An Orthodox Christian reader who is part of a Third World immigrant community e-mails to say:

On your article Anti-Modern = Pro-Muslim + Pro-Immigrant…

The Conservative Party here in Canada tried a few years ago to make precisely this sort of political alliance with immigrants, which it viewed as social conservatives and potential economics Liberals (capital L), immigrants who have traditionally voted for the other more Left parties. Many of us thought it made sense – it does on the face of it – but it was one of those things that upon deeper reflection turns out to be quite mistaken.

Most immigrants come to the West not as St Paul went to Rome, putting God first, but as the Jewish masses went to Rome, putting mammon first (this is not to belittle their poverty and other suffering at home, but such suffering always existed). Immigrants come to the West drunk with Western propaganda, with an inferiority complex, mesmerised by the idol of Western civilization, more precisely the mix of individualism, unfettered economic largesse, efficiency, cleanliness, decorum, democracy, technology, work ethic, etc. Precious few of them are aware, or they don’t want to be aware, that a fundamental part of this Western civilization package is secular liberalism or modernity.

These immigrants – the religious ones, and most of them are – will try to hang on to God, but they don’t understand that their very decision to leave their own community and subject themselves to the temptations and idolatry of Rome, for the sake of mammon, has done them in. And it does. If they don’t fully capitulate, their children and certainly their grandchildren will.

So, which is more of a danger to Rod Dreher’s society, the social conservative religious immigrant next door or secular liberalism? Both – they go hand in hand – but the poor immigrant is but a pawn – having been subject to Western propaganda via TV, movies, the internet, etc., propaganda that would be the envy of a Soviet communist propagandist. He doesn’t quite know the danger he’s put himself in by immigrating, while the secular liberal elite know very well what they’re doing. They know, as one of your commenters wrote, that mass immigration breaks down traditional societies on both ends. That’s the goal of today’s ideology of globalization, similar to Marxism, to blow up tradition and build a ‘new’ society based on the fantasy of a few.

You want to fight against this… The best way is certainly not focusing on the problems immigration brings to the West – immigrants won’t listen to that. But to focus on the dangers of immigration to immigrants themselves and to their home countries.

In the meantime, praise God that some Orthodox Christian immigrants have understood this, reversed course, and tried to become St Paul in Rome, converting so many Americans, against the tide, to Orthodoxy.