If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know a theme here is that people are more often driven by irrational belief than cold hard reason. Evolutionary biology tells us the belief is one of the oldest cognitive traits, probably co-evolving with language. The quest for salvation, grace and glory are at the heart of human history, because they are the things that drive men to dominate other men.

In the current age, formal religion based on the super natural has mostly fallen away. Look at the empty churches across what we used to call Christendom and it is hard not to see the West as post-Christian. With some exceptions, the leaders of the free world, as we used to call the West, are secular men and women, lacking any identifiable attachment to a Christian sect. The exceptions are usually attached to modern sects that have found a way to wrap Christianity around the core of Rousseau-ist theology.

This “secularization” does not mean that men are less fanatical or lack belief. It just means it is untethered from the traditional constraints of organized religion. Christianity was particularly good at modulating belief, as well as directing it into useful habits. Of course, the Catholic Church was very good at rooting out the dangerous fanatics. The suppression of the flagellants is a good example and one relevant to our current age.

My favorite example, as an aside, is Konrad Schmidt, who claimed to be Frederick II and baptized himself in the blood of his followers. His band of fanatics abandoned their normal lives and spent their days praying in preparation for Judgment Day. The Inquisition had them burned at the stake before they caused too much trouble. For most of human history, people understood that the unhinged fanatic was more dangerous than the barbarian at the gate.

It is one of the many things we seem to have forgotten in the modern age. The bombings in Belgium once again remind us that the fanatic is the most serious threat to human civilization. I don’t mean the fanatics who self-detonated in the airport. I mean the fanatics who invited them into the West and now demand that we invite ever more of them into our lands. The bodies are still warm and the open borders fanatics are demanding even more immigration.

Read that Vox article and the only conclusion is that the writer is so committed to open borders she can no longer accept reality. Instead she is forcing reality into the world she believes is just over the next hill, the fulfillment of prophesy. Amanda Taub may be harmlessly crazy, but the people running Western countries are just as unhinged as she is over the topic of immigration. Open borders is now a religion for these people. They will die for it, or at least let you die for it.

What other conclusion can be drawn from current events?

There’s no economic argument for importing foreigners. Wages in Western countries have been flat for decades. There are no unfilled jobs that can only be filled by foreigners. The demand for unskilled labor is falling, as automation take over in the West. Importing millions of illiterate young men who have no usable skills and the IQ of a grapefruit adds nothing but a burden to the economies of the West.

The other side of this is who has ever heard someone demand that their town or village invite foreign settlement? Were the residents of Amsterdam demanding their government fill up their city with Moroccans? Were Germans in Frankfurt organizing rallies in the 80’s demanding the importation of Turks? Did the people of Lewiston Maine ever get a chance to vote on the importation of Somalis?

Of course not. There never has been a practical reason to import foreigners into the West, much less hostile, low-IQ savages from the Middle East. Whatever contributions have been made to the Belgian economy by Muslims were just blown to bits by a pair of suicide bombers. There are now rivers of blood because the leadership of Europe has been overrun by what looks increasingly like a suicide cult.

Angela Merkel, who will be remembered as one of history’s greatest monsters, is a good example to study. This piece on her from a few months ago walks you through her “evolution” from mundane Christian lady to a prominent deacon is what amounts to liberation theology, centered on the annihilation of the West as penance for generations of oppression.

Merkel is not alone, of course. The religion of the West, at least for the people in charge, is the toxic blend of egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. The more the bodies stack up, the more they are convinced they must somehow atone for the sins of the West. Each new blast renews their faith. There’s no reasoning with them and there is no bargaining with them. They are true believers.