The Land of Liberty

Foreigners are prohibited or heavily restricted from owning land (though not always buildings or long-term leases) in many countries around the world, most notably the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and China in Asia; Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe in Africa; and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait in the Middle East. Other countries impose strong but partial bans — typically limiting foreigners to leasehold interests or subjecting ownership to special approval — such as Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

By contrast, the United States permits foreigners to own land, reflecting a legal tradition grounded in equal treatment under the law rather than ancestry or nationality. And yet, despite this openness — despite being the world’s foremost destination for immigrants and the most multicultural country ever to exist — it is the United States that has become the primary target of accusations of ‘racism’, ‘fascism’, and ‘intolerance’. Meanwhile, countries that explicitly enshrine exclusionary, citizenship-based property laws — countries that explicitly protect or prioritize their own citizens through what might be called rather nationalistic laws — escape serious scrutiny altogether.

The irony is difficult to ignore — where exclusionary practices are brought to the attention of the protesters and rioters in America, they are likely to view them charitably as forms of cultural protection, but they are never as charitable in their treatment of the United States: in fact, many of the protestors, rioters, agitators and activists don’t even recognize an American culture, or any which isn’t specifically imported from abroad; all of this despite the fact that the immigrant culture of the past was one assimilating into — you guessed it — American culture. The primary differences now are that immigrants in the modern age are far less likely to assimilate, and modern America is no longer the country of ‘rugged individualism’ that it once was.

Thus, the combination of unassimilating immigrants, a massive welfare state, a legal system granting special ‘protections’ for ‘minorities’, and an oft-echoed ‘victim’ narrative have completely upended the traditions that once defined ‘America’ and what it means to be an ‘American’; and America’s uniquely open posture toward the rest of the world has left it uniquely susceptible to a special kind of invasion, a dismantling from within, often even within the bounds of the law.

As leftist protests and riots continue unabated, and as Western civilization appears increasingly willing to permit the dismantling of the very principles that made it possible, the question arises: if these foundations fall, where does one go next?

Whether immigrants who’ve claimed America as their new home or Americans with firmly-planted roots (for whom this is their only home in the world), where are they to turn? As Ronald Reagan warned in his 1964 speech in support of Barry Goldwater, “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.” For the true-blood American, it is much worse: this is his one and only home, and the only one he’s ever known. For him, it is sacred, the land of his fathers and the last stand for liberty; for others, it’s a destination on a map or a stop along the route. For the American, it is where he’s buried his ancestors; it is the land of liberty, the land of the free and the home of the brave. To him, it is much more than an option; for him, there is no alternative.

Indeed, it is in this way that politics destroys: what some call ‘politics’ is the destruction of another’s culture and identity. It is in this way that immigrants and anti-American sentiment have combined to lay siege to the land of liberty — a land that made the mistake of receiving them with open arms, and a land of people who turned the other cheek as the agitators and malcontents trod, trampled, and spat on the sacred artifacts, ancestors, ideas, and institutions that formed not just a country but a whole people, their culture and their shared identity.

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