I confess myself entirely unmoved by the sudden solicitude for Mr. Milo Yiannopoulos. For the better part of a decade, a certain species of libertarian and internet "conservative" has labored under the curious delusion that conservatism consists chiefly in irritating "the Left": that vulgarity becomes virtue when it scandalizes a feminist; that decadence becomes tradition when draped in the proper political colors; that obscenity acquires the dignity of statesmanship when directed against sufficiently fashionable enemies.
I have never shared this view.
There was always something profoundly unserious in the spectacle of men who spoke endlessly of restoring Western civilization while treating civilization itself as little more than an elaborate stage upon which to perform acts of adolescent rebellion and unspeakable sexual perversion.
A civilization is not preserved by transgression merely because the transgressor votes correctly. Indeed, the very idea of universal suffrage and democracy are the humanist political manifestations of a theological anthropology incompatible with proper Christianity. Defending "democracy" is nonsense, for democracy rests on the premise that man's will is naturally upright and therefore does not require divine grace to incline it toward the good. Thus, every human will possesses equal intrinsic political authority, so nobody has an inherent claim to rule anybody else, under this conception. Indeed, to a political democrat, the Church and God's laws are "just one more option", equally valid, AT BEST, with all the other options. At worst, the actual consequence is prosecution against true Christianity. No serious Christian can argue that there is no problem in living in a society that permits the things our western nations allow today.
A nation is not preserved by turning politics into entertainment.
And conservatism, if the word is to retain any meaning whatever, cannot signify simply the permission to indulge every appetite, mock every restraint, profane every convention, and then demand applause because the people one has offended happen to be godless liberals. There is no difference between a godless liberal and a godless "conservative" like Milo Yiannopoulos.
His brand is not conservatism. It is the spirit of the evil, wicked and vile sexual revolution of the 1960s with a different rhetoric.
Mr. Yiannopoulos was, by all accounts, extraordinarily gifted at provoking precisely those people whom conservatives most enjoyed seeing provoked. For this he acquired admirers. He was witty, outrageous, frequently entertaining, and possessed that peculiar talent, so highly rewarded in our degraded political culture, for making enemies loudly and friends indiscriminately.
None of this confers citizenship in our republic. None of it confers a right of residence in our country. And none of it absolves a foreign national from obedience to the immigration laws (what little is left of them) of the country whose hospitality he enjoys.
Mr. Yiannopoulos is a British subject. According to the Department of Homeland Security, he remained in the United States beyond his lawful authorization, failed to appear for his immigration hearing, and was ordered removed.
Very well. Let the order be executed. Incidentally, curiously enough, I happen to live in Louisiana, where the arrest has taken place.
Our state has endured hurricanes, floods, carpetbaggers, oilmen, northern transplants, Bourbon Street, and more than its proper allotment of colorful foreigners. We are not a people notoriously deficient in hospitality. I will welcome you with open arms, talk to you for hours at no cost to you, and wish that you enjoy your stay here. But hospitality is neither citizenship nor friendly. Don't confuse our polite hospitality with a license to encroach. Indeed, as the famous old Picayune guide said about our culture down here: “A gentleman could not fight anyone whom he could not ask to his house.” Indeed, I may consider you sufficiently respectable to dine at my table, and therefore sufficiently respectable for me to also get into a fight with you tomorrow morning if you offend our honor.
Louisiana may offer a stranger gumbo, whiskey, music, conversation, and the Gospel all at once. We are an hospitable people in Louisiana; but ours is an old hospitality, of the sort which once permitted a gentleman to dine at one's table in the evening and required him to answer for himself beneath the oaks in the morning.
I am also not persuaded by the argument that Milo ought to receive some special indulgence because he has spent years fighting the Left. What a strange doctrine! Are immigration laws merely weapons to be employed against foreigners whom conservatives find disagreeable? I may find an illegal alien Chinaman very polite, agreeable, industrious, indeed spotless in manners, and still not want him in our country. I want him in China, where he belongs with his people.
Does a visa become perpetual when its bearer accumulates enough Republican friends? Are borders sacred when crossed by an anonymous Mexican laborer, yet suddenly negotiable when crossed by a celebrity with a sufficiently amusing social-media account?
If that is our principle, then we have no principle.
The law acquires its majesty precisely from its indifference to our personal affections. It is easy to demand enforcement against the stranger whose language we do not understand, whose politics we despise, and whose skin color is darker than a paper bag. The sterner test arrives when the law knocks upon the door of someone who attended our conferences, appeared on our podcasts, entertained our friends, and once made our enemies furious. That is when one discovers whether “law and order” was a conviction or merely a slogan.
I bear Mr. Yiannopoulos no personal malice. Quite the contrary. In fact, he has expressed remorse and repentance for some of his past sexual behaviors. If he is sincere, then Christians should support him in his quest for sexual purity. I wish him health. I wish him peace. I wish him repentance where repentance is required, wisdom where wisdom is lacking, and sufficient maturity to discover that notoriety is a poor substitute for a life worth living under God's laws.
I wish him pleasant dinners, loyal friends, good books, Christian charity, domestic tranquility, and every happiness Providence may yet reserve for him. If he ever came back to Louisiana, I'd want him to do it as a new man in Christ, legally, and spiritually. He will have a place on my dinner table at that point. I merely see no compelling reason why these blessings must be enjoyed in violation of immigration laws.
Britain is a venerable country. It possesses churches older than our republic, villages older than our Constitution, excellent tailoring, tolerable people on occasion (they are our ancestors after all), and a civilization which Mr. Yiannopoulos has spent a considerable portion of his career claiming to defend. Surely it is not cruelty to permit him the privilege of defending it at somewhat closer range.
And perhaps there is a lesson here for the American Right. For too long they have mistaken entertainers like Milo and Donald Trump for thinkers, provocation for courage, notoriety for importance, and hostility toward the Left for fidelity to the Right. But conservatism is not simply whatever progressivism dislikes.
The true conservative believes that freedom exists within an order; that rights are accompanied by duties; that citizenship means something precisely because it does not encompass everyone; that nations possess the moral authority to distinguish guest from citizen and permission from entitlement; and that laws cease to be laws when friendship, celebrity, wealth, or political usefulness purchases exemption from them. There must be boundaries somewhere. There must be standards somewhere.
There must remain some authority before which even the clever, the famous, the amusing, and the politically useful are required to bow. Otherwise all our talk of order is fraudulent.
Spare me the notion that America owes permanent residence to every foreign provocateur who once made the clowns at Berkeley angry.
Wish Milo well. Pray for him, if you are so inclined. Send him a Louisiana moonshine bottle for the journey, and a gospel tract.
Then put him on the plane.
Next up on the list of deportations should now be that gross Somalian woman named Ilhan Omar! Ilhan Omar is a festering wound on the body politic, a foreign-born parasite who came to this country only to hate it, and who uses her position to champion barbarism. She's the living embodiment of immigration gone wrong, a walking, talking argument for why we shouldn't import people whose first act upon arriving is to plot our destruction. Indeed, ICE should have focused much more on people like her than on Milo, but alas, they don't have the real guts to do it! That means it will be up to us, Americans, to do the job!
Alfred Cromwell
Mandeville, Louisiana