Culture and Country

Borders. Language. Culture.

Radio personality Michael Savage has long stated that these are the three key elements that define a country.

You cannot have a country unless you have a well-defined and enforced border. Look no further than the border between North Korea or South Korea. North Korea's leaders know they would have no country without that border. The same was true for East Germany. The borders in those countries were to keep people in. However, borders are just as important to define those that rightfully should be in your country. Without borders you invite chaos. Chaos eventually destroys a country.

Countries also need a common language. If the people of a country do not share a common tongue you create divisions and dissension. And these divisions ultimately undermine the unity necessary to sustain a country.

A shared culture is probably the most critical element to sustain a nation. Unless the values, beliefs and customs are universally accepted in a country, there will be factions and friction that will rip a country apart. Look no further than the cultural divide between North and South on the subject of slavery in the United States in the early years of the nation.

Those that favor open borders and liberal immigration policies do not seem to recognize that all cultures are not the same. They do not seem to recognize that the culture that exists in the United States and other Western countries is unique. The values and beliefs that stem from our Judeo-Christian heritage are special. The recognition of individual freedom and property rights are not universal. The wealth that a capitalist economy provides is unsurpassed in the well-being in can provide for the citizenry.

Those that believe this are not racists, or Islamaphobes or evil imperialists. They are realists who understand human history over the last 1000 years. It has been Western culture that has contributed the most to the advancement of mankind.

A young, idealistic Peace Corps worker fresh from college learned this very quickly when she was posted to Senegal. Karin McQuillan recently wrote about her experiences in "What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump is Right" in American Thinker. It is a must read, especially for any liberals who want to proclaim "that Western Civilization is no better than a third-world country".

A few interesting excerpts from the article.

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town.  Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health.  That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, "a fecalized environment."

In plain English: s--- is everywhere.  People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water.  He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water.  Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.

The longer I lived there, the more I understood: it became blindingly obvious that the Senegalese are not the same as us. The truths we hold to be self-evident are not evident to the Senegalese. How could they be? Their reality is totally different. You can't understand anything in Senegal using American terms.

Family takes on an entirely different concept in Senegal. It included everyone out to second and third cousins. Men have up to four wives in the Muslim culture and love and friendship in marriage are unknown in Senegal.

What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death.  Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives.  Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees.

Those that believe that there is some kind of innate value and belief system in human beings learns quickly that is not the case in a place like Senegal.

The Ten Commandments were not disobeyed – they were unknown.  The value system was the exact opposite.  You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives.  There are some Westernized Africans who try to rebel against the system.  They fail.

Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  It's not.  It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.

Those that believe that work ethic and individual enterprise is natural also find these traits are universal.

We think the Protestant work ethic is universal.  It's not.  My town was full of young men doing nothing.  They were waiting for a government job.  There was no private enterprise.  Private business was not illegal, just impossible, given the nightmare of a third-world bureaucratic kleptocracy.  It is also incompatible with Senegalese insistence on taking care of relatives.

All the little stores in Senegal were owned by Mauritanians.  If a Senegalese wanted to run a little store, he'd go to another country.  The reason?  Your friends and relatives would ask you for stuff for free, and you would have to say yes.  End of your business.  You are not allowed to be a selfish individual and say no to relatives.  The result: Everyone has nothing. 

The more I worked there and visited government officials doing absolutely nothing, the more I realized that no one in Senegal had the idea that a job means work.  A job is something given to you by a relative.  It provides the place where you steal everything to give back to your family

McQuillan states that she enjoyed her year in Senegal but the biggest gift she received from that experience was a greater appreciation and love for what we have in the United States of America.

I love and treasure America more than ever.  I take seriously my responsibility to defend our culture and our country and pass on the American heritage to the next generation.

I couldn't wait to get home.  So why would I want to bring Africa here?  Non-Westerners do not magically become American by arriving on our shores with a visa.

We have the right to choose what kind of country to live in.  I was happy to donate a year of my life as a young woman to help the poor Senegalese.  I am not willing to donate my country.  

Indeed.

Why is it so difficult for those who advocate for open borders to understand how closely culture and country are linked?