At the core of the American cultural outlook is the assumption that the more open something is, the better it will become over time. Openness means a low barrier of entry and a low of barrier entry means lots of people with a wide variety of ideas can enter the system, thus improving the system through competition. Therefore, the more open a system is to new people and ideas, the faster it will mutate and improve into something better than the original.

As much as conservatives like to label the cultural lunacy we see happening as the product of Marxism, it really is the product of Americanism. Sure, the people who brought us novelties like gender and racial grievance were trained up in radical philosophy, but they have always operated under the assumption that reducing the barriers to entry is a primary goal. In fact, their presence in the academy is the result of this bedrock belief in total openness.

Whether it is the marketplace of ideas or the marketplace of goods and services, the starting American assumption is the more the better. If you want better health care, so the argument goes, you need more competition among providers. Get more providers competing for patient dollars and inevitably the quality of  service will improve and the cost to the patient will decline. Similarly, open the marketplace of ideas and the number and quality of competing ideas will improve.

George Soros is now a stock villain in normie politics, but look at what he calls his umbrella organization. It is the Open Society. George Soros literally seeks the end of all borders in the world. That is not just national borders, but all of the cultural and social borders that define human society. In many respects, Soros is the extreme representation of the core American principle of openness. He imagines the world as one giant wide open frontier.

Of course, the frontier is why Americans love openness. The founding of the American way of life was based on the idea that you could always head west and find a new place to call home if you were not happy. This later transformed into the natural mobility Americans take for granted. The typical European lives his life in one place, only leaving for holiday trips. Americans move all over the place, often from one type of community to another, without thinking much about it.

You cannot move from Boston Massachusetts to Nashville Tennessee if the people in these areas are naturally hostile to strangers. The typical person from Tennessee may think the typical person from Massachusetts is a mean word, but both people assume it is immoral to exclude someone based on their place of origin. We will never see a campaign by one region to block the migration of people from another region, even when it is terrible for the receiving end.

We have a good example in Idaho. People are fleeing California due to the economy, crime, taxes and general lunacy. They first moved to Colorado where they promptly started voting for politicians that promise to ruin Colorado. Now people are leaving the state because it is getting as bad as California. The people of Idaho know this and should erect barriers to entry in order to protect themselves from California, but they would rather die than be rude to the newcomers.

American openness is the heart of the immigration problem. You can get a majority behind enforcing the laws against migrants flowing freely over the border, but you cannot get majority support for an end to all immigration. The idea of closing a border brings shame and guilt to the mind of the typical American. He cannot explain why he thinks closing the border is wrong, he just knows it. Like the Idahoans, Americans would rather die than be mean to newcomers.

In fairness, American openness was a great advantage. The openness to new ideas and new people turned an empty continent into a superpower. It made it possible to flood the continent and make the most of the natural resources. If Americans were not willing to pick up and move, the West would never have been conquered. Much of the technological progress the world enjoys is the result of openminded sorts coming to America and challenging old assumptions.

When the continent was protected by two massive oceans that were not easy to cross, this ethic of openness was a great asset. Now that the world is much more crowded and oceans are no longer a barrier, openness is a liability. Not only are millions of people flowing into the country ever month, every stupid and toxic idea is free to jump on stage and do its worst. American openness is turning the country into the dayroom of a lunatic asylum with no way to close the doors.

Many blame the problems of the West on individualism, but the more serious problem may be American openness. Since the middle of the last century, American values have been imposed on Europe. They now sound like grievance studies professors because of the American cultural dominance. For three generations, the ticket up the status ladder has had the stars and stripes on it. As a result, openness is now as much a European principle as an American one.

In the West, it is now immoral to close the door on anyone or anything, with the exception of those who want to close the door. The surest way to be removed from polite company is to question the open door policy. Only fascists and white supremacist want barriers to entry and objective standards. Paradoxically, the most tolerant and open culture in human history is violently intolerant of anyone suggesting that there must be a limit to tolerance and openness.

Fitness applies to all things, even morals and ideas. It is looking like the open society, like many species, was able to flourish in an exceptional environment, but once the environment returned to the norm, the open society is no longer fit. Like the giant panda, the open society is only suited for specific conditions. Unlike the giant panda, there will be no zookeepers to maintain it. Either openness is abandoned or it dies out taking the people with it.

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