least, perhaps prematurely old. We are no longer restless, wenare bored and tentative; we are not optimistic but increasinglyn(and with good reason) the opposite; we have lostnconfidence in our heritage, our traditions, and above allnperhaps our faith. This does not mean that we willnnecessarily adopt other traditions and other faiths; it doesnmean that we will have less and less of ourselves to offernpeoples whom we would assimilate to the remnant of annindigenous culture. We know this. And so do the peoplenwho have recently appeared among us.nThe stranger is within the gates, and he smells blood. I donnot mean that he is bloodthirsty; he simply senses ournweakness and is ready to exploit it as far as he can. He isntaking advantage of us, and we cannot claim that we havennot left ourselves open to, and even encouraged, him.n”Mulhculturalism” is a sign, maybe a proof, of this. AsnLawrence Auster has written in a recently published bookn{The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigrationnand Multiculturalism), the multiculturalist standard is thendirect result of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 which,nby removing the national quotas provision of earlier immigrationnlegislation, cleared the way for great numbers ofnimmigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and othernnon-European regions of the world. It is also noticenserved—by these immigrants and by others on theirnbehalf—that “assimilahon” is henceforth an outmodednconcept, ethnocentric at best and racist at worst, and thatnthis and future generations of newcomers will have no partnin it, or of that Western civilization that is also under attack.nAnd who, after all, is going to tell them differently? As thennew immigrants arrive in their numbers in America, theynwill not only prove in plain fact unassimilable, they will benable, by the exercise of the suffrage, to alter Americannsociety to the extent that they will not need to assimilate tonit; perhaps there will be nothing left of the original tonassimilate to. Already this is seen to be the strategy of thenleading Hispanic “rights” organizations, while there hasnbeen talk in the Mexican-American community for at leastntwo decades of using their numbers and the vote to effectnthe secession of several of the southwestern states, whichnwould either be incorporated by Mexico or form the newnNation of Aztlan. We have already experienced one episodenof secession in our history; stranger things have occurrednthan that it should happen again. Just look at Canada.nThere are further dangers inherent in multiculturalismnbeyond the foreseeable submergence of European-nAmerican culture and governance in the United States. Thensituation that is likely to evolve is not so simple a one as Usnversus Them, White versus Brown, European versus Non-nEuropean. Jesse Jackson to the contrary, there will be nonRainbow Coalition — or if there is, it will be of very limitednduration. Underlying the cant, the yes-saying, the culturalnpolitics, and the silly celebrations of unity, profound resentmentsnand antagonisms exist in multiethnic America thatnwill surely grow stronger and deeper with time — and withncontinuing immigration from every part of the worid.nNearly forty years after desegregation and a quarter-centurynafter the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s, relationsnbetween whites and blacks in this country are arguably worsenthan they have been at any time in our history. It is an opennsecret that blacks (collectively) despise Hispanics (againncollectively) and vice versa, and that both groups arenresentful and suspicious of Asians, who seem happy tonreturn the compliment. Georgie Anne Geyer, the newspaperncolumnist, invites her readers to witness the disintegrationnof the Soviet Union and to learn from it: the day of whatnshe euphemistically terms the “socially complicated state” isnover, she warns, or at least the writing is on the wall. Eventsnthroughout the world today have one great thing to tell us:nnamely, that everywhere blood is thicker than water. Modernnnations that not only refuse to recognize this truth butndeliberately fly in the face of it will do so at their peril.nAdvocates of immigration repeat adnnauseam that immigration is ‘an Americanntradition.’ Well, so are spacious skies, ambernwaves of grain, wide-open spaces, the opennrange, and the wilderness of mountain,ndesert, and plain.nIn the light of America’s immigration problem, JamesnBurnham’s “suicide of the West” takes on a newer meaning.nFrom the time when the Puritans landed in Massachusetts,nAmericans have tended to think of themselves as membersnof a church whose reality has a secular dimension beyondnthe religious one. As the religious sensibility has waned innAmerican society, the assurance of a quasi-religious missionnhas increased to the point where the United States at the endnof the 20th century seems to regard itself as a collectivenChrist figure, redeeming the world by example and bynpurity of intention. But if we do succeed in crucifyingnourselves, after our crucifixion we shall not rise again, andnthere will be no inheritors and apostles of our peculiar faith.nThe Third World — its cultures, its peoples — will remainnemphatically in place, but we ourselves will have perishednforever, having accomplished by our suicide no good fornanyone save a relative handful of the world’s refugees — andneven those only in the short run.nBecause we will have killed the goose that laid the goldenneggs. The Third World is its people, not its sinister, corrupt,ngreedy, and incompetent governments; where the peoplenare, there the Third World is, and will be. We have no magicnalchemical atmosphere capable of imbuing Third Worldnpeoples with the ability to maintain the First World culturenthat created and continues to create the economic andntechnical fruits for which they hunger. In the collapse ofnEuropean-America, nobody will be a winner except for thenchronically and pathologically resentful (from our own ranksnas well as from those of our supplanters), and even theirs willnbe a Pyrrhic victory. Then America will correspond, at lastnand in reality, with the description falsely applied to it in thenI960’s by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith of HarvardnUniversity, when he wrote that the United States was a landnof private affluence surrounded by public squalor. It will, innother words, truly have become another Third Worldncountry. <^nnnJULY 1991/23n