Max's Musings

Social problems can only be fixed by people who possess a strong sense of in-group loyalty and responsibility.

We fear tribalism, yet it’s the only thing that can fix a problem like this. Source

Earlier this month, I introduced “Max’s Musings,” the official title for my thought dumps. I also gave myself permission to stray from my lane a bit, be a bit more opinionated, without worrying too much about being right or wrong. Besides, we all think we’re right, at the end of the day.

So, let’s get to it.

Convincing Women To Worry About Immigration

I often speak of the divergence between men and women in Western society. On almost every major political issue, men and women tend to disagree more than agree. Immigration is no exception.

With the exception of maybe France, women throughout the West are overall supportive of immigration and sympathetic towards migrants, more than men. One reason is because women tend to be more in line with the status quo and prevailing social sentiments. If being anti-immigration is damaging to one’s reputation, most women won’t be. Status is extremely important, but especially for women, since this is the one avenue they have for getting ahead in life.

As you might imagine, it’s also because men and women differ biologically. Substacker Aly Dee says:

This piece is primarily for women because younger conservative men seem to be more familiar with the immigration issue and are instinctively more tribal than women.

Just as men’s tribalism can lead to tragic outcomes when not balanced out or permitted to be taken to extremes, women’s comparative lack of tribal sentiment can just as easily lead to disaster:

Women are not tribal at all, except in their loyalty to the sisterhood. Beyond being Team Woman, we have no loyalty to our communities or nations. We often forget that we are the ones raising families and that immigration impacts us directly in a multitude of ways. Immigration threatens the safety and survivability of our women and children. It impacts the ability of women’s husbands to find work. Women are being forced to work because of the strain immigrants put on the economy. American men and women are having a harder time purchasing property. Additionally, their children are likely to be in the same boat regarding difficulty in acquiring gainful employment and property due to rampant, unfettered immigration.

Not only are men impacted by immigration in ways women simply aren’t, they also bear the brunt of it. All those fighting-age males aren’t just potential physical threats. They’re also potential economic competitors, as well as reproductive competitors. The impact of immigration on women tends to be more of a downstream effect, a consequence of the walls being breached. This means it takes longer for women to be affected, hence, it also takes longer for women to understand why we don’t just let anyone into the country.

Aly Dee makes a similar point:

Too often, women don’t pay attention to large societal issues until they touch our doorstep, but ignoring immigration is no longer an option. Moving forward, we must understand that legal immigration is an equal threat to our families as illegal immigration.

It’s true that the only way to get women to pay attention to large societal issues is to either bring them to their doorstep or send them to college. But not only does this not always work, women often fail to see the bigger picture when they do. If a woman is, for example, victimized by an illegal immigrant, they either don’t see the fact the criminal was an illegal as problematic, or even if they do, they fail to understand that women’s safety is one of many issues when it comes to immigration, but not the only one.

When everyone finally agrees it’s a problem and something needs to be done, it’s men who almost always end up fixing a problem, anyway. Social problems can only be fixed by people who possess a strong sense of in-group loyalty and responsibility. We like to think we’ve advanced well past tribalistic ways, but all that’s happened is the scale and scope of tribalism has changed. Being defensive and threatened by outsiders isn’t bigotry or xenophobia. It’s the evolutionary biological norm.

Going back to being directly affected, I don’t think it makes any difference any longer. Indoctrination has been quite successful in ensuring ideological compliance. Women will seek to preserve status over their well-being. Furthermore, in today’s atomized society, women feel less threatened by migrants because they, in large part, feed the machine which allows them to lead independent lives apart from any other institution to which they hold any obligations towards (their employer and the government excepted). Mass immigration means cheaper handymen, more Uber drivers, cheaper everything to live comfortable, bourgeois lives.

This, plus the lack of tribalism plus the lack of obligation means women simply don’t feel the same sort of investment to anything beyond the self. The glaring contradiction is that if things do get out of control, women will be most vulnerable. I think that’s what we’re seeing in France. But the whole point is to ensure things don’t get out of control, because if they do, it’s too late.

Aly Dee goes on to say that immigration in general is the problem, not just illegal immigration. I primarily address illegal immigration because it’s the most glaring problem, but she’s right - immigration overall is the issue. Just because someone comes to the country “the right way” doesn’t mean they’re a blessing to the country. In fact, if the liberals are correct, and most illegals in America arrived legally, but overstayed their visas, then yes, legal immigration is very much the problem.

More important, the situation has gotten so out of control, it’s no longer useful to differentiate:

Our government doesn’t define “legal” based on what benefits citizens—it defines “legal” by whatever helps them cling to power. Their ability to retain power would be bolstered by importing immigrants who are likely to vote Democrat in exchange for resources until their deaths. This cycle would continue with the births of anchor babies, as well as the influx of more imported migrants. This would ensure no Republican would ever take office and usher in a permanent uniparty1.

Over and over again, our government has proven that if immigration grows their voter base, they’ll call it legal regardless of the cost to us.

I’m not arguing that we should start treating legal immigrants like criminals, and I don’t think Aly Dee is making that argument, either. But we do need to accept the fact we have too many foreigners in this country and that just because an immigrant is legal doesn’t mean they’re doing good for America. Legal status is just that - status. It doesn’t imply benefit or detriment.

More:

“Legal vs. illegal” is a false dichotomy. Immigration today is not organic. Immigration is imposed from the top down, without the consent of the governed. Immigration reshapes more than just towns. It reshapes our economy and workforce.

I often make the point that nobody loses sleep over not enough foreigners coming into the country. Immigration is something people were forced to accept. All those liberals expressing righteous indignation over the Trump administration’s anti-immigration effort aren’t going to change a thing or force themselves to endure discomfort over it. The reaction isn’t organic - it’s people reacting the way they were taught in school and by our institutions. It’s programming on display.

America is a land of competition, but too much competition is counter-intuitive:

And then there’s the job market. Husbands and sons are struggling to find decent work or purchase property due to this imported competition. To add complexity to this issue, hiring practices tilt in favor of women, stacking the deck even further against men5. Not only are our husbands competing with imported third-world labor for jobs in their own country, they’re competing with women as well.

This double bind erodes men’s ability to function as breadwinners, the very role that once allowed wives to slow down during their childbearing years. This is not accidental. It is by design. It is part of the long march to dismantle the nuclear family, already weakened by cultural decay and made less viable than the multi-generational households that sustained civilizations for centuries. Families keep paying the price when it is families who actually produce and raise the next generation.

While it’s true that immigrants aren’t the main reason why men have difficulty finding gainful employment, and that native women aren’t being taken by foreign men, not only do they make existing problems worse, creating further competition for men is certain to increase tensions. If it creates more problems than it solves, regardless of intent, then it’s both morally and practically wrong keep doing it. This is what proponents of immigration are being obtuse about, aside from the fact that immigration isn’t all upside, no downside.

This is sure to trigger a firestorm of argument:

According to WHO data, 28% of Gen Z were aborted. That is somewhere between 800–900 million children worldwide. Nearly a quarter of a generation gone before they could even take their first breath. The labor shortages and demographic gaps created by those missing children were filled, not by Americans, but by foreigners.

I don’t care what you think about abortion. My own views trend more in the pro-choice direction than not. If you don’t want to have kids, then don’t. You’re probably doing us all a favor. As I’ve said many times before, having too many young people in a society has it’s benefits, but it also has lots of detriments. Young populations are unstable, susceptible to high crime rates, even war.

At the same time, we need to understand that replacing Americans with foreigners has serious long-term consequences. The economy isn’t a zero-sum game, but the pie has only so many slices. At some point, someone needs to lose. Liberals justify mass immigration on the grounds of “Plenty For Everyone” or “We Need Workers”, but again, they ignore the fact that eventually, you run out of plenty and having lots of workers just makes everyone, even the immigrant, more easily replaceable. When immigrants say they want more of them in the country, they’re talking about their own group. I can assure you that no Korean wants more Chinese in America.

Then there’s the safety threat immigrants pose:

Back to immigration, it not only affects jobs and schools, it changes our general public safety—and not that bullsh*t women try to tout through ideological safetyism. I mean real-deal threats to families and women that are exacerbated or created by rampant immigration.

I harp a lot on how women, liberal women, especially, are utterly paranoid about imagined threats, but will outright ignore clear and present ones right in their midst. Every woman seems to have a strong opinion on the question of whether men should be allowed to approach and compliment a woman. Crimes committed by illegal immigrants? What’s the big deal?

An incident out of Florida has triggered considerable controversy and has left the Left unable to respond. Aly Dee says of it:

Look at the recent Singh Case. Harjinder Singh, 28, crossed the southern border illegally in 2018. He obtained a commercial driver’s license in Washington in 2023 and subsequently obtained another in California.

The problem? He failed basic English and road sign tests. Out of twelve verbal questions, he answered only two correctly. Out of four traffic signs, he identified just one.

In July 2025, Singh was pulled over in New Mexico for speeding but wasn’t given the legally required English proficiency test. Weeks later, on August 12th, he made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike. His truck jackknifed into a minivan, killing all three American occupants.

He’s now facing three counts of vehicular homicide.

Here’s the reality: drivers who cannot read road signs or understand English are being allowed on our roads. This could have happened to any family while driving home from church, on vacation, or after a soccer game.

This is why we have to take a harder stance on immigration, even if it feels “uncomfortable.” Because our children’s lives are worth more than anyone’s feelings.

This is a big story and I’m probably going to have more to say about it in the coming days and weeks. For now, all I have to say is that this was an entirely avoidable outcome and the fact that people are being allowed to enter the country illegally and not only stay, but do important jobs like commercial trucking is intolerable. The driver isn’t the only guilty party here.

In fact, this case is the perfect study for why tribalism is necessary for a society’s well-being, even a modern society such as ours. Take a look at how Indians reacted to one of their fellow countrymen being rightfully arrested for this inexcusible crime:

BREAKING: More than 1,600,000 people have signed an online petition urging the federal government to grant clemency or a sentence reduction on behalf of Harjinder Singh, the migrant trucker who k-lled three Americans by making a U-turn in an 18-wheeler on a Florida turnpike.

You can reject tribalism all you want. The other side never will. And they’re going to win because they’re tribal and you aren’t. Though they were talking about Somalis, not Indians, in a separate conversation, someone pointed out what they thought was the contradiction in calling Third Worlders like Somalis “low-IQ” while also fearing them taking over governments and institutions, which is what’s happening in Minnesota. There’s no contradiction, however: tribal, low-IQ Third Worlders will always defeat atomized First Worlders, no matter how high their IQs are.

As far as our children’s live being important, good luck with that message. Our society views children as burdensome, not as a blessing. The only time anyone really cares about kids is when a school shooting occurs. I doubt “Think Of The Children!” works as an appeal anymore. Moreover, for this message to appeal, we have to live in a country where people are actually proud to be here, proud to be its citizens, and are invested in its future well-being. Americans and its foreign residents want for so little, yet they’re still so unhappy. A country like this will never conjure up the will to protect itself, protect its children. It’s always going to be someone else’s problem, if at all.

I’ll share these last passages from Aly Dee:

Additionally, I’ll be blunt: I should not be seeing 5- or 6-year-old girls in hijabs and niqabs in America. Period. American men are capable of not sexualizing children. It’s foreign men who need to prove they can restrain themselves, not our own.

We know where this leads. Low-trust immigrants will create a low-trust society. Just compare major blue cities to red ones as a source.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: multicultural societies require constant fine-tuning to maintain functionality. Even more homogeneous societies experience conflict and social instability. Why would diverse societies fare any better? Our institutions embarked on a decades-long campaign to convince Americans that diverse societies aren’t only worth the trouble, but are actually more stable than homogeneous societies. I think that’s been proven a lie time and time again. If you have to constantly learn and adjust to entire groups’ of ways of life, there’s no way dysfunction won’t occur eventually. A society can only function when everyone is more or less on the same page.

Finally:

When I share these uncomfortable, but verifiable truths, the arguments from dissenters pivot swiftly to, “We should accept immigrants who are willing to assimilate!”

First of all, how do you know someone is going to assimilate before they get here to prove it? Are you willing to take that chance at this point? I’m not. Assimilation is not happening. It’s a fantasy. People do not abandon their customs and behaviors the moment they set foot in America.

It’s worth mentioning that assimilation doesn’t happen in America. There’s nothing to assimilate to. What’s happening is integration, becoming just another face in the crowd. That’s actually really easy to do, especially since America has become such a multicultural society and doesn’t demand much out of its newcomers.

That said, anyone who cannot meet the bare minimum of social expectations shouldn’t be allowed in the country. This means we should be more restrictive with migration from certain countries over others, yes. Some people call it racism, some of us call it common sense. Put your public school-brain aside for a second and just think in practical terms: is it better to bring in people more or less like you? If you think too hard about this question, you’re doing it wrong. This isn’t something you need to meditate for long on. We understand, when it comes to our personal lives, compatibility matters a lot.

Why are societies any different?

Stay TF Out Of Haiti

George Mason University PhD candidate in economics Nicholas Decker says:

In Haiti, we’re letting a country descend into civil war literally because deploying white soldiers against Black people makes us feel icky. It’s ridiculous.

If the name Nicholas Decker sounds familiar, that’s because I once wrote an essay about another one of his bad takes, which he has seemingly no shortage of. It’s not ideal out of a PhD student, but we all know universities aren’t where the best nor the brightest can be found today.

For those who may not be aware, Haiti is all but a failed state with a barely functioning government. Most the country, including its capital, Port-au-Prince, is in a virtual state of anarchy, with criminals ruling the roost. It’s in worse shape than even some war-torn African and Middle Eastern countries, which is saying something. Haiti is a small pieces of land - one of the smallest countries in the world, in fact - but a whole lot of bloodshed, disease, filth, misery, and cat-eating (yes, they do eat cats in Haiti!) packed into 10.7 thousand square miles, roughly the size of Massachusetts.

What Decker is proposing is for the U.S. to send its troops to this hellhole and re-establish order. It’d need to contend with not only armed and vicious gangs, but self-defense groups as well and convince them to lay down their arms. We’d also need permission from the Haitian government to intervene. I don’t know if they’d be amenable to American intervention, given the country’s history as a colony and how it still uses that legacy as an excuse for all its failures. America has no real history as a colonial empire to speak of, but as a European-descended country and the world’s lone superpower, Haiti is certain to play up its victim card.

The funny thing is, Decker isn’t wrong in saying that racial over-sensitivity does prevent us from doing very obvious, very simple, very necessary things in order to handle problems. Someone we all know is always saying that, right? The problem is that Haiti isn’t the place to do it. If Decker said that about the U.S., I’d be in total agreement.

The thing about Haiti is, the U.S. has lots of experience with interventions in failed or failing states. The closest analogue to Haiti is Somalia. From 1992 to 1993, the U.S. supported a United Nations-implemented peacekeeping operation in the country whose government had collapsed and had come a “Mad Max”-style land in civil war. It eventually led to U.S. special operations getting involved and the infamous Battle of Mogadishu, documented in the book Black Hawk Down and depicted in its film adaptation. I don’t know what kind of warfighting capabilities the Haitians have, but their savagery alone ought to be enough to give us pause. Our troops would be up against an enemy which would make up for a lack of skills and weaponry with the simple willingness to do damage.

In fact, if there’s anything I’ve seen improve in the last 10 to 15 years with respect to U.S. foreign policy, it’s that we’re getting involved in fewer and fewer of these overseas military interventions. Going into Haiti would halt that positive trend. The U.S. does need to seriously reorient its foreign policy to the Western Hemisphere, but it also needs to understand which countries are worth engaging and which ones aren’t. Haiti cannot be ignored, but it cannot be fixed, either. Our resources are better spent elsewhere, and there are plenty of countries in our part of the globe, like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, who are of greater significance.

By the way, we already went into Haiti twice. The U.S. occupied it from 1915 to 1934, then returned in 1994 in response to a 1991 coup d’état. Neither can be regarded as a success. Clearly, Haiti never reached stable statehood, which should’ve taught us by now that we cannot fox the country and it’s simply not worth it to try.

Decker also said:

Do you *really* think the inter-gang conflicts are so ideologically motivated that they’ll keep fighting after the US shows up? I think they could stop things essentially without firing a shot, but we still won’t do it.

The fact that the conflict isn’t ideologically motivated has no bearing on whether the fighting will stop after the U.S. shows up. These groups are fighting for literal survival in a state of anarchy. To imagine they’d quit fighting just because a stronger power shows up displays ignorance of what actually motivates these people. If they were cowed by strength or aspired for civil governance, they probably wouldn’t be fighting.

By the way, Nick might get his wish for foreign intervention:

Haiti’s government has hired Erik Prince — founder of the infamous private military company Blackwater — to help restore control in Port-au-Prince, a city overrun by violent gangs. The deal comes amid Haiti’s deepening crisis following the collapse of its national police force and government institutions.

Prince’s intervention reportedly includes the deployment of foreign contractors, drone operators, and intelligence assets. His team has been linked to direct actions that have resulted in the deaths of 200–300 gang members in recent weeks.

This move fits into a broader trend where private security firms are being contracted to handle what were once state responsibilities, especially in fragile states like Haiti. The arrangement has drawn criticism from human rights advocates, but Haitian authorities see it as a last resort to stop the violence and reclaim control.

Strategically, this reflects a growing model where “third-generation gang” environments (criminal organizations that challenge the state) are dealt with using hybrid warfare approaches — blending military tactics with private sector execution.

Yes, it’s our Caesar-In-Waiting Erik Prince to the rescue! I’ve written about Prince more than once, so I’ll just summarize it by saying this: never trust a mercenary. Sure, if Prince and his guns-for-hire manage to stabilize Haiti, that’d be a boon to his business. But if he can’t, that’s just as well. I can’t find any follow-up, but Prince announced that he plans to keep his forces in Haiti for 10 years. I get it; nation-building is difficult. Let’s not pretend like it really matters whether Prince succeeds, however.

A stable Haiti would be of benefit to the U.S. It means fewer migrants, for one. While a country as insignificant as Haiti would be of no consequences to the U.S. if it were on the other side of the world, it matters because it’s here in the Western Hemisphere. However, it’s a problem that can be contained, so long as our political leadership possesses the will to do the simple, fundamental things necessary to ensuring Haiti’s problems never reach America’s shores. The only reason why Haiti is a problem is because we don’t - we bring in Haitian refugees, going as far as to settle them in small cities and towns throughout the country.

Returning to Aly Dee’s essay:

Our government facilitates totally legal foreign invasions on domestic soil. Take Springfield, Ohio, for example. Roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants have been brought into a city of only 60,000 in just a few years. That’s one-quarter of the entire population added practically overnight.

Local families never voted for this. Constituents weren’t asked if they condoned this, yet the town is expected to absorb new costs in housing, schools, and public resources.

Springfield schools became overwhelmed, scrambling for Creole translators and emergency staff to manage the influx of Haitian students. Affordable housing was squeezed, leaving American families struggling. This was considered legal, but “legal” does not mean the citizens of Springfield consented.

This is unacceptable. What’s important about Haitians that they must be brought into the U.S. and sent to live in places that have fallen on hard times? The U.S. gains nothing from bringing them in and loses nothing from keeping them out. The Dominican Republic, which shares the same island as Haiti, has no trouble keeping them out. Never let a policymaker tell you we don’t have a choice but to take them in.

When it comes to Haiti, less is more. Stay out of their country, don’t bring them in. It’s that simple.

With Age Comes Wisdom

I often make the point, which has also been made by others smarter than me, that demographics matter a lot with respect to social stability. Civil war and revolution are things which happen to young societies, not old. The ability for a society to maintain stability and also make necessary adaptations depends as much on its age structure as it does on any other characteristic.

H.W. Brands explains on his must-read Substack why young minds, even in good times, are predisposed to revolution:

First, young people have little investment in the status quo. The entire adult world is new to them, and they have little to lose if that world is overturned. Old folks, by contrast, have built lives based on the status quo. What threatens the status quo threatens them.

It’s important to understand who Brands is speaking of when he says “young people.” He’s not talking children, he’s talking young adults, say the 18-to-29 age group. This is the group that’s least invested in the status quo, though I think he goes too far in saying they have little to lose if the status quo changes. The fact that they’re young and lacking in experience means actually they have quite a lot to lose - their entire framework for understanding the world is destroyed.

Lack of experience matters a lot:

Second, young people have imaginations unconstrained by experience. They encounter a compelling idea and want to put it into action at once, blissfully unaware that ideas very much like it have been tried in the past and found wanting. Old folks, on the other hand, have seen earlier bright ideas fail. They recognize that existing institutions and norms didn’t happen by accident. They survived numerous challenges and will probably survive the next challenge.

Once upon a time, I remember my mother telling me that what our elders had to offer us youngsters wasn’t knowledge, but wisdom. I wish I’d heeded that lesson at the time, because at this point in my life, I’ve come to realize how big a difference there is between knowing stuff and understanding stuff.

Years afterwards, I became friendly with an older gentleman approaching middle age who attended the same gym as I did. I wasn’t very upbeat about my future at the time and this concern came up during a conversation. He assured me I’d be fine and that I probably still hadn’t found my place in the world.

I didn’t like what he was saying and told him, “Well, how would you know?” He replied, very compassionately, “I’ve lived it.” All these years later, I realize he was right. That was the last conversation I had with the man. I wish I could tell him how much him sharing his wisdom meant to me.

Anyway, we don’t respect the wisdom of our elders enough. In fact, it’s now a cultural norm to dismiss the wisdom of our elders entirely because we tell ourselves they’ve done everything wrong, they’re closed-minded, they’re prejudiced. Strangely, we seem to forget none of us would be here, surviving and thriving, if not for them. It’s all negativity, all the time.

What we should be doing instead is learning from our elders. It’s not just about not making the same mistakes as they did. It also means realizing they were once idealists themselves and that they, too, once believed they could change the world for the better. They may have failed to do so, but it’s not because they were lesser people. It’s because they’re people. Some things are just hard and fast physical truths, like biology.

It’s easy to believe things can be reconstructed easily only if you’ve never built anything. That’s what separates the old from the young. Even building your own life, failing, starting over; all this will take the idealism out of you. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not about being cynical; it’s about becoming more connected to reality, which is what growing up is all about.

The moral of the story is that having lots of old people in your society can be hard. But they still bring lots of value. That value can only be extracted if we’re willing to hear what they have to say. They’re not right about everything. I’d go as far as to say they’re wrong about a lot. They’re right about a lot, too, however. And if nothing else, they help keep your society tranquil. That’s worth something in my book.

That’s all for today. What are your thoughts on anything discussed? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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