Larry Alex Taunton on X. Author & freelance columnist combining scholarship with boots-on-the-ground. Host of “Ideas Have Consequences”
Since ~2019, I have tracked caravans of illegals from So America to the US. I interviewed them, followed them into cartel towns and jungles, and observed all that they were willing to do — sell themselves, go without food, steal, risk every kind of danger, make Faustian bargains, etc. — to get to the US. Always I had this feeling, a memory, really, from my years of studying history, that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it was trying to penetrate my conscious being.
Then it came to me: They are tougher than Americans. Writing on the fall of Athens, historian Will Durant said, “Nations are born stoic and die epicurean.” That is, nations are born amidst struggle and hardship and collapse as seekers of pleasure.
I said I had a memory of sorts that was trying to find expression, and it ran along much the same lines as Durant’s observation. I remembered that Rome collapsed, not in a day, but over the course of centuries that accelerated into decades, as wave upon wave of uncivilized Germanic tribesmen, “illegals” so to speak, poured across the empire’s northern frontier and eventually sacked Rome itself. Rome had been built on strong, large families; unity of purpose; and the hard work of its people. Its armies were, at its height, citizen armies. Men fought to preserve what they knew and loved.
Near its end, Romans were a lazy, self-indulgent people who paid others to do their fighting. Infanticide, which was common throughout Rome’s history, became a capital offense and a woman who aborted her child, also common, could be executed or exiled. This wasn’t due to any moral considerations, a recognition of the personhood of an unborn child, or anything like that at all. It was a much too late recognition that with the dramatic decline in the size of Roman families as prosperity increased, came a decrease in tax revenues and an over-reliance on foreigners to fill the ranks of the army — all of which would prove disastrous for Rome.
Sound familiar? All of this was somewhere in the back of my mind, a feeling at first, as I observed the third worlders making their way by the millions to our borders. I saw them in the violence of Africa, the intrigues of the Middle East, and everywhere there is misery south of our border. Generally speaking, they are a people inured to suffering (theirs or that of others), are accustomed to death, unaccustomed to the comforts Americans take for granted, have lived in nothing but squalor, do not share your views of private property or civil discourse, view violence as a part of daily life, lack even the most basic education, and have little sympathy for the low pain threshold of Americans.
These are the people coming to take your inheritance from you. Coming from a “might makes right” world, they know no other policy. They have no vested interest in preserving American law or culture, and that is because it isn’t their heritage and they don’t understand it. Democrats seem to think they will be immune from all of this because they foolishly believe these newcomers will view them as benefactors. They do not. I’ve met them, been in their cardboard camps, walk with them on trails, heard their hopes and dreams, and in none of it is there such nuanced thinking. America is, for them, a ripe fruit theirs for the taking.
Once you open the castle gates and lower the drawbridge, you no longer control the outcome. Indeed, you have surrendered it. And why are Democrats willing to do that? Because they hate Americans more than this still ill-defined rabble, and they don’t understand what’s coming. These people are tougher than you, and they don’t give a damn about you.
Be careful how you vote. The future you hope for will be, I promise, very different from the rosy one media promises you. I’m speaking from firsthand experience.