Category Archives: IMMIGRATION

Buchanan’s Bifurcation

IMMIGRATION, Islam, Old Right

Buchanan is easily one of the few smart men left on the networks. A person of the right, starved for some intelligent comment on immigration, tends to be somewhat forgiving of his omissions. Trust Lawrence Auster NEVER to neglect his critical faculties.

A quick aside: Well into his post, Auster writes the following:

There is virtually no one in the West who will stay consistently with the idea that an immigration-related problem is due to the character and culture of the immigrants themselves. They might make such a point occasionally, but then they will immediately edge away from it and start talking about some secondary issue like assimilation and alienation and stuff like that. This is a basic test of conceptual clarity and conservative seriousness: is one willing to say that a non-Western people is different from us, period?

Of course, this is demonstrably false, as my own pieces demonstrate, and in particular, “Rah-Rah for Rioters” and “Mass Immigration and Multiculturalism: What a Riot, Mate.”

Here, then, is Auster’s take on the Buchanan muddle, not least of which is his apologia for Islam:

“I just listened to Patrick Buchanan being interviewed by radio host John Gambling about his book State of Emergency. Buchanan’s message regarding the immigration threat is bracingly strong, but also disconcertingly confused. There was no clear and consistent message or call to action, but a grab-bag of often contradictory complaints. First he talked about immigration. Then he switched into complaining that we’re not trying to assimilate the immigrants. Well, then, which is it—immigration or insufficient assimilation? (Not that we couldn’t do both, reduce or stop immigration and return to strong assimilationist policies, but the problem is that 99 percent of those who focus on inadequate assimilation as the problem also say that immigration is not a problem; they assume that the immigrants all assimilable, when they’re not. Therefore to start complaining about weak assimilationist policies in the midst of an attack on immigration diffuses the anti-immigration argument.)

Then he went into his riff about low Western birth rates and that whole doom and gloom scenario, with its implication that we can’t do anything to stop immigration until the native birth rate is increased. So, what do we do in the meantime? Then he switched to the problem of illegals. So, is the problem illegal immigration, or immigration as a whole? Then he said that America is finished. But if America is finished, what’s the point of talking about it? Does he think we can stop and reverse the immigration and save America, or not?

A further potential contradiction is his position on Muslims. In recent years Buchanan has established a record for himself as a major appeaser of Islam, denying that it represents a threat to us, arguing that at all costs we must avoid a civilization clash with Islam, and publishing an article by a British leftist claiming that Islamic terrorism is not real but an image manufactured by neoconservatives. He passionately attacked the European newspapers that bravely stood up to Muslim intimidation by publishing the Muhammad cartoons, and he has said we must “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims rather than confront them. Winning Muslim hearts and minds, avoiding a civilization conflict—this obviously implies that we must not criticize or seek to reduce Muslim immigration, let alone repatriate Sharia-supporting Muslims. In fact, Buchanan seems to be saying that America’s problem is Hispanic immigration, while Europe’s problem is Muslim immigration. This bifurcation of the issue—allowing Buchanan to come across as a patriot defending America even as he continues to appease jihad-waging Muslims—will not do. He ended however on a strong note. When Gambling asked him, would the massive changes he is describing in the Southwest be a good or a bad thing, Buchanan said he believes in nation, believes in sovereignty, believes in borders, believes in the country America has been, and that all of that is imminently threatened by immigration and particularly Bush’s amnesty bill. He said America is in an existential crisis.”

Buchanan's Bifurcation

IMMIGRATION, Islam, Old Right

Buchanan is easily one of the few smart men left on the networks. A person of the right, starved for some intelligent comment on immigration, tends to be somewhat forgiving of his omissions. Trust Lawrence Auster NEVER to neglect his critical faculties.

A quick aside: Well into his post, Auster writes the following:

There is virtually no one in the West who will stay consistently with the idea that an immigration-related problem is due to the character and culture of the immigrants themselves. They might make such a point occasionally, but then they will immediately edge away from it and start talking about some secondary issue like assimilation and alienation and stuff like that. This is a basic test of conceptual clarity and conservative seriousness: is one willing to say that a non-Western people is different from us, period?

Of course, this is demonstrably false, as my own pieces demonstrate, and in particular, “Rah-Rah for Rioters” and “Mass Immigration and Multiculturalism: What a Riot, Mate.”

Here, then, is Auster’s take on the Buchanan muddle, not least of which is his apologia for Islam:

“I just listened to Patrick Buchanan being interviewed by radio host John Gambling about his book State of Emergency. Buchanan’s message regarding the immigration threat is bracingly strong, but also disconcertingly confused. There was no clear and consistent message or call to action, but a grab-bag of often contradictory complaints. First he talked about immigration. Then he switched into complaining that we’re not trying to assimilate the immigrants. Well, then, which is it—immigration or insufficient assimilation? (Not that we couldn’t do both, reduce or stop immigration and return to strong assimilationist policies, but the problem is that 99 percent of those who focus on inadequate assimilation as the problem also say that immigration is not a problem; they assume that the immigrants all assimilable, when they’re not. Therefore to start complaining about weak assimilationist policies in the midst of an attack on immigration diffuses the anti-immigration argument.)

Then he went into his riff about low Western birth rates and that whole doom and gloom scenario, with its implication that we can’t do anything to stop immigration until the native birth rate is increased. So, what do we do in the meantime? Then he switched to the problem of illegals. So, is the problem illegal immigration, or immigration as a whole? Then he said that America is finished. But if America is finished, what’s the point of talking about it? Does he think we can stop and reverse the immigration and save America, or not?

A further potential contradiction is his position on Muslims. In recent years Buchanan has established a record for himself as a major appeaser of Islam, denying that it represents a threat to us, arguing that at all costs we must avoid a civilization clash with Islam, and publishing an article by a British leftist claiming that Islamic terrorism is not real but an image manufactured by neoconservatives. He passionately attacked the European newspapers that bravely stood up to Muslim intimidation by publishing the Muhammad cartoons, and he has said we must “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims rather than confront them. Winning Muslim hearts and minds, avoiding a civilization conflict—this obviously implies that we must not criticize or seek to reduce Muslim immigration, let alone repatriate Sharia-supporting Muslims. In fact, Buchanan seems to be saying that America’s problem is Hispanic immigration, while Europe’s problem is Muslim immigration. This bifurcation of the issue—allowing Buchanan to come across as a patriot defending America even as he continues to appease jihad-waging Muslims—will not do. He ended however on a strong note. When Gambling asked him, would the massive changes he is describing in the Southwest be a good or a bad thing, Buchanan said he believes in nation, believes in sovereignty, believes in borders, believes in the country America has been, and that all of that is imminently threatened by immigration and particularly Bush’s amnesty bill. He said America is in an existential crisis.”

Updated: A New Kind of Conquest

America, IMMIGRATION

I’ve begun reading Paul Johnson’s A History of the America People, and tracing the routes the first colonists took, using my large globe. Walter Raleigh: now there’s a “proto-American” clichésman of action distinguished in his courage, vision, energy, audacity (alas, cruelty), and intellect.

Speaking of colonists, there’s a new kind in town. Here are some of the intriguing facts, (collated by Human Events) highlighted in Pat Buchanan’s new book, State of Emergency, The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America:

  • Fact: our illegal population today is greater than the total number of Irish, Jewish, and British immigrants who ever came to the U.S.
  • Why the reigning Republicans ignore the law and do little or nothing to stop illegal immigration
  • How mass immigration inevitably tilts the center of gravity of American politics to the Left
  • How the numbers of Americans of European descent are rapidly decreasing — and the political and social implications
  • How Los Angeles today provides a glimpse of what all of America will be like in 2050
  • An ‘American creed’? Why those who believe that the ideas of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address hold us together as a nation are distorting or reinventing history
  • Fact: not only are arguments about the economic benefits provided by illegal aliens false, but illegal immigration also constitutes a massive drain on our economy
  • Why importing a vast diaspora from a neighboring nation so different from our own is such a hellish risk
  • How the United States Government threw up its hands and abdicated its constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion by illegal aliens over four decades ago
  • Why it is difficult, if not impossible, for cities to get control of the growing crime menace of immigrants and illegal aliens
  • John F. Kennedy and immigration: how, in 1991, the U.S. took in twelve times more immigrants than what JFK stated in the early 1960s as an acceptable annual limit
  • Bush’s guest worker plan: how it provoked a surge to the border
  • How, as Republicans dither, some Democrats are beginning to see the potency among voters of the illegal immigration issue
  • How, rather than fading away, issues of nationality long considered dead are resurfacing today
  • Why so many children of Asian-American and Hispanic immigrants are assimilating into a deadly subculture of gangs and crime
  • How even conservatives now routinely denounce as ‘racist,’ ‘nativist’ and ‘xenophobic’ anyone who argues that mass migration from the Third World risks disuniting and even destroying America

Eurabia on the rise: the devastating consequences of unrestricted immigration in Europe

Buchanan disapproves of Eurabia? Why, then, is he so eager to see Israel claimed by the same savages?

Update: Buchanan’s contradictions aside (elucidated in “Buchanan of Arabia“), his WND column today, “Prophets Without Honor” is certainly gutsy, as his book will no doubt be.

Immigration Infarct

America, Bush, IMMIGRATION

Bush’s immigration infarct was studded with his trademark non sequiturs:

We are a nation of immigrants; therefore we must uphold that “tradition,” he puled. And “to secure our border, we must create a temporary worker program.” In both assertions, the second proposition doesn’t follow from the first—even if America is indeed a nation of immigrants, it doesn’t follow that it has to remain so. Similarly, it is quite possible to seal the border without creating a guest worker program (with its attendant bureaucracy).

One of the many moral infelicities Bush has committed on the matter of immigration is to have decided that the longer an illegal alien has been in the U.S., and thus violated its laws, the shorter his road to citizenship. Another was to praise these plucky folks for heroically forging documents and lying to employers about their status in the country.

Sanctimonious admonitions were in no short supply—but were directed at … the American people. They were told to “conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone.” “We must always remember,” said The Man Who Pulverized Iraq, “that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions.”

Since Those Jobs The American People Aren’t Doing were also mentioned, I, in turn, wish to refer the POTUS to a report by researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein, according to which illegals make up only 13 percent of hotel industry workers, 11 percent of restaurant and food service workers, and 10 percent of construction workers.

Will the president pray tell who the other mystery workers are?