculturalism and globalization but Americanness? What if she had said more boldly that the slowing rate of English-language acquisition was a problem she was determined to solve? What if she had acknowledged the challenges that mass immigration brings, and then insisted that Americans could overcome those challenges by focusing not on what makes them different but on what makes them the same?

Some on the left would have howled. But I suspect that Clinton would be president today.

Pass the popcorn.

Link to Atlantic article: Link

Any divide between those who work to captive others who wish to be free cannot be resolved peacefully. The only way America can survive is if the tyrants and their complicits are defeated with extreme prejudice.

Except the US is not a democracy.

Yes.

England has been around in it's more or less current form for over 1500 years. France, Russia, Germany...any number of nations are as old and still recognizable.

Will we still be 50 states or still a republic or any number of other possibilities? Who knows. But we are established. We will remain established barring some no-shit apocolyptic event such as comets, all out nukelar combat, toe to toe with the Rooskies, zombies, alien invasions and other unlikely events.

Nothing is static. Things are going to change of course. We will eventually fight another civil war or two. Maybe have a coup or two as well. Probably fight a few more world wars as well. There will economic crashes and recoveries. Radical leaps in technology will upset the status quo on a regular basis. But in ten years or fifty years or five hundred years we will still be here as a nation in some form and I would bet it would be recognizable to us.

quote:

Originally posted by OcCurt:
Yes.

England has been around in it's more or less current form for over 1500 years. France, Russia, Germany...any number of nations are as old and still recognizable.

Will we still be 50 states or still a republic or any number of other possibilities? Who knows. But we are established. We will remain established barring some no-shit apocolyptic event such as comets, all out nukelar combat, toe to toe with the Rooskies, zombies, alien invasions and other unlikely events.

Nothing is static. Things are going to change of course. We will eventually fight another civil war or two. Maybe have a coup or two as well. Probably fight a few more world wars as well. There will economic crashes and recoveries. Radical leaps in technology will upset the status quo on a regular basis. But in ten years or fifty years or five hundred years we will still be here as a nation in some form and I would bet it would be recognizable to us.

I'd advise reading some history books. England as a country is fewer than 1000 years old (since 1066), and that's an eternity in the history of nations.

Germany wasn't even a country until Bismarck... and Russia has gone through several incarnations, as has France.

Now, if what you meant is that the same people lived in roughly the same geographic area (Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Russians, etc) then that is fair. But I don't see how you can ascribe that continuity to the US, which has demographically and ethnically changed so much in just 100 years.

The GOP is too fractured and corrupt to accomplish what needs to be done. Nor do they give a fuck about the working man and the middle class. Eventually the globalists will win and we'll end up with a country we won't recognize.

Wow, PD, your enthusiasm is infectious!

quote:

Originally posted by PD:
Eventually the globalists will win...

PD: that's downright depressing.
Which is why I'm going to keep fighting with this guy:

quote:

Either the United States will return to a shared single language and allegiance to a common and singular culture, or it will eventually descend into clannish violence.

If anything at all is certain about the future, I think that this is. Lincoln (quoting the Bible): "A house divided against itself cannot stand.

We have been... I don't know what the right word is... bamboozled... into using the term "immigrant" not only to refer to those who enter the country lawfully and work to gain citizenship-- in other words, actual immigrants-- and those who in disregard for our laws cross our border with no intention of assimilating. "Aliens." Many of them not only do not intend to become Americans, they are contemptuous of America. You see them at leftist rallies waving the Mexican flag and holding "Fuck America" signs.

quote:

Now, if what you meant is that the same people lived in roughly the same geographic area (Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Russians, etc) then that is fair. But I don't see how you can ascribe that continuity to the US, which has demographically and ethnically changed so much in just 100 years.

It was the continuity of the people (in general) living in those regions that I meant. It was simply easier to identify those regions by easily recognized names. I probably should have been both more clear and included regions, such as Egypt as examples, that were outside the European sphere.

And you are also correct about the U.S.-the rapid change and the melting pot idea/ideal.

However I do believe that modern and evolving technology mitigates that to some greater or lesser degree. We have an actual record of our recent past-late 1800's through the early 20th century to today-in the form of photographs, video, newsreel, audio and so forth. Further that record is mass produced and distributed. Para's thread about Robber's Roost comes to mind as an example.

A nations record or it's people's history is no longer word of mouth or handwritten manuscripts than can be easily changed or even erased (think of the Bible-the many different versions, what made it in, what didn't, how much was changed in the various re-writings or even what has survived).

Yes the modern mediums I describe can and are manipulated and that is what is happening now with the left vs. right culture war. But that record still exists (once on the net, forever on the net) and in a largely accurate form (the ability to verify). That record will continue to exist and grow so long as the technology is available to record it, which it will be barring one of the cataclysms I mentioned in my earlier post.

One other factor to the U.S. (or any established region/culture/nation longevity) is there is no more Manifest Destiny. There are no more New Worlds to explore and conquer, at least until we go to space. Established nations/regions/collectives are very hard to wipe out and that is what we largely have today. People(s) are assimilated into existing cultures, existing cultures adopt bits and pieces of those being assimilated-language, holidays, beliefs, religions, myths and everything else that is so much a part of human experience.

The U.S. is built on a set of ideals that have their origins going back countless centuries but never fully realized until the establishment of these United States of America. Despite our own mistakes, ignorance, prejudices, inequity and every other thing we as a nation have done wrong or screwed up, those guiding ideals will endure. I believe we as a nation will continue to strive to meet those ideals, to exceed those ideals.

It's why I believe the United States of America five hundred years from now would be both radically different yet very recognizable to someone from today.

Provided we don't destroy ourselves, of course.

I understand what you meant now, and my apologies if I was a bit direct.

My direct family is from Venezuela, by way of northern Spain. In just one generation, that country went from having one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world to the gutter.

What man has built, another can destroy - and destruction rarely takes as long as creation.

I read the news. We now know McCain has a foundation supported by Soros. Trump goes easy on Clinton and a special prosecutor is gonna fuck him in the ass. The GOP is prepping a health care bill in secrecy and tax reform is getting shelved until next year. I hate to sound like a pessimist and that's not how Ive been living life but to me the future doesn't look bright.