I think it’s time for a brief review of some simple, obvious facts about human nature and the character of human societies.

1) People generally prefer to live with others like themselves. Even in highly diverse places like great port cities, people generally associate homogeneously in their private lives.

2) In highly homogeneous societies, those things that form the social framework of homogeneous groups in private association — commonalities of language, religion, folklore, history, humor, cuisine, manners, literature, music, sport, custom, courtship, drink, pastimes, ritual, dress, taboo, myth, and legend — may also be shared in the public square, without friction or controversy.

3) This expansion of shared values into the public square favors, in turn, high social cohesion and public trust, and, importantly, a feeling of liberty that flows naturally from congruence of manners, desires, aversions, attitudes and behavior. (See this post from a couple of years back.)

4) In small amounts, diversity, existing in conformance with (and subordinate to) a society’s ambient culture, adds flavor and spice to a community.

5) The more diverse a society becomes, however, the less congruence there is between the social lexicons of its several subpopulations. As more circles are added to the cultural Venn diagram, the area of mutual overlap — the region that represents the range of commonality suitable for uncontroversial expression in the public square — diminishes, rapidly.

6) In contrast to 3), this shrinking commonality erodes social cohesion and public trust (even, it has been shown, trust within one’s own group). As it does so it erodes liberty, and happiness.

7) There is, then, a “sweet spot” for diversity: a percentage of exotic residents and influences that is sufficient to season and enliven an otherwise homogeneous society without becoming large enough to begin to usurp its ambient culture or disrupt general social cohesion. Beyond that “tipping point”, though, the effect on the host society is increasingly divisive and detrimental.

8) Just where the tipping point is depends, in large part, on the rate of immigration, and on how similar the new arrivals are to the culture they are joining. Denmark, for example, could far more easily absorb a large wave of Norwegian immigrants than an equal number of Somali Muslims. I think we will all agree that if, say, you were to swap out three-quarters of the native population of Denmark with Somali Muslims, that the indigenous, traditional cultural life of that nation would be irrevocably changed, and effectively destroyed — and that the happiness of the remaining Danes would be greatly diminished.

9) It is nearly impossible to know in advance just where this tipping point is. By the very nature of this sort of gradual change, it only becomes apparent after it has already been crossed.

10) Once wrought, the demographic changes brought about by mass immigration are almost impossible to reverse, without recourse to great, often sanguinary, unpleasantness.

11) Given, then, a) the destructive effects of excess diversity; b) the difficulty of knowing when the demographic “tipping point” has been reached; and c) the irreversibility of demographic change wrought by immigration, it seems that wisdom, prudence, and a concern for general happiness all counsel that any ethnic homeland’s immigration policy should err strongly on the side of caution and moderation, particularly as regards immigration from profoundly (often irreconcilably) alien cultures.

These commonsense truths are the basis of the widely accepted idea that indigenous societies have a fundamental right to defend and preserve the cultural and demographic integrity of their homelands. Nobody in the liberal West imagines, for example, that the forcible settlement of Han Chinese in Tibet, and the ongoing displacement of traditional Tibetan culture, is conducive to the happiness of the Tibetans.

There is a curious blindness, however, on the part of the educated elites of the liberal West to acknowledge that these obvious principles, the generality of which should be entirely and uncontroversially self-evident to anyone of sound mind, might in fact apply to Western peoples and homelands. Can any person not a child or an imbecile look at, for example, Britain, Sweden, France, or the Netherlands and seriously imagine that the native people of these countries are happier (or freer) now, after decades of mass immigration of Muslims and other non-Europeans, than they were when the populations of these nations were almost exclusively British, Swedish, French, and Dutch? Can anyone even begin to think such a thing is actually true?

Apparently so, even now.

It would have seemed unimaginable just half a century ago — but barring a very sudden and dramatic awakening from this deadly enchantment, the ancient peoples and cultures of the Western world are on a path to self-inflicted extinction.