Michael Yon: "The hardest post I have had to write."

Michael Yon writes about General Erik Kurilla, "one of the most physically courageous and capable Soldiers" Yon has ever known. In combat, that is. Not so much when it comes to defending Americans at home. 

    I felt real pain deeply in my soul when Erik never stood against the death jabs, or women into Ranger Regiment. (Erik became Ranger Regiment Commander and a lot more).

    Nobody gets a pass on death jabs. Not Trump. Not Erik. Nobody.

    This is a moral abomination. This above almost all else bothers me: That Erik Kurilla does not stand up against the invasion of America.

    We are being destroyed.

    We are being destroyed.

    America is being destroyed.

    Civilization is being destroyed. Generals and Admirals should be resigning en-masse. I find it deeply bothersome when the puppets continue to salute Biden while grinding our young people into mulch under jabs and communist indoctrination.

Read the whole thing.

    Several weeks ago I reviewed End Time: Elites, Counter-Elites And The Path Of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin which was a follow-up to his 2016 book, Ages of Discord. A lot of conservatives are fans of William Strauss and Neil Howe's book The Fourth Turning. But while Strauss and Howe describe cycles (the "what"), Turchin describes the mechanisms (the "how") of the cycles. And as Turchin points out, the issues we face essentially boil down to two things: too many "elites" and too many "workers" as a result of immigration. The latter issue is of great concern because too many immigrants drive down wages, drive up prices for goods and housing, and allow the elites to siphon off too much money (thus enriching the elites at the price of the common person). 

    We also know that there are knock-on effects to stagnant or declining relative wealth not the least of which is family formation. Hypergamy is real. And while I often focus on how hypergamy benefits wealthy successful men by providing them with harems of available women, its more general effect is that women will not marry and settle down with men that make less money than the woman. This is one of the reasons that marriage rates have been declining and the age of marriage has been increasing over the last several decades. That is, men's real wages started to stagnate in the 1970s while women's wages generally continued to increase since that time leading to a greater pool of women that make as much or more than men. This change was even more stark among black Americans and may be partly the cause of the higher rates of single-parent homes among them. (See Wage Disparities and Industry Segregation: A Look at Black-White Income Inequality from 1950-2000 by Nathan Marwell, Chicago Federal Reserve). 

    So, in short, low wages equals low family formation. See, e.g., "Survey: Only 10% of young men with low incomes get married"--Asahi Shimbun. Although this article discusses the issue in Japan, it is representative of other countries.

    Only about 10 percent of men aged 21 to 30 with annual incomes below 2 million yen ($13,400) get married, underscoring the need for wage hikes to lift Japan’s low birthrate, the labor ministry said.

    The ministry’s survey tracked people in their 20s for five years from 2013 to see how many of them wed over that period.

    Among men aged 21 to 25, the marriage rate increased to around 30 percent if they earned 3 million yen or more annually.

    And for men aged 26 to 30 who were paid 3 million yen or more a year, the marriage rate was around 40 percent.

And the most basic way to counteract low wages--and as we saw when the U.S. went through a similar issue in the late 1800s and early 1900s--is to shut down immigration. This should be further augmented by deporting the illegals already here.

    The cessation of immigration and deporting of illegals will also benefit the public fisc. Steven Malanga recently delved into the cost imposed by illegal immigrants. ("Illegal Immigration’s Terrifying Cost"--City Journal; h/t Peter Grant). Malanga relates, for instance:

    State and local social spending on migrants is exploding. In a 2021 lawsuit filed by Texas against the Biden administration after it froze deportations of illegals, the state listed $850 million of extraordinary costs due to illegals—including more than $579 million annually at public hospitals for uncompensated medical care and more than $30 million in prenatal care. Texas also reported spending about $150 million a year on incarcerating criminal migrants, and up to $63 million to educate unaccompanied immigrant minors now domiciled in the state.

    Florida faces similar pressures. Hospitals delivered $312 million in uncompensated health services to a total of 111,475 illegals in 2020, and another $340 million to treat a similar number in 2021. Births to illegal-immigrant mothers are one of the biggest burdens on Florida’s health-care system. In 2019, one study estimated, Florida hospitals delivered nearly 9,200 babies to uninsured illegals, with an average price tag of $5,359 per birth. The same study estimated that the state was also spending $1.6 billion yearly on public school education for the children of illegals.

That is just two states and a handful of expenses. More generally, Malanga points out, that while it is true that illegals pay taxes, they on the whole consume more in social services than they pay in taxes:

    Studies that estimate how much people residing in the United States, including citizens, get from government, typically consider various services that everybody accesses, from schools to police and fire protection to roads and other infrastructure. The total benefit per household is typically far greater than most people realize. A 2010 Heritage Foundation study calculated that the average American household received more than $31,500 in government benefits annually. Immigrants here illegally received somewhat less, the study found, because they couldn’t access programs like Medicaid and Social Security, but their benefits still amounted to $24,721 per household. On average, those immigrant households paid far less in taxes than most American households—about $10,300 annually—producing a large net deficit that has likely expanded as states have started offering illegals access to expensive programs like Medicaid and, during the pandemic, unemployment benefits.

    States bear lots of this weight. A 2017 study by the National Academies Panel on the Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration looked specifically at the state services provided to immigrant households, and at immigrant contributions to government revenues. On average across the United States, the study found, immigrant households generated a net deficit—that is, they used more in state and local government services than they generated in revenues—of about $1,600 per household annually. The deficit varies substantially by state. In California, the study put it at $2,020 per household; in Massachusetts, $2,250; in Arizona, about $1,350. Those numbers, when multiplied by the number of immigrant households in each state, add up to huge drains on public treasuries—nearly $19 billion in California, $8 billion in Texas, and $6 billion in New York. And those numbers are surely higher today, given the surge of migrants of the last two years—many not working—and the expansion of benefits in places like California and New York.

He also notes that "migrants, even when they become legal, tend to consume far more in government services than the average American household. A 1998 National Research Council report to the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform determined that more than 30 percent of California’s foreign-born were on Medicaid, compared with 14 percent of native-born households. Legal immigrants were also more than twice as likely to be on welfare as households headed by those born in the U.S." 

    Another issue with immigration is the formation of what Henry Kissinger recently referenced as "pressure groups". The concept is simple: immigrants arrive with a lot of political and ethnic baggage favoring certain countries or peoples or opposing others. One example is the so-called "Israel Lobby" including AIPAC (see, "How Should We Talk About the Israel Lobby’s Power?" by Andrew Sullivan). But one could just as easily point to Muslim organizations (e.g., CAIR) or Cuban exiles (e.g., the Cuban American National Foundation) or Hispanics more generally (e.g., UnidosUS, previously known as NCLR (National Council of La Raza ["the Race"])). 

    They not only organize and lobby in favor of domestic policies which favor their groups, but they are often involved in attempting to influence our foreign policy. We are seeing this play out right now with the Israel Lobby successfully urging the U.S. to support Israel with military aid (above and beyond the money we already give Israel each year) and assistance (as evidenced by our dispatch of two aircraft carrier groups to protect Israel from a group that has nothing larger than a fishing scow); and, on the other side, Palestinians and their reliably anti-Western, anti-Christian allies on the Left leading protests, ripping down pro-Israel posters and signage, and even taking their protests into the Capital Building. This conflict even seeps into our elections. (See, "Pro-Israel lobbying group Aipac secretly pouring millions into defeating progressive Democrats"--The Guardian).

    George Washington warned about "pressure groups" and the like in his farewell address. He wrote (emphasis added):

    The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

    So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

    As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. ...

In short, then, the cessation of immigration and deportation of illegal aliens and their kin will prove an immense boon to our country, and may even save it from ruin. But the failure to control immigration will surely destroy it.