From Breitbart: Pope Francis is urging America to throw open her borders to thousands of impoverished migrants, in part to atone for the “sins” of the colonial era.
“We must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible,” he declared before a joint session of Congress. “Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities…We must not be taken aback by their numbers.”
The call was not entirely unexpected.
“America Atone,” read The Drudge Report’s banner story upon the Pope’s arrival to the White House a day before his historic Congressional address.
The headline linked to a Bloomberg piece entitled, “Obama to Bask In Pope’s Aura, But Francis Wants Economic Justice.” The article predicted the Pope would aim to “exploit” his “moral authority” to “pressure his host” nation on issues including mass immigration and wealth redistribution.
Indeed, as the Pope addressed the nation today it is clear that the immigration issue has hit a boiling point. Headlines blare:
European Migrant Crisis: Austria, Germany Near Tipping Point… As Europe Grasps For Answers, More Migrants Flood Its Border… Pope Francis Urges Congress To Embrace Migrants… Western and UN Aid Falling Far Short… Five More Fleets On The Way, From Africa, India and Asia… Refugee Fleet Is Headed For Europe, For France…
The last three headlines, however, are ripped not from today’s papers, but from the pages of a controversial 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail, which many say has predicted with shocking accuracy the events unfolding today.
The novel, which has been translated into English, is entitled Camp of the Saints, and posits that the liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself. Raspail’s thesis, quite simply, is that liberalism is inadequate to defend liberalism.
All around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book. The novel features a new pope, born in Latin American, who is “in tune with the times, congenial to the press” who preaches “universal love” and calls on the Western world to open its borders to the world’s migrants. Now, as in the novel, prominent political officials are urging on ever larger waves; secular and religious leaders hold hands to pressure blue collar citizens to drop their resistance; media elites and celebrities zealously cheer the opportunity that the migrants provide to atone for the alleged sins of the West— for the chance to rebalance the wealth and power of the world by allowing poor migrants from failed states to rush in to claim its treasures.
Raspail argues that the inability of the Western conscience to erect walls, to “put her foot down,” to turn people away, will lead to the undoing of Western civilization itself.
As the world’s eyes turn to the U.S. arrival of the pope, many conservatives are arguing that Jean Raspail’s book has perhaps come to life.
As Pat Buchanan recently wrote
Will the West endure, or disappear by the century’s end as another lost civilization? Mass immigration, if it continues, will be more decisive in deciding the fate of the West than Islamist terrorism… Does Europe have the toughness to seal its borders and send back the intruders? Or is Europe so morally paralyzed it has become what Jean Raspail mocked in “The Camp of the Saints”?
The Hudson Institute’s John Fonte told Breitbart News:
It is not surprising that the confused response by European elites to today’s mass migration from the developing world has triggered new interest in Jean Raspail’s 1973 dystopian novel “Camp of the Saints,” in which feckless Western leaders are unable to respond to a fictitious mass migration from what was then called the “Third World.”
The novel begins with the Belgian government’s announcement that it is ending its Indian child adoption policy, originally instituted to aid overpopulated India. The program had to be shut down due to an influx of applicants: “babes by the hundreds of hundreds, all ripe for adoption, [their mothers] pushing up to the brink [of the Belgian Consulate gate], to take the giant leap to [Western] paradise.”
Shortly after the program is terminated, millions of impoverished men, women and children board a fleet headed to the West.
The majority of the novel takes place around Easter as the French government decides how to respond to the “unprecedented incursion”: whether to throw open its borders and receive the fleet, or defend their nation from the coming invaders. France’s response stands to dictate that of the rest of the Western World:
“With France the Enlightened glad to grovel on her knees, no government now will dare sign its name to the genocidal deed” of fighting off the helpless horde.
Throughout the book, Raspail is constantly grasping for an “explanation” as to what sparked the Third World incursion, and what has caused the West to thrown down her arms and thrown open her doors.
Raspail suggests that overly-generous immigration policies are, in part, to blame. This is not dissimilar to Republicans’ recent push for amnesty, which government data shows played a substantial role in encouraging the 2014 border surge of alien youths.
“Once we had opened the door and shown how weak we are, others would come. Then more, and more. In fact, it’s already beginning,” Raspail wrote.
