MacIntyre: America: A country or a cash register?

The identity of a nation is a critical thing. A country that does not understand its identity and purpose cannot bond over shared goals in the present or form a shared vision of the future.

America is a nation undergoing a deep identity crisis as a progressive cultural revolution rewrites its history and open borders transform its population. For decades the Republicans ignored this identity crisis in favor of economic gain, supporting the agenda of large corporations and pushing a hedonistic ideal of liberation at any cost. Now that conservatives have seen the horror of drag queen story hour and woke capital, they are starting to understand the price that materialistic indifference has extracted, and many are attempting to change course.

This is a critical development, but it comes far too late. Democrats are often clever enough to obfuscate their agenda, but Barack Obama was kind enough to articulate the left’s goal of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” for all to hear. This transformation has been under way for some time, and if Americans do not make a conscious decision about their national identity soon, that decision will be made for them in perpetuity.

According to reports, the federal government has authorized the Border Patrol to begin mass releases of illegal immigrants into American border towns. Shelters and border facilities have been overwhelmed by waves of migrants who were emboldened by the Biden administration’s destructive immigration policy.

The foreign nationals inhabiting those facilities are about to surge into small American communities, overtaxing their infrastructure and radically impacting the lives of residents. From there, these illegal immigrants are likely to disperse deeper into the country, and without any real way to keep track of them, the Border Patrol will have essentially aided in making these illegal immigrants permanent residents of the United States. The new arrivals will join the millions of illegal immigrants who have already poured through America’s open border under Joe Biden and will help to achieve the fundamental transformation that Democrats seek.

Anyone with brain and a conscience is understandably concerned about America’s rising crime rate, crumbling education system, and horrific obsession with child mutilation. Policies aimed at addressing these issues are important and essential, but they become meaningless in the face of unchecked mass migrations. Many of the illegal immigrants entering the United States come from countries with some of the highest murder rates in the world, like Honduras and Venezuela. Two weeks ago, a Mexican national with multiple illegal entries into the United States on his record allegedly shot five of his neighbors in Texas with an AR-15.

Most illegal immigrants will simply be people seeking economic opportunity, but a nation cannot import the population of another country without also importing the problems of that country to some degree. The fact that the party of police abolition is also the party of open borders is no coincidence. There is simply no tough-on-crime policy that can outpace the unrestricted flow of illegal aliens into the United States.

Open borders may have a serious impact on crime, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, the Democratic Party understands that open borders allow for the importation of a voting bloc that will permanently shift electoral outcomes in Democrats' favor and alter the American political dynamic in perpetuity.

Progressives shrieked incessantly at Tucker Carlson for noticing this obvious fact on his large platform, but the Democrats have been far from subtle about their goal. Leftist politicians and political opponents love to gloat about how the GOP’s days are numbered due to the inevitable demographic shift in the United States. New York Times columnists write articles with titles like “We Can Replace Them” while bragging about how mass immigration will assure that Republicans are never able to hold meaningful power again. The downstream effects of mass immigration exist in a state Michael Anton calls celebration parallax. You are allowed to notice them if you are celebrating them, but you are evil for noticing them if you disagree with the intended results.

Sadly, democracy is a comically easy system of government to hack. If a ruling elite want to stay in power and the current population will not reliably vote the way they are supposed to, the best strategy is simply to import a new, more compliant population who are entirely beholden to those in power. It does not matter if the ruling elite are pushing sex reassignment for children or war in Ukraine; if popular sovereignty is the roadblock to your agenda, the best solution is to acquire a new populace. If anyone who crosses a border can immediately become an American, then the population is fungible and can be manipulated, removed, or replaced as those in power see fit. The rulers owe no allegiance or duty to the people of the nation, only to an ephemeral ideal that can be redefined at the whim of progressive fashion.

The electoral issue is critical, but behind it sits a deeper and more difficult question for conservatives: Is using mass immigration to alter the American population only an issue because it “hacks democracy” and impacts the outcome of elections? If our electoral system could be preserved, would mass immigration be acceptable, or is the replacement of the current American population in and of itself a problem?

Much of permenant Washington, Republicans included, made a deal with large corporations to open American borders to mass immigration, both illegal and illegal, for financial gain. Cheap labor and an ever-expanding consumer base drove record profits and soaring real estate prices, but they also cratered wages for the average American and made homes unaffordable for new families. Stocks boomed, retirement funds swelled, and GDP soared, but social fabric disintegrated and the shared culture of the nation was redefined out of existence. Conservatives cozied up to big business, ignored the impact on the spirit of the nation, and called it small government, but now the bill has come due.

The American right has largely avoided the issue of mass immigration, both legal and illegal, by defining the American dream through economic mobility. If someone wants to work hard and make money, then he can be an American, but this is a terrible way to understand the identity of a county. A population that is considered fungible, kept in a state of constant flux by a ruling class that only cares about the financial bottom line, can never cohere as a people. No change, be it cultural or political, can ever last if the ruling class can simply upend poplar sovereignty by altering the populace.

Is the United States a nation or simply an economic zone? Are Americans a people with a particular identity, or is the country simply a staging area for global techno-capital? A people bound together into a nation can eventually overcome many differences.They can force their ruling class to answer specific concerns and compel them to care about the well-being of the specific individuals and groups that constitute the whole. But the shifting, rootless population of a zone defined only by economic ambition has no such recourse. They can simply be diluted or replaced if they rub the ruling class the wrong way. The United States must decide if it wants to exist as a country or simply as a cash register for its ruling class, and it must make that decision soon, because time is running out.