A friend recently sent me an article written a couple of years ago entitled “How to Destroy America,” which provided an account of a Washington, D.C., “immigration-overpopulation conference filled to capacity by many of America’s finest minds and leaders.”

According to the article, Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado, made the startling claim at the conference that “the way to destroy America is to turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.”

Unfortunately, the good ex-governor apparently failed to explain how his amazing thesis can be reconciled with Switzerland, a long-established, peaceful, and harmonious European country in which Swiss citizens speak German, French, or Italian, depending on which section of Switzerland in which they happen to live. Switzerland seems to have had no problem surviving — and for centuries!

Or maybe the good ex-governor isn’t familiar with my hometown of Laredo, Texas, located on the Rio Grande, which is both bilingual and bicultural — and has been for at least 150 years! In fact, I would estimate that at least 75 percent of the Laredo populace is bilingual and that 15 percent speaks Spanish only. The city, whose street names include many Spanish and Mexican historical figures, has the biggest celebration in the nation honoring George Washington’s birthday.

As far as I know, no one in Laredo lives in fear that the city is about to collapse. In fact, people in Laredo, which has been under Spanish, Mexican, French, Texas, Confederate, and U.S. rule (as well as self-rule as the Republic of the Rio Grande), seem to live as normally and harmoniously as people in pure, white, Anglo, English-only societies. I wonder how the good ex-governor of Colorado reconciles that with his startling claim that “no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures.”

The “How to Destroy America” article also states that “a brilliant college professor, Victor Davis Hansen, talked about his latest book, Mexifornia, explaining how immigration, both legal and illegal, was destroying the entire state of California,” where, by the way, Los Angelenos recently overwhelmingly elected a bilingual Latino, Antonio Villaraigosa, as mayor.

Surely the good professor knows that California, along with New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and parts of Colorado, once constituted the northern half of Mexico. Those areas were knowingly taken over by the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, leaving all (former) Mexican citizens in that area, Spanish-speakers all and thoroughly inculcated with Spanish and Mexican culture, as U.S. citizens. Talk about “Mexiforia” and “Mexinewmexico” and “Mexiarizona” and “Mexitexas” and “Mexicolorado”! Given all those Spanish-speaking (former) Mexicans living in that part of the United States, which had been the northern half of Mexico the night before the treaty was implemented, did that mean that the demise of the United States was imminent? I don’t think so.

For that matter, did the open borders that were maintained between the United States and (the southern half of) Mexico for the next 80 years or so, which enabled Mexicans and Americans to freely cross back and forth across the border to visit, tour, work, or open businesses, result in the demise of the United States? I don’t think so.

Contrary to what all the “finest minds and leaders” at that “immigration-overpopulation conference” suggest, what is destroying America is not immigrants, legal or illegal. They’re just the convenient scapegoats for ever-increasing crises and woes arising out of failed foreign-policy and domestic-policy paradigms of empire, socialism, and interventionism that misguided U.S. politicians have brought to our land — paradigms that ironically are enthusiastically supported by many of those in the “blame-the-immigrants” camp.

The foreign-policy paradigm entails the presence of U.S. military bases in more than 100 countries, invasions of sovereign and independent countries, and support for brutal foreign regimes, all of which have contributed to the anger and hatred that has ultimately spawned the ever-present “war on terrorism.”

The anti-immigrant crowd conveniently uses the terrorist “blowback” arising from the empire-militarism paradigm as an excuse to call for a Berlin Wall to be erected along our southern border in order to protect us from the “terrorists.” They even endorse, or at least remain silent about, the use of U.S. immigration controls to repatriate Cuban refugees into communist tyranny, bringing to mind President Franklin Roosevelt’s use of immigration controls to reject Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany.

On the domestic side, we have such failed programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, and the drug war. The anti-immigrant crowd cries out, “They’re coming to take our welfare and give us drugs!” But rather than call for replacing this failed socialist-interventionist paradigm with one based on freedom, free markets, and voluntary charity, their cry is inevitably, “Oh, no, how could we survive without our government dole, and who would protect us from the drug dealers?” And so they use the continuation of the socialist and interventionist paradigm as the excuse for closing the borders to immigrants, including those who are simply seeking a better way of life through labor.

America is faced with conflicting visions, both domestic and foreign. On the domestic side, we have socialism and interventionism vs. liberty and free markets. On the foreign side, we have empire and militarism vs. a limited-government republic.

Socialism, interventionism, empire, and militarism will continue to bring us internal moral decay, a decay that perhaps is best reflected by how U.S. officials treat people from foreign lands. The rot will inevitably be accompanied by exorbitant government spending, borrowing, taxation, regulation, and assaults on civil liberty. Gripped by a deep reluctance to recognize and address the root causes of the decay and rot, unfortunately some of our fellow Americans would rather look for scapegoats, especially those who lack the means to defend themselves.

Replacing those old, failed, immoral, and destructive paradigms with ones based on liberty, free markets, individual responsibility, and voluntary charity would bring our nation back to a solid moral foundation, one in which Americans would once again live in peace and harmony with the people of the world.