Camp of the Saints, 2014 style

Given the crush of news, NRO is overloaded with good stuff today. At NRO our friend Mac Owens has followed up on my “Camp of the Saints revisited” with what NRO calls “Camp of the Saints, 2014 style?” Mac’s column is already far down the NRO home page and hard to find unless you go looking for it. I want to draw it to your attention.

As Mac explores the relevance of Jean Raspail’s dystopian novel to the invasion of alien minors across our southern border, I think the question mark can be removed. Here is the heart of Mac’s column:

Raspail was ahead of his time in demonstrating that Western civilization had lost its sense of purpose and history — its “exceptionalism.” If the loss of self-confidence on the part of Western liberal society was apparent in 1973, it is much more so today. The pious nonsense spouted in the novel by apologists for the overwhelming onslaught against France merely adumbrates what has become mainstream today.

Of course, Raspail was denounced as a racist, and his emphasis on the white race can indeed be off-putting. But the central issue of the novel is not race but culture and political principles. The United States has always welcomed immigrants, but until recently, it has expected them to assimilate — in other words, to become “Americans.” The traditional focus of American society has been the individual. Instead, multiculturalism has spawned a balkanized society of resentful members of various groups that seek favors for themselves, often at the expense of other groups — identity politics at its worst.

And that is the real danger today — that the American political system will be swamped by people who seek material goods but who disdain the American achievement in creating a government that protects the individual rights of all, without regard to membership in a favored group.

Please check out the whole thing here.

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