Yessir. I'm a sucker for this country. I'm a sucker for the Star Spangled Banner—and I'm a sucker for this country.
I like what we got here! I like it! A guy can say what he wants -- and do what he wants -- without having a bayonet shoved through his belly. Now that's all right, isn't it?
You betcha. All right. And we don't want anybody coming around and changing it, do we?
...No sir. No sir. And when they do, I get mad! I get b-boiling mad. And right now, John, I'm sizzling!...I get mad for a lot of other guys besides myself--I get mad for a guy named Washington! And a guy named Jefferson--and Lincoln. Lighthouses, John! Lighthouses in a foggy world! You know what I mean?"
I'm with Mr. Connell, as are many Americans, deep down. We don't like 'anybody coming around changing' our country. And yet we've let them do it -- so far.
Why? We Didn't Mind Enough.
John Derbyshire says that we didn't mind enough to stop mass immigration -- ''we'' being the American populace or the electorate.
The same thing could be said, as he notes, of the population of the UK, and it could be said of Australia or New Zealand or Canada or just about any country in former Christendom.
Derbyshire cites the feedback he has received from Americans who object to this statement of his, this accusation that we haven't bothered to do anything about mass immigration. Most apparently disclaim any responsibility for the situation, blaming 'the elites' for forcing it on us. For some people, the 'elites' translates to 'the Jews' but either way you look at it, it seems dishonest to blame it all on some outside force. But is it all our fault?
I can't quite go as far as Derbyshire does in asserting that we could have done something via the ballot box and other respectable means.
''Politicians can be voted out; businessmen can have their products boycotted; journalists (let me tell you) can be swamped with negative mail. ''
Yes, politicians can be voted out. We could "turn the rascals out," all of them, if we so chose -- couldn't we? That's presuming the electoral system is not totally rigged, a presumption which may or may not be valid.
It does seem plausible to many of us that the system is rigged, and the electoral system, with our much-vaunted 'democratic' system, is a sham. Both parties are slaves to the same kind of politically correct ideology, and long gone are the days when anybody could up and run for political office as a candidate for one of the major parties. Sure, almost anybody with money can run as some kind of independent or minor party candidate but to run as a Republican or Democrat is to toe the party line, which includes supporting the politically correct, egalitarian, nation-of-immigrants twaddle.
Sure, we could turn all the rascals out, as the old saying goes, but there are any number of other rascals with identical views and identical allegiances to take their place. Nobody gets anywhere politically in this country without toeing the line. We no longer live in the Frank Capra world where the 'little guy' matters, and wields actual power.
As for trying to reform our corrupt politicians by flooding them with angry e-mails or phone calls -- don't think it hasn't happened. Many of us have tales to tell of contacting our representatives and party officials only to be dismissed or ignored. Some immigration patriots proudly say we 'stopped the Bush amnesty' and maybe ''we'' did, momentarily, but before you could say 'Dream Act' the old amnesty express was rolling again. And the issue has not gone away.
I no longer have much faith in the 'system' to right the wrongs that are endemic to it.
This does not mean that I don't believe any change is possible, but if and when it happens, it will not be done by the old-fashioned 'vote-em-out' method. Nor will boycotts work, as I noted in last night's post, if all the businesses are on the same page. Where are the immigration patriot businesses, who hire only legal American labor, or who sell American-made products? They are thin on the ground, if they exist at all. We can fax, boycott, and call all we like; things don't change.
So how did we get here, to the place where Americans 'don't mind' our race replacement and the dismantling of our country?
The elites did not 'force' this on us, but it happened gradually enough that few realized they were being conditioned to passivity, conditioned to believe in egalitarian and universalist beliefs, conditioned to feel guilty about excluding all those poor hard-luck cases from our wealth and plenty. Americans minds have been shaped to go along with this agenda, or at best, to feel conflicted about it. It's the same in all Western White countries.
We are not solely to blame, because there are powerful forces out there who are not answerable to us, whether financially or at the ballot box, who are moving the chess pieces. 'The people' are not really sovereign and in charge. Nonetheless, I don't advocate passivity or resignation. I think if public opinion could be moved enough to recognize what is happening, things might change, but until that happens, it is uphill going. Propaganda+peer pressure is a strong combination that has helped weaken us and render us vulnerable to the manipulation.
The left did not effect their changes via the ballot box as much as through the use of propaganda and social pressure. They did it gradually and relentlessly for decades. Unfortunately, we don't have the leisure to work as they did, and we don't have the voice in the media that they have. So it will not be easy.
So we've let our country be changed beyond recognition. It's happened, in part, because we have fewer and fewer Connells, as in the quote at the top of the post, people who get 'boiling mad', 'sizzling' about what is being done. We have been prozac-ed into passivity, bread-and-circus-ed into a stupor.
And we lack those 'lighthouses' in our 'foggy world'.
Our world is worse than foggy; it's midnight, on a moonless night. We need the lighthouses, many of them, so that we can see through the darkness, and respond as a healthy people should.
