Taking liberties with progress

Human progress is not a given. Great achievement can be squandered if treated carelessly. Modern-day “progressives” like President Obama, who were “liberals” before they gave the word a bad odor, are counting on transformation of the culture to eliminate memory of the past. They may regret it.

Mr. Obama’s determination to enforce “hope and change” has done more to endanger the republican form of government than any of his 43 predecessors. His unilateral executive orders disarming U.S. immigration laws have triggered waves of illegal immigration, swamping the states’ social services capacity and threaten to overwhelm institutions that have made America what it is. The United States added 430,000 foreign-born residents in 2010 and 2011, growing to 520,000 in 2012, and to more than 1 million in 2013. The foreign-born population grew to a record 42.4 million in 2014, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Abroad, Mr. Obama squandered the Middle East convulsion that was naively called “the Arab Spring.” He may think it’s useful and even clever to “never let a crisis go to waste,” but the turmoil of “the Arab spring” descended into the drearily familiar pattern of murderous mayhem, ranging from anarchy in Libya to ethnic cleansing in Syria. Forces of cultural displacement are hard at work now as waves of refugees wash up on the shores of Europe and no doubt soon in the United States. The president has committed the United States to accepting 10,000 Syrians this year and 100,000 a year by 2017.

The jarring effect is already evident. Muslim parents reacted with rage when a school board in New Jersey denied their petition to close schools for a Muslim holiday. “We’re in the minority,” cried one Muslim parent, “that’s clear from tonight. We’re going to be the majority soon.”

Mr. Obama and fellow “progressives” welcome the effects of infiltration from the culturally alien Middle East into the West as a means to destroy, once and for all, the concept of American exceptionalism and its European equivalents. He despises such ideas. Once unleashed, the social pressure of unassimilated immigrants would upend the institutions of society. The United States celebrated its 239th birthday this year; ancient Rome, which thought of itself as eternal, endured as a republic for more than three centuries, and all that remains of that cultural colossus are crumbling curiosities for tourists.

The Antikythera Mechanism, a bronze apparatus for calculating the positions of the sun and moon, was recovered from a sunken ship in 1901. It contained a sophisticated device that was thought to have been first built in 1575, but it turned out that the ship had foundered in 65 B.C. The U.S. Constitution was the great leap forward in how civilized man governs himself, but Mr. Obama treats it as an impediment to progress. Like the Antikythera Mechanism, the success of the American experiment could be lost in the headlong rush to leave behind the treasures of the present day.

“The president insists that ours is not a Judeo-Christian nation,” Ben Carson told an audience the other day in South Carolina. “But he doesn’t get to decide what kind of nation we are. We get to decide.”

The Obama administration is beginning the inevitable slow countdown to history, and after seven years of decline Americans can still welcome hope. The president can keep the change.