My favorite Bush basher from the Right, Paul Craig Roberts, hit the nail on the head in his observations upon Christmas, entitled The Greatest Gift of All, in which he announced offhandedly "There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country."

Now why didn't I think of that?

Actually, I did, but not in those words. All the Sturm und Drang over legal and illegal immigration, which is the mainstay of VDARE.COM, boils down to the concept of a club—specifically to the idea that a country is a club, and should not be violated.

It seems to me this is the essence of what Roberts has said. The purpose of a club, any club no matter how large, is to embody some primary, unified idea, purpose or outlook. That is what defines a country, after all. By its very nature, the nation-state is exclusionary. When it no longer is exclusionary, it ceases to be.

Perhaps 15 years ago, I started confiding to close friends my feeling that I was living in a madhouse—and not just because I had grown up in south Florida, on the streets of South Beach before it became, well, South Beach.

No, my remark was in reference to the country as a whole and at large—to the late, great north American republic of 1789, which I now think of as Ex America, in homage to Garet Garrett.

Actually, it went a bit further than that. I suggested that the apparent lunacy of current events and the magnificent hypocrisy of the passing scene, largely determined by officials in Washington, D.C., could best be understood, in fact could only be understood, when one accepted the madhouse scenario.

The situation has only progressed wildly in the wrong direction in the meantime, and my moyen de vivre, or way of looking at the big picture, has become more useful and consoling.

America has ceased to be a club; it has devolved into a free-for-all. Mass immigration is just one of the more outstanding manifestations.

I would guess that at one time or another some of us have belonged to a private club which was going to hell, at least in our own minds. This "going to hell" may have been for a variety of reasons, but essentially was caused by the club not being true to its founding principles and not enforcing its own rules.

That appears to be what has happened to the United States. Things have evolved to such an extent that the founding principles of America are now unrecognizable, indeed almost nonexistent.

As a result, we are living in a postscript era, which could be thought of as Phase III.

Phase I, the original Republic ended with the Civil War, or with the War of Northern Aggression, as my die-hard, Southern friends are apt to call it. How can anyone maintain, even theoretically, that the United States is being governed by the same Constitution approved in the aftermath of the American Revolution against John Bull, when in the interim half of the country has been demonized, invaded, pillaged, ransacked and subjugated by the other half?

In any club the right to resign is understood, taken for granted. The Southern states had a perfect right to go their separate way. They were not trying to force their point of view, their way of life, upon the Northern states. It was just the opposite. The legitimate issue of slavery aside, the Civil War marked the collapse of the American republic as envisioned by the founders of that Republic, many of whose leaders were slave owners. The great experiment lasted little more than 70 years

The Civil War launched a newly-reconstituted America unto the road of expansionism and empire—what could be termed Phase II.

The Spanish-American war of 1898—in which Washington acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines—opened the door wide to the possibility of America's entry into the Great War of 1914 and then, after that triumph, to the Great War's inevitable reprise, the Second World War. 

All three conflicts were avoidable and, from the perspective of the West, horribly self-destructive and counter-productive. This, at least, should be obvious by now. There was no legitimate reason for Washington to become involved in any of these conflicts. They were truly "elective" wars, just as much as Bush Jr.'s escapade in Iraq is today.

All of this frenetic activity in search of something and on behalf of god-knows-what has led to the enervation of the European stock in America, and to the importation of nonsensical ideas, to wit, "liberalism," socialism and internationalism, taking the place of nationalism, common sense and reality.

It has brought us to the free-for-all aforesaid, and to the invasion of America by aliens, an invasion acquiesced in by both political parties for a variety of reasons, none of them good.

Madison Grant's "Great Race" of 19th Century America has followed the path taken by the British imperialists, who had a good thing going but who did not know when to stop and reevaluate their position.

Frank Harris wrote in 1924, in the aftermath of the Great War, that "It makes one almost despair of humanity...Anglo-Saxon domineering combativeness is the greatest danger in the world today."

At the beginning of the 21st century, the greatest danger to America might be the tendency for what is left of the Anglo-Saxons and their successors to roll over and go back to sleep. Their country has been hijacked, and the world is being held hostage.

Patrick Foy [email him] is a writer and photographer, a graduate of Columbia University, and the author of The Unauthorized World Situation Report .