Lux Lucet

Irredentism isn’t a word most of us use on anything like a regular basis. Maybe we don’t even know the meaning of it.  But though it’s an unusual term, one that is well worth knowing.

If you live in a Western nation currently being inundated with legal and illegal aliens at a pace that makes you feel like a foreigner in the nation of your birth, you already know the effects of irredentism, even if you haven’t heard the word before. 

My dictionary gives the definition of “irredentism” as “a political principle or policy directed toward this incorporation of an irredenta within the boundary of a political unit.”  Okay, so that may not make a lot of sense all by itself.  After all, what’s an “irredenta”?  An “irredenta” is “a territory historically or ethnically related to one political unit but presently subject to another.” 

An example of an irredenta is the southwest United States, which before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that settled the Mexican War, was part of Mexico.   When the treaty was signed, the U.S./Mexico border was reset to the Rio Grande, ceding all of the territory that is presently part of the southwest U.S. 

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