We must do better

I oppose the decline of civilization. This means, for example, that I support environmental protection, because we need civilization more than we need oil. 

But civilization depends on oil, you say. It does. But civilization can change, and it might have to change to survive. I don't have the whole analysis worked out. But this is how it seems to me. Civilization cannot survive if the environment goes to shit.

Opposing the decline of civilization, I also oppose things like the "universal state" and the "volkerwanderung", which Arnold J. Toynbee identified as late-stage phenomena in the life of a civilization, and part of the decline.

Opposing the universal state means that I naturally oppose the development of the European Union, NAFTA, and free trade pacts generally, and I oppose imposing such developments upon society. These developments are anyway driven by the economic needs of the powerful (those of great wealth, who want even more) and are supported among the rest of us by those who have accepted the sales pitch that says the universal state will improve the economy. That sales pitch is nonsense: Economic problems require economic solutions, not political solutions.

Opposing the volkerwanderung means I am naturally uncomfortable with the ever-increasing border crossings along the southern US border. 

The Dark Age, which over-civilized people insist on calling "the early middle ages", is identified by Toynbee as "an interregnum or heroic age". He writes:

Again, the Roman Empire's fall was followed by a kind of interregnum between the disappearance of the Hellenic and the emergence of the Western Society.

This interregnum is filled with the activities of two institutions: the Christian Church, established within and surviving the Roman Empire, and a number of ephemeral successor states arising on the former territory of the Empire out of the so-called Volkerwanderung of the Barbarians from the no-man's-land beyond the Imperial frontiers.

"Ephemeral successor states" arose (after the fall of Rome) out of the "Volkerwanderung of the Barbarians" (before, during and after the fall). Such successor states will arise again, unless we stop our own decline and fall.

I have to oppose "immigration" (which is the word we use, though Volkerwanderung would be more apt) because it is a sign of the approaching fall of civilization. But of course, stopping the immigration won't stop the decline. We have to fix the problem that causes problems like this immigration.

And I want to emphasize that this view has nothing to do with race or racism. I think economic conditions are worse on the other side of our southern border than they are on our side. And I think the difference in economic conditions drives the migration.

But conditions on our side of the border are not good, either. And this is the more pressing problem, one which underlies the immigration problem: for we cannot afford to fix the immigration problem. 

And yet we cannot afford not to fix it.

The immigration problem cannot be solved by welcoming immigrants; we know that didn't work in ancient Rome. It cannot be solved by building a wall, because the problem, which continues to grow, originates on the other side. And it cannot be solved by making conditions better on the other side of the border, because we cannot afford to do that.

That is the only solution, though: to make conditions better on the other side of the border. I don't think very many people want to be foreigners. I think they'd prefer to live in their own home land, as I do. But I think conditions must be so bad for them at home that they have no choice but to come to America, where conditions are better.

The most successful thing we do to discourage immigration is that we continue to let our own economic conditions deteriorate.

We must do better.