Immigration and other European ideas for America

As I noted in my post title, this is interesting, if true:  it is a post that claims that a European policy institute, working closely with the UN, is determining large facets of American immigration policy, with special emphasis on settling Muslims in the Midwest.

If this is indeed true, it it reminds me of the International Baccalaureate Program that is being touted at more and more American schools that emphasizes academics.  I freely admit to knowing little about the program, but I have heard that it teaches Euro-centric values that may please some parents, but may be distasteful to many others, who believe that it has strong Marxist leanings and that it preaches a UN centric internationalism that is inherently anti-American.

As it is, I suspect that only on the upper liberal echelons do American values march in complete harmony with European values. As David Gerlernter wrote after witnessing the Democratic attack on General Petraeus, one facet of the by-now-commonplace desire to see America lose is motivated by Europe-envy (emphasis mine):

Americans are so accustomed (or inured) to this attitude that they rarely step back and ask, What the hell is going on here?

The issue isn’t tactics–doesn’t concern the draw-down that the administration has forecast and General Petraeus has now discussed, or how this draw-down should work, or how specific such talk ought to be. The issue is deeper. It’s time for Americans to ask some big questions. Do leading Democrats want America to win this war? Have they ever?

Of course not–and not because they are traitors. To leading Democrats such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Al Gore and John Edwards, America would be better off if she lost. And this has been true from the start.

To rephrase the question: Why did Harry Reid announce months ago that the war was lost when it wasn’t, and everyone knew it wasn’t? The wish is father to the deed. He was envisioning the world of his dreams.

The Democrats’ embrace of defeat is inspired by no base desire to see Americans killed or American resources wasted. But let’s be honest about it, and invite the Democrats to be honest too.

Appeasement, pacifism, globalism: Those are the Big Three principles of the Democratic left. Each one has been defended by serious people; all are philosophically plausible, or at least arguable. But they are unpopular (especially the first two) with the U.S. public, and so the Democrats rarely make their views plain. We must infer their ideas from their (usually) guarded public statements.

Globalism and Euro-envy are explicit, sometimes, in Democratic pronouncements–about the sanctity of the United Nations, the importance of global conferences and “multilateralism” (except in cases like North Korea, where the president already is moving multilaterally), the superiority of the Canadian or German health care system, and so forth. The Democrats are not unpatriotic, but their patriotism is directed at a large abstract entity called The International Community or even (aping Bronze Age paganism) the Earth, not at America. Benjamin Disraeli anticipated this worldview long ago when he called Liberals the “Philosophical” and Conservatives the “National” party. Liberals are loyal to philosophical abstractions–and seek harmony with the French and Germans. Conservatives are loyal to their own nation, and seek harmony with its Founders and heroes and guiding principles.

I have to admit to being a former Euro-centric thinker.  I grew up in a very European household, and the forces to which I was exposed both within and outside of my home all had me thinking modern Europeans were smarter, more sophisticated and quite simply better in every way than the primitive, simplistic yokels in America.  I therefore believed that we should emulate them whenever possible.

Funnily enough, though, after each of my many trips to Europe, although I was always staggered by the beauty surrounding me, naturally, architecturally and artistically, I was so grateful to be back in America, and became ever more appreciative of American values and American people.  Now, I look at Europe and, while I can still appreciate its good sides, I am increasingly appalled by its knee jerk anti-Americanism, its rising anti-Semitism, its stagnant economic policies, its rising dhimmitude.  I therefore hate the idea of seeing my kids raised as I was to think blindly that Europe is better than America.