The First Universal Nation.

• Author: Reeves, Richard

The First Universal Nation

I am not always crazy about Ben Wattenberg's politics, but I admire his work. I have to. He and I sometimes seen to be the only syndicated columnists not convinced that the United States is terminal, just falling apart where we stand. My view, which he seems to share, is that the doomsday scenarios are based on the assumption that 250 million people are going to roll over and play dead. Even if they did, however, millions of immigrants are ready to take their place. The American Dream is no longer American or a dream. America is a force of nature, a global option.

So I plunged into The First Universal Nation with the friendly enthusiasm of a swimmer in the same lake. I loved the first 18 pages called "Thesis." This is what Wattenberg had to say: "Students, like other humans, vote with their feet. More than 360,000 foreign students...