A long litany of antisemitic and anti-Christian hate crimes, and terroristic violence, supports the conclusion that the European Union should be selective as to which migrants it welcomes. This has nothing to do with the race, religion, or ethnicity of the migrants, but rather the incompatibility of their cultures with that of Europe, and also the inability of many European countries to assimilate even people of the same ethnicity who speak the same language.
Ronald Reagan pointed out that the United States is almost unique in its ability to assimilate immigrants from anywhere in the world. “A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’” The United States is the only country in the world with a centuries-long history of assimilating immigrants from all corners of the world. Other nations lack this experience and are far less able to assimilate newcomers.
Consider for example the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which disintegrated in the aftermath of the First World War. Its people never regarded themselves as Austro-Hungarians, but rather Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, and other ethnicities. About all they had in common was that the Hapsburg dynasty married the right people, inherited duchies or kingdoms from the right people, and won the right wars to create an empire. Burgundy, now part of France, was once an Austrian domain because, upon the death of Charles the Bold, his heir Mary of Burgundy married Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor. The duchy’s peasants, who had no say in the matter, probably did not care one way or the other, although the king of France did. Flanders also was, as a result of the Peace of Utrecht, part of the Holy Roman Empire.
One of the functions of the emperor was to get his subjects to kill the nation’s enemies rather than one another. The Hungarians revolted against the Austrians in 1848, and when the empire lost the First World War, it disintegrated into its components, including Czechoslovakia, which later separated peacefully into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Serbia succeeded in creating a South Slavic (Yugoslav) entity, which broke up in the 1990s, whereupon its former components started to kill one another. Let’s just say that they weren’t really into diversity and inclusion.
Neither, in fact, are the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. The Irish never really liked the British, and there is even talk of Welsh and Scottish secession. All these people look roughly alike; talk alike, albeit with different accents; and share pretty much the same enlightened values about human rights and nondiscrimination, along with more than three centuries of common history, but some question whether they should belong to the same country. Why do they think they can assimilate migrants from drastically different cultures and backgrounds, many of whom are unwilling to assimilate at all? Ben Shapiro discusses this in Episode 2110.
Germany is an amalgamation of dozens of countries with their own identities. Some Bavarians, in fact, want to secede and take Oktoberfest, lederhosen, and sauerkraut with them. Why does Germany think it can assimilate migrants when it can’t even get all Germans to think of themselves as Germans? Catalonia has expressed an interest in seceding from Spain. It’s to be remembered that Spain was not even a single country until the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella — that is, it’s a country only because two monarchs decided to marry and pool their collective domains.
The Belgians and Dutch also were killing each other back in 1830 because the Belgians did not want to be part of the Netherlands. Once Belgium seceded, its Flemish and Walloon people could then concentrate on disliking each other, although they now limit their hostility to vandalism of road signs in each other’s languages. If many Flemings and Walloons cannot really see themselves as fellow Belgians, why do they think they can get migrants to do so? The same goes for Canada, where there is friction between English-speakers and French-speakers despite more than two hundred years of shared history. Why does Canada think it can assimilate the migrants (and their home-grown allies) who are wreaking havoc in their cities and universities?
The United States’ Unique History of Assimilation
The United States, unlike European countries, never had one specific ethnic background, so we had to become a melting pot in which everybody can and must assimilate. We speak English only because the United Kingdom won what we call the French and Indian Wars, which was part of the Seven Years’ War in Europe. How many people know we were fighting not only the French and their native allies, but also Austria-Hungary, Russia, Spain, and Sweden (among others)? It was fortunate for us that the Austrians never sent their Pandurs and Grenzers over here to join the French and the natives in shooting at us from behind trees.
France once owned the Louisiana Territories (named for France’s patron saint), which we purchased during the Napoleonic Wars. Detroit (Michigan), Saint Louis (Missouri), and New Orleans (Louisiana) are all French names, and Lasalle, Illinois is named for a French explorer. New York was once New Amsterdam, and “-kill” (a common suffix for streams in New York) is Dutch for stream or river. Spain, meanwhile, owned a good part of what is now the western United States — e.g. “San Diego” (Saint James) is named for the patron saint of Spain. Los Angeles (the Angels, short for Our Lady or Queen of the Angels), San Francisco (Saint Francis), and Las Vegas (The Meadows) speak for themselves. Spain also owned Florida, and Saint Augustine was once a Spanish settlement. We are therefore the product of at least four major colonial powers (England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands), along with substantial German immigration as shown by (for example) “King of Prussia” in Pennsylvania, and of course Native Americans who lived here before our ancestors. More than half our states have Native American names. In any event, it was clear ever since the founding of the United States that, although we might speak English and derive our Constitution from English common law, we could not be another England, France, Netherlands, or Spain. We had to largely forget our ethnic origins and assimilate.
Viktor Orban is right about migrants who are not Hungarians and have no intention of becoming Hungarians, but want instead to live in parallel societies. “We do not know who these people are, what their plans are, how they wish to maintain their own ideals, and we do not know if they will respect our culture and laws. This is an unregulated, uncontrolled process, the definition of which is invasion,” he stressed.
Even the United States, which has had more than three centuries’ experience in welcoming and assimilating people from all over the world (as happened even before we became a country), is now having similar problems with migrants who want to “globalize the intifada,” as a homegrown terrorist did in New Orleans. We must reject these migrants, and it is even more imperative that Europe do so before the inhabitants find themselves living in a caliphate, where Jews, Christians, Hindus, those deemed to be the wrong kinds of Muslims, women, and LGBT people have few if any human rights whatsoever.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. The author remains anonymous due to being subjected to “cancel culture” for denouncing Black Lives Matter’s incitement of civil disorder.
Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
Jesus Christ is King
