Kudos to the Archbishop

When asked by a friend, a couple of weeks ago, how I reconciled all the positive things I have been saying about the very anti-elitist populist political campaign of Donald Trump in the country to our south with my own political convictions, which are High Tory, a form of conservatism that is ordinarily thought of as being extremely elitist, my answer was to point to the plurality of elites. There always have been and always will be elites of many different varieties, rather than the single monolithic ruling class or power elite that Marxist sociologists are always raving about, and the elites whose traditional authority I would argue in favour of are not the same elites that Donald Trump, himself obviously a member of the elite of successful entrepreneurs, rails against as a populist. The elites that Trump has been blasting, including those of his own party, are globalist elites, relentlessly pursuing the goal of an integrated world in which borders will in no way significantly impede the movement of either labour or goods, no matter the negative impact this may have on their own country. Such elites are quite new, having attained elite status through the economic and political innovations of the last century, whereas the elites that High Tories such as myself believe in are those whose prescriptive status and authority are rooted and grounded in a history that goes back much further. These include royalty, nobility, and the clergy of the church.

It is most unfortunate that some of the attitudes of the newer, globalist, elites have infected some of the older elites. Consequently, it is extremely rare in this day and age to hear anything sensible about immigration come from the mouth of a clergyman. Most clergy, be they Roman Catholic or Protestant, evangelical or the infidels who dress their unbelief up in the language of faith and call themselves liberals, speak as if they worshipped at the idolatrous shrine of the cult of one-world-without-borders. The prime example of this is the world’s most recognizable clergyman, Jorge Bergoglio, the Jesuit - in every sense of the term - who recently rose from the archbishopric in Argentina where he had preached Bolshevism and called it “Christianity” to become the pretender to St. Peter’s throne in Rome after it was left vacant when his predecessor was ousted through some diabolical chicanery that is as yet to be explained. Forty years ago, in his prophetic novel, The Camp of the Saints, about a Western apocalypse brought about by an invasion of Third World migrants that the West found itself unable to defend itself against, being paralyzed by liberal guilt, Jean Raspail described a pope, newly risen to the post from Latin America, who in a Good Friday address, told Europe that it was their Christian duty to welcome and embrace the migrants. The sentiments of Raspail’s fictional pope, eerily anticipated those which Bergoglio has expressed in real history regarding the migration crisis that has been menacing Europe.

It was refreshing, therefore, the other week, to read the remarks that had been made by the present successor to St. Augustine – the other St. Augustine that is, not of Hippo but of Canterbury - the Most Reverend Justin Welby, in an interview given to the parliamentary periodical The House. In the interview Welby acknowledged the legitimacy of people’s concerns about how mass migration will affect their communities and public services, and described the tendency of the bien-pensants to condemn or dismiss those who voice such concerns as being “racist” as “outrageous, absolutely outrageous”, which, of course, it is. He is quoted as having said:

Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis. This is one of the greatest movements of people in human history. Just enormous. And to be anxious about that is very reasonable.

This is quite right, and the Archbishop went on to talk about specific concerns about housing, jobs, and access to health services.

Now we need to be careful and not read too much into these remarks. It is clear from the article as a whole that Welby has a generally positive view of the mass migration that is taking place and that his idea of addressing these legitimate concerns of people is to increase funding to programs upon which large scale migration places strains rather than doing something to stop the flow of migration.

It is, however, a step in the right direction for such a high-ranking prelate to accept the legitimacy of negative views of migration and to condemn the condemnation of such as racism. For the many who are sick and tired of hearing from the pulpit that racism is a far worse sin than all the Seven Deadly combined and that they are guilty of it for wanting the people they order coffee or lunch from, buy groceries from, and otherwise do business with in person or on the phone to speak the language of their country in an understandable manner, for wanting their government to select newcomers with the needs, interests, and security of the whole country in mind, for not wanting to overload the public services network with too many newcomers at one time, for wanting to pass their country on to their children and grandchildren, hopefully improved but substantially intact and untransformed from when they received it from their ancestors and for resenting government policies that go against all these wishes and which were enacted without their consultation, Welby’s words are a breath of fresh air. Hopefully, they are also an indication that we will be hearing less sanctimonious and self-righteous tripe and pious prattle about “the stranger” – which never in the Scriptures meant unassimilable migrants by the hordes of thousands or millions– and more truth, sanity, and good sense.

So kudos to the Archbishop of Canterbury. If only Canadian primate Fred Hiltz would take a page out of his book.