For years, Democratic Socialists and their allies on the American left have pursued a radical transformation of the United States. They prioritize abstract notions of compassion, inclusion, “social justice” and pretty much free everything over national cohesion, cultural continuity and the practical requirements of a functioning society. Under their influence, skepticism toward unlimited immigration is branded as bigotry, borders are treated as immoral barriers and any discussion of cultural incompatibility is shouted down as xenophobia. The goal is never measured by results — only by the moral preening it allows.
This mindset has hardened into something far more destructive than naive kindness: a suicidal empathy that demands America subordinate its own preservation to ideological purity. Self-defense, assimilation and common sense are sacrificed on the altar of virtue-signaling. Questioning the project is heresy. Uncomfortable realities — crime spikes in sanctuary cities, parallel societies forming in enclaves, strained welfare systems and eroded social trust — are dismissed as inconvenient distractions from the glorious multicultural future.
Nowhere is this socialist-driven folly more evident than in their aggressive push for mass immigration, multiculturalism and now even extremes such as the abolishment of the position of President, the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, all borders and all police, each promoted by the next Democrat Congresswoman from New York’s 13th Congressional District Darializa Avila Chevalier in past social media posts. All this even as they ignore the glaring conflicts between many incoming cultures and core American values. This is a complete rewrite of our system of governance, our Constitution.
But for now let us focus on immigration and multiculturalism.
Socialists insist that all cultures are interchangeable, that diversity is an unqualified strength and that America must endlessly absorb populations from societies with fundamentally different foundations — often without any expectation of genuine assimilation. They treat the U.S. as a blank slate to be remade, not a sovereign nation with a specific Western heritage worth defending: individual liberty, free speech, equality under secular law, religious pluralism and the primacy of the individual over tribal or theocratic authority.
Many immigrants arrive from cultures where religion dominates public life, dissent is suppressed, women’s rights are curtailed, homosexuality is criminalized or violently opposed, and clan loyalty trumps individual rights. These are not minor “differences to celebrate.” They represent deep, often irreconcilable clashes with the Enlightenment principles that built America. Yet socialists and their activist allies pretend these tensions don’t exist — or worse, actively suppress debate about them while accelerating demographic change.
The contradictions expose the intellectual bankruptcy. Progressives and socialists champion LGBT rights, feminism, secularism and personal autonomy at home, while importing and defending large numbers of people from societies that reject those very principles. They lecture Americans about tolerance but extend none to critics who point out the obvious: importing illiberal values undermines the liberal society they claim to love.
A vivid recent example was the cruise with roughly 2,000 predominantly gay passengers facing rejection in Turkey and Egypt. For critics, it perfectly illustrated the collision between fantasy and reality. Socialists who cheer mass migration from Muslim-majority countries and smear integration concerns as “Islamophobia” suddenly confronted the fact that many in those cultures do not share — or actively oppose — Western attitudes on sexuality, gender and freedom. The shock was revealing. What did they expect when ideology collides with imported worldviews?
This is suicidal empathy in action: relentless self-criticism of America and the West, paired with willful blindness toward the authoritarian, patriarchal or theocratic tendencies being imported. Socialists demand that the U.S. apologize for its past, dilute its borders, weaken its cultural confidence, and remake its institutions to accommodate newcomers — while shielding those newcomers’ originating cultures from scrutiny in the name of “diversity.”
The irony is damning. The very freedoms socialists enjoy — free expression, democratic accountability, legal equality and secular governance — are rare historical achievements, not universal defaults. They flourish in the West precisely because of the traditions socialists are eager to erode. A society that loses faith in its own foundations will find that not every imported culture shares, or even tolerates, those foundations.
By ignoring these obvious cultural conflicts in their zeal to “fundamentally transform” America, socialists are engineering long-term consequences: fragmented communities, rising tribalism, declining social capital and the slow unraveling of the liberal order. Good intentions, slogans and moral superiority will not shield the country from reality once the bill comes due. America’s experiment in ordered liberty requires vigilance and cultural self-confidence — not endless, one-sided surrender disguised as empathy.
Bill Murphy lives in Manchester.