There are two kinds of people in this world: those who separate people into two kinds, and those who don’t. :)

The reactions to 200 Haitians just literally walking up the beach into Miami are telling: it is as if this weren’t already going on every day on a much larger scale along our land borders. Is there something about the geology of entry — by land versus by sea — that makes the one worthy of rational discussion and the other not? Bizarre.

Touché, Matt. But in order to make a large point in 300 words, one must necessarily simplify. I hope that is not the same as being ideological.

This welcome explanation of a portion of the other side’s brutal intransigence on immigration is appreciated. It is cool water for P.C.-parched thoats. Understanding their motives and totalitarian behavior in regard to this issue can come only through our own side’s efforts at very difficult analyis, since they steadfastly refuse ever to explain themselves as they ram their immigration policies through.

Mr. Auster: I am in complete agreement with your article; just having a little pun with dichotomies.

Liberals/neocons will do the usual thing and equivocate when individually confronted, though (this just being an added observation on top of the original article). That is, individually they will treat the ideological characterization of their position as a straw man, and say more reasonable things — as reasonable as necessary and no more — when ruthlessly backed into a corner by a trad. But since the relentless social pressure is toward the ideological position this doesn’t really matter. If every single liberal/neocon taken as an individual is less than perfectly ideological, but the transcendent social whole that they form is ideological, then all the cries of “straw man” are incorrect. As individual persons each can claim to not be ideological — I think Mr. Auster has referred to this backpedaling as “making unprincipled exceptions” in past articles — which can be entirely true and at the same time entirely irrelevant. As a social whole the neocons/liberals make it nearly impossible to publicly discuss immigration rationally, a silencing/dehumanizing of rational debate that we usually call “political correctness”.

As individuals neocons/liberals can backpedal from the ideological position when confronted without undermining the ideological nature of liberalism-as-social-whole. This dynamic shields the politically correct social whole — the greater-than-sum-of-the-parts where individual neocons/liberals are the parts — from criticism; a sort of social immune system for politically correct ideology. Finally, this immune system that protects the ideological whole from criticism by deflecting it toward individuals, who can personally backpedal, relies on radical individualism/nominalism; because in radical individualism/nominalism individual persons are all that exist. Readers of VFR don’t need to be encouraged to cast a critical eye on radical individualism, but a vigilant watch for nominalism is also necessary in order to counter this social immune system that liberalism has evolved, and that we know best by the name “political correctness.”

Mr. Auster’s distinction between traditionalist and neocon/lib views of immigration is on the mark, as always. I prefer to call the neocon/lib position the absolutist one. For the reasons Mr. Auster cites, all stemming from the belief that people of any origin are perfectly fungible if subjected to the “correct” stimuli, the absolutist view sees immigration as a perfect good, and any restriction of it as detracting from the ideal: that we perfectly fungible people should suffer no restriction of our absolute freedom of movement and residence. That the evidence of experience makes it obvious to anyone not willfully blind that this is false is beside the point; the truth of a PC doctrine need never be proved. The doctrine is guarded by the automatic ostracism of those who question it.

This immigration orthodoxy is leading Europe and the Christian West to catastrophe. I would argue that the situation is worst in the United States, for peculiarly American reasons. Far more than any other nation, a conception of our country as a “nation-of-immigrants” has been imposed on Americans. It is self-evidently false: an American nation was founded by colonial American settlers, a nation that has been uncommonly generous to immigrants. That is the reality, but it seems we are compelled to deny it. (Truth in advertising: I have an article on this topic in the next American Conservative - not Mr. Auster’s favorite mag, I know - that debunks the NOI creed at greater length.)

Much of the pressure to recast American history as a tale of immigrant achievement and nothing more is Great Wave immigrants and their descendants slanting our history in their favor as they gain greater power and influence. How nicely it dovetails with the still-more-malign dogma of multiculturalism is also obvious. While Jewish groups have been most aggressive and successful (and have an added motive of suppressing Christianity), Irish and Italian groups play the NOI game, too. Hispanic and Asian pressure groups have caught on as more recent immigrant waves break on our eroding national shore. All of this is not surprising to a traditionalist: it is how we expect ethnic groups to behave.

What is surprising is the utter supine-ness (is that a word?) of the founding ethnic group - the descendants of the British colonial settlers who are the original Americans, if by America we mean the United States - in the face of it. The American tragedy is a double tragedy. There are the malign and destructive consequences of mass, largely incompatible, immigration, to be sure. But far worse, and far more to blame, are the old Americans who not only have allowed it to happen but have become propagandists for the NOI creed that in the end will destroy the United States. Look no further than the White House for today’s prime example. HRS

About 65 years ago, Evelyn Waugh wrote:

“I believe in nationality; not interms of race or of divine commissions for world conquest, but simply this: mankind inevitably organizes itself into communities according to its geographical distribution; these communities by sharing a common history develop common characteristics and inspire a local loyalty; the individual family develops most happily and fully when it accepts these natural limits.”

Are Europeans and Americans allowed to make such statements anymore?

WW

Evelyn Waugh was wrong to exclude race from nationality. A common physical ancestry is obviously going to strengthen communal loyalties, although a shared history, language, religion, culture and environment can also be important in the formation of a national identity.

I doubt he meant categorically to exclude race or would have denied that common ancestry is important for fellow-feeling. All he really says is that nationality is not the same as “race or … divine commissions for world conquest” but is primarily a matter of long common history. In the late ’30s it would have been necessary to make that point. In reality, of course, long common history would normally lead to intermixing and therefore in the end to a feeling of common ancestry, at least if the original mixture was not radically diverse. And at the time, that was not the issue.

I feel Mark Richardson’s and Jim Kalb’s comments bring the discussion to this question: Ought there to be explicit recognition — officially written down somewhere — of a right of a people to ethnic self-preservation, referring, yes, to their genetic not just cultural heritage? I don’t mean something that would give any nationality the right to be mean toward any other nationality or group, but we seem to need something that defends our side against charges of racism … something that says it’s OK to want to continue to live in a country filled mainly with people who look and act like you, while still honoring all rights of minorities of whatever variety. It seems clear there’s a fundamental right not to have one’s traditional genetic patrimony effaced. The Founding Fathers didn’t think of everything — being only human they couldn’t, stupendous giants though they were.

The other thing I meant in my post above was that such an official recognition as I inquire about would help not only to defend against charges of racism but would also help take away that sense felt by many good people that morality in the form of Christian self-abnegation obliges them to not protest at seeing their race extinguished, however much they may want to.

Unadorned, I have two friends who are college professors. I give them the argument for immigration restriction. I challenge them to refute me. They can’t and change the subject.

One says, “I prefer to be optimistic.” The other says, “Well, I think the Mexicans do like us.” As Larry says, just about every group seems to accept the situation. Still, when pinned down, they will reluctantly agree.

Yes to Unadorned’s question. With the two posts, Unadorned hit the nail on the head. The best expression of the ideas I have seen. I just might copy and send (in quotes of course) Unadorned’s posts to my congressman and suggest a congressional resolution.