In response to last night’s Darkstream on the inevitable failure of conservatism, a Voxiversity supporter observes that the duty of the immigrant to refrain from interfering in the affairs of his new residence dates back to the days of ancient Rome.
I’ve been reading Quintus Curtius’ translation of Cicero’s On Duties. Cicero devotes just one sentence to the duties of foreigners, and he gets right to the heart of the matter: “But the business of the foreigner or the foreign-resident of a country is to keep to his own concerns; he has no reason to probe into things beyond this and by no means should inject himself into the affairs of his host nation.”
The significance of this wise advice can be seen in way that the failure of the United States to impose this duty of non-interference in its affairs on its foreign residents, particularly the Jewish and Irish immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, has proven fatal to both its place in the world and its future prospects.
A failure to learn from the past is a near-guarantee of failure in the future. Imagine how much better off the American people would be if those it permitted to immigrate had simply refrained from injecting themselves into the affairs of their host nation.