That’s the kind of thing that gets historian Victor Davis Hanson’s mind turned to, well: History.
And other things besides:
Europe and immigration
If we revised immigration policy and predicated legal entry on education and skill, ten million Europeans would arrive tomorrow, replete with degrees, expertise, and capital. There is a great unease over here, mostly in worry that no one knows the extent of aggregate debt, only that it is larger than let on and will result in higher taxes and fewer benefits without resulting in budget surpluses. It is always difficult for a government to ask its citizens to pay more than ever, receive less than ever, and end up nevertheless with greater debt than ever. We’re next.
Here and there a few Germans seem to wonder what Obama is doing, but they are torn: “We are flattered the U.S. wants to emulate our system” versus “Why would you wish to get yourself into the jam we are in?”
The American left has for so long looked to Europe as the very model of the modern social compact that I do not think they can walk away from it. Even if it does implode.
Why, we can’t base immigration quotas on education and skill, they have to be based on the usual factor; you know, pure political demagoguery!
Why would we want a buch of educated and industrious Germans when we can allow the Democrats to try and create an entire new pet identity-victimhood underclass to add to their divisive race fetish pantheon?
And I have to say that as of late I wondered myself how Obama & Co. can keep a straight face as they try to move us inexorably left to a Eurosocialist nanny state model; all the while wringing their hands over ever increasing debt as they spend us into oblivian.
Sometime, just for the entertainment value, look up the requirements for immigration to Australia. The English language requirement is especially interesting.
The American intellectual, academic and political left (as opposed to the trade unionists and voting public in general who identify as left of center) feel they don’t have too, Lex. They damn well know–believe themselves to be– they ARE the American Nomenklatura–albeit a more educated and *enlightened* version. As such, they know full well that there will always be Dachas in the countryside no matter what the economy as long as they are part of the bureaucratic system of statist control allocating resources in a command economy–a direction we are rapidly taking if you hadn’t noticed–what with increasing government control of not only the banking/financial sector, but large segments of the pvt economy such as GM.
From the pov of the new Nomenklatura they are sitting in the crows nest of the Ship of State. If it founders they will the last to get wet–with plenty of champaign and caviar to sustain them. And besides, the Soviet Union and Communism only foundered because it had a competatitor–Capitalism. With Capitalism once vanquished/brought to heel, there will only remain State control. And if the economy founders and runs out of money? As Zimbabwe demonstrates, the printing presses never sleep and the Nomenklatura survive in style via expropriation of private assets by armed thugs acting as agents of the State, But that’s only the worst case. As Thomas Friedman’s latest pining for a whiff of Chinese Communist *practical* authoritarian State-run Capitalism (THEY know how to make the trains run on time!) shows, the Nomenklatura believes it can all be finessed with the judicious application of their brilliance unfettered by the messiness of democracy.
There is a reason the Founding Fathers fashioned the 2nd Amendment.
VX
Spot on. The new rise of the Left, after the fall of communism, is the euphemistically (and oxymoronically) named “Sate Capitalism” which China is suppose to enshrine so admiringly and enviably. The fact that serious thinkers can pull of that dastardly double-speak in the public is the type of thing Orwell would have been envious of on a creative level, and terrified of in real life; and also points to just how miserable our schools are at teaching American history and what the country is all about. (re: the recent flap in Arizona where the “American History” course taught mostly about the Aztecs and Mexico!) Ian Bremmer even has a new book about whether the free market or state capitalism will define the future, and although I haven’t read it yet think it might be worthwhile to see what some of the chattering class are saying about the conflict.
And yes, without a competitor statism groans on. This is why Obama is so shrill in calling for so much international regulation. There will be no American city on a hill, with all of its faults inherent in human nature, to which capital and people willing to work and wishing to keep the fruits of their labor can flee. We are indeed living in interesting times.
And as for the 10 million Europeans waiting to enter America? Eh . . . I think Europe can keep ‘em if the voting trends of the most educated Europeans is anything to go by. In the words of Lawrence from Office Space “don’t want you f^&king up my life too, man.” I imagine this is how many in America feel about the Californian diaspora. The irony of immigrants escaping their home country only to bring the cultural values that made their home country such a hell hole along with them is not an iron rule as America has proved, but it certainly does happen.
*to* viz *too* Your in-house imbecile at work again…
AND there was a BIG REASON why they left Europe – and fashioned a different way of life -
Want to be like Europeans Lefties??? GOOD get out and stay out ! WE ARE NOT EUROPE and that is a good thing…’
I have been living at Kandahar Air Field (KAF) in AFGHN and the NATO idjits couldn’t run a Bake sale let alone a war….
NOw living in Marine-istan and couldn’t be happier – no issues here with attacks as the USMC will kill anything that moves….
“The American left has for so long looked to Europe as the very model of the modern social compact”…
“The idiot who praises, in enthusiastic tone
Each century but this, and every country but his own”
–Gilbert & Sullivan