A Man of the West shares how his attempt to introduce immigration heresy into a proud hyphenated-American family went:
I’ve been a reader of your blog and viewer of your videos for some time now, but I’ll cut to the chase rather than linger in my own backstory. An hour ago I was on the phone with my parents that live on the opposite side of the country (dad is a boomer, mom is early gen-x) and the conversation quickly turned to politics and history as it always does.They are Reagan-era right-wing conservatives. I wouldn’t consider them neocons, but tomato tomAHto at this point. Gradually the topic transformed into immigration being more detrimental to a nation than warfare. As with any historical discussion with a boomer, the subject quickly returned to exclusively America. So I introduced to him the idea that even the Ellis Island immigrants, legal as they may have been, were a net negative to the American nation and culture.
Now, in an Italian/Irish immigrant family, to say something like this is sacrilege. But that’s when I could tell I was getting somewhere, because my dad started spewing post-modernist, globalist, pro-Babel propaganda like the Littlest Chickenhawk on a week-long soy bender. He even tried to drag out some JBP quotes until I dropped the “he authored a 2015 UN Development Panel report” on him. Then came the stuff I had heard him slip into past conversations, like “culture is always changing” and “no culture remains the same. History shows a constant fluctuation of cultures”. These always seemed like wishy-washy public-education level slogans parroted to give the illusion of sounding like you are well-versed in a wide scope of history. But this time I wasn’t tolerating it.
I’m not going to waste your time with a play-by-play review of the whole argument, but in the end I calmly told him “You are so focused on the microcosm that you cannot see the macrocosmic implications of the Tower-of-Babel agenda that you are supporting, and you are attempting to excuse your fear of the duty and suffering required to fight for Christianity, Western Civilization, Aristotelian rationality, and Truth by capitulating to this idiotic idea that ‘cultures will always change’. It is a lie to cover up a fear, and it is rationalizing surrender.”
Any advice on teaching an old dog new tricks?
Just keep standing calmly, confidently, and respectfully by the truth. Don’t meet anger with anger, just keep calling out the falsehoods and deceptions as they are presented to you. As the reader has already observed, he’s over the target and his father is already in a state of cognitive dissonance. The trick is to avoid making the correct path out of that dissonance more unpleasant than a) it has to be and b) than the alternative of full delusion.
A Reagan conservative is halfway there. But it’s not unknown for them to retreat into liberalism, even SJWism, simply because the pain of the truth is too great for their soft Boomer sensibilities. So, it’s not wise to punch them in the mouth no matter how much nonsense they spew in their intellectual flailing about.
You will know they have been convicted of the truth, even if they haven’t accepted it yet, when they desperately try to change the subject to you, your motivations, and your shortcomings. Don’t take the bait, just calmly ask, “What does that have to do with 20th century immigration and its consequences?” and steer them back to the subject they are now trying to avoid addressing.