Buzz off, Fly Guys

            Many immigration enthusiasts seem indifferent to the past and future of our country. And the reason is that quite a few of them are. This is difficult for immigration restrictionists to understand. Most of us, due to temperament and principle, identify with the past of our civilization and country, and we hope, for the sake of our descendants, that those entities and their essential character and values will extend into the future.

            This seems perfectly right and normal—and by all normal appearances it is. But we deceive ourselves if we think that everyone basically thinks as we do. Many immigration enthusiasts have an entirely different mindset. They view themselves as superior beings who have liberated themselves from such backward concerns as piety toward ancestors and duties to our future generations. In their minds, we are ignorant bigots caught up in backward thinking.

            They see themselves as agents for brave new worlds of diversity where past has little connection to future—a future of change for the sake of change with no duties owed to anyone. Somehow they imagine that this journey into what can only become social chaos will bring human fulfillment, and they heartily despise us for resisting it.

            Since they often direct that hostility toward what they see as our character and motives, we have every right to shine the same spotlight on them. What stands out more than anything else is their egotism, which wants liberation from all loyalties. Specifically among the latter are allegiances to God, country, community and family—which for most human beings through history have brought purpose, meaning and happiness.

            No such ties bind our enthusiasts for diversity and change. Their primary loyalty is to personal ambition and the fulfillment that may provide. Sir Walter Scott called such people, with no loyalty to country, “soul[s] so dead” and “wretch[es] concentered all in self.” Edmund Burke likened people, with no ties to past and posterity, to the “flies of summer,” creatures which breed for a season and die, leaving no legacy. Some have suggested that we might refer to them as “summer fly guys,” or “fly guys” for short.

            One thing about fly guys is that selfish ambition often doesn’t seem to fulfill them as much as they would have us believe. Without the life-giving nurture of love and loyalty for things outside themselves, they seem to grow weary of life. Malcolm Muggeridge called the attitude of these sophisticates “the great liberal death wish.” 

Without affection for their societies they seem inclined to fill their inner void with an active hatred of country, and view massive immigration as a battering ram to carry out social destruction.

            Perhaps one reason the fly guy makes such a fetish of “diversity” and multi-cultures is that the resulting upheaval and chaos also diverts his mind from his emotional deadness, and at least gives him some sensation of life. Of course he could end the emptiness by embracing the life-enhancing loyalties, but to do that he would have to concede that the “bigots” and “backward” folks were right—and that his exhalted pride can never accept.

            Average patriotic Americans should not be intimidated by his haughtiness, for in fact it is an empty shell of conceit. When the fly guy offers us his death wish, we should recognize it for what it is. We should shoo him away and let him buzz off to his meaningless end.