* Steve, it is interesting that you bring up the example of the EU and also of mass immigration, when illustrating the ‘precautionary principle’.
In fact, regarding mass immigration, at least, the EU is the absolute and complete antithesis of the ‘precautionary principle’.
All EU member states are legally bound to uphold the stinky 1951 Geneva Convention on ‘refugees’. EU law takes supremacy over national law. Therefore, the ‘sovereign’ parliaments, assemblies, presidents etc of any EU member state *cannot do a damned thing* to alter the 1951 Convention. They *MUST* enforce it, even if it is against the will of their people, the democratically elected representatives, parliaments, or presidents.
Now, amongst its stinky obligations the stinky 1951 Convention obliges signatories to accept unlimited massive uncontrolled immigration -if- the magic word ‘ASYLUM’ happens to be uttered.
This is not a ‘precautionary principle’. It’s a ‘permissive proviso’.
It’s also the clinching argument of why the British should vote to ‘leave’.
* A related example is Libya. The FT has an editorial this weekend agreeing with Obama that France and Britain should have put troops on the ground after deposing Qatafay and implanted democracy there, and how their failure to do that led to ISIS taking root in Libya and migrants pouring out into Europe. Not much on how they shouldn’t have deposed him in the first place.
* I’m sorry, they are NOT ‘free’ to ignore the 1951 Convention.
The EU CAN and WILL take action against them, involving nasty, bullying, ‘sanctions’ , fines, freeze-outs, embargoes etc. Also many eastern European nations are dependent on central EU funding (Britain is a massive contributor, but that’s another story). This is the real meaning of ‘independence’. If you depend on another man, any man for your sustenance, then you are his slave, effectively.
* Ross [Douthat]’s latest column suggests using party machinations to subvert the will of the voters. I’m wondering when an established pundit will take the leap and suggest scrapping democracy all together.
Although, ironically, an autocratic America might turn restrictionist. After all, there’d be no incentive to import voters.
* President Trump deports all infiltrators, we suffer through all the protests and angst and recriminations and then we vigorously enforce the law and the new “culture on immigration” will become the norm.
The weak link in the plan is that we have to count on President Trump having the backbone to do what is necessary. Surgeons manage to do what is necessary even as they inflict great trauma on the bodies of their patients because they realize that they’re doing good for the patients. We need to all embrace this analogy and apply it to the immigration issue.
* Any country that’s bound by the Geneva refugee treaty would have to withdraw separately from it, regardless of its EU status. Also, all Western European countries are part of the Council of Europe, and therefore under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. This has control over immigration policy and has stopped deportations in many test cases. But anyway, as Wilkey says, the countries’ leaders will do what they please, as Merkel has done by ignoring the EU and opening Germany’s borders to invasion.
* I’d point to how effortlessly the major European powers have pivoted from denouncing Hungary as un-European for controlling its borders to denouncing Greece because it doesn’t. Previously, the wave of migrants was this Unstoppable Force, this 1000-foot wave, which will just overwhelm or route around any puny obstacles a Hungary might place in its way and all the European masses could do was cower before the Will of the Desperate. Now, suddenly, you see the awesome efficiency of the modern European state effortlessly chopping the wave into little rivulets, turning into stagnant puddles in backwater European states, with no ability to force their way into Germany.
Passing healthcare reform was politically hard ’cause it took decades and faced deeply entrenched opposition. Abolishing the ExIm bank is politically hard. Policies which are shown to be easily reversible within a matter of *months* don’t qualify as politically hard at all. Hillary is dragged to the left on immigration by liberal-White-Power Bernie Sanders, not by fear of implicitly dissing Jorge Ramos.
* Political experiments have uncertain outcomes, and someone has to be first to try them. But the result of mass non-white immigration was obvious before it ever started. Even the most uneducated Englishman in 1950 could have predicted that his country would be changed irreparably by making it ten per cent African or Asian.
The fact is that we are ruled by people who hate and despise us – there is no other way of putting it. To take people’s country from them as Merkel and Blair have done is the most poisonously evil thing imaginable. They’re spitting on the memory of people who defended us from Saracen and Hun invasions in the past, and they’re condemning us permanently to the status of peoples like the Kurds, forever living as outsiders in countries ruled by other races and hoping our rulers will be merciful to us.
* If we restrict immigration or in any way acknowledge group differences then inevitably Hitler will be resurrected and the 4th Reich will plunge the world into eternal night!
* The West has simply gone batshit crazy on immigration….
That’s just one of the things the West has gone “batshit crazy” over. The West cannot be long for this world.
Some of the others include:
Financialization, creating globally-parasitic institutions “To Big To Fail” (i.e., to kill the parasite is to kill the host).
Civil rights, privileging minorities so that they no longer need to make any effort to fit into the majority society (for, if they did so need, that would be evidence of bigotry), while bringing about the incurable self-debasement of white Europeans, a situation in which all parties can only succeed by failing.
Nationalism, leading to two World Wars and innumerable smaller conflicts and revolutions (If you don’t control the Nation State you don’t control your life; if you don’t control the neighboring Nation State you don’t control yours, ad infinitum).
Welfare statism, bankrupting all these Nations one after the other.
Celebrity, leading to the psychotic belief that if you aren’t famous (or notorious) you don’t actually exist.
All of these, and others, are nothing but luxuries that only wealthy cultures can afford, and spoiled cultures demand. As most of them, while being narcotically popular (for being morally self-satisfying), and therefore irreversible, are unproductive, they will slowly bleed these cultures dry.
* For a white South African such as myself this is all so déjà vu. We always assumed the Americans and Europeans knew that they were screwing us, i.e. acting in bad faith. But now I’m beginning to think they really believed all the BS they unloaded on us. That we were the guinea pigs to see how this wonderful multicultural project, where whites are the minority, would work out. Somehow they forgot to register how the experiment turned out, before embarking on that same disastrous road. But then again, they never listened to us in the past, so why should they listen to us now. Since colonial times they always knew everything better.
* Bringing democracy to the benighted Muslims we’ve just bombed and forcibly regime-changed. That stuff *never* gets old!
* South Carolina and Mississippi had white minorities for over a century. Minority status isn’t all that bad if you maintain control. (You don’t even have to work!)
South Africans dug their own graves when they allowed black Africans to cross the line in the sand to come in and make their beds. The western Cape could have made a lovely lily-white country, but no, you had to throw it away.
* Black population growth under Apartheid was not a function of immigration (the borders were tightly controlled by the military), but due to free health care, proper nutrition, clean water, missionary activity, law and order, and work opportunities, all provided by whites. Mass immigration only started once the ANC took over. Its main purpose was to provide cheap labor for the industries and mines who were benefactors of the ANC, and to render the whites politically irrelevant. South Africans “dug their own graves” by developing the black population. Of course since most whites were Christians, it was kinda the obvious and right thing to do. I have yet to find a pastor that can explain that contradiction to me.
* There were state elections in three German states today. AfD made massive gains, at about 12,5% in Rheinland-Pfalz, at almost 15% in Baden-Württemberg (where I voted for them), and almost 25% in Sachsen-Anhalt (in the former GDR) where it’s the 2nd strongest party after the Christian Democrats. Elite reaction has been predictable, totally along antifa lines, i.e. above all we need to demonize and exclude the evil right-wingers. Probably won’t change much (though it will be difficult to form a government at least in Sachsen-Anhalt) in the near run…will be interesting how things work out until 2017.
* Donald Trump is firmly in the mainstream of American historical policy. Strong military with limited intervention? Ike. Protectionist tariffs? Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln through FDR. Affirmative Action? Nixon to Present. Medicare-Social Security? FDR to Present.
The man spent his life in NYC being both a big time real estate developer and major celebrity who poked fun at himself. He is as mainstream as it gets. Nor can someone maintain public life in both spheres for over thirty years without his flaws and virtues being well known. Trump is pretty socially liberal and uncaring about much beyond law and order, nationalism, protectionism, and border control. That’s enough for me.
He is not a True Con like Cruz, who also subscribes to BLM aka “Grovel Whitey before your masters.” He is favor of AA, which hurts me as a Straight White male, but the only candidate who has even a chance of limiting both H1 Bs and illegal/legal mass Third World immigration which hurts me more.
Other than the border and tariffs Trump will be decidedly non revolutionary. That suits me just fine.
* Why is nationalism on that list? There was a severe problem with out-of-control nationalism in 1930s Germany, but that is long gone. No western nation is threatened by the nationalism of another nation. In fact we need some sense of nationalism to return if our societies are to avoid further degradation.
As James Goldsmith put it in the 1990s:
Indeed, nations need new blood and new ideas. But they can only absorb a limited amount at a time. They cannot allow themselves to be overwhelmed by immigration otherwise they will lose their identity and cease to be nations. Newcomers who are welcomed into a nation should want to honour and respect the customs of their new home. They must not step on shore or over the border and reject the national culture. If they do, the inevitable results are hostility, intolerance and conflict.
I’ve been re-reading some of Goldsmith’s stuff (and watching his interview with Charlie Rose on YouTube). Truly a Cassandra whose wisdom could not get the attention it deserved at the time. He had it right on trade, financialization, immigration — pretty much all the points you mentioned.
