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Bully Pulpit

The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful. The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Immigration vs. Migration


Really? In what way?


Both Vox Day and Mark Steyn have written at length on the thesis that what the United States sees as an immigration problem is actually a migration. Both have offered that a solution will not be forthcoming until the issue is properly identified.


How is the solution obvious?


Because, as others have noted, migration is synonymous with invasion. Meeting an invasion can only be accomplished in one of two ways from the larger perspective: you can repulse it or you can succumb to it. The trade-offs involved with repulsing it are well known, whereas there are no trade-offs in succumbing to it. Acquiescence means the death of the invaded country's society and culture, one way or the other.


To me, there really is no solution. It's just going to happen - the 'melting pot,' if you will.


I think you're missing the distinction between immigration and migration. Immigration implies assimilation, and that's where the melting pot happens. Migration is invasion and is exclusive of assimilation. The migration from our South does not have assimilation as its goal. The in-flooding Mexicans, Colombians, and others have no desire to learn English or to be otherwise assimilated into American culture and society. This is what differentiates immigration from invasion and occupation.


And since the US (overwhelmingly a Christian nation) has Christianity in common with the vast majority of those 'migrating' to our soil (who are generally Catholic Hispanics), I don't see how your example of the Muslim incursions into Europe apply here, other than the large numbers involved in the movement.


I don't know that it is accurate to call the US a "Christian" nation any more. I just saw some demographics and the similarities between North American and South American culture with respect to religion are only passing at best. In the demographics I saw, fewer than half of North Americans self-identify as religious and having an affiliation with an organized church. In the US, of those identifying themselves as religious, only 1 in 5 is Roman Catholic. In any case, there is more to the disparity between the two cultures than just religion. The differences between Latin American and North American cultures are easily as great as those between fifteenth century Moorish culture and that of Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand. Just the differences in language and economics are enough to create a cultural struggle of epic proportions.


Since religion seems to be at the core of what separates the cultures of the world, our problems will most likely be peaceful (and economically-based) in comparison.


Not at all. Associating religion with causality for cultural differences is an artifact of the rhetoric used by those who are antipathetic toward it. It comes from the same school of polemic that spawns the canard that religion is responsible for most or all of the world's wars.

What it comes down to, for the United States, is whether we are willing to recognize that the in-migration that is in progress right now will mean the eventual death of our culture. And once we recognize that fact, will we acquiesce to the nihilism of our own cultural and political left and let it die, or will we act to protect it? And if we act to protect it, will we recognize the cost and bear the burden?

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