June 25, 2018--A Quick Run Around The Web

I thought I would start off today with a little humor: "Surprising Benefits of Urine Therapy - Ultra Spiritual Life episode 114" (3-1/2 min.)

• I've noted before that the United States has essentially been at war with Mexico since the mid-1800s. Most of the time it is a cold war--mostly criminal elements using Mexico as a haven from U.S. law enforcement--but sometimes it heats up into open conflict. We are heading toward another open conflict. The Daily Caller reports that "Mexican Presidential Candidate Calls Mass Migration To US A ‘Human Right’." Not just any candidate, however, but the candidate leading in the polls: Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Obrador is quoted as telling a crowd:

       “And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

       He then declared migration “a human right we will defend[.]” 

The open conflict won't be immediate, but illegal aliens will continue to migrate into the United States and agitate against U.S. government and American values. Perhaps even gain sufficient local political power to win a vote to leave the Union (or, at least, become a semi-autonomous region). At the same time, we will see Mexico further attempt to influence our elections and promote anti-American groups like La Raza. 

• Richard Fernandez writes about the border crises facing both the United States and Europe:

        [T]he biggest aspect of the crisis, even though it is underreported, is in countries close to where 22.5 million have fled imploding societies -- the biggest such tide of displacement since WWII. The numbers are staggering: Turkey has 3.5 million Syrian refugees, tiny Lebanon a million; 1.5 million Afghans are camped in Pakistan; more than a million Sudanese are cooling their heels in Uganda. In South America, one million Venezuelans fleeing Bolivarian socialism have lodged in Colombia. In Central America, multitudes of "families and unaccompanied children" daily flee their own crime-ridden societies for the U.S.:

       Current homicide rates are among the highest ever recorded in Central America. Several cities, including San Salvador, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, are among the 10 most dangerous in the world. The most visible evidence of violence is the high rate of brutal homicides, but other human rights abuses are on the rise, including the recruitment of children into gangs, extortion and sexual violence. 

       From 2011 to 2016, the number of people from the Northern Triangle who have sought refuge in surrounding countries has increased by 2,249 percent. The majority fleeing are women and children. In 2016, 388,000 people fled the region – more continued to flee in 2017. The rapid growth of those forced from their homes is quickly outstripping available resources, leaving many vulnerable children, women and men without physical and legal protection.

       The migration crisis is an indictment of the global world order.

       It also underscores its biggest weakness: a grandly named system ironically incapable of either preventing the collapse of its constituents or managing the displacement of tens of millions.

• Related: British police can't (or won't) do anything to stem the rising violent crime caused by migrants, but they have the time to track down people expressing there concern or dislike for immigrants and immigrant crime: "Brits Arrest Almost 3500 People For Offensive Online Content"--Anonymous Conservative.

• "Chain Migration Comes to Hazleton"--City Journal. Hazleton, Pennsylvania, used to be a pleasant working class town with low crime. Now it "has been radically transformed since the early 2000s by secondary chain migration, principally driven by Dominicans—immigrants, both legal and illegal, as well as second- and third-generation citizens arriving from the New York metropolitan area." In 2000, less than 5% of the town was Hispanic; now it is over 50%. Crime is also up, and the town is a hotbed of organized drug gangs. From the article:

        Of course, Dominicans also take pride in their culture, but their gateway neighborhoods in New York served as an extension of their country of origin; assimilation proved unnecessary. The pattern has repeated itself in Hazleton. The broader Hazleton community has encouraged Dominicans’ political and civic involvement, but the newcomers often remain disengaged in local matters. Hazleton has become an important campaign stop for the Dominican Republic’s leading political candidates, for example, suggesting to many Hazleton residents that their new neighbors, even when U.S. citizens—and many are not—retain stronger ties to their ancestral home than to their city, or even to America. Resentments on both sides have grown.

       Hazleton’s Dominicans are living in a city that traditionally handled its immigrant diversity by emphasizing assimilation, but today’s conversations about immigration often downplay, and even dismiss, assimilation. During the Obama years, liberal elites, and many conservatives, ignored Americans’ longing for community stability. As columnist Peggy Noonan puts it, such elites, safely removed from the “roughness of the world,” have often supported immigration policies, including tolerating large numbers of illegal immigrants, that are harmful toward the “unprotected”—those living in struggling cities like Hazleton. “If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration,” Noonan wrote. “You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you.”

       This was true of Hazleton, part of a county that, until recently, found political refuge in the Democratic Party. Luzerne County’s voters, though ideologically agnostic, nurtured an enduring belief in the legacy of the New Deal. But they felt increasingly betrayed by Democrats, who seemed unconcerned by the underlying problems of their communities. Many Hazleton residents preserve and maintain their century-old homes, spanning generations in their family. But they reside in neighborhoods now afflicted by late-night gunshots, noise-ordinance violations, drug deals, and blighted properties.

The lesson is that migrants from dysfunctional cultures bring that dysfunction with them.

• Jesse Kelly writes, at The Federalist: "America Is Over, But I Won’t See It Go Without An Epic Fight." He reminds us:

       The Indians were faced with something that faces all civilizations. It’s something we face now. They were facing the unstoppable force of inevitability. Many of them knew it. The settlers from Europe were about to take over every inch of this country. Some tribes, like the Choctaw, chose to play nice with the government in hopes that their peaceful gesture would be returned. They got a Trail of Tears for their kindness.

       But some tribes, like the Lakota, chose a different path. They chose war. Leaders of the Lakota like Sitting Bull knew full well how this war would end. Nevertheless, he gathered thousands of young warriors in the Black Hills and made his enemy feel some pain before he surrendered. He scored a decisive win at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and collected some scalps. Yes, the U.S. government prevailed in the end, but General Custer and his 200 men weren’t there to see it.

Kelly believes that it is inevitable that the the Left--and the Globalists--will win. To him, it is the choice of how you will lose:

When you make that long trek to the reservation the leftists have set up for you—and make that trek you will—what memories do you want to take with you? When living in the liberal utopian nightmare of 57 genders and government control over everything in your life, you will want to have been a Lakota. You’ll want to know, to remember, even just cherish the knowledge that, one day, you rode out onto the plains and made them feel pain.

• I think not. "Has the West the Will to Survive?"--Ammo Land.  The author writes:

       Is there a liberal, progressive, Christian way to seal a 2,000-mile border, halt millions of migrants from crossing it illegally, and send intruders back whence they came? Or does the preservation of Western nations and peoples require measures from which liberal societies today reflexively recoil?

        Does the survival of the West as a civilization require a ruthlessness the West no longer possess?

       Consider what our fathers did to build this country.

        The English settlers brought in 600,000 slaves, ethnically cleansed the Indians, joined their cousins in a war to expel the French, then revolted and threw out those cousins to claim all the land to the Mississippi for ourselves.

       Jefferson grabbed the vast Louisiana Territory for $15 million from Napoleon, who had no right to sell it. Andrew Jackson drove the Spanish out of Florida, sent the Cherokee packing on the Trail of Tears, and told a dissenting Chief Justice John Marshall where he could go.

        Sam Houston tore Texas away from Mexico. “Jimmy” Polk took the Southwest and California in a war Ulysses Grant called “the most unjust ever fought.” When the South declared independence, Lincoln sent a million-man army to march them back in a war that cost 600,000 lives.

         William McKinley sent armies and warships to seize Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. The indigenous peoples were not consulted. “God told me to take the Philippines,” said McKinley.

        The conquest and colonization of the New World and the creation of the United States and its rise to world power required acts of aggression and war ....

       Which brings us again to the larger questions.

       While our forefathers would have not hesitated to do what was needed to secure our borders and expel intruders, it is not a settled matter as to whether this generation has the will to preserve the West.

        Progressives may parade their moral superiority as they cheer the defeat of the “zero tolerance” policy. But they have no solution to the crisis. Indeed, many do not even see it as a crisis because they do not see themselves as belonging to a separate tribe, nation or people threatened by an epochal invasion from the Third World.

      They see themselves as belonging to an ideological nation, a nation of ideas, whose mission is to go forth and preach and teach all peoples the gospel of democracy, diversity and equality.

• Expect the calls for gun control to escalate; the Left is stymied from what they would like to do by the very fact of there being an armed populous:

• "Is violence next? Some Democrats encourage aggressive public confrontations against Trump, aides"--Washington Times.

• "Is America headed toward a civil war? Sanders, Nielsen incidents show it has already begun"--Glenn Reynolds at USA Today.

• "Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, and Progressives' Dangerous Games"--Erick Erickson.

        But the left is more and more normalizing violence and harassment against their political opponents and justifying it with the language of morality. What should not be normal is becoming normal, and that is a dangerous game. This will not end well for anyone. Violent extremists on the left, including Hollywood celebrities, are only going to emboldened more James Hodgkinsons. It is going to happen. And the condemnation from the left will become more and more faint as it does. They have decided the President and his supporters get what they deserve.

      This won't end well.

• I often see people scoff at the idea of a civil war being imminent because things aren't like they were in the 1850's prior to the American Civil War. Which just shows the ignorance of those making such comparisons. Civil wars are not always fought over whether one part of the nation can secede, but generally about whose faction will control government. For example, practically every civil war fought within the Roman Republic and Empire; the Russian Civil War that pitted the White Russians against the Communists; the 30 Years War; etc.