It isn't hard to spot the difference in the press's reaction to Israel's carefully targeted response to the hail of missiles raining down on Sderot from Gaza, and the Lebanese government's bombardment of a Palestinian "refugee camp" where terrorists belonging to Fatah al-Islam are holed up.
Lebanon's action is rightly seen as a legitimate act of self-defense against a Syrian-backed attempt to destabilize its government. Israel, by contrast, is condemned for its decision to retaliate against the Hamas leaders who are ordering indiscriminate attacks on its civilians.
Right now, far more Palestinians are dying in the civil war between Hamas and Fatah, or between the Lebanese army and Islamist terrorists, than those who are being killed by Israel. There is nothing new about this disproportion. In fact, since 1945, the number of Muslims killed by other Muslims outnumbers those killed by Israelis by a factor that far exceeds 100-1.
The death toll from the civil wars, genocides, and insurgencies that have raged across the Islamic world from Algeria to Indonesia simply dwarfs the numbers killed in the Arab-Israeli wars or the Palestinian intifadas.
Yet, here in Britain, as elsewhere in the West, the demonization of Israel is relentless. Press coverage during the run-up to next month's anniversary of the Six Day War has been uniformly hostile. A vociferous campaign to lift the European Union's boycott of the murderous Hamas regime is gaining ground, and, in any case, the aid is still flowing to the terrorists through all kinds of backwaters.
Nor has Hamas abandoned its genocidal policy towards Israel and America. One of its leading spokesmen, the acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Bahr, ended his sermon in a Sudan mosque last month with the following prayer: "Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them."
This kind of thinking is driving the violence that is endemic at the interface between Islam and other civilizations. How long will it be before that interface runs through the streets of every major city in the West?
Europe today looks like a continent at peace. And so it is. With the exception of the Balkan nations, Europeans have enjoyed the longest continuous period of peace in modern history. For this, they have America to thank. Despite the hysteria directed at the United States, the pax Americana has been incomparably less oppressive than the pax Romana. In reality, however, Europe is a tinderbox.
In Berlin, former Baader-Meinhof terrorists hold master classes in rioting for protesters planning to disrupt next month's the G-8 Summit in Germany. In France, the election of President Sarkozy has galvanized all the Chanel-scented sans culottes of our day to man the barricades.
The further east you go, the more febrile the situation. Poland has not been so worried about Russia since the martial law period of the 1980s. Estonia is fighting the first cyber-war in history. Russian e-sabotage has almost brought the government of Estonia less than a third the size of New York State and a tenth of the population of New York State to its knees. The Putin regime has also cut off transport links and trade. What prompted this malicious campaign? The Estonians moved a Soviet war memorial from the center of their capital to a military cemetery. That's it.
But the biggest threat to civil order in Europe comes not from outside, but from within. At least 20 million Muslims now live in Europe, almost all concentrated in a handful of large cities in the richer, western countries. Hopes that they would gradually integrate into these ultra-tolerant societies, economies, and cultures have not become a reality. Muslims have chosen segregation instead. So the host countries are beginning to abandon multiculturalism in favor of integration.
In Sweden, the government is trying to ban arranged marriages and has proposed to ban the veil for girls who are under 15 years old, and instituting compulsory gynecological exams as a deterrent to prevent female genital mutilation, which occurs in some parts of the Muslim world. The minister behind this policy, Nyamko Sabuni, is herself a former African refugee and a former Muslim. She rejects accusations of Islamophobia from Muslim organizations: "I will not be scared into silence. I will never accept that women and girls are oppressed in the name of religion."
It is striking that such outspoken voices so often come from those who know the Islamic world from the inside. The Dutch politician forced to go into hiding, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is the best-known, but there are more emerging all the time.
Ed Husain's book "The Islamist" is a surprise best-seller in Britain. It charts the author's spiritual journey from conversion to radical Islam to the brink of terrorism, followed by disillusionment and a new mission to save other young Muslims from predatory preachers.
As the Islamists take heart from the loss of nerve on Iraq and vilification of Israel, Europe looks ever more vulnerable to blackmail. This week, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda warned the French that they would be punished for exercising their democratic rights: "As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign in the capital of Sarkozy."
Let's hope that the voices of sanity have not come too late.
#1
Yep, Europe , you've coddled the malcontent goat abusers far too long. They will cause loss of life in your cities. In France, at least , since they've barricaded themselves into congested slums, your targets are distinct and easily vanquished. A nice firestorm, with no available firefighters, will do nicely.Just go from one slum to the next. Britain,Germany, and Belgium are more problematic since you have allowed them to disperse within your general neighborhoods and villages. I have to believe you'll gain some courage for the counter attack after they have committed repeated attrocities within your cities.
#3
Don't hold back, tell us how you *really* think! ;-)
Regardless of what you think, to me, Israel is an european country, that's why I support it, like theUSA, NZ, Australia,... I'm talking about ethnic stock and civilization, not geography, of course.
That's why, even if Israel really was Humiliating and Oppressing the paleo, even if the USA were waging an illegal, immoral and injust war on iraqis, slaughtering them and all, I'd still support them, because, in last analysis, you've got to support your own.
Except among your closest, personal friends. Like here.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/25/2007 7:46 Comments ||
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#5
a5089, I'd agree that Israel's culture and institutions are based on Western philosophies and practices, but the ethnic stock of the Jewish 80% is only half European, and falling fast. The other half come from the ancient Jewish communities of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and their women have a birth rate similar to that of the Arabs, while the European stock have a birth rate similar to that of Europe.
#6
I was somewhat aware of that, at least the trend, but I don't see how that's significantly different of what's happening in Europe, or the USA for that matter, so that makes no real difference for me in my appreciation. Thanks anyway for your info!
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/25/2007 19:52 Comments ||
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#12
A culture which lacks the will to breed in sufficient numbers to continue existing is incapable of doing anything great.
Why would we have thought that in Bosnia or Iraq the continent could do anything meaningful? They can't get out of the way of their own antitheist cultural Marxist hedonism long enough to have kids. Any other level of sacrifice would be impossible.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/25/2007 21:09 Comments ||
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#13
No Mo: "Antitheist Cultural Marxist Hedonism!" Magnificent Modifier Noun Proliferation, and truly monumental cadences!
As the most attractive land for would-be immigrants, America has the equivalent of the first 100 picks in the NBA draft. Yet through lax border control and sheer inertia, it allows those sl*ts to be filled by (with apologies to Bill Buckley) the first 100 names in the San Salvador phone book. The filter won't let me post the word with the asterisk LOL
The immigration compromise now being debated in Congress does improve our criteria for selecting legal immigrants. Unfortunately, its inadequacies in dealing with illegal immigration -- specifically, ensuring that 10 years from now we will not have a new cohort of 12 million demanding amnesty -- completely swamp the good done on legal immigration.
Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into America, but to family members of those already here. Given that America has the pick of the world's energetic and entrepreneurial, this is a stunning competitive advantage, stunningly squandered.
The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance. However, before we get too ecstatic about finally doing the blindingly obvious, note two caveats:
(a) This new point system doesn't go into effect for eight years -- eight years of a new flood of immigrants chosen not for aptitude but bloodline. And who knows if a different Congress eight years from now will keep the current bargain.
(b) It's not enough to just create a point system in which credit is given for education, skills and English competence. These points can be outweighed by points given for -- you guessed it -- family ties, which are already built into the proposed new point system. There are already amendments on the Senate floor to magnify the value of being a niece rather than a nurse. (Barack Obama is proposing to abolish the point system entirely in five years.) A point system can be manipulated to give far more weight to family than skills -- until it becomes nothing but a cover for the old chain-migration system.
As for the bill's provisions about illegal immigration, let's not quibble: It grants the essentials of amnesty. True, there is a $5,000 fine (for a family of five!) attached to registering for legal status in the U.S. But the truly significant penalty for illegal immigration is deportation -- which undoes everything the immigrant has built in America. When the feds raid a sweatshop, the fear is not that the agent will grab you and yell, "We are here to collect a fine." The fear is that he will yell, "We are here to deport you back to the subsistence and misery you fled in China."
From the moment this bill is signed, every illegal alien who does not have a criminal record can register with the U.S. government for temporary legal status. Moreover, as soon as the president certifies that certain border enforcement triggers have been met, this cohort of 12 million becomes eligible for the new Z-visa -- renewable until death -- which allows them to stay and work and travel and re-enter.
This is amnesty -- and I would be all in favor of it if I believed in the border enforcement mechanisms in this bill. If these are indeed the last illegal immigrants to come in, let us generously and humanely take them out of the shadows. But if we don't close the border, that generous and humane gesture will be an announcement to the world that the smart way to come to America is illegally.
In this bill, unfortunately, enforcement at the border is all bureaucratic inputs and fancy gadgets: principally, a doubling of the border patrol to 28,000, lots of high-tech sensors and four unmanned aerial vehicles. And 370 miles of fence -- half of what Congress had mandated last year.
Does anyone imagine these will stop the flood? Four UAVs? And how does 370 miles of fence close a border of 2,100 miles? And if fences work (of course they do: look at the San Diego fence), why not build one all the way?
The amnesty is triggered upon presidential certification that these bureaucratic benchmarks are met -- regardless of what is actually happening at the border. What vacuous nonsense. The trigger must be something real. I propose a single amendment, short and very concrete: "The amnesty shall be declared the morning after the president has certified (citing disinterested studies) that illegal immigration across the southern border has been reduced by 90 percent." That single provision would guarantee passage of this comprehensive reform because most Americans would be glad to grant a generous amnesty -- if they can be assured it would be the last.
Its been a rough seven years. Gore. Kerry. Now this:
WASHINGTON Bowing to President Bush, the Democratic-controlled Congress grudgingly approved fresh billions for the Iraq war Thursday night, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew his earlier veto.
80-14 in the Senate. 280-142 in the House. Ouch. The Dems cant muster those kind of votes. Even with graft. It's a quagmire, I tells ya! A quagmire!
Hillary, who was for it before she was against it, went with Obama. Thats what you want in your commander-in-chief. A vote against troops in the field fighting al-Qaeda and anti-American Iranian stooges.
This debate will go on, vowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was even more emphatic. Senate Democrats will not stop our efforts to change the course of this war until either enough Republicans join with us to reject President Bushs failed policy or we get a new president, he said.
That has a kind of non-binding sound to it. Theres a fair amount of self-loathing going on.
I hate this agreement, said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who played a key role in talks with the White House that yielded the measure.
And yet he voted against it. Has a bit of a for it before he was against it. Meanwhile, theres the against it before they were for it crowd.
I cannot vote to stop funding for our troops who are in harms way, said Sen. Carl Levin, D- Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I simply cannot and I will not do that. It is not the proper way that we can bring this war to an end.
Dawn over Capitol Hill. But I dont think he really means that. Anyway, heres the reaction from the party unfaithful. There seems to be a lot of surprise and disgust that the people who advocate surrender practice it. Odd. You try to make sense of it:
Matt Stoller at MyDD: How dare they surrender when we are trying to force a surrender? Dont they understand you cant win by surrendering?
But look, whats done is done. And now that were finished popping off, it needs to be said that generally this new Dem Congressional leadership has repeatedly defied expectations with its willingness to take on the White House. Just not this time.
Gentlemanly that he doesnt want to kick his people in the head while their down, but Im not sure what hes talking about. The non-binding resolution? The trip to Syria?
Kos wants to know when beltway Democrats will realize that no one likes Bush or his war? And when will they realize that every time he opens up his trap, his poll numbers drop another few points? I dunno, Kos. Theyre gutless but they arent morons. Maybe they know something you dont.
Crooks and Liars (Good name for an antiwar Dem website, ain't it!)
takes comfort in anti-war polling numbers. But seems to sense that Americans really dont like losers:
The Democratic Party has a 53% favorable rating to only 38% for the Republicans Americans also choose the Democratic Party as more likely to make the right decisions about U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iraq, and immigration. I wonder how this will change in the new polling
Meanwhile, at last check, MoveOn is still leading with a campaign to get Congress to vote no. Time to move on.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/25/2007 09:28 ||
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A profoundly dispirited Shakesville, Dems gave in to bullying!
Considering that what the whole existence of the netroots is about, it only repeats the lefty mantra - one set of rules for me, a separate set of rules for thee. Shocked! Shocked they are that someone else can bully Donks! Didn't put that bullying power under double super secret exclusivity, huh?
#3
Mark my words, after Iraq is pacified, all the DONKS we claim the they were "Just trying to prod the administration and Iraqis in action and never EVER would have allowed a retreat or srrender."
In a country where it is still illegal to photograph a bridge or to be found hanging around the road that leads to the Bum factory, it is amazing that the young female academic Ayesha Siddiqa should have written a book laying bare the Pakistan Armys inner economy and providing the first documented account of the vast commercial empire it has built with public money. So secretive is Pakistans defence establishment that the National Assembly is not permitted even under civilian governments to debate its budget or question its spending. Nor is anyone authorised to look into the Armys enterprises. If anyone is looking for a state within a state, he need not look any further. All he has to do is to come to Pakistan.
Ayesha Siddiqas book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistans Military Economy had long needed to be written but wasnt because those who had the ability or the knowledge to write it considered discretion the better part of valour. How the Army will react to her findings, I am unable to predict. Since her facts are well supported, I suspect they will simply be ignored. However, I do hope a copy of the book will be available in every station library in every cantonment.
According to the author, the commercial empire of the Pakistan Army has a net worth of Rs 200 billion. The term she has coined for the Armys commercial and business activities is Milbus, which is shorthand for military business. She defines Milbus as military capital used for the personal benefit of the military fraternity, especially the officer cadre, which is not included as part of the defence budget or does not follow the normal accountability procedures of the state, making it an independent genre of capital. It is directly or indirectly controlled by the military. She writes that this unaccounted transfer of resources can take many forms. She lists them as: state land transferred to military personnel, resources spent on perks and privileges for retired personnel, business opportunities diverted to armed forces personnel by flouting the norms of a free market economy, and money lost on training personnel who seek early retirement to join the private sector.
Ayesha Siddiqa maintains that a study of Milbus is important because it causes the officer cadre to be interested in enhancing their influence in the states decison making and politics. This military capital also becomes the major driver for the armed forces stakes in political control. She writes, Pakistans military today runs a huge commercial empire. Although it is not possible to give a definitive value of the militarys internal economy because of a lack of transparency, the estimated worth runs into billions of dollars. The Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust are the largest business conglomerates in the country. Besides these, there are multiple channels through which the military acquires opportunities to monopolise national resources.
Ayesha Siddiqa makes three major points. First, that Milbus is military capital that perpetuates the militarys political predatory style. This capital is concealed, not being recorded as part of the defence budget and it involves unexplained and questionable transfers of resources from the public to the private sector, especially to individuals and groups that have the inside track. Second, the militarys economic predatoriness increases in totalitarian systems. The armed forces encourage policies and related environments that multiply their economic opportunities. Milbus becomes part of the tribute that the military extracts from providing services such as national security. Since the armed forces ensure territorial security, they believe that anything that contributes to their welfare is justified. At times, the military convinces the citizens to bear additional costs on the basis of a conceived or real threat to the state. Third, the militarys economic predatoriness is both a cause and an effect of a feudal, authoritarian and non-democratic political system. In the process of seeking benefits, those in power give a blank cheque to other elite groups to behave in a predatory manner.
The author argues that the elite groups in society have their own reasons to turn a blind eye to the militarys economic interests. In politics dominated by the military, other dominant groups often turn into cronies of the armed forces to establish a mutually beneficial relationship, as has happened in Pakistan every time the military has been in power. Monopolies, caused by illegal military capital result in market distortions, place a burden on the public sector because of the hidden flow of funds from the public to the private sector. Since the military claims Milbus activities to be legitimate, funds are often diverted from the public to the private sector, which can and does include the use of military equipment by military-controlled firms and the acquisition of state land for distribution to individual members of the military fraternity for profit making.
A friend of mine, Tariq Jazy, says that when he looked up the word army in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, he found it defined as an organised force armed for fighting on land. This definition, he added, he has modified in line with Pakistans requirements, and it now reads, an organised force armed to fight for land. Ayesha Siddiqa writes that the military is a significant stockholder in agricultural land. Out of the 11.58 million acres that is controlled by the armed forces, an estimated 6.9 million acres, or about 59 percent of the total land, lies in rural areas. The military is the only department of the government that has assumed the authority to redistribute land for the benefit of its officials, having distributed about 6.8 million acres among its cadres for their personal use. When a dispute arose over the Okara farms when the Army wanted to throw out the sharecroppers who had cultivated that land for generations, Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said, The needs of the Army will be decided by the Army itself and/or the government will decide this. Nobody has the right to say what the Army can do with 5,000 acres or 17,000 acres. The needs of the Army will be determined by the Army itself. So there, in a nutshell, you have it.
Ayesha Siddiqa concludes, An authoritarian system in which the military has a dominant position is hardly the panacea for Pakistans political problems, nor does it help the long-term interests of the countrys strategic external allies. A politically strong Pakistan will also be a stable Pakistan, which will not be detrimental to the South Asian region or the world at large. She also points out that the military has been central in nourishing the religious right without necessarily realising the strength of religious ideology as an alternative to itself.
But let me close this with another observation from my friend, Tariq Jazy. In Pakistan, the military has been civilianised and the civilians have been militarised.
Posted by: John Frum ||
05/25/2007 07:48 ||
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#1
In Pakistan, the military has been civilianized Islamicized and the civilians have been militarised.
#2
This might not be as bad a problem as it sounds. For example, the US Military-Industrial Complex is as much part of our economy as everything else. In the US, it is truly immense and powerful, involving most large and even medium sized businesses.
And if properly directed, it might be very useful in combating Islamist influences in the Pakistani government, much like in Turkey.
The bottom line is to convince the military leadership that they will continue to be wealthy and powerful only if they can keep the Islamists out of power. Because if the Islamists get in, they are going to want what you have, and will try and take it from you. Like in Iran.
The Six Day War created the two movements that defined Israeli politics for decades: Peace Now and Gush Emunim. The former believed that land-for-peace was ours for the asking; the latter that absorbing the ancient Jewish heartland would secure our future. These ideologies, driven and burdened by messianic overtones, lie in tatters, exhausted from battling each other and the stream of events.
But the war fought 40 years ago created something else: the Palestinians. Though the Palestinians try to trace their history back thousands of years, they did not exist in their own minds as a people until after 1967.
Did you see those demographic stats in the New York Times last week?
The Census Bureau estimated yesterday that from July 1, 2005 to July 1, 2006, the nations minority population grew to 100.7 million from 98.3 million... Nearly half the children under age 5 are Hispanic, black or Asian... 80 percent of Americans over age 60 are non-Hispanic whites, compared with only 60 percent among those in their 20s and 30s, and 58 percent among people younger than 20...
(Some of the quotes in what follows are from the NYT story; the others are from the actual U.S. Census Bureau news release from which the story is abstracted.)
It is not news that white Anglo (i.e. white non-Hispanic I am using Anglo just as a linguistic marker) Americans are heading for minority status. Bill Clinton was exulting over the prospect a decade ago. And so was mike moore in the "Big one" movie IIRC.
Interesting to see the numbers in detail, though, and the state-by-state disparities.
Four states and the District of Columbia are majority-minority. Hawaii led the nation with a population that was 75 percent minority in 2006, followed by the District of Columbia (68 percent), New Mexico (57 percent), California (57 percent), and Texas (52 percent).
The economic sidebars are interesting, too:
[Demographer Dr. Mark] Mather said the three most homogeneous states Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia spent the highest proportion of their gross state product on public education.
This reinforces a number of findings from recent years suggesting that people are much more willing to be taxed for the benefit of people like themselves than for the benefit of the Other. Old people already grumble about paying taxes to support extravagant educational establishments. As the racial generation gap opens up, with the oldsters being noticeably more white and Anglo than the kids being educated, the grumbling will escalate into action most likely, the simple action of yet further residential segregation, the old and white-Anglo living here, the young and dark Hispanic living there.
Though, of course, the unwillingness to be taxed to support the Other cuts both ways. How will a majority nonwhite young workforce feel about paying out income and Social Security taxes for the sustenance of old, white Anglos? I dont know about you, dear reader, but I, at least, have looked forward glumly to my last days, most likely spent stuck, incapable, in some cruddy nursing home with a bunch of other helpless white geezers, my daily needs in the hands of resentful black and brown orderlies whose educations featured long catalogs of the wrongs done to Them by Us.
Back of all that is the question: As white Anglos decline into a minority, will we see the rise of white-Anglo race consciousness? The common understanding at present is that open expressions of race consciousness are taboo for white-Anglo Americans, but just fine for everyone else. A leading black presidential candidate subtitles his best-selling biography A Story of Race and Inheritance; the main lobbying organization for Hispanics carries the proud title National Council of the Race; and so on. This word is, however, not available to white-Anglo Americans in reference to themselves, and white-Anglo Americans are indoctrinated from childhood to believe, or to pretend to believe, that race is an empty category.
This taboo is left over from the old pre-1960s order of unassailable (as it then seemed) white-Anglo supremacy. It was really just a form of noblesse oblige, a patronizing courtesy from the vast-majority race, who owned and ran pretty much everything in the U.S. up to about 40 years ago, to minorities about whom they nursed a mildly guilty conscience.
Noblesse oblige is a wonderfully satisfying, self-flattering attitude: Look at me not only powerful and rich, but gracious and kind, too! Whether it can survive as white Anglos dwindle to minority status is not clear to me. It might: it runs strong today among the white-Anglo inhabitants of Washington, D.C., even though they are (see above) only 32 percent of the population there. I suppose it depends how the economics shakes down.
Hispanics accounted for almost half (1.4 million) of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 1, 2005 and July 1, 2006... The Hispanic population in 2006 was much younger, with a median age of 27.4 compared with the population as a whole at 36.4.
It is quite possible that Americans alive today will live to see the nation become majority Hispanic. Did anyone ever think this would happen, prior to a few short years ago? Well into the 1960s, Mexico was an inconsequential place, a joke place, while the other Central American nations simply did not register at all. You went to Acapulco for an exotic vacation, got a nasty case of Montezumas revenge, and came home with some colorful handicraft trinkets to put on your mantel shelf. That aside, you never thought about Central America from one years end to the next. The highest level that Mexicans rose to in the American imagination was the vaguely sentimental portrayals in the works of southwestern writers like Willa Cather.
The inconsequentiality was numerical, too. In midcentury there was one Mexican per four or five Americans. The place was underpopulated. The few thousand Mexicans who drifted across the border looking for work could easily be rounded up and deported if they became an inconvenience, as in Eisenhowers famous Operation Wetback. There were no limits at all on legal immigration from the Western hemisphere until the 1965 Immigration Act, none being thought necessary. An annual quota of 120,000 was imposed by that act; but this was just a low-value bone thrown to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Everett Dirksen and Sam Ervin) by Teddy Kennedy to get the bill through. Nobody cared about Hispanic immigration; no-one thought it consequential.
Now there are 110 million Mexicans to the U.S.s 300 million, with corresponding numbers of Hispanics further south. If you count the 20 or 30 million Mexicans actually living here, legally or illegally, the Mexican-American ratio must actually be about one to two. Unfortunately Mexicos great late-20th-century population boom was boomier, and longer-lasting, than that nations economic boom, which fizzled out around 1980. Not only were mid-20th-century Central American populations numerically insignificant until recently; the economic gap between their sleepy, stagnant economies and our vibrant one was less then that it is today, after several more decades of sleepy stagnation on their part, vibrancy on ours.
And so white-Anglo America slips into minority status. Probably we never wanted it to happen. Probably, if asked around 1970 whether it ought to happen, most of us would have said no. The topic never rose to the status of a major political issue among the mass of Americans, though. The coming presidential election will be the first in my lifetime to have immigration as a major theme.
If Americans minded what was happening, they didnt mind enough to stop it. To be sure, their indifference was aided and abetted by the late 20th-century browbeating campaigns by cultural elites on behalf of diversity, political correctness, and racial guilt; but Americans didnt seem to mind those much, either not enough to rebel against them in any significant way.
If there is any large general historical lesson to be taken from all this, it is that a population as prosperous, secure, well-employed, and well-entertained as the white Anglos of late 20th-century America, and as confident of its own cultural superiority, cannot be made to care much about matters of ethnic identity, and may altogether lose the habit of thinking in such terms.
Whether this ethnic insouciance will survive the coming great demographic changes, I dont know. Things have gone so far now that there is very little we can do but wait and see.
#1
No, I don't think it's going to happen gracefully. I think there's going to be one hell of a fight when white America finally realizes that they've GOT to start taking action in defense of their own culture and ethnicity. The problem that has immobilized the white portion of America is the fact that idiots like Chomsky, et al, have successfully pinned racism ONLY on whites. The USG has also taken that position. As events like the Christian-Newsom murders show, racism is not only alive and well among other races, they exercise it at least as frequently as whites ever did. It will continue to get worse as whites are increasingly perceived by nonwhites as stupid and weak. God knows the media makes it a point of portraying whites that way.
The anger among whites is out there and very strong. Sooner or later, after enough horsecrap has gone by to make the viciousness of anti-white racism absolutely impossible to ignore, someone will come along and raise the flag of white solidarity. Whoever it is will have to do it in the teeth of everything the MSM can throw at him but what will enable his/her success will be the empirical knowledge white people will have of their precipitously declining position and the persecution their children face in the nation's educational establishments. There will be simply too many examples of mistreatment of whites for the MSM arguments to be accepted.
Whoever it is will also have to expect resistance from the USG because too many positions in the permanent civil service have been taken by nonwhites to allow smooth functioning of a government that will be redressing the balance that started swinging toward nonwhites in the 1960's. Example: Massachusetts just elected Deval Patrick, former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, as governor. The Department of Justice, at Patrick's urging, took a position against a white female teacher who had been fired in order to retain a black female. Whites depending on an unbiased USG in a case against a nonwhite have a weak reed to depend on when there is a Republican in the White House; under a Democrat they face an enemy who makes no attempt to hide their bias.
The generation that permitted the passing of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act is going to be cursed bitterly by white people for a long, long time because of the disaster they wrought on this country through their blithy irresponsible failure to consider the consequences of their actions. They sowed the seeds of civil war and I'm very afraid that the reaping of that crop is not far off.
Posted by: Mac ||
05/25/2007 22:57 Comments ||
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Very good summary of the whole cultural marxism thing, definitively a good read.
Editor's note: This column is an excerpt from Dr. Ted Baehr and Pat Boone's new book "The Culture-wise Family: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World." In the book, entertainment expert Dr. Ted Baehr and legendary musician Pat Boone urge people to make wise choices for themselves and their families so they can protect their children from toxic messages in the culture. The following is Chapter 10, written by historian Williams S. Lind.
By William S. Lind
Sometime during the last half-century, someone stole our culture. Just 50 years ago, in the 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe. It was decent. Children got good educations in the public schools. Even blue-collar fathers brought home middle-class incomes, so moms could stay home with the kids. Television shows reflected sound, traditional values.
Where did it all go? How did that America become the sleazy, decadent place we live in today so different that those who grew up prior to the '60s feel like it's a foreign country? Did it just "happen"?
Why do people want to come here? Same reasons as a hundred years ago. For a job. For opportunity. To rise. . . .
I asked myself a question this week and realized the answer is "Only one." The question is: Have I ever known an immigrant to America who's lazy? I have lived on the East Coast all my life, mostly in New York, and immigrants both legal and illegal have been and are part of my daily life, from my childhood when they surrounded me to an adulthood in which they, well, surround me. And the only lazy one I knew was a young woman, 20, European, not mature enough to be fully herself, who actually wanted to be a good worker but found nightlife too alluring and hangovers too debilitating.
But she was the only one. And I think she went home.
Everyone else who comes here works hard, grindingly hard, and I admire them. But it's more than that, I love them and I'm rooting for them. When I see them in church (it is Filipino women who taught me the right posture for prayer; Central Americans helped teach me the Bible) I want to kiss their hands. I want to say, "Thank you." They have enriched my life, and our country's.
Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it's being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill's Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay's pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you're not, you cur, you gun-totin' truckdriver's-hat-wearin' yahoo. It's all so complex, and you'd understand this if you weren't sort of dumb.
But it's not so complex. The past quarter-century an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants has crossed our borders. The flood is so great that no one--no one--can see or fully imagine all the many implications, all the country-changing facts of it. No one knows exactly what uncontrolled immigration is doing and will do to our country.
So what should we do?
We should stop, slow down and absorb. We should sit and settle. We should do what you do after eating an eight-course meal. We should digest what we've eaten.
We should close our borders. We should do whatever it takes to close them tight and solid. Will that take the Army? Then send the Army. Does it mean building a wall? Then build a wall, but the wall must have doors, which can be opened a little or a lot down the road once we know where we are. Should all legal immigration stop? No. We should make a list of what our nation needs, such as engineers and nurses, and then admit a lot of engineers and nurses. We should take in what we need to survive and flourish.
As we end illegal immigration, we should set ourselves to the Americanization of the immigrants we have. They haven't only joined a place of riches, it's a place of meaning. We must teach them what it is they've joined and why it is good and what is expected of them and what is owed. We stopped Americanizing ourselves 40 years ago. We've got to start telling the story of our country again.
As to the eight or 10 or 12 or 14 million illegals who are here--how interesting that our government doesn't know the number--we should do nothing dramatic or fraught or unlike us. We should debate what to do, at length. Debate isn't bad. There's a lot to say. We can all join in. We should do nothing extreme, only things that are commonsensical.
Here is the truth: America has never deported millions of people, and America will never deport millions of people. It's not what we do. It's not who we are. It's not who we want to be. The American people would never accept evening news pictures of sobbing immigrants being torn from their homes and put on a bus. We wouldn't accept it because we have hearts, and as much as we try to see history in the abstract, we know history comes down to the particular, to the sobbing child in the bus. We don't round up and remove. Nor should we, tomorrow, on one of our whims, grant full legal status and a Cadillac car. We take it a day at a time. We wait and see what's happening. We do the small discrete things a nation can do to make the overall situation better. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
05/25/2007 06:28 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
