The future of the Republican Party -- this is what they say of you, dear Hispanics.  But a future for better or for worse has yet to be seen.

My suspicion has nothing to do with Hispanics' capabilities, nor with their civility -- for I know that many work hard, and many more behave respectably.  But looking beyond these two qualities lies another issue far deeper than the ability to labor and abide by law, and that issue concerns the problem of lower faction.

What we must consider is something along the teachings of Jonathan Edwards or Tocqueville: the realization that the good of the faction itself must be subordinate to something higher -- something tapping not simply into our sense of belonging to groups, but into our sense of what it is to be man.  In short, we must, as Tocqueville wrote, adopt a platform of higher faction (Toqueville's Great Parties), a faction for the promotion of true ideals, and not conform to lower factions (his Minor Parties), which exist for the sole purpose of self-promotion.

If we consider what it means to do otherwise, we find ourselves an example very quickly.  For there exist two kinds of aim in the world: the first, of true virtue, behavior which respects the objective good of mankind -- universal benevolence, the will of God.  But the moment we disregard that universal goodness -- the laws of nature, of Scripture, of conscience -- we begin to say that what's good for my group, however that group is defined, is good simply because it benefits my group.

The larger the lower faction is, of course, the more noble its factional behavior appears -- but in reality, the behavior still violates the silent but irrepressible fact that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.  And when the faction becomes so small that its factitious nature becomes obvious -- be it simply for company, family, or most obvious of all, the self -- it is then that humanity most easily recognizes the faction's behaviors as entirely immoral.  Lower faction is the man who cheats taxation to further his business, the woman who testifies that her obviously murderous son is innocent, the spirit of Pontius Pilate -- terrified of his own demise, and caring little for the rights of an innocent Jew -- sending Jesus Christ to be crucified. 

This isn't necessarily to say that man must in all circumstances grant everyone exactly the same legal privileges; for society's harmonious operation, certain rights and privileges must be extremely lopsided in the pursuit of civilization.  The husband and father has greater obligations to his wife and children than to others.  The policeman and the legislator and the citizen may be permitted far different rights and privileges, but all necessarily, and requiring the habitual popular examination known as the election season to determine whether or not the trustees have used their licenses for the public good or for personal gain.  As well, the citizen and the non-citizen must be afforded different rights, not simply because one is a man and another isn't -- that is to say, not because one has unalienable rights and the other doesn't -- but rather because if the higher faction is to exist for the defense and propagation of higher principles (i.e., those pertaining to the true justice toward mankind), then it must have some way of establishing, maintaining, and defending itself against the unprincipled world.  For if the world had already proven itself capable of harmonious integration according to universal benevolence, no smaller governments would be necessary.

One issue both immigrant non-citizens and Americans must agree upon is this: there is something about America that attracts immigrants, and what attracts immigrants did not happen by accident. The kind of people who make a nation great, and who are valuable prospects for future citizens, are reasonable people --  and reasonable people do not believe that great nations magically appear.  Rather, they know that a special something -- something comprising the grace of God, a particular culture, and a coexistent ethic -- permits establishment, production, propagation, and defense.  And what reasonable immigrants must then agree upon is that that something must be defended if glory is to be maintained.

It is true: if the principles are eternal, then good men from all nations may reside there; but if it is to remain long a place worthy of residence, then people cannot be allowed in without discrimination.  And when a people defend unreasonable -- or worse, illegal -- immigration, and when they do not support a necessary and moral assimilation, then what they do is declare their support for lower faction, and therefore themselves void of higher principle.  If one may say he loves America, he must love it not for the land itself, nor for the color of its inhabitants, nor for its present luxuries; he must love it for that special set of ideals which makes it great.  And he must be willing to defend those ideals, even should his own family remain without.

The problem with America's minority factions and many Hispanics -- and I speak this gently, noting very well that the best portions of my Hispanic family are likely to read this -- is that so many do not necessarily champion the good of America or mankind.  They don't speak in true high ideals, or protest for the laws of nature, or rally for America's founding principles.  Rather, through decades of shouting and bullying and government pandering, what Americans -- who are mostly white -- have seen is an invading people advancing for the sole sake of brown or black or others (and combinations thereof).  And there is no such moral aim as the advancement of black, or brown, or white; nothing that we know of God says anything of the sort.  But there is such a thing as the moral advancement of universal justice -- the Laws of God -- unalienable rights -- Christian brotherhood not for the sake of unity itself, but within unity of purpose.  What Americans need is higher faction; what they get from minority parties is the lowest of the low: the coercion of government used to rob families of property and the constant derision of true unalienable rights as "racist."

I have yet to meet more than a handful of Hispanics -- including myself, though only half-Hispanic -- who quote the Law as authority for legal doctrines, or who enjoy Locke, or Smith, or Paine (Rubio himself, a proponent of a 800-plus-page amnesty bill, is unlikely either to have read or to have revered The Federalist [see: #62]).  But when Hispanics speak the Laws of nature and of nature's God; when they proclaim that their own advancement as a people is subservient to principles of eternal justice; when black and white and colors of all kinds unite not superficially, but spiritually, according to biblical law, then will all good Americans support massive Hispanic immigration, because Hispanics will view common good and Hispanic good as one and the same.

Men such as myself do not simply want Hispanics who assert the laws of the universe; we need them.  Real men, godly men, thoughtful men of whatever color -- to whom acquisition means far less than objectively defined justice, to whom socialism is as loathsome as piracy, who war against postmodernism while wielding the sword of Scripture.

To all who fit this description or now after reading desire it, I extend a fellow citizen's embrace -- and so long as I remain a true American patriot, I extend it to none else.

Jeremy Egerer is a convert to biblical conservatism from radical liberalism and the editor of the Seattle website www.americanclarity.com. American Clarity welcomes friend requests on Facebook.