Steyn: Bold As Brass

Mark Steyn on crime increases in Britain:

Back in the Seventies, it was discovered that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were illegally burning the barns of Quebec separatists. And the then Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, remarked with his customary glibness that if people were upset by the illegal barn-burning perhaps he’d make it legal for the Mounties to burn barns. As George Jonas observed, M. Trudeau had missed the point: barn-burning wasn’t wrong because it was illegal; it was illegal because it was wrong. Once that distinction is lost, civil society becomes all but impossible – because a broadly agreed morality plays a big role in social cohesion. Today in the western world, more and more things are illegal but we’re less and less clear what’s wrong. And everywhere but America, where any metal thief who attempts to steal your doorknob risks staggering away with at least as much metal lodged in his vital organs as in his swag bag, the state doesn’t trust its citizens to defend their property and in doing so uphold what’s right.

Steyn's point is excellent. The caving in to Muslim's who want to live under their own laws even when living in another country, or pandering to illegal immigrants who refuse to try to become a legal participant of this country reflect a breakdown in the broadly agreed morality that makes a free society work. I am very pro immigration, but legal immigration only. People who want to come and enjoy Americas benefits must become Americans. They need not abandon their heritage or deny it but, they must embrace our heritage too.