The indispensable cultural argument

The other day, after a neocon (Peggy Noonan) and a liberal (Nicholas von Hoffman) came out in favor of an immigration moratorium, I wrote:

[M]aybe this is the way it will happen. A new conventional wisdom will arise, not based on any explicit cultural arguments such as I make, but simply based on the non-conceptual, commonsense idea that we need a long pause to absorb and assimilate the many millions we have taken in since the 1960s.

A reader then said that I should not sell myself short, that we should not forget the importance of the cultural argument in making these radical changes in public opinion possible. And this is correct. While mainstream immigration reformers may need to stay within mainstream assumptions, it is also the case that because people like me, from just beyond the edge of respectability, have been pushing these understandings, other people have started to get the (correct) feeling that it is morally legitimate to criticize immigration for its cultural effects on America. They may not express that idea in exactly the same language as I do. They might not say, “Our culture is threatened by Third World immigration.” They may simply say, “We need a long pause to absorb the people we have already taken in.” But even that vaguer language carries the key ideas (1) that culture matters, (2) that many non-European immigrants and their progeny are not fitting into our culture but are radically changing and damaging it, and (3) that stopping or greatly reducing immigration is a necessary part of any solution. And this, as I said, represents a stunning shift in the mainstream American consciousness.

In this connection, we need to remember the total psychological block that most people have had on this issue, the idea that to worry about immigration at all, and particularly to worry about its cultural consequences, makes one evil. (I myself had to go through profound inner changes before I realized it would not make me an evil hater to criticize immigration.) From the start, when I wrote The Path to National Suicide in 1989-90 (here is the pdf version), my main focus has been on showing people that it is morally ok to care about the ethnocultural effect of mass immigration on America. As I wrote in the Introduction of PNS:

This curious inhibition [on debate] stems, of course, from a paralyzing fear of the charge of “racism.” The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.

The United States is in a situation without precedent in the history of the world. A free and great people have embarked on a course which must result in their own total and permanent transformation, without ever having had a serious public debate on whether or not they want to be so transformed. The purpose of this essay is to help open up such a debate. There is a need for the information, ideas and arguments that will make it intellectually and morally respectable to question our current pol icy and the orthodoxy that upholds it. We need to break free from the paralyzing notion that because “we are all descended from immigrants,” we therefore have no right to make such a fateful choice about our nation’s future. Let us prove our faith in democracy: If the American people truly want to change their historic European-rooted civilization into a Latin- Caribbean-Asian “multi-culture,” then let them debate and approve that proposition through an informed political process, as befits a free people. And if Americans do not want their society to change in such a revolutionary manner, then let them revise their immigration laws accordingly. But let the debate occur.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 20, 2007 12:01 PM | Send