Peace is bought, not found

The X Files made a habit of tantalizing its viewers with possibilities, mysteries, alternative facts and dreams. Ultimately it would become a victim of its own need to deceive, inveigle, obfuscate, with the mythology becoming so convoluted there would be no possible satisfying answer forthcoming.

The issue of borders being an important one, it needs some thought. If 'Home' presents the dream, 'Teliko' presents the reality.

How does the 'land of opportunity' navigate between this Scylla and Charybdis?

The obvious answer is that there is no obvious answer.

Home, by definition, is small and intimate. It may be possible to stretch the idea as far as a small town's boundaries but no further. We can think of the world as a global village but, in reality, it is anything but. In truth, it is as wide as it is broad and what is mine only remains mine as long as I am willing to 'stand my ground'. Only a fool or an innocent invites the vampire over the threshold!

When the West was building itself into what it is today it was accused of usurpation and colonialism. And, indeed, without this guilty past we never would have achieved all that we have. But the English would not be who they once were if not for the marriage between the logic and order of the Romans and the fighting spirit of the Vikings. Without advocating the virtues of invasion, one must recognize the benefits of experience.

Times they do seem to have changed. Where once a nation sought to make itself great, today it is easier to run away to those who have obtained the dream than it is to 'stand one's ground' in the name of God, monarch and country. The immigration crisis as it exists today is simply a matter of those oppressed seeking salvation elsewhere than home.

Where would Europe be today if Britain had shirked its responsibility? And where would Britain be if not for Roosevelt? Peace is bought, not found!

Something which cost the lives of so many should not be given away to those unwilling to pay the same price.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." (cf. L. P. Hartley 'The Go-Between') What they did was build their future. And succeeded so well that those whose past is today can build nothing for their future in their mad rush to benefit from the sacrifice of others.

Controlled immigration is beneficial to both parties: the immigrant has the opportunity of a new life; the country gains from the immigrants experience and expertise. I live in a country not my own on these terms.

No sane person opens the door of the home to those who would simply take all that has been earned. In both Britain and the States there are cases in which the defender of the home has paid the price for preventing an invasion. Yet we are led to believe that because they come en masse, in vessels barely able to carry them, they deserve all that our societies have to offer.

They would be more deserving of our aid if they 'stood their ground' and fought for their future as once the British and the Americans did.

Freedom is not something to be found, like a piece of fluff, in the pocket of another.