They're Here. (Have a Fajita!)

Another "moldy oldy" letter to the Trib, dated April 4, 2006, but no less relevant today:

The columnists writing on the issue of illegal immigration in the Sunday (April 2) Opinion section all have well thought out and sincere arguments (even the liberals!). But I think they are missing an important point – or if they’ve thought of it they aren’t sharing in these columns. The massive influx of immigrants, both legal and otherwise, from Mexico and Central America is, indeed, an invasion (as Michelle Malkin terms it in the title of her recent book), and should be looked at that way, not only as a current event but also from the historical perspective of past invasions over, say, the last few thousand years. Human history is full of invasions, migrations, conquests – one people infiltrating or overrunning another – and there are common elements, aside from the immediately obvious political and economic ones. (I am not talking about “refugees” here, in the traditional sense, i.e. people fleeing war, famine, and pestilence; that is a somewhat different phenomenon.) In the most general sense, “invasions”, or whatever we want to call them, occur when a society that is expanding in population and that has energy and determination moves into the territory of a society with less – or no – expansion, energy, and determination. It’s all relative, we might say; and “population pressure” is just one factor. Certainly a society that is willing and able to reproduce has a long-term advantage over one that is not; this is as true for humans as for any other species. But a “youthful” society is also characterized by risk-taking, daring, and willingness to make great efforts to expand its territory. A “tired” society that is in decline (political, economic, moral) not only lacks those qualities, but lacks even the will to resist invasion.

There is a popular image of historical invasions that they consisted only, or primarily, of armed bands of men landing on a coast or crossing a river or mountain range, and proceeding to rape, pillage, destroy, and generally lay waste to whatever they encountered. This may be true if we’re talking about the “first wave”. But it’s amazing how, in very little time, this first wave is followed by ordinary people – hunters, farmers, shepherds and then merchants and tradesmen, who proceed to integrate themselves into the pre-existing society (or what is left of it) and create, in effect, a new, hybrid society. This has certainly happened any number of times in European history – start with the repeated invasions of England from Roman times onward – and also characterizes the exploration, “conquest”, and settlement of North America. The result may be judged better or worse, depending on what side one is on at time, and in retrospect according to the value system of whichever historian is writing about it. (We have only to reflect that Attila is still a popular boy’s name in Hungary.) One can regret the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, but would we really want to give up the Italian Renaissance (which, admittedly, took a few centuries to get off the ground)? We honestly cannot say what the result of any given “invasion” in our time might be – even for those now living, to say nothing of future generations.

What is called “nativism” (ironic since the term “Native Americans” is limited to people who were here at the time of Columbus) basically boils down to “we want to keep what we have, and we want it to stay the way it is” -- a conservative view, certainly, and one that is easy to sympathize with. But let’s also reflect on the fact that these “invaders” come from a newer, more vigorous and youthful society; they are more willing to reproduce because they have not had their spirits crushed by liberal gloom and doom, and they are not hobbled and inhibited by “political correctness”. They look across the river, or the mountains, or the desert, and see something they want, and they try to get it. This is simply human nature, and when enough people get the same idea at the same time, we have what we call an invasion. We think of “America”, i.e. the United States, as a vigorous society of people who are willing to make sacrifices in the interests of “democracy”, “freedom”, and so on. And this is still true, to some extent – although moral relativism has taken most of the heart out of our campaigns, and compromises our subsequent consolidation (“peacekeeping”) efforts as well. From a historical perspective, we could be described as a society that has lost its vision, and that has morphed into something where “business as usual” (power and money) generally carries the day. Politically, we are experiencing gridlock. Economically, we are on very thin ice. And socially and morally, we are a disaster area. The day approaches when we will become just another big, unwieldy place with resources spread way too thin, and not a whole lot to offer either through example or through military and political dominance. How inspiring is that when we are asking people to fight, and to “stay the course”, whatever we imagine that course to be? We have vigilante organizations on our southern border, trying primarily to protect their own interests. But has their zeal spread far beyond the border area? No, and the media and the politicians have consigned them to the outer darkness where it is now a “hate crime” to defend one’s homeland.

It is one thing to have something worth defending, and another to actually defend it. It appears to me that we have lost that will, and that even this “soft” invasion (not led by armed marauders – at least not in most cases) will not be turned back. History will eventually place this episode into the same class as most other invasions, simply as one people being more forceful and determined than another, with the result that the former dominates while the latter submits. It’s not so pleasant when one is living it. But no one should think that anything new or unusual is going on; it’s simply part of the ever-changing pattern of history, and as such carries with it an aura of inevitability. Am I counseling despair and capitulation? Without a struggle? No – we certainly need to hold up our end of the dialogue. But a bit of long-term perspective would certainly not hurt, and might help to ease the trauma.