There is a subtle and dangerous point about the tidal immigration described in today’s AT blog on Muslim invaders in Europe. We are a "high trust" society. In 99.9999% of the cases in ordinary life, we all get along due to basic Christian values that are not even articulated. If you walk in front of a car at a crossing you can expect the car to wait for you to cross, no matter who is driving. You don't even look.  If someone were lying by the side of the road, everybody would stop no matter what the person looked like. If a nurse comes in to look at you in a hospital, you thank him-or-her for doing so. If there is a line, you get in the back of it. Just some examples among the countless courtesies we all treat each other with on a day-to-day basis.

All that goes out the window when a different culture gets injected. Before the welfare state, there was a very important criterion for immigrants to the U.S. since there was no general welfare available, everybody who came expected to make it on their own. That was their attitude. They didn't come if they didn't have that expectation.

That is a huge difference from today. Because if you are going to support yourself then you are part of the enterprise society. You are "selling yourself" to fit in with the social culture in general and impress your employer in particular and you have the attitudes associated with that. Everybody in the enterprise society is always selling themselves, from the entry level to the CEO. And also courtesy is part of the culture from which both sides of that courtesy feel better about themselves.

But in the welfare society, you are demanding things. People who come for welfare rather than to support themselves are demanders, and demanders get what they want by belligerence. Their whole life philosophy is different from enterprisers and is based on aggression to society as a whole.

Do we want to change our culture from enterprise to welfare?