Clouds Like the Locusts

He would never suggest the immigrants should be prevented from coming to America, would the famous preacher. To say that, of course, would be un-American. This is a nation of immigrants, after all: a free market of ideas political and religious. Though the famous preacher must bravely say what, after all, must be said: these immigrants are different. Their minds are shackled to institutions too unlike our own. They are “un-accustomed to self-government” and would only be pawns for those seeking to undermine our democracy. Indeed, the very tenants of these immigrants’ faith virtually forces them to do their clerics’ bidding and be “easily embodied and wielded by sinister design.” Speaking bluntly (though of course objectively, and resignedly), the famous preacher notes their religion is fundamentally “adverse to liberty.” These immigrants could simply never assimilate to American culture. It’s almost unfair of us to let them try, isn’t it? And while he would never write anything remotely prejudiced, would the famous preacher, isn’t it concerning how the laws of a foreign religion seem to be taking over America? It happened in Boston, he heard. And to be historical for a moment, the famous preacher muses, “the world has never witnessed such a rush of dark minded population from one country to another.” The famous preacher means “dark minded” as “ignorant” or “malicious,” of course: which are just facts, not bigotry. But really aren’t these immigrants “Clouds like the locusts of Egypt…rising from the hills and plains” of foreign lands “to settle down upon our fair fields?” I’m just saying, the famous preacher insists, I’m just saying.

These Catholics have got to be stopped.