Celebrate Xenophobia!

Diversity be damned. It’s time to celebrate xenophobia.
It’s time to reject the “other” and accept that which is plainly evident: Not all cultures are equal. Not all principles of human organization should be given equal respect. Some ways simply are better. Our ways are better.
John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, recently riled social-justice jihadis with this Twitter post: “I think it’s legitimate to prefer one culture to another. For example, I prefer cultures that do not tolerate female genital mutilation.” As do I. As I suspect you do, too.
Our ways are better than other ways humanity organizes itself outside the world we used to refer to – with common understanding and common reverence – as Western civilization. Can you name one nation founded on different principles that is able to provide the combination of legal protections, personal and community rights and freedoms, economic opportunities, and governmental stability that we take for granted here in the epicenter of modern Western civilization?
Merriam-Webster defines xenophobia as “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.” It would seem a bad thing to celebrate. “Diversity” and “inclusion” sound so much better. Can’t we all just get along?
Fear and hatred are strong emotions, yet they have their place. Without them, humans could not have survived; they are built into our fight-or-flight response to danger. But in the post-war era, Americans developed a feeling of economic and social security that was both strong and ahistorical.
History is coming back to bite us. The foundation of our society is crumbling, undermined by forces from within and without. Though it’s been happening for a while, the 2016 election made the cultural divisions between us impossible to ignore. And the crisis at the border has exposed a weakness in our sense of nation and self-determination. We are letting “the other” decide our fate, and we will not survive as a nation unless we stop it. In embracing “the other” we are losing ourselves.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, recently proved himself to be “the other” we should fear. In a letter to President Trump (reprinted in the Wall Street Journal), López Obrador called for the dissolution of the United States of America. Not directly, of course. Leaders of corrupt, failed, narco-terror states are never direct. They hide their meaning in smiling phrases. But the meaning was clear.
He began, “I am aware of your latest position towards Mexico…The peoples and nations we represent deserve that, whenever facing any conflict in our relations, however serious they may be, we resort to dialogue and act with prudence and responsibility.” This from the leader of a nation aiding and abetting the invasion on our shared border that includes citizens of Africa’s Democratic Republic of the Congo, currently in the grips of a major Ebola outbreak. (Hundreds are being settled in San Antonio, TX.)
The leader of Mexico described a future when “Mexicans will not need to migrate into the United States and that migration will become optional, not compulsory.” Do the citizens of the sovereign United States of America have no say in the matter? Is Mexican “migration” into our nation something that foreigners decide, regardless of our wishes and our laws? The national dissolution begins here.
It continues with the question: “How do you transform the country of fraternity for the world’s migrants into a ghetto, a closed space, where migrants are stigmatized, mistreated, persecuted, expelled and the right for justice is canceled to those who tirelessly seek to live free of misery?” The answer is that we welcome legal immigrants and have the right to reject illegal aliens. Their status does not give them a right to what we and our forefathers created, and certainly not to the fruits of our welfare system. Their status does not impose on us a responsibility to alleviate their situation.
“With all due respect, even though you have the right to express it, the slogan ‘America First’ is a fallacy because until the end of time, even over national borders, universal justice and fraternity will prevail.” He writes of values his own government can’t provide to his own people. “Universal justice” is the fallacy. The US Constitution is not a global document, and US borders are not mere lines on a map; they are marks of national sovereignty.
López Obrador, President of “the other,” closed with “Nothing by force, everything by reason and Law!” I assume President Trump did not miss the irony.
It is time to reject Diversity, Inc. and to rekindle a healthy sense of fear of what “the other” is trying to do to us. Equally important, it is time to confront forcefully those within our ranks who bristle at the idea of “America First” or deprecate the notion of American Exceptionalism. It is Us vs. The Other. I vote for Us.

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com