The advantage of the Internet is that your like-minded friends don’t even have to be in the same country as you. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:
International Man: It seems now more than ever that people have less and less in common with others who happen to carry the same government ID.
At the same time, like-minded people are finding each other from across the world.
What’s your take on this trend? What does it mean for the nation-state?
Doug Casey: Once upon a time, like-minded people came to America because of their desire for personal freedom and financial opportunity. That’s part of what made America what it is. Americans were the kind of people that were drawn to the ideals put forth by the country’s Founding Fathers.
But now America is drawing the wrong kind of people. They’re not people who necessarily want freedom. Some do, of course. But many are drawn to the massive welfare benefits, free medical care, and free schooling.
Past migrants may have been dirt poor and ignorant, but they had to make their own way. The State didn’t subsidize them; it gave them absolutely nothing. But that’s not the case today. The character of America has changed, and so have the kind of people who want to migrate here. They don’t want to accept American values. They want to maintain their Somali, Afghan, or Haitian values. Most won’t become Americans; they’ll become United Statesers. America, a republic sharing a common culture, is being washed away and replaced by the US, a multicultural domestic empire.
America used to be totally unique, but now the US is just another nation-state like all the others. Of course, change is a constant in all areas of life. But I’ll miss the America of the before times because it was a refuge for things like free thought, free speech, free markets, and entrepreneurialism. Oh well, nothing lasts forever, and America had a pretty good run.
I do miss the freedom times from lil’ shaver days.
Even the teevee was good.