XPost: can.politics, can.general   
   From: Pat@Buchanan.org   
      
   Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,   
      
   “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet Robert Frost   
   in the opening line of “Mending Walls.”   
      
   And on the American left there is something like revulsion at the idea   
   of the “beautiful wall” President Trump intends to build along the   
   1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.   
      
   The opposition’s arguments are usually rooted in economics or   
   practicality. The wall is unnecessary. It will not stop people from   
   coming illegally. It costs too much.   
      
   Yet something deeper is afoot here. The idea of a permanent barrier   
   between our countries goes to the heart of the divide between our two   
   Americas on the most fundamental of questions.   
      
   Who are we? What is a nation? What does America stand for?   
      
   Those desperate to see the wall built, illegal immigration halted, and   
   those here illegally deported, see the country they grew up in as dying,   
   disappearing, with something strange and foreign taking its place.   
      
   It is not only that illegal migrants take jobs from Americans, that they   
   commit crimes, or that so many require subsidized food, welfare,   
   housing, education and health care. It is that they are changing our   
   country. They are changing who we are.   
      
   Two decades ago, the Old Right and the neocons engaged in a ferocious   
   debate over what America was and is.   
      
   Were we from the beginning a new, unique, separate and identifiable   
   people like the British, French and Germans?   
      
   Or was America a new kind of nation, an ideological nation, an invented   
   nation, united by an acceptance of the ideas and ideals of Jefferson,   
   Madison, Lincoln and Dr. King?   
      
   The Old Right contended that America existed even before the Revolution,   
   and that this new nation, this new people, wrote its own birth   
   certificate, the Constitution. Before Washington, Madison and Hamilton   
   ever went to Philadelphia, America existed.   
      
   What forced the premature birth of the nation — was the Revolution.   
      
   We did not become a new nation because we embraced Jefferson’s notion   
   about all men being “created equal.” We became a new people from our   
   familial break with the Mother Country, described in the declaration as   
   a severing of ties with our “brethren” across the sea who no longer   
   deserved our loyalty or love.   
      
   The United States came into being in 1789. The Constitution created the   
   government, the state. But the country already existed.   
      
   When the Irish came in the mid-19th century to escape the famine and the   
   Germans to escape Bismarck’s Prussia, and the Italians, Jews, Poles,   
   Greeks, Slovaks came to Ellis Island, they were foreigners who became   
   citizens, and then, after a time, Americans.   
      
   Not until decades after the Great Migration of 1890-1920, with the   
   common trials of the Depression, World War II and Cold War, were we   
   truly forged again into one united nation and people.   
      
   By 1960, almost all of us shared the same heroes and holidays, spoke the   
   same language and cherished the same culture.   
      
   What those with memories of that America see happening today is the   
   disintegration of our nation of yesterday. The savagery of our politics,   
   exemplified in the last election, testifies to how Americans are coming   
   to detest one another as much as the Valley Forge generation came to   
   detest the British from whom they broke free.   
      
   In 1960, we were a Western Christian country. Ninety percent of our   
   people traced their roots to Europe. Ninety percent bore some connection   
   to the Christian faith. To the tens of millions for whom Trump appeals,   
   what the wall represents is our last chance to preserve that nation and   
   people.   
      
   To many on the cosmopolitan left, ethnic or national identity is not   
   only not worth fighting for, it is not even worth preserving. It is a   
   form of atavistic tribalism or racism.   
      
   The Trump wall then touches on the great struggle of our age.   
      
   Given that 80 percent of all people of color vote Democratic, neither   
   the Trump movement nor the Republican Party can survive the Third   
   Worldization of the United States now written in the cards.   
      
   Moreover, with the disintegration of the nation we are seeing, and with   
   talk of the breakup of states like Texas and secession of states like   
   California, how do we survive as one nation and people?   
      
   Old Europe never knew mass immigration until the 20th century.   
      
   Now, across Europe, center-left and center-right parties are facing   
   massive defections because they are perceived as incapable of coping   
   with the existential threat of the age — the overrunning of the   
   continent from Africa and the Middle East.   
      
   President Trump’s wall is a statement to the world: This is our country.   
   We decide who comes here. And we will defend our borders.   
      
   The crisis of our time is not that some Americans are saying this, but   
   that so many are too paralyzed to say it, or do not care, or embrace   
   what is happening to their country.   
      
   http://buchanan.org/blog/trumps-wall-says-world-126472   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)