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Immigrants are bad for the West: discuss
Writing at Tech Central Station, Jerry Bowyer, an avowed conservative Republican, poses a question he says he recently put to Pat Buchanan:
If 200 years from now America will be filled with people who know and love the ideas of Jefferson and Madison -- but these people are overwhelmingly dark skinned -- will this be good or bad?
Buchanan's measured response: "a disaster and a tragedy"--identifying him obviously enough as as a "blood-and-soil conservative," as against the "we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident" kind, of which Bowyer is one. The problem for Buchanan and his ilk, says Bowyer, is that they're on the wrong side of history.
America is a highly dynamic country. In fact, dynamism is the point of it, especially racial dynamism. When the first Congress commissioned that Adams, Franklin and Jefferson create a 'great seal' which would represent the ideals of our country, the (eventual) results included the Latin words "E Pluribus Unum", From many, One. From many what? From many races. How could Jefferson and Franklin (who worked together on the Declaration of Independence) see it any other way? When they 'declared' to the world that rights were self-evident, they staked everything on the notion that the software of liberty runs on all varieties of human hardware.History proved them right. ...
But, wait, if we don't send 'em all back to where they came from and erect electric fences from sea to shining sea won't we, you know, utterly destroy the West and everything Anglo-Americans hold dear?. Well, no.
Immigration doesn't represent the 'death of the West' it represents its renewal. People go from places that they don't like to places that they do like. This implies that they 'buy in' to what we're about to some degree. I would argue that immigrants tend to buy in to America more fervently than those of us who are born here. ...Immigrants start businesses at significantly higher rates than the native born. Entrepreneurship is risky. It's difficult to imagine Silicon Valley occurring without immigrants from India. Immigrants have more children, which, of course, parents will recognize as the ultimate risk.
Do they change the culture? Of course, they do. Living cultures change, dead cultures don't.
All of which strikes me as sensible, obvious, true, reasonable, humane...etc. That it makes Bowyer something of an outlier among his Republican pals--and not just the paleoconservative Buchanan types--is as alarming as it is ludicrous.
Posted by Julian Brookes on 06/29/06 at 4:13 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us
Comments
It seems to me that you've missed the point here, namely that citizens have the right to be free of the problems associated with illegal immigrants. Pity the African-American father who sees his daughter out selling her body on the street--because the lowly job she might have "won" went instead to an illegal immigrant.
You say, I'm sure!, illegal immigrants do work no one else wants...
Still, a person's first job is often moping floors, ect....
And, oh sure, wouldn't it be nice if there were no borders, and no reason for them...
On the other hand, there is no real immigration debate, because it is all self-evident...
Personally, I think that we need to stop letting in the 50,000 legal immigrants every year. Jobs are simply too difficult to come by to "give them away."
As to the other side of the coin, is it so very important to the nation that immigrants buy in so fervantly...? Does this represent something so vital that we should look past the downside?
I guess I just don't understand, because it seems to me that illegal immigrant vagrancy and the crime surely associated with it are so very dire that there is no debate.
Though I would like to see a "comprehensive" policy put into effect, whereby agriculture interests can be "advanced."
Posted by: Michael L. Wagner on 06/29/06 at 9:09 PM
Why I ask myself do I live here and not somewhere else? I mean I’m an immigrant but not someone who immigrated to America but rather an American who immigrated to a foreign land. My roots are European. German, Welsh, Irish and English but I live in Norway. In a reductive sense I’m ¾ English, though an Englishman would never consider himself Welsh much less Irish unless he were himself actually Welsh or Irish and found himself lopped into the category of being English but then he would be English by default and not by choice. The heart is that national identity. It is easier for a Welshman to accept his Englishness than it is for Irishman because at least the Prince of Wales is indeed the highest title in the Kingdom of England after that of King. Still an Irishman would never consider himself a Welshman, though both are Celtic and vice versa and both would be offended if you said you’re English God damn it because you can be sure there would be a fight. Still these people have not yet settled the score about who is who in terms of nationalities, and I imagine if you get down to the nitty gritty even in terms of tribes. They have fought one another before the Romans, they fought one another with the Romans and they fought one another after the Romans. Ireland is Ireland always but it is Irish Ireland only in the 20th century and that only after a war which failed in the goal of a united free Ireland. In Belfast in the North, where I have some of my roots, things can still get rather uppity and this is with good reason. What we call our right to sovereignty and even how we define our nationality is not clear and is indeed a delicate matter, even among such eloquent people as those Irish Bards and English Poets and no matter how refined the men of law can be. To some the country is occupied by British dogs and to others it is Catholic dogs that need English Pit-bulls to hold them in line. For simple minded and ignorant me it is good old Ireland and good old England doing what they do best and that is some jolly good fighting like cats and dogs. As I have emotional distance I can say I love them both and am proud to have the blood of both in my veins, but I guess for Samuel Huntington one has to ask is the exchange congenial or is it a threat? For more than 30 years English soldiers rule the streets of Belfast and the green grass of the countryside by the guns of martial law and the Irish fight with the guns of defiance and the bombs of terrorism. It has been and is bloody and tragic and I cannot say, nor do I feel qualified to say who is right other than in my gut Ireland should be one, Scotland One, Wales One and England One and if I were to add E pluribus Unum would you be any wiser as to whether I mean under one hat or to each his own one? It is how I see it. The riddle of the One and the many I leave to Plato’s Parmenides. We must always work for solutions and once we find them we will find that they will change again by the tides and the wills of new generations and then we will find ourselves struggling to maintain what we once had which is no longer. In this way we are never bored. Still I disagree with that Icelandic dictum which says, “We aren’t racist and we don’t want to become racist” ergo no immigration. I like the mix and if it be whites become the minority, one will ask what’s white and who’s Mediterranean, and some will say are Turks European? Or are Afro Americans really black Africans and should Nigerians be classified in the same group as Ethiopians or Ethiopians Eritreans. If we really get mixed will Ethiopians remain Ethiopians? We see that Irish don’t tend to bomb or even hate English once settled into the American way of life and in fact are not even aware of whether their neighbor is English or not but they might argue like hell about whether you are Red or Blue. Personally I think we need this challenge, this mix and ultimately it could end the historical hate that pits white against black, Moslem against Christian, Moslem against Hindu, Hindu against Buddhist, and everyone against the Jews because everyone knows who was that found the penny in the latrine and will laugh together as a hardy and strong gang laughs, no one has hurt feeling because they have the psychological armor to take a jab and the mental reflexes to throw one back in jest. I’m a strong believer in the racial mix of immigration.
Posted by: Jeff on 06/30/06 at 7:08 AM
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Since your site hasn't approved any of my past comments I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but perhaps you could answer a few questions:
1. What if the great majority of the current American people don't approve of the proposed demographic changes? Do they have the right to oppose those changes?
2. What if the demographic changes result in the U.S. becoming more like a Central American country, say, Panama? Isn't there the chance of that happening? Isn't that chance lessened with less immigration? Aren't those who support massive immigration putting the U.S. at great risk for little gain?
3. Does this site know the difference between legal and illegal immigration and between reasonable immigration and massive immigration? And, does it know the difference between immigration from a wide variety of countries vs. immigration from mainly one country?
4. Does this site have a cite for the E Pluribus Unum claim? Isn't Bowyer's knowledge of history a bit lacking?
5. Speaking of which, does this site have a substantial counter argument to the arguments put forth by Samuel Huntington in the linked excerpt?
The viewer should click my link to find out things about this issue that you won't read either here or at TCS.
Posted by: IllegalImmigrationIntroduction on 06/29/06 at 8:55 PM