Modern Americans have enormous difficulty in grasping hierarchical social structures. We grew up steeped in “applied Christianity” pretty much the way the Hitler Youth grew up steeped in Hitler. The suggesting that slavery could ever be or have been, as Aristotle suggests, natural and healthy, is like suggesting to the Hitler Youth that it might be cool to make some Jewish friends. Their idea of Jews is straight out of Jud Süß. Our idea of slavery is straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If you want an accurate perspective of the past, a propaganda novel is probably not the best place to start. (If you want an accurate perspective of American slavery, I recommend Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll, which is a little Marxist but only superficially so. No work like it could be written today.)

Let’s observe the relationship between the Cathedral and our old friend, “democracy.” Since 1933, elected politicians have exercised minimal actual control over government policy. Formally, however, they have absolute control. The Cathedral is not mentioned in the Constitution. Power is a juicy caterpillar. Maybe it looks like a twig to most of us birds, but Washington has no shortage of sharp eyes, sharp beaks, and growling bellies.

We can see the answer when we look at the fate of politicians who have attacked the Cathedral. Here are some names: Joseph McCarthy. Enoch Powell. George Wallace. Spiro Agnew. Here are some others: Ronald Reagan. Richard Nixon. Margaret Thatcher.

The first set are politicians whose break with the Cathedral was complete and unconditional. The second are politicians who attempted to compromise and coexist with it, while pulling it in directions it didn’t want to go. The first were destroyed. The second appeared to succeed, for a while, but little trace of their efforts (at least in domestic politics) is visible today. Their era ends in the 1980s, and it is impossible to imagine similar figures today.

What we see, especially in the cases of McCarthy and Powell (the recent BBC documentary on Powell is quite good) is a tremendous initial burst of popularity, trailing off into obloquy and disrepute. At first, these politicians were able to capture large bases of support. At least 70% of the British electorate was on Powell’s side. This figure may even be low.

But Powell — Radio Enoch aside — never had the tools to preserve these numbers and convert them into power. Similar majorities of American voters today will tell pollsters that they support Powellian policies: ending immigration, deporting illegals, terminating the racial spoils system. These majorities are stable. No respectable politician will touch them. Why? Because they cannot afford to antagonize the Cathedral, whose policies are the opposite.

Recall La Wik’s simple summary of the Lippmann system:

"The decision makers then take decisions and use the “art of persuasion” to inform the public about the decisions and the circumstances surrounding them."

Even McCarthy was not a real threat. He got a few people fired, most temporarily. Most of them were actually Soviet agents of one sort or another. They became martyrs and have been celebrated ever since. His goal was a purge of the State Department. He didn’t even come close. If he had somehow managed to fire every Soviet agent or sympathizer in the US government, he would not even have done any damage. As Carroll Quigley pointed out, McCarthy (and his supporters) thought he was attacking a nest of Communist spies, whereas in fact he was attacking the American Establishment. Don’t bring a toothpick to a gunfight.

We know exactly what Washington’s policies twenty years from now will be. They will certainly have nothing to do with “politics.” They will be implementations of the ideas now taught at Harvard, Yale and Berkeley. There is a little lag as the memes work their way through the system, as older and wiser civil servants retire and younger, more fanatical ones take their place. But this lag is getting shorter all the time. And by the standards of the average voter forty years ago, let alone eighty, Washington already is seriously insane. What is the probability that by your standards — as progressive as they may be — Washington forty years from now will not seem just as crazed? Fairly low, I’m afraid.

Dear progressive, why is racism wrong? Racism is wrong because all humans are born simply as humans, having done nothing right or wrong, and it is incompatible with our deeply-held ethical principles to mark these newborn babies with indelible labels which assign them either privileges or penalties which they have not earned. Such as the privilege of being able to drink at sparkling-clean water fountains marked “Whites Only,” or the penalty of having to go out back to the horse trough.

We hit that one out of the park, didn’t we? Okay. So why is it ethical to label newborn babies as “American” or “Mexican,” due to nothing but the descent and geographical position at birth of their parents, and give the former a cornucopia of benefits from which the latter is barred — such as the right to live, work, and drink from drinking fountains in the continental United States? What makes Washington think it is somehow ethical to establish two classes of human, “Americans” and “Mexicans,” based only on coincidences of birth that are just as arbitrary as “black” versus “white,” and treat the two completely differently? How does this differ from racism, Southern style?

You think this is ugly? Oh, we can get worse. Let’s suppose the US, in its eagerness to treat these second-class humans, if not quite as well as possible, at least better than we treat them now, establishes a new guest-worker program which is open only to Nigerians. Any number of Nigerians may come to the US and work.

There are certain restrictions, however. They have to live in special guest-worker housing. They have to go to their workplace in the morning, and return before the sun sets. They may not wander around the streets at night. They must carry special guest-worker passes. Obviously, they can’t vote. And they are strictly prohibited from using all public amenities, including, of course, drinking fountains.

Is it a more ethical policy to have this program, or not to have it? If you think no Nigerians could be found to take advantage of it, you’re quite wrong. If you have the program, should you cancel it, and send the Nigerians home, to a life of continued poverty back in Nigeria? How is this helping them? On the other hand, our program has all the major features of apartheid. And surely no-apartheid is better than apartheid.

There is a very easy resolution to this problem: adopt the principle that no person is illegal. This rule is perfectly consistent with “applied Christianity.” It is taught at all our great universities. It is implied every time a journalist deploys the euphemism “undocumented.” And I’m sure there are dozens of ways in which it could be incorporated into our great Living Constitution. There is only one problem: the people are not quite ready for it.

But perhaps in thirty years they will be. Perhaps? I would bet money on it. And I would also bet that, by the time this principle is established, denying it will be the equivalent of racism. Us old fogeys who were born in the 1970s will be convulsed with guilt and shame at the thought that the US actually considered it ethically acceptable to turn away, deport, and otherwise penalize our fellow human beings, on the ridiculous and irrelevant grounds that they were born somewhere else.

So the Cathedral wins coming and going. Today, it does not suffer the political backlash that would be sure to ensue if the Inner Party endorsed opening the borders to... everyone. Still less if it actually did so. (Unless it let the new Americans vote as soon as they set foot on our sacred soil, which of course would be the most Christian approach.) And in 2038, having increased North America’s population to approximately two billion persons, none of them illegal, and all living in the same Third World conditions which it has already inflicted on most of the planet, our blessed Cathedral will have the privilege of berating the past with its guilt for not having recognized the obvious truth that no person is illegal. Ain’t it beautiful?