Nations of Immigrants
The irrepressible Silvio Berlusconi is in hot water again with all left-thinking people, this time for his remarks on illegal immigrants. After praising Libya for taking back 500 illegals from Italy, the Italian PM observed, "The Left's idea is of a multi-ethnic Italy . . . That is not our idea, ours is to welcome only those who meet the conditions for political asylum." Naturally, the Secretary of the Italian Bishops Conference was outraged and praised multi-culturalism as an Italian value.
In France, the government is under fire for trying to clear out illegal immigrants who have swarmed into Calais in order to cross to the UK. Traffic jams have been caused by the hundreds of illegals swarming onto highways and trying to climb onto trucks headed for Britain. The French immigration minister--imagine, they have such a post!--is promising to use the army. Meanwhile Socialists in the French Parliament are trying to immend [sic] a law that makes it a crime to aid and abet illegal immigrants.
In Greece, about 500 illegal immigrants have occupied a building. When police refused to dislodge them, members of an anti-immigrant group known as the Golden Dawn attacked the building, and a dozen police officers were injured in the clash. Naturally, the fault lies with the right-wing extremists and not with the illegals--much less with the Greek police, who have a distinguished record for doing nothing to stop the violence perpetrated by illegals or by the leftists who have been systematically burning down conservative bookstores and publishing houses.
Here in America, there is no story. The far-left Obama administration welcomes illegal immigrants and will nurture them as a voting block and state-building constituency, while the center-left opposition can talk all day about immigration reform without cracking down on anyone but Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, and any Republican unwise enough to love his country.
Meanwhile, the official leaders of the anti-immigration movement and immigration reform think tanks--you know the names--accomplish exactly nothing. Couching their arguments in strictly economic and utilitarian terms, they embrace the same universalist and materialist ethic of the Left. What is really important, you see, is not the national origin or cultural and religious traditions of immigrants, only their potential earning power and the future tax revenues to be squeezed out of them.
You cannot win if you will not fight. At least Italians love their country enough to have voted the impossible Berlusconi back into power, largely on the strength of his promise to do something about immigration. Just before the most recent election, a leftist taxi driver in Rome told me Berlusconi would win, unless the Left wised up about immigration. But it is the very essence of Leftism to destroy all forms of the natural order, the family, the community, the province, and the nation. Here in America, it does not matter what the Republicans say or propose, because in their hearts they believe the Left is right. The only difference is that the phony Right puts its faith in the Global Market instead of the Global Government. It is a distinction, increasingly, without a difference.
Some years ago, when I was foolish enough to tell the truth that we were losing or had lost the immigration battle, I was attacked by many former allies and even by some friends. At that time, I said we would continue to fight the good fight, but not under the illusion that we could win it. The so-called nationalists, in attacking Chronicles, displayed the historical memory so typical of American youth. They forgot to mention that Chronicles had been fighting this battle since the mid-80's and that it was our issue, "A Nation of Immigrants," that gave our cynical opportunist colleague, Richard Neuhaus, a weapon he could give to the Podhoretzes to put us out of business. Even today I find it hard to believe that any rational person could believe the lies they told at that time.
Poor Richard went to his grave, still angry that with so few resources at our disposal we had defeated him and his horde of anti-Christian allies. Apparently he commemorated his much deserved firing with an annual commiseration dinner. Many people have asked me when I am going to respond the lies his friends are still telling, and I can only respond: It hardly matters. Not one American in a hundred is interested in the truth, and the percentage drops dramatically among self-described conservatives.
We intend to go on fighting this fight, not because we think we can defeat either wing of the Left but because it is one way of waking people up to the profound truth that man is neither a social insect nor a rogue elephant. We are creatures whose lives depend on the traditions and communities that form our character--the families that rear us, the language we speak, the books we read, the religion we practice. The government can and will raise our taxes, fight unjustifiable wars of aggression, and flood the country with immigrants, but it cannot, without our complicity, rob us of our identity and historical memory.
Since nothing can be done on the national level to save this country from its people and the leaders they elect, the best you can do is to mind your own business in some place that has not yet been overrun. Taking to the streets, like the members of the Golden Dawn, will not meet with the feeble response of the Greek police. Our President may be a sissy, but he has hired some mean "women" to work for him. Do not through your life away on futile causes or waste time hating people you will never know.
If some combination of passive obedience and good living is not a solution that can satisfy you, you can always move to Italy or to the Greek countryside, which is relatively free of immigrants and the crimes they commit. My Greek friends are horrified by what has happened to Athens, but Athens is no Los Angeles or Chicago, and the rest of Greece is underpopulated and backward-looking. Life can be good if you forget about changing the world and concentrate on brightening the corner where you are.
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Oddly enough big city leftists are more likely to become the victims of crimes committed by immigrants. Car thefts, muggings, etc. and some of them have become Buchanan conservatives -- at least on the immigration issue. Comfortable suburbanites who vote their GOP pocketbooks seem almost clueless on the issue, at least until the foreclosed house next door beomes occupied by 5 families withan IQ of 87 who cause the school to get dumbed down even further.
The best left-wing allies are those who bemoan the loss of green farmland only to see it reeplaced by shoddy plastic sided houses.
It took several years, but in the mid-1990s your arguments for immigration finally convinced me. So Chronicles does have influence.
Like you, I'm not sure what policy changes can be made, given the status of the political parties that you described. But as Dr. Johnson said, "Though we cannot out-vote them, we will out-
argue them."
Opps. In my previous post, I meant "immigration restrictio."
Didn't see the hidden bomb that Michael Kenny sniffed out of Dr. Flemings article (and still don't) but do thank him for posting something rare and priceless these days -- an honest essay. The powers of youth supply the high energy for conquest and victory in hard battles but it is the qualities of age that should inform and draw the skirmish lines. The harvest for heoric effort is always ripe but intelligent laborers are few today because hype has a tenedency to replace contemplation. I remember the days of my youth were filled with nuclear disarmament issue by the hyper-active types, while the more contemplative teachers were talking about the consequences for high rates of divorce, illegitamacy and abortion for a culture rooted in family traditions and revealed truth. Of course the hype drew more attention and larger crowds but the wise men seem to have had more lasting effects. Tom is a wiser man than the street junkies and cammoed assasins lurking on his web page, but thank God he is not nearly as dangerous.
Periodically, my dislike for web-chatters becomes so intense that I simply give up writing pieces for our website. The only solution I have been able to devise is to delete without comment the ad hominem remarks and irrelevant digressions that make reasonable discussion impossible. Every poster who suffers deletion should hear the words "Rem tene" echoing across the electronic desert.
"... you can always move to Italy or to the Greek countryside"
In other words, you can become an immigrant there? How, unless we come from an Italian or Greek family ourselves, does that serve the purpose of preserving our ties to "the traditions and communities that form our character–the families that rear us, the language we speak?"
I have a comment on your last article regarding immigration regarding last Saturday’s clashes in the centre of Athens.The main event was a demonstration against illegal immigration organized by non-partisan committees of Greeks living in the centre of Athens. This was followed by the announcement of a counter-demonstration by the far-leftist thugs. On the other hand the far-right Golden Dawn was (unfortunately) the only party who took part in the demonstration.
The clashes started after the end of the demonstration, when the Golden Dawn activists were going to their offices accompanied by the police. Their offices are near the old Court of Appeal building which is illegally occupied by 500-600 illegal immigrants. The immigrants and the far-leftists were the first to attack by throwing pieces of marble and bricks from the upper floors of the building and injuring far-rightists and policemen. Then the Golden Dawn activists tried to attack the building, but were stopped by the police.
I know the impression given by the foreign news reports is that the far-rightists attacked without provocation a building which houses immigrants, but the truth is the other way around. Of course Golden Dawn is far from being a decent party, but as long as the main parties refuse to tackle the immigration problem, the Greeks living in the centre of Athens turn to them for support since they feel abandoned by everyone. I attach the poster for the demonstration against illegal immigration.
Thanks, Andreas, for the information. I am inserting the poster, if I can, at the end of my article above. I look forward to getting filled in when I see you in Athens this Summer.
I do not recommend any course of action to anyone. A Catholic Englishman in Tudor England could either 1) betray his and his ancestors' religion and comply with the tyrants' decrees, 2) stand up boldly for his faith and be martyred, 3) live in the shadows as an alien in his own land, or 4) go some place where he could practice his religion in peace. The choices one makes will depend on a man's character and circumstances but also on his age.
There are two sets of traditions, the local (by which I include provincial and national) and the universal--though they are hardly that. One set makes us Charlestonians and Southerners, but another makes us Christian and heirs to classical antiquity. In anything like a decent country, one should be able to balance the two traditions, the two sets of loyalties. Some times it is more difficult. Our is a pagan country that makes it increasingly difficult to lead a Christian while carrying out our duty of loyalty to divinely appointed authority. To speak personally, I think I can be comparatively happy in remaining an American but spending a good part of the year away from my increasingly unlovely homeland. Others will make other choices. I do not at all envy the fate of emigrés and exiles, however comfortably fixed they are, but my fellow countrymen seem Hell-bent on living like swine on a commercial pig farm, getting fat on chemical slops, oblivious to the fate their masters have planned for them. But even if I had the answer, I doubt that I would state it. Some mistakes we have to make for ourselves.
I was one of the people influenced by the Chronicles of the late 1980s-early 1990s. I have the "Nation of Immigrants" issue and still read it from time-to-time.
I agree with Dr. Fleming 100%. The immigration battle is over and we lost. The U.S. is not a great place to live but my parents and family are here. If I were 10 years younger I would move to Argentina.
St. Edmund Campion chose martyrdom. Shakespeare, a young man when Campion was killed, was not as brave. Like many English Catholics, he compromised and he certainly can be criticized for not standing up for his faith. I would gather that he surreptitiously practiced his religion by attending an occasional illicit Mass in some London hideaway. Yet, Shakespearean scholar David Allen White maintains that Shakespeare's works are filled with Catholic references. Was Shakespeare wrong or right not to go out in the fashion of Campion? Was writing plays with occasional Catholic references a suitable compromise made by Shakespeare?
As for Bernie's first comment, I happened upon Chronicles about the same time as he. National Review no longer nourished or even seemed particularly relevant, especially after the Berlin Wall was torn down and Eastern European and Russian communism imploded. National Review became more of a Teen Beat for Republicans. Chronicles, with its emphasis on culture, was much more relevant to the post-Reagan America and it still is. As for Bernie's second comment, I disagree only in that I love the historical America and believe that remnants of that America can survive at the community, county and, in some cases, state level. Other parts of America are forever lost to the onslaught.
I like Solzhenitsyn's stance. He was a Russian and would put up with anything to stay in his *otechestvo* (fatherland), even under the demonic Soviet Union, leaving only if he was forcibly deported. He was, then returned.
Thank you for your reply, Dr Fleming. We are in complete agreement.
My finances don't allow me to vacation out of the country, and family ties prevent me from emigrating. That leaves trying to live quietly where I am and hoping that I can mostly escape the notice of our new masters.
Shakespeare's religion is a subject that has been discussed and debated by a number of important scholars. He certainly was brought up in a Catholic, perhaps recusant milieu, but it is possible, nay probable that he went with the flow, preserving a Medieval Christian/Catholic imagination but not regarding the Church as important enough to take risks for. Solzhenitsyn's amor patriae was admirable, but then Russia was a patria in a way that AMerica has never been. What chance we had was destroyed by the nationalists of the 19th century and the internationalists of the 20th. I agree that there is still enough to local identities to justify staying where you are. My job takes me abroad a good deal. Otherwise I should have to make up my mind to answer decisively the musical question posed by a famous punk band, "Should I stay or should I go?"
I wish I could go, but have no resources with which to accomplish leaving.
I wonder, Dr. Fleming, what you make of the "Benedict option" as practiced by places like Clear Creek?
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080323_1_A1_spanc15125
In other words, Christians moving together intentionally to try and preserve the faith in a new dark age.
"Meanwhile, the official leaders of the anti-immigration movement and immigration reform think tanks–you know the names–accomplish exactly nothing."
When I have posted comments on the Stein Report blog (for FAIR) pointing out how immigration affects whites in particular throughout the West, they have been deleted.
The idea of starting an otherwise respectable activist organization that looks out for the interests of white people specifically has not even been tried. (By "otherwise respectable" I mean not anti-Semitic and not separatist.)
It is almost certainly too late to keep whites from becoming a minority in this country, but it is not too late to fight this mentality that says that whites can never think of their own interests as whites. The sooner whites wake up about this, the better, and creating the sort of organization I am talking about would certainly help with this process.
I'm curious (and this is genuine interest, not a hostile question) what it is that makes Dr. Fleming more confident that Italy, Greece, or France is more likely to hold out against the forces of decadence than the U.S. is.
From a distance they seem not much (if at all) better than we are. All the nations you mentioned have legal abortion. Berlusconi and Sarkozy seem to be as ardent lechers (and in Berlusconi's case a crook as well) as any American politician, albeit more charming. I wouldn't expect Italy to legalize gay marriage, but I wouldn't have expected Spain to do so either, and instead Spain turned out to be in the vanguard of that benighted movement. Maybe their popular culture is not yet as degraded as ours is, but in a report from Italy you wrote a few months ago you seemed very un-optimistic that that would remain the case.
@10 Bernie
The Chilean Lake District looks pretty nice, too. And my former neighbors' children moved to Tierra del Fuego because it's far enough away from Argentina's national capital that everyday life can proceed without too much interference, and its homogeneous population is relatively law-abiding and civilized.
@16 James
There is hope in Russia because today the Duma denied legalizing sodomite marriage.
I have been a Chronicles reader and subscriber for over 20 years. The Chronicles argument on immigration convinced me when I first became a reader. I have the November 2001 issue in front of me, "Strangers In A Strange Land: Nation of Immigrants II."
In a Foreward, Thomas Fleming wrote, "The time has come to face the unpleasant reality that-politically, at least-we have lost the immigration battle." Eight years later, this has been proven true. Under a "Conservative Republican" president, things continued to get worse. I remember last year in a news report about the GOP South Carolina primary it seemed that voters were "surprised" that John McCain was for amnesty. They had no idea and voted for McCain because he was a "war hero," without bothering to learn his policy positions. Republican voters will tell pollsters that they are against "illegal immigration," but cast their votes for the most pro-immigration Republican.
I am a descendant of the 17th and 18th Century pioneers. I live according to my own precepts and pursue my interests.
There was a sacred place in our house: the supper table. There each evening my father would pray and then, while enjoying the meal, hold court over various themes, including politics. I recall that when the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was being discussed and was finally passed, it was a topic which my father closed on as swiftly and decisively as Jackson's Corps closing on Yankees. I remember it so well because he said, "It will be the bane of us all!" I did not know what "bane" meant. My father defined it for me as "ruin and woe." He was right. The longer I live the more I come to understand how right he was on many things.
I am a Hellene living somewhere in "Bactria" and I am very impressed with TJF's knowledge of Hellenic affairs, language and history. There is a vibrant Right and Left wing patriotic discourse in Greece but because of the difficult and relatively unknown language, and the dominance of syndicated journalist channels by internationalist Left journalists, no one gets to know about it. Good man. Thanks.
As a young conservative activist in the 1960s, I had two acquaintances who emigrated to escape American decline---one to South Africa and one to the Falklands. Exile is seldom a good idea. There are no places left for seekers of new lands.
"The best left-wing allies are those who bemoan the loss of green farmland only to see it reeplaced by shoddy plastic sided houses."
How so, Mr. Gervaise? Leftists are apt to bemoan anything which has to do with personal choice exercised by owners of private property. If you intended that remark as a statement of sympathy for the green-weenie agenda of "sustainable growth", I could see how you might regard some leftists as allies.
I can't find any reason in my own experience for allying myself with leftists on any political or social issue. Leftists are, on the whole, immature, unreasoning, delusional and absolutely consumed with envy and an obsession with forcibly bending others to their will. They also are capable of abandoning their stand on any issue upon which their allies have presumed to count on their support.
Leftists usually have no principles nor any discernible moral values, only dogmatic enthusiasms for the latest faddish slogans circulating among their spokesmen in the media.
Forgive my failure to understand what you meant by that post. If you could explain it to me, I'd be glad to read the response.
Mr. Roberts, I find that in many ways lefties like James Howard Kuntsler and Kirkpatrick Sale have more to offer in conserving America than the editorial staffs of the Wall Street Journal, with their devotion to absolute free trade, free immigration and free enterprise, or the Weekly Standard, which adds a thirst for perpetual wars throughout the globe on top of the Wall Street Journal's fetishes.
Where I live on Maryland's Eastern Shore the crab, clam and oyster harvest is way down from when I was a boy. Although overharvesting has something to do with the decline, much of the deterioration of the aquaculture industry on Maryland's Eastern Shore is caused by the overbuilding of homes along the waterfront. Developers, most of whom are Republicans, want to build more homes. The evil environmentalists, most of whom are Democrats, want to conserve the Chesapeake habitat and the historic Chesapeake way of life. Locally, I support the more conservative of the two parties- the Democrats. In fact, in heavily Republican Queen Anne's County, Democrats who support slow/no-growth have four of the five county commissioner seats while a sympathetic Republican holds the other seat. Something for the laissez-faire Republicans to think about.
Clyde Wilson is absolutely right: There are no wildernesses or new lands to escape to. In my teens and early 20's, I was mightily disturbed by this, since I detested the way the country was going. Later, I came up with the slogan, "Go East, young man," to express my conviction that decadent old Europe still had much to offer. The trouble with exile to Europe is the temptation to be an American or English-speaking colonist in Italy or France. I run into such people all the time. They are a bit like the John Bull Englishmen who went to India to strike it rich while despising the locals, except the exiles today are not getting rich, only living in comfort. To live abroad for even a few weeks requires intensive preparation, particularly in the language, without which you are only a tourist or a comfort-seeking refugee (not that I am condemning either tourism or the pleasures of life in Tuscany), but to have any kind of life in any place--at home or abroad--one has to have some feeling for the history and traditions of the place and people to talk to who are not waiters, barmen, or taxi drivers. I cannot say that, in spreading my nets rather broadly in several countries, I have succeeded. Far from it, but I think I could spend several months a year in one of several non-English-speaking countries, always remembering my rule that "All foreigners are stupid."
On the value of Leftists, I would distinguish first, between people who are Leftists because it is the cultural milieu in which they live and ideological Leftists who have embraced the cause, and, second, between those who are eager to continue the revolution against humanity in which they have been engaged for centuries and those who merely want to tweak it. In the end, though, one has to realize that however valuable their critique may be, Leftists-and here I include WSJ libertarians and liberal capitalists--are infected with a virus that is far more dangerous and communicable version of Swine Flu--because it turns us into swine. I like and admire Kirk Sale and wish I could spend more time with him, but among religious and conservative people--many of whose values he shares--I wonder if he too is not a tourist or colonist and perhaps one who is bringing small pox.
The first problem in posing questions in terms of White People is that Whiteness is an abstraction. For example, many South Italians are comparatively dark, while Swedes are achingly White, but, although I have several Swedish and Swedish American friends, I am more comfortable in the company of Sicilians. There are African and partly-African Americans who are more "White" in the sense of being civilized and Christian than 95% of the Whites in Rockford. The second is that Whiteness tends to be a negative category, that is, it is defined in terms of not being black or brown rather than in terms of being something good. At this point in my life I am not much interested in making alliances with Meth freaks, child molesters, school shooters, neoconservatives, or wife swappers, simply because they have white skin and blue eyes. The Church is open to all human beings and so is the possibility of being civilized, while racialist and nationalist ideologies are not only close-minded but they are part of Jacobin leftism. If we could just go back to the good things our ancestors had, train our minds and cultivate a good life, we would not have to worry so much about skin tone or hair texture. White people per se did not create our civilization. Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Celts and the nations of Europe they spawned did.
I thought Hal K might get rebuked for saying the dreaded 'w' word on Chronicles.
I don't think that being white is an abstration, as the word is not to be taken in the literal sense but as shorthand for people of European Christian heritage.
Dr Fleming's personal examples of who he feels comfortable with have no bearing on the argument. Of course there are many civilised non-whites and uncivilied whites but looking at those groups as a whole it is entirely apparent which ones tend to be more civilised and which ones do not. History also teaches us which ones have the capacity to reach heights of civilisation and which ones do not.
The simple fact is that white europeans share a certain fellowship (even if implicit) based on belonging to a common civilisation with many similarities in language, customs and behaviours.
Yes, our civilisation was created by Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts etc but do these people have common? There are no Arabs, Asians of Africans in that list.
TJF: I think you might be missing the forest for the trees.
Who would deny that anti-white and pro-non-white political correctness permeates our society? This is not just an abstraction. It helps the pro-immigration side and hurts the anti-immigration side.
This sort of political correctness has to be countered head on. The restrictionist organizations bend over backwards to avoid any appearance of racial loyalty, but they are still called racist. Meanwhile, there are no restrictionist organizations that actually say that they are looking out for the interests of whites. The same battles are fought year after year, and the best that the restrictionist side can hope for is to keep Congress from making things worse.
The problem is that anti-white political correctness cannot be countered on a race-neutral basis. Conservatives have been trying that for years, and it never works. If all mainstream conservatives insist on opposing the left’s agenda on a race-neutral basis, then this validates the underlying political correctness that is at the root of the problem.
There ought to be activist organizations that are willing to take the step of simply saying that they are for white people. There would be social and political costs involved, but these can be overcome in the long run, since it is a double standard if there can be organizations for the interests of non-whites but not for whites.
"There ought to be activist organizations that are willing to take the step of simply saying that they are for white people.'
There are such organizations in the prisons all across our country. Which is at least one experiment that proves the battle lines of civility are not to be drawn in color codes. If they are a strong people, then let them lead us. If they are an intelligent people them let them teach us and if they are s pious people then let them offer prayers and worship to their God. What does the color, white, do for a people who have lost their nerve, their desire to cultivate their intelligence and their love for the divine within every creature created in the image of God. The white man's cultural institutions have not been attacked and leveled from an enemy outside the walls, they have rotted from within from the seven deadliest sins ever known to man. Physician, heal thyself!
Robert:
I did not make this clear in my previous comment (26), but in an earlier comment (15) I said that I was talking about organizations that were not anti-Semitic or separatist. If you know of organizations that are specifically for the interests of white people and that are not anti-Semitic and/or separatist, I would be very interested in hearing about them.
Hal K,
The problem is that the smear has been a very effective tactic for the destroyers. They name things what they want with no regard for the truth of the thing itself. Even if there was an organization as you describe, it would be tarred and smeared with the same brush they use to paint Pat Buchanan, Clyde Wilson, Tom Fleming or any other organization or persons they see as a threat to their immediate desires. The enemy moves like a mudslide when it can not burn like a wild-fire, it destroys but never creates anything and it depends for its existence on the very host from which it feeds and draws its strength. My point is that the cure is to strengthen the animal which it depends upon for its survival, and not to attempt to eliminate the pests. It is like destroying a family so the kids (or parents) can have their way. It is similar to the rancher that spends all his time on fly control rather than facilitating health in the herd or in the pastures they depend upon for nutrition. We are not utopians we are mere humans with one life to live and after that, the four last things. As one poet put it "we are only here a little while to learn to bear the beams of love," not to be distracted by the hate that roars like a lion seeking someone to devour.
"Life can be good if you forget about changing the world and concentrate on brightening the corner where you are."
That works for me and should for the rest of us as well, especially when it comes to immigration. For the issue, when boiled down, was always a local issue. Some communities, like large cities or college towns or towns with a food processing plant, will be more welcoming of immigrants than other communities, like a Hazelton, Pennsylvania for example. If a community wishes to be a sancutary city then it must accept the consequences of such policies and the response of any citizens that vote with their feet.
Where I live in Pepin County, we do have Mexican migrants who work on big diary farm operations. These are family farms that have expanded their operations, not corporate farms or farms owned by billionares getting rich off subsidies. Certainly if such immigrants broke the law or were without their work permits, they should be deported, which I'm sure Sheriff's Department would do and something I've made my feelings clear about as a member of the county board. But the local community itself (at least no one has openly complained anyway to me or anyone else) is not up in arms about seeing dark faces in nearly all-white Pepin County, so the situtation is not contentious. At least not to the extend it would be in other places where lots of immigrants settled at once and where they causing trouble within the community and upsetting the cultural balance. Again, it all depends on where you live. On the other hand, I had written an article for Chronicles on a town not too far from where I live called Arcadia which did have a dispute over immigration because large numbers of said immigrants moved there because the local food processing plant was hiring them dirt cheap and there were questions over their legal status to be in the country.
That's why the politics on this issue were always deceptive. It's true that popular pressure among conservatives sunk President Bush II's amnesty program. However, immigration was not an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. That's why John McCain won the GOP nomination while Tom Tancredo never made it to the Iowa Caucuses. It's political fool's gold to think that anti-immigration alone as an issue can elect anybody as Hazelton mayor Lou Barletta will tell you given his own unsuccessful run for Congress. You have to think locally.
Maybe its time to reposition oneself on the question of immigration. Instead of calling for a moratorium, perhaps we should ask if the door is truly wide open for all immigration, then why can't Europeans immigrate in same fashion as Mexians? Why must their be quotas based on race and national origin? Is that not inherently discriminatory? There are thousands in Eastern Europe who I'm sure would probably love to immigrate to the U.S. Should they not have the same opportunity to do so instead of by the restrictive statute of the 1965 immigration law?
I want disagree about there being no places left to migrate too. There sure are, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wyoming and Montana. You can read endless number of articles and see on TV news stories about dying little towns on the Plains where only the old live, waiting to die off. You hear about ghosttowns, abandoned schools, counties virtually emptied of population. In fact, there are probably many places in the states where you live that have "forgotten corners", those areas the globalized world has left behind. If nationalists want to do something more constructive instead of basement dwelling disruptive blogging of conservative websites, then I suggest moving to those empty places and starting one's own comunities and taking over counties so if one wishes to have the sheriff bust some business for employing illegal immigrants, they can do so. I think it's a much better alternative than going to jail for firebombing some immigrant community center or synagouge or church or writing ignorant letters or internet comments of attack.
Thanks, Sean, for your wise commentary. As for the assertions made about whiteness, I continue to be amazed at the way in which people refuse to think or even read. Of course whiteness is part of reality, because race is a reality. Who here said it was not? I suppose I have read a good deal more racialist theory than most people who write in, but the question is not whether being white makes a difference, but how are we to lead our lives? If the abstract quality of being white is more important to you than the reality of friendship, then I can only say I hope you live long enough to learn better.
Sean@30
This piece of yours should be published as "A companion to Mr. Amtley's Strategy for the GOP." Thanks for psoting it here.
For 4-year old Josie Bluhm of Omaha, Nebraska, America's illegal immigration controversy turned deadly last night as she was killed by an illegal alien Eleazar Rangel-Ochoa, driving with a suspended license. Rangel-Ochoa's license had been suspended in 2003 after his third DUI offense. Drunk driving is a favorite activity of our neighbors south of the Rio Grande. Certainly much of the blame for this poor girl's death eighty years ahead of time can be laid on the shoulders of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the staff of the Weekly Standard, George W. Bush and John McCain.
Immigration is only a local problem in so far as most people only assess the impact of immigration on the basis of how it affects them personally. If the Mexicans work at the abbatoir and keep to themselves why would someone complain? What proportion of the population do you think would sit down and consider all the ways in which white Americans becoming a minority would impact them and their children? Of course, it will become a national issue at some point after whites become a minority and all the implications that that entails.
With regard to Dr Fleming's caricature about racially conscious whites who might place their skin colour over friendship (or other such personal decisions), I think very few of such people would ever do such a thing. Racially conscious whites merely recognise that those people of European Christian heritage have common political interests in the same way as other groups and wish to take action to defend and further those interests.
Thanks for the kind words one and all. To answer Chris' question, the percentage of whites who sit down and consider the ways being a minority would impact them is about 1%, especially if they live in a gated community or a retirement colony or in areas still overwhelmingly white. Immigration as a topic grew in volume because such immigrants were showing up in places like North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas and Kansas, instead of California, New York and Illinois. However, how people judge its impact still depends on where you live.
I have visited Clear Creek, and it is an inspiration. The people who have filtered into the area have done so not in any vain expectation of creating a New Jerusalem, but out of a desire to spend more time with people who share their faith and to be able to attend mass regularly. Next month in France, I shall go to visit Fontgombault, which set up Clear Creek, and we intend to devote the December issue to a variety of attempts to maintain traditions--Protestant and Orthodox as well as Catholic--without creating a sect of cult.
I thank "Antipodes" for his kind words. Ancient Greek is, perhaps, my best second language, but I struggle with the modern, which I only started trying to learn a few years ago. I try to visit Greece every year and meet with the few people who know of my existence there. What most classicists find a bit off-putting about Greece--its Balkan qualities--are a pleasure for someone who has spent so much time in Serbia and Montenegro. I don't know a more nice set of people than the Greeks I have met and if I could ever get the hang of the language, Greece would be among my first choices as a destination.
I understand why people want to speak about what my late friend Sam Francis liked to refer to as "white racial consciousness," and I suppose for some it might be a tool of liberation. But there are better ways to spend your time and energy than in looking for a white power group. Want a club? Try the Alliance Française or take a class in Greek or Latin or devote some time to reading the English classics. Come to The Rockford Institute Summer School on the Old West, if you want to meet up with good people and read about some really tough white guys. Believe me, Ranger Leander McNelly would have wiped up a whole room full of street thugs all by himself, to say nothing of such peaceful gentlemen as Wes Hardin or Jesse James. For students and young teachers, we have some scholarship money. I know, I know. You cannot take time off, find the money, or just want to wait another year. Take this from an old man who heard it from someone who heard it from a dying old man: It is not so much the things you did wrong you regret in old age as the things you failed to do.
Every American man should adopt Crockett's motto: Be sure you are right, then go ahead. On the last night of the first time I took my wife and kids to Italy, my wife sighed and said, "How wonderful it has been, a once in a lifetime experience. I told her this was nonsense, that I would be back in less than a year and every year after that. And so it has been, because I made the opportunities by doing enough work and study that someone would pay a poor writer to travel. Our young friend in France Mr. Moses has also found his promised land. I think of a tinny song of the late Richard Farina, "No use crying, talking to a stranger, naming the sorrow you've seen. Too many bad times, too many sad times, nobody knows what you mean...." So what if the world has gone to Hell: You don't have to go with it.
Sean @ 38. It is not a matter of "immigrants showing up at places like North Carolina ...." Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia are literally being hispanicised, with close to 10 per cent Mexican population and growing. And these are States that until now have had some remnants of a real culture and identity to preserve, unlike New York, Illinois, etc. Forget Florida.
"The government can and will raise our taxes, fight unjustifiable wars of aggression, and flood the country with immigrants, but it cannot, without our complicity, rob us of our identity and historical memory." Wow, so, so true.
In the end forced multiculturalism through immigration will fail, because diversity is not our strength. The government's giant social engineering program is a disaster but it will not end until the government implodes, as happened with the Soviet Union. Until that happens we will continue to struggle, but perhaps then we can find out who we are again...as Russia is starting to discover.
I don't think the color issue would be an important issue if the government would get out of the way.
Read Chronicles and go The Rockford Institute Summer School of The Old West, as TJF suggests.
I live in Cody, Wyoming and it's still a wonderful place.
Cheers,
Wow the Italian President gets nailed by a bishops council for not being multicultural!!!!! Pretty hard to win the battle for Western Civilization when one of the founding pillars of that civilization(The Church) is supporting Marxist doctrine. Western Civ and the Church is making its own noose indeed!!!!!!