Says who? Why, another imported foreigner like Berlin, who can lecture people whats best for the natives in their own country.

"Let’s go back to this idea. If you were among the many German ethnics living in the Czech nation after WW1, would you cite culture as the grounds to start rebelling and breaking the law along with the rest to become a separate nation, or would you be a proud Czech patriot and condemn others for not being patriotic?"

I know this wasnt directed at me, but honestly I would either do 1) what the Sudeten Germans did do, hope for a pan-Germanism revival 2) move to Germany proper

Those two things are not one and the same, are they?

So either a man can accept all those within his geographic boundaries as American and stick to it, or consider one definition of American culture, and work on excluding all the Italians, Poles, Russian Jews, and other latecomers by some means (maybe draw new boundaries around New Jersey and New York), but a man can't have it both ways.

Let's go back to this idea. If you were among the many German ethnics living in the Czech nation after WW1, would you cite culture as the grounds to start rebelling and breaking the law along with the rest to become a separate nation, or would you be a proud Czech patriot and condemn others for not being patriotic?

Beyond all this talk of nationalism and ethnicity (which are never the same), it comes back to what Isaiah Berlin said: "Reluctant tolerance is the only solution".

and

"You never chose the country in which you were born, and those who formed its governments and borders a few decades ago did it without your consent."

Mr. Sanjay - I continue to be astonished by some of the things you write here. I never chose the family into which I was born, but I will always come to the defense of every last kinsman that I have, even if I do not always agree with them. I also didn't choose to be an American, but I am one and will always defend America against all of its enemies (both foreign and domestic). America was not founded yesterday. It has been around long enough to have its own substantial history and its own unique culture. That is why the patriots that frequent this site are opposed to both illegal and excessive legal immigration. We do not identify with most recent immigrants because they do not identify with us. It's that simple. We are called bigots, racists, nativists, and nationalists, but the truth is that we are Americans. Too many of the people living in America are not Americans and we want them out.

Giving low interest rate loans to people to acquire expensive housing only drove prices further. Immigration has nothing to do with it, and I doubt it can greatly aggravate a problem that would exist just as much without immigration.

No real solution to it, since you can't defeat hundreds of local laws, just the way you can't defeat the hundreds of local government Enclosure Acts in England that drove thousands of English people into poverty. It's the general cruelty of human behaviour that can turn even municipal authorities and city halls into terrifying oppressors - as many in British towns can attest.

Increases in personal productivity limit the number of individuals necessary to provide the needed products from farming, ranching, logging, mining, etc. The level of investment to get started has also increased significantly. These were traditional industries for many of the European peoples that settled the Intermountain West. Not to say you can't make it here because many still do, but the necessary skill sets may be challenging to acquire. State and federal subsidies have become fairly important.

The point is that things change and many people get left behind. Sure for some individuals and some tribes the goods get cheaper and life gets better. It would appear that life is better in Arizona for many illegals, or they wouldn't be there. But for many other people, their economic situation is not changing for the better. They cannot afford to pay rent, let alone buy a home. And it isn't always an easy task to convince them that they are to blame for their failure.

Because it won't happen. Only 5% of American land is urbanized.

This too happens in a country with the largest urban sprawls ever known. The figure is *lower* for Third World countries, which pack in far more people in smaller space, since they have less financial resources to expand housing, transportation, and other utilities.

To give you the whole image, ancient Rome was the population of Michigan in an area one-tenth the size of Detroit (source: Sowell, Applied Economics). Overpopulation is defined as a ratio of people to a particular resource. This is a tautology - if people are poor and lack resources, they will always be "overpopulated". They are not poor, because they are crowded in; they are crowded in, because they are poor.

Resources are not getting more scarce or expensive. Real prices of copper remained the same across several decades, even with ever increasing demand. As for oil, it will never run out in our grandchildren's lifetimes. Scarcity of other resources means that scarcity of natural resources is even further limited by the inability to use them. To justify the high costs of oil exploration, drilling, and actual operations, nobody undertakes any of those things until prices start rising very high. And when they do start, a single oil well would have only 20% of its capacity used, and it would still take two decades to pay off the investment.

What we six billion humans do is gulp very little, and when we really really need more, we have to make tremendous effort to dig a little more and a gulp very little of it. The total known reserves in 1930 were a small fraction of total known reserves in 1940, which were a small fraction of what they were in 1950, and so on.

These skills were very useful in expropriating the native tribes and making the land their own. However, these skills are not so useful anymore. Now it appears the pioneer tribes and cultures are withering. Birth rates are lower, incidence of dysfunctional features is higher. They are no longer "thrifty".

Where I come from, the Intermountain West, it reminds me of a stand of Larch (Tamarack) that have grown old. After a fire, on good sites, the Larch will quickly repopulate the area. They are fast growing, fire resistant, and long lived. They will produce a stand, in combination with other seral species, of very tall and straight timber.

But they are shade intolerant. The seedlings will not thrive in the shade of their parents. They struggle and die. They are crowded out by the offspring of the shade tolerant shrubs, trees, and weeds. After say, three hundred years the only Larch remaining are the fire scarred relics; still towering but surrounded by crowd loving, aggressive species. They will not dominate again until a catastrophic fire or other stand replacing event occurs.

Mr. Sanjay reminds me of a couple of questions. How many Americans would wish to migrate to India, and attempt to live in conditions perhaps an order of magnitude more crowded than conditions in the average American urban area? Second, why are Americans so resistant to relearning the skills of living well on a very meager allowance? How can they expect to compete in a world where the resources of land and its products become ever more scarce, or more expensive?

"There is no such thing as the demise of the West. In any shape or form. It never happened, nor will happen."

I would be careful making obviously indefensible statements like this. No country, culture, or empire can ever be assured escape from some kind of demise. The West has been in decline for a while now, especially culturally, and now demographically.

We no longer produce great art (well, not in the same quantity), adhere to the great moral teachings of Christianity or even classical thought, much of our government is corrupt and getting worse, and to top it all off, our economies are standing on stilts.

"Look at any random Western nation. Say…Netherlands. The Dutch are well-to-do and happy now. They were well-to-do and happy 100 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 200 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 400 years ago."

You are ignoring the present and the future. Just because I was rich yesterday, does not mean I will be rich tomorrow. I may be more likely to retain my wealth in the future, but that is a very thin argument.

Also, I think you may be projecting your own attitudes about nationhood, community, and culture into a context (The West) that is extremely different from that which engendered them. Just be aware that, unlike India, most cultures in the west have sovereignty over the geographical area they inhabit. Thus, their attitudes are different because their situations, problems, and duties are different.