Maggie's Farm

Murray's idea is far too rational to be tried, but it's a darn good mental exercise. Count me as being in favor of it. One quote:

We start with a country that is the richest country in the world, with most of its people having lots of money (compared to any historical standard), ample money to provide for their own retirements, medical care, and the rest of it. On top of this national wealth, we then add more than $1 trillion to help people provide for comfortable retirement and medical care, and so forth. And guess what? We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate medical care. And only a government can spend that much money that ineffectually.

The alternative I suggest is give every adult American, age 21 and older, $10,000 a year. And let them run with it.

Read the whole thing - link above.

The Multiculturalism movement, which has been sufficiently mocked and demolished endlessly, represents cultural suicide.

A very fine piece by Dinocrat on the subject of the encounter of Sharia Law with Western Liberalism. That encounter leads to fire, as it has for over one thousand years. War is the only solution, and inevitable, as long as Islam requires submission from others. War, or submission, but submission is not my cup of tea. A fight is preferable.

For the past week I have been reading about the wars of the barbarians against the Romans. Those barbarians never did quit. Tribal people for whom fighting and expansion of territory was their way of life. Why didn't they just want to make nice villages and farms along the Danube and the Rhine? We call them "warlike," and that captures it. Rome conquered Gaul not to expand empire - there was nothing valuable there that could not be obtained by trade - but for defense. The tribes would not leave them alone.

Today, we are dealing with people of a similar mentality. If you compromise with them, they will only view it as weakness, and will be encouraged to push your limits further. It is difficult for Western Christian people to imagine the mindset of people who truly view us as subhuman, because we try so hard to be humane. Someone forgot to teach them multiculturalism and tolerance, and perhaps we have been over-taught not to respect and love our culture and our civilization.

They can easily take France and Sweden, but they will never take the USA. We are not warlike, but we are proudly cranky.

In reading all about the "revolution" in Belarus in places like Publius, I realized I knew nothing about it.

Here is where it is. Used to be called "White Russia." Population ten million. Broke from Soviet Union in 1991. Details here. Capital is Minsk. I know a joke about Minsk, but I'm not going to tell it now.

As the Republican Party hosts more and more black candidates, blacks continue to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Why aren't blacks voting somewhere closer to 50-50 like the general population?

From a piece by Shadroui at Intell. Cons:

There are core issues around which whites and blacks can and should rally: economic empowerment, local empowerment, states rights, cultural renovation, school choice, the sanctity of unborn life, etc.
 
Fifty years later, conservatives and Republicans are still trying to convince African-Americans that these causes are not code words for racial attitudes held half a century ago, that many Americans sincerely believe that the path to empowerment now longer lies in Washington, D.C. or Jesse Jackson, that our nation, already tested by so many issues domestic and foreign, still offers opportunities that will benefit their children if they do the hard work of preparation.

Read the whole thing.

Our News Junkie posted the link, this morning, to Big Lizard's piece "It takes a village meathead." Rob Reiner has apparently used taxpayer dollars to purchase PR and advertising to promote one of his personal political agenda items: the necessity to expand government child care.

The consultant, also hired with taxpayer dollars, advised thusly (highlights from Big Lizard):

"We must create demand by creating awareness of the problems caused by insufficient attention to the early years. Currently, not enough people see the need for the state to do more, because they don't see a problem. If we offer people the solution to a problem they are not aware exists, they will reject it. We must educate people that there is a problem, thereby leading to demand for improvement....

We must continue our efforts at parental education. It is crucial that we continue to build upon the work we've already done in educating parents and caregivers about the difference they can make in the way their children develop, not just because it is important in and of itself, but also because it will also help to create more demand for improved programs from the state. The more we communicate about the relationship between the early years and future outcomes -- especially in K-12 -- the more we will create demand for a greater level of service from the state...."

That advice on how to extract more money from California taxpayers cost California taxpayers $110,000.

It seems so simple. Create an atmosphere of crisis, and create a "need" - or, if they can get away with it, a "prescriptive right." Then the State can ride in on its white horse to save the day. Thus government expands incrementally, and freedom and autonomy and self-reliance diminish proportionately, with the ultimate goal being, I suppose, a nation of emotional pre-schoolers as in Europe supervised by a supposedly benevolent tyranny of nannies, bullies, know-it-alls, and sanctimonious busy-bodies.

Interestingly, there is no evidence that so-called "early childhood education," such as Head Start, does any good whatsover. Other than to give mothers a break from their kids. Young kids are probably better off just banging around and following their natural noses in unstructured ways. AKA "playing."

We can see this same pattern of operation on the subject of medical care, climate, gun control - you can name the others. The MSM is typically a willing useful idiot for these efforts, and the cherry-picking of statistics is fairly obvious to those who know anything about statistics.

It is easy nowadays to identify when this crisis du jour process is happening. It is usually fairly-well coordinated, with all sorts of advocacy groups, hungry for grant dollars, on board in advance - and it always requires more government power and control. There is never a freedom solution - never.

The NEA:

"[T]he instructional strategies and learning styles most often favored in the nation's schools," the guidelines declare, "are inconsistent with the cognitive styles, cultural orientations, and cultural characteristics of some groups of students of color."

Not only do I find this racist and demeaning, I find it totally counterproductive and totally defeating the entire purpose of basic education. Not to mention that it is untrue. This isn't benign "multiculturalism" - whatever that is - this is a design to prevent the normal education of those who need it most. This kind of BS makes me nuts.

People in all nations go to school and learn math, reading, foreign languages - esp. English -  and everything else - usually in more rigorous and more disciplined settings than the average American High School. And immigrants have been learning and achieving in America forever, without problems. These morons will end that, if they can.  Story at Front Page. 

Camille Paglia is always interesting. FOX should replace the dreary and chronically disgruntled funeral home director Alan Colmes with a live wire like Camille, who has something interesting and smart to say about everything, and who can talk faster than anyone in NYC and could run circles around teddy-bear Sean. We do not always agree with her, but she is a fountain of stimulation. Two paragraphs from her NYT piece Academic, Heal Thyself:

It now remains to be seen whether Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is capable of self-critique. Will its members acknowledge their own insularity and excesses, or will they continue down the path of smug self-congratulation and vanity? Harvard's reputation for disinterested scholarship has been severely gored by the shadowy manipulations of the self-serving cabal who forced Mr. Summers's premature resignation. That so few of the ostensibly aggrieved faculty members deigned to speak on the record to The Crimson, the student newspaper, illustrates the cagey hypocrisy that permeates fashionable campus leftism, which worships diversity in all things except diversity of thought.

If Harvard cannot correct itself in this crisis, it will signal that academe cannot be trusted to reform itself from within. There is a rising tide of off-campus discontent with the monolithic orthodoxies of humanities departments. David Horowitz, a 1960's radical turned conservative, has researched the lopsided party registration of humanities professors (who tend to be Democrats like me) and proposed an "academic bill of rights" to guarantee fairness and political balance in the classroom. The conservative radio host Sean Hannity regularly broadcasts students' justifiable complaints about biased teachers and urges students to take recording devices to class to gather evidence.

Kay Hymowitz reviews Mansfield's much talked-about new book in Commentary. A few paragraphs from the review:

Harvey Mansfield sets off into America’s treacherous sexual wilderness with a clear destination in mind: to rescue manliness from the bear-like clutches of its enemies, in particular feminists and advocates of a gender-neutral society. As he notes, the opponents of manliness have tried to depose the term altogether, in favor of “masculinity.” They want to expose manliness as a mere social invention, a rationale for male power.

But this, Mansfield observes, begs the question of why men have always had the power in the first place. He finds the answer in manliness, which he defines as “confidence in the face of risk,” an “easy assumption of authority” that leads to an abundance of corollary qualities stereotypically associated with the male of the species. If the womanly tendency is to seek intimacy and personal warmth, the manly tendency is to dominate.

Mansfield concedes that the manly man is not always appealing. He can be willful and boastful, and patronizing toward women. But these annoyances are part of a package that makes the average Joe capable of greater heroism and command than the average Josephine. More open to facing risk, he is more likely to gain and wield power and to make his mark in the world. There can be manly women—Elizabeth I and Margaret Thatcher come to mind—but they are rare.

Male power is not a social artifact, Mansfield argues, but a reflection of our nature, as much a part of biological reality as testosterone itself. This explains the failure of the androgynous utopia promised by the 1960’s. Even after decades of re-educating the young, the line between male and female activities has been “blurred” but not erased. Men, he points out, still drive trucks, fly planes, fix cars, and mow lawns. Women still teach kindergarten, empty hospital bedpans, and clean the kitchen.

Truth is, I do none of those particular male or female things, except sometimes clean the kitchen when it gets really bad. But if Mansfield were President of Harvard, instead of a Yale Prof, he'd be fired for writing this book. Entire review here.

From DeHaviland at Samizdata:

Guy Herber's excellent article The public mood (while the public moo-ed) got me thinking about the nature of the 'Radical Centre'.

The Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology: there is no Blairite or Clintonite (or even 'Bushite') 'The Communist Manifesto' or 'Mein Kampf'. They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that does not organise mass rallies or collectivise farms, it just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera.

Perhaps this also explains the radical centre's transcendent hatred of the USA's system of checks and balances: the US Bill of Rights takes whole sections of civil society and tries to place them outside politics (free speech, the right to have the means to defend yourself etc.). Sure, it fails miserably as often as it succeeds but at least the notion that not absolutely everything is subject to politics is part of the American cultural DNA and that, rather than the US government's policy towards, well, anything, is what makes the US anathema to the Radical Centre (including the US Radical Centre).

The Radical Centre has also been called 'Authoritarian Populism' because it seeks to impose the popular will by force and it does not much care what that will is. Just as liberty for liberty's own sake is the objective of the Classical Liberal/Libertarian rather than some 'overarching narrative' as was the case with the radical statist left and statist right in the corpse filled 20th century, the Radical Centre seek control for control's own sake with no particular grand reason in mind other than to perpetuate a political class whose reason for existence is to make decisions about other people's lives.

The reason they dislike us so much is that to attack regulatory statism is to attack these people's very reason to exist and we challange them on a profound psychological level. They need to control other people just as we need to control our own lives.

The Radical Centre is our demonic reflection.

Thirty-six hours since the Snow Storm of the Century has passed, and still Bush hasn't plowed my driveway.

Nor have I heard from FEMA, nor has anyone offered me any free money or free luxury hotel rooms in NYC. This is difficult for me to comprehend, and it surely represents a failure of leadership at the top. Bush had at least four days advance notice to prepare for this snow disaster, and yet - nothing.

If I didn't have my 4 WD Lexus, I couldn't get out of the house.

And not only that, there is Deep Slush in the village, which presents a serious health hazard to the Aged and Infirm. Does Bush care about the Aged and Infirm? Obviously not. Us regular people are left to Fend for Ourselves without government aid, while the wealthy and privileged loll in the sun in the Caribbean and Cabo and wait for the snow to melt. Or they have the funds to pay someone to plow their driveway or, like The Barrister, are fortunate enough to own their own beautiful snowplow, as posted on Saturday.

Photo of The Barrister's freshly-plowed driveway below. Meanwhile, the rest of us wait for Bush to bring help. Who's taking care of me? Who is in charge at the White House?

Auster has written a stimulating piece on the Founding and the Constitution, noting the extent to which the Founders were preoccupied with procedure rather than with the implicit, small "c" constitution - the civilization - which the government was designed to serve. Was that wisdom, or did they take the nature and character of the nation for granted? I don't know, but Auster has added his own paragraph to the Constitution:

United States Constitution, Article VII, Section 1 (appearing just before the closing section of the Constitution which lays out the procedures for ratification):

In ordaining this Constitution for the common government of the United States of America, we would be remiss if we did not gratefully acknowledge that divine Providence whose blessings have made this government possible. For he has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence. Without the commonalities that make us one people, and the shared struggle for liberty that has made us a free people, this government could not exist. Nor could it exist in a state of pure freedom. Since liberty requires for its continuance the voluntary restraint of our sinful natures, and since such restraint requires the willing subordination of ourselves to the Author of all Good, it is clearly to be seen that this Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

"Traditional and politically incorrect?" Certainly. Very interesting and provocative and highly debatable piece.

If they can tell us how do deal with Iran. We are all ears. Hello? Hello? Aw shucks. They hung up.

I guess it's easier take shots at what others do, than to propose ideas. 

Banning hot-cross buns in England. WFT? Michelle. Those Brits should try emigrating to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and getting them to ban something. Hello???  Where is Chamberlain Churchill when you need him? Have you abandoned all self-respect?

Who is speaking for Britain? Is anyone home? Don't let Maggie's Farm give up on you as our proud Homeland! Where is that Anglo-Saxon-Norman spirit? I do not think that we American cousins are planning to rescue you this time. You are on your own...hot-cross buns. I love 'em. And we love you folks - don't give it away. You have a precious heritage.

We are looking for a special person with latent blogging tendencies, perspicacity, wisdom, a go-for-the-jugular attitude, a legalistic bent, a mind for detail, a sense of humor, and a moderate, balanced, centrist view of the world to produce a new blog to monitor the New York Times.

We are fortunate to have Patterico calling the La-la-land Times on their bias and baloney, and Squaring the Boston Globe keeps a watch on that wholly-owned organ of the loony Left. But, remarkably, thus far no-one has taken on the job of holding the arrogant, condescending, and paleo-leftist Gray Lady to task, leaving many bloggers the task of doing so, on a part-time and occasional basis.

Is anyone out there up for this enjoyable job, which could lead to fame and fortune, babes or guys or whatever you like, a new Maserati in the driveway, free beers, social popularity, and doubtless countless appearances on the Sean Hannity radio show and on O'Reilly?

If serious about taking on this adventure in a diligent manner, email us. Maggy's Farm will be happy to set you up with your own blog, and cover your start-up costs and twelve month's operation, and more if necessary. Our prosperous Gwynnie agreed to pay for that. The only unpleasant part of the job entails reading the darn NYT daily while remaining calm and not blowing a gasket. (Yes, the Washington Post is next on the agenda. But First Things First.)

Mark Steyn, as always, nails it in his piece titled Sensitivity can have brutal consequences:

 But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

Straw hailed them not for their manners, but for their timidity. In brave England? The England of Churchill? Are Straw and Blair our modern-day "better red than dead" weenies? Read Steyn's entire piece - especially our readers in Europe. You have been fore-warned, as the Jihadists say, which is all they need to do to get murder off of their consciences, apparently, according to their rules. Awake yet, Europe, our friends and cousins? Or still asleep?

You are our lucky 3,273,367th visitor, and therefore have been specially selected to be the winner of one of the following:

- A 42-inch plasma TV!!! Delivery not included!!!
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Click below to find out what you have won!!!

...this silence results from the fact that everyone has his state-granted privileges that he fears to lose (journalists, for example, pay lower rates of tax than ordinary mortals). The one thing that unites the French is resistance to change, not because the present is so happy and glorious, but because few understand the causes of past progress, and most look to the future with fear.

Read entire.

Mexico has been invading the US illegally for many years. But without arms, without armies, and with only covert governmental support from Mexico. What kind of President wants its population to leave their country? The East Germans used to dig tunnels to get out, but Mexicans are digging tunnels to get into the US.

In recent years, their armed forces have been engaged in this invasion, behind the scenes. Thanks to the blogs, this quiet war is getting some attention. The MSM ignores it, due to psychotic political correctness or something like that. Kind of similar to the Moslem invansion of Europe.

My suggestion is that Mexico get its act together, and become a country people want to live in and stay in. Why can't they do that? No-one is stopping them, and the US does all it can to help them. They have natural resources, great beaches, good hunting, a big population of nice folks, religion, a work ethic - everything you need to make a proud, successful nation without trying to colonize the US. (We tried being colonies already, and we did not like it very much.)

Message to the invaders, and legal immigrants too from around the planet: Why not stay in your own country, and make it a better place? It's not like the 1920s anymore - there is a world economy and the internet, and we are all connected. Show some pride of homeland - some patriotism. You can do it. Everyone in the world who wants to breathe freedom and who wants to take the risk of economic opportunity and personal development and achievement instead of being weak dependents of a totalitarian or corrupt or socialist State, wants to come to the US. We only have room for a few of you brave good people, and it is a big loss for your home country to have the ambitious and most energetic folks walk away.

Why should the US and Australia be the only Meccas for those excellent, energetic people seeking such fine but difficult things? Be patriots, honor your own traditions, and fix your own place. We did it here. India is doing it, too, Vietnam, even Libya - of all places - among others. It is not easy. For us, it required a war or two or three, but we paid our dues. It is worth the effort.

We don't believe in saints at Maggie's Farm, but we do love Dylan and Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was a progressive Republican with more interests and ideas than he knew what to do with. He was always concerned about the power of industrial monopolies and "trusts," and always genuinely concerned about the farmer and the factory worker at a time when you would have to have been heartless not to be.

Here's Teddy's voice, with a speech on Social and Industrial Justice, 1912.

While chuckling over The Barrister's post yesterday about spying, I arrived at a mini-epiphany: those goofy but loveable entertainers Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are right: the American Left really does hate America.

And the Democratic Party follows their lead just like a pig on a leash. I hate to admit it, because I like the idea of a two-party system, with each holding the other to account, but both loving their country and what it stands for. That ain't what we have now.

So, for amusement, next I Googled "anti-war" and some variants therof and saw what popped up. Please sample some of these to see where the current anti-war movement is coming from. Talk about living in the past!

Truthout, via Geocities, Communist Tactics for the Anti-War Movement, Lessons from Vietnam, Socialist Viewpoint, Tom Dispatch, Veterans for Peace, again Socialist Viewpoint, The Nation, Atheism.com

Now I do not mean to smear anyone with serious and principled misgivings about the War on Terror, or the liberation of the Middle East, with Communist intentions. But I think these sorts of people on the links are where the rhetoric, the talking-points, and the attitudes are coming from: Vietnam and a wish for the defeat of the US, just like The Barrister's character with the tin-foil hat. Too bad they're too young to remember World War 2, or are willfully forgetting it.

This is a real email. The bold highlights are mine. Don't you just love their sensitive concern with "hate"? And don't you just love the idea of reporting speech to campus security? If I find this email offensive, or the SJP offensive, to whom do I report that emotion? I find this creepy, and wonder whether such tender solicitude (aka fear-enforced speech-control) would be shown to Ann Coulter, or George Bush, for that matter. For maximum effect, read out loud with a German accent. Achtung:

Members of the Georgetown University Community,

The Georgetown University Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) will host the fifth annual national conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement  at Georgetown University over the President’s Day holiday weekend, February 17th to 19th, 2006.  As Vice President for Student Affairs, I wanted to take this opportunity to respond to a number of questions our office has received concerning this conference and the controversy associated with it.

In conjunction with the University’s Office of Communications, we have created a website to respond to inquiries and provide other relevant information about the upcoming conference and related activities. That website can be found at: http://explore.georgetown.edu/documents/?DocumentID=12105.

It has also come to my attention that some members of the Georgetown community have received unsolicited emails criticizing the conference, its organizers, and the University. While we have and will continue to investigate these messages to the best of our ability, it may not always be possible to determine their origin.  We anticipate
that such emails may continue.  Conference organizers have informed the Office of Student Affairs that at least one  such email, representing itself as from the Palestine Solidarity Movement, is fraudulent.

If you receive emails that are offensive or hateful in nature, please forward them to the University Information Security Office at %3Cmailto:abuse@georgetown.edu%3E.  If you have further questions, please visit the website above.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Todd A. Olson, PhD
Vice President for Student Affairs

Daily Pundit on "The coming catastrophe in Britain:"

To add to Lastango's series of posts on the decline and fall of the United Kingdom, come two related articles in The Sunday Telegraph. The first is one of the leaders, which details how Labour's handling of public-sector pensions could end up bankrupting the country, The second is by Max Hastings, the military historian (and no fan of the Iraq war). He states that the cult of human rights legisaltion is gutting the British armed forces, long regarded as among the finest on the planet. Taken together, the articles make for depressing reading.

Read his entire piece.

Culturally, religiously, genetically, and economically, we Americans feel most connected to Europe, and to the Anglosphere. It's only natural, but it isn't necessarily for the best.

In the US, our interest and attention has quickly moved to India, China, and to the east in general. You are being left behind by the movement of history, but there is no-one to blame but yourselves that India is more friendly to business growth, innovation, jobs and creativity. More friendly to the future and more committed to the Work Ethic.

But at Maggie's Farm, we are deeply concerned about the direction being taken by our European cousins. And not because of any self-interest - it is purely an emotional and nostalgic family matter to us. When one watches a close family member heading for disaster, it is impossible to be indifferent or to remain silent. All we can do is to talk to you with love and concern.

We are concerned with your judgement and prudence:

You have taken sanctimonious, pseudo-neo-Maoist Political Correctness to a self-satirical and suicidal extent.

You have regulated your businesses to the point of suffocation.

You have taken moral equivalency to the point of endorsing moral nihilism.

You have endorsed masochistic pacifism -  a self-destructive pacifism, since the "Better Red than Dead" days, (if not before).

Your loony do-gooders are destroying your noble and historic culture and traditions.

You are abandoning the idea of "family" by letting "the State" become the surrogate parent, and getting comfortable with people becoming children, as in feudalism.

You don't have three or four children because you cannot afford them, or because you have no confidence in your future, or because you are self-obsessed - and your native population is declining.

Your antiquated, dusty socialist and "third-way" Nanny State notions destroy entrepreneurialism, growth, energy, and a can-do attitude, and reward sloth, lethargy, discouragement, "working the system", dependency, excuse-based values, and hedonism.

Your taxes tax the human spirit, discourage effort, defeat invention, and drive business, and work, away to more friendly climates.

Your tax-supported subsidies support long-dead industries and businesses and their parastic unions, like brain-dead bodies on life-support - and thus drain capital from new vibrant enterprises.

You welcome too many immigrants from alien cultures because you have no confidence or pride in your own. Sure, permit limited immigration, but not invasion or you won't have your country anymore.

You reward the sociopathic and weak, and seem to resent and punish your achievers.

You deprive your people of arms, and welcome murderous invaders. Can it be true that you are not allowed to shoot intruders in your home? That is nuts. Why not simply castrate your men at birth, if you don't want your men to protect and preserve their families. Call a copper? Please!

Your antipathy for religion (unless it's the religion of others) has left you with a spiritual and moral emptiness - a vacuum -  to be filled with...what? What sacred values? Is there nothing you believe worth dying for? You are better than that!

Your losses of your Empires has left you with no easy source of national pride and seemingly with no avenue for adventure and energy and heroism, and with multiple avenues for exhaustion and defeat and dependency - and ultimately moral, economic, cultural, and spiritual poverty.

And you don't listen to enough Country Music.

This is the definition of cultural decadence.

You are heading in a direction which will lead you to becoming a minor backwater of the world - self-preoccupied, comfort-obsessed, culture-less, childless, economically pathetic and, ultimately, a Disney-type travel destination into past history (like a San Gimignano run by Moslems) living on long-past glory like beggars, instead of a growing, energetic, inspiring and vital part of the planet which is grounded in a profoundly important heritage of freedom and thought and energy and pride. You chose a false security over vitality, and that will never work out in the long run. You have given up too much, and replaced it with a big nothing. Or with an illusion of comfort and ease, like spoiled children. That is not what man was made for, and it is not mature and not manly and not noble.

And what is this EU nonsense? An endless source of rules produced by a million un-elected bureacrats who only want you to be "better"? What? You need that? You want that? The EU is nothing but a multi-billion-dollar bitch of a Kindergarten teacher, and not one of them has more sense than the average Brit tradesman or French artichoke farmer or German banker. Less - or those over-educated bureaucrats would have real productive jobs in the real world.

It is painful to the millions of Americans of European heritage to watch this happening before our eyes. It feels, to us in the US, like having a suicidal child - or even worse - a suicidal parent.

Well, it's your life and these are your countries, and you will do what you want, even if it is destruction of spirit and history and future. But we have to, at least, speak out about it. This is a battle of spirit and soul and heart and cultural confidence - a battle without armies, from which the USA cannot and will not rescue you, because the damage is self-inflicted.

The rest of this big world is going to "eat your lunch" culturally, economically, and in every other way - without a single shot being fired (deGaulle, Churchill, and Eisenhower are weeping in their graves), unless you pull up your socks and get with reality - fast.

Your friends and relatives in the US pray that you will.

(Yes, that is Winchester Cathedral.)