The American Spectator

The Nation's Pulse

While America looks to amnesty as a way out of an illegal immigration problem it can't cope with, and while Europe undergoes soft Islamization as it gives up any hope of assimilating the newcomers to its shores, there remains just one entity capable of preserving civilization: Casinos.

Take Las Vegas, for example. In defiance of the current trend of embracing Arabic culture and even bending to certain Muslim practices in banking, real estate and other spheres, last week the Mandalay Resort Group announced that the Luxor hotel-casino will be dropping the Egyptian theme:

The Luxor is poised to undergo a massive makeover that will see the property abandon its Egyptian theme in favor of something a little more generic. The pyramid-shaped building and the famous beam of light will remain but many of the themed restaurants, shows, and shops have already been replaced.

This is on the heels of the "Aladdin" hotel-casino going by the wayside and becoming "Planet Hollywood" hotel-casino. In other words, Vegas's only two homages to the Middle East have been eighty-sixed.

But there's a lot more that makes Vegas the anti-dhimmitude city. Cheese steak shop owner Joey Vento in Philadelphia was put through the wringer last year for having a sign that read, "This is America. When ordering, speak English," but Poker rooms in Vegas aren't given any grief for allowing exactly one language to be spoken during tournaments: English. If you start speaking in a foreign tongue (and in casinos "foreign" includes Spanish -- despite the name "Las Vegas"), you'll get a 20-minute time-out. Try it a second time and you'll get kicked out. Because casinos legislate and enforce their rules in a way that our leaders aren't willing or able to.

And guess what happens. People respect the rules. They respect the establishment. Because people like being in casinos. Just like they like being in Western-style democracies. But what Western-style democracies have forgotten is that people also like to be put in their place; sometimes they'll even thank you for it and become your best friend, recognizing it as a character-building exercise. We've forgotten how to do that and so the children are taking over the civilized world, which increasingly looks like a gangster's paradise.

Meanwhile, if you want to work in the casinos but don't speak English, the casinos will teach it to you -- and not through the pathetic bilingual ed approach that keeps both Hispanic and non-Hispanic kids in public school fluent in Spanish -- but through language immersion. As I wrote in 2004:

A middle-aged Bellagio guest room attendant who wouldn't even pick up a ringing telephone for fear that the caller might speak English became confident enough to pick up the phone by the end of her four-month English course at the casino. Another employee, whose English skills needed some honing through the program for her job as a bus person, a few weeks ago interviewed to become assistant manager at the hotel's buffet restaurant.

There's more. Gambling industry magazines have described Vegas as "Surveillance City," and Homeland Security has looked to Vegas as a model of security, its cameras covering every square mile of the city and capable of following you from any one point in the Valley to any other. Yet we don't hear any whining about it. Because people want to be in Vegas. The security personnel at casinos and even pit bosses are trained in what to look for in terms of potential "problems". That's why they seem suspicious of you from the moment you walk in -- even if you plunk ten grand on the Blackjack table.

While education administrators in Scotland enact Sharia Law through guidelines telling students to not stare at Muslim students, a pit boss will stare you down no matter who you are. And the casino reserves the right to ask you to leave for any reason--and it doesn't have to tell you what it is.

Just think of it! A pit boss says, "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"What's the problem?"

"I don't like your face."

"My face -- or my race?!"

"Neither. Do I need to call security?"

What's more, unions traditionally aren't welcome in casinos either, the dealers spurning one attempt after another by union representatives to organize them (with the very recent exception of the Wynn Casino). With industry-blackmailing union thuggery kept at bay, if you have issues with the agreed-upon conditions of your employment, once again, you have the option to leave.

All these reasons that casinos should run the world are in addition to the long-known economy-boosting effect that casinos have on the areas they come to. Which means that the ultimate capitalistic enterprise is a more effective wealth redistributor than any system the socialists in Congress, Europe and Latin America have been able to come up with.

With that, I nominate Las Vegas to be the new capital city of the United States of America.

topics:
Education, Islam, Hollywood, Law, Immigration, Unions