Donald Trump has a sensible, patriotic plan for fixing legal immigration. It dropped from the headlines. Polls show strong support for it. This in the face of constant media hostility. Trump ought to be giving the full court press to passing it. It’s something concrete he can accomplish. It would fulfill the promises made to his core voters. But most of all, it would help to stabilize our country. We need that more than we have in decades, because of all the native-grown forces of division that keep popping up.

On so many issues, the left has dialed up its outrage meter to “11.” It backs the persecution of Christian bakers. Of tech employees who disagree with their boss’s politics. Of conservative and even moderate college profs. Meanwhile, our elites scan the pages of obscure academic journals and grievance groups. Their quest? To find ever new outrages to launch against existing mores. To find the last few surviving strands of Christian faith, or of rational thinking, then rip them out by the roots. Before we could wrap our heads around same-sex marriage, BAM! We had to justify why we were anti-trans bigots for wanting single sex bathrooms. Then BAM! Why are so hateful that we don’t want to fund sex change operations for soldiers? How cruel and harsh can we be, to favor policies that liberals also favored, say, two years ago?

Can We Just Stop with the Craziness Already?

We need a break. That’s the main reason most people voted for Donald Trump. He was gruff. Politically incorrect. Even kind of a cad. Maybe he would have a thick enough skin. He’d be “rude” to endure all the abuse. To say “Heck, no!” to the next set of crackpot demands.

One of the easiest ways to destabilize a country: Flood it with newcomers.

One of the easiest ways to destabilize a country: Flood it with newcomers. Want to wreck the place quickly and irreversibly? Make them openly hostile colonists. Like the hundreds of thousands of strutting sharia Muslims. You know, the guys who are now harassing/shaming/raping women all over Europe.

But America doesn’t sit close to any massive Muslim population centers. And newcomers need not be hostile to have an impact. Just large, large numbers of people all coming at once. That will do the trick. Especially if your country has lost the techniques for assimilating them. Or if it has just become too self-hating even to try.

Assimilating America to its Immigrants

American institutions have given up on assimilation. Schools back in the 1920s would have aggressively (even obnoxiously) striven to “Americanize” immigrants and their kids. Now those schools push America-bashing, leftist narratives. They assign books that demonize our founders. (See Howard Zinn’s Marxist A People’s History of the United States.) Some teachers and texts even boost aggressive foreign nationalism.

As far back as 1995, some California public schools were using a textbook that advocated the “reconquista” of the Southwest for Mexico. How? Via mass immigration:

Santa Barbara County has adopted a textbook which calls for the “liberation of Aztlan” by Chicanos. The book, The Mexican American Heritage, will be used for high school “Chicano studies” throughout Santa Barbara County.

According to a review of the book by Debora L. Sutherland of Santa Barbara, the book introduces the concept of “Aztlan” in the first chapter and from that point on uses the term to mean the seven states of the Southwest which were ceded to the U.S. by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

“The book consistently questions the validity of our existing border with Mexico,” Sutherland wrote.” It also makes it very clear that with the continuing influx of Latinos into the Southwest along with their high birthrate, these so-called ‘natives’ will realize their power to control Aztlan once again.”

On page 107 it says, “Latinos are now realizing that the power to control Aztlan may once again be in their hands.”

A Self-Hating America Can’t Help Immigrants

Now such curricula have gone state-wide. If the massive California school system buys into a program, New York and Wisconsin cannot be far behind. Such programs will likely show up and become mandatory in dozens of other states. Stanley Kurtz warned about this in National Review. He judged a K-12 curriculum proposed for California in 2016:

[T]he College Board’s latest AP U.S. History framework drastically downplays, omits, and distorts the significance of the assimilationist ethos in American history. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the proposed California framework is even worse than AP on immigration. I think it’s fair to characterize California’s new curriculum as openly anti-assimilationist….

[I]nstead of simply presenting the across-the-board political and cultural consensus of the Progressive Era in favor of assimilation, the authors of the framework feel it necessary to insist that the ideal of immigrant assimilation is no longer appropriate, and was probably based on some combination of bigotry and selfishness when it flourished.

The framework offers not a hint of the role played by American democratic ideals in the process of assimilation. Liberty and equality, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in our constitutional system, are the glue that binds Americans together, regardless of race or ethnicity… . The proposed California curriculum not only omits and distorts the historical truth about assimilation, it intentionally makes it all but impossible to introduce a new generation of immigrants to the secret of America’s success.

The framework’s anti-assimilationist theme is carried through to the 1960s, where radicals and ethnic separatists are featured and presented as part of a benign push for civil rights. The black power movement, with its demands for racial separatism and change “by any means necessary,” is portrayed as beneficial, if misunderstood. The violent and still controversial American Indian Movement gets similar treatment. Most striking of all, El Plan de Aztlan, the charter of the radical group MEChA, the militant separatist organization which aims to “reconquer” the American Southwest for Mexico, is also featured as a benign example of sixties civil rights activism. This is a dangerous concession to a group whose activists populate many California schools. It is also the ultimate repudiation of America’s assimilationist ethos.

We Owe You a Living

My grandfather arrived in 1916 from Croatia. He got a job, learned English, and assimilated. If he arrived today, he might not. And why not? Let’s tote up the differences between the experience of low-skill immigrants in 1916 and 2017.

• Immigrants then had to find work or go home.
• Immigrants today can find enough government support that they’d be crazy to go back. They live better on U.S. welfare than they ever could back home.
• Immigrants then faced public institutions, schools, churches, and even employers who touted the benefits of “Americanization.”
• Today they face institutions that say precisely the opposite. They don’t see “diversity” as a challenge. Or even as a neutral phenomenon. No, it’s a positive value we must embrace. Indeed, it’s a central dogma of our new civic religion. Heretics will be punished.

Immigrants like my grandfather knew it was a privilege to live in America. If they didn’t realize it? Every single American institution — even their churches — drove it home.

Immigrants like my grandfather knew it was a privilege to live in America. If they didn’t realize it? Every single American institution — even their churches — drove it home.

Assuming they’re not white Europeans, immigrants and their children today are taught that they are victims. (Which is funny, since they came here willingly and are free to leave.) They enjoy affirmative action benefits which we created for descendants of slaves. You can discriminate in favor of any non-white immigrant against a white, male war veteran. That’s perfectly legal. What message does that send? Is it good for immigrants as citizens? Is it healthy for them spiritually? Is the welfare system that welcomes them a wholesome influence on new Americans? So far, the answer to those questions seems to be a sober and ringing, “No.”

The textbooks and teachers we give them tell immigrants that America exploited their ancestors. That it oppresses them now. That it essentially owes them a living. What could go wrong in such a scenario?

The answer to that question is easy. It can be summed in one word: California.