From Instapundit in its entirety:
THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS WAS JUST A NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? ‘Camp of The Saints’ Seen Mirrored In Pope’s Message.
The novel, which has been translated into English, is entitled Camp of the Saints, and posits that the liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself. Raspail’s thesis, quite simply, is that liberalism is inadequate to defend liberalism.
All around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book. The novel features a new pope, born in Latin American, who is “in tune with the times, congenial to the press” who preaches “universal love” and calls on the Western world to open its borders to the world’s migrants. Now, as in the novel, prominent political officials are urging on ever larger waves; secular and religious leaders hold hands to pressure blue collar citizens to drop their resistance; media elites and celebrities zealously cheer the opportunity that the migrants provide to atone for the alleged sins of the West— for the chance to rebalance the wealth and power of the world by allowing poor migrants from failed states to rush in to claim its treasures.
Raspail argues that the inability of the Western conscience to erect walls, to “put her foot down,” to turn people away, will lead to the undoing of Western civilization itself.
As the world’s eyes turn to the U.S. arrival of the pope, many conservatives are arguing that Jean Raspail’s book has perhaps come to life.
That’s silly. It’s like suggesting that Fallen Angels was prophetic.
It’s all about assimilation – as Rush said, there is a REASON why the West is rich and other parts of the world are not – culture matters.
…The one thing that I can honestly say that has perplexed me all of my life — and you know me, I’m the mayor of Realville, and I live and breathe nothing more complicated than common sense. It’s the other stuff that confuses me. Common sense, to me, is simple. And I’ve never understood why there aren’t a lot of people trying to figure out how the United States became this special place and then try to replicate it around the world, because that’s the solution to the human condition. The solution to poverty, the solution to misery, the solution to backwards living is the United States of America. Why not learn how that happened, learn why and how we happened. What is it that made it special? Don’t just assume that it just happened, quirk of fate, a meeting of various forces coming together in a giant coincidence.
That’s not what it was. It was miraculous in a way. Why not try to replicate it. If you really love people, you say you really love people, really care about people, want the best for people, well, this is the best place. Instead of coming here and destroying it, why not copy it, replicate it? I never understood that, folks. I mean, on a certain level I do of course.
If you bring in too many that don’t understand the underlying culture and the reasons for that success, well, then we are back to Robert Heinlein’s “bad luck”:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
