Goldberg: It’s ok to object to immigrants based on their origin

On reading Jonah Goldberg’s entire USA Today piece and not just the excerpt he posted at the Corner, I realize that his embrace of nationhood is less tentative than I thought. Here is the opening paragraph of the article:

Historians may well look back on last week’s defeat of the immigration bill as a watershed moment. It was, for good or ill, a milestone in America’s transformation into a “normal” country. Normal countries have arguments about their national identity and immigration’s effect on it. In normal countries, it’s not illegitimate to suggest that too many immigrants, or too many immigrants of a specific origin, may upset the social peace or do damage to the national culture. In America, however, to raise such concerns is to open yourself to charges of racism, bigotry, nativism and all-around hate.

I’m delighted that Goldberg is saying this. This represents a significant, even a radical, shift in mainstream conservative thinking away from a purely liberal idea of nationhood toward a traditional sense of nationhood, something I have been striving through my writings to effect for the last 18 years.

However, in the interests of honesty, it would be nice if Goldberg would mention that until yesterday, he was among the people charging bigotry, nativism and all-around hate against anyone who argued that “too many immigrants of a specific origin may upset the social peace or do damage to the national culture.” See, for example, his article in the February 24, 2002 Los Angeles Times.

- end of initial entry -

Larry G. writes:

“Normal countries have arguments about their national identity and immigration’s effect on it. In normal countries, it’s not illegitimate to suggest that too many immigrants, or too many immigrants of a specific origin, may upset the social peace or do damage to the national culture.”

All true, but by this definition, most Western countries are not normal.

I’m trying to figure out what Western country he could be referring to. From what I have read, here and elsewhere, suggesting such things in most Western countries today will get you fired, condemned, and possibly put on trial. Where is this great bastion of Western freedom, acting to ensure its own cultural survival? Britain? Sweden? Norway? Italy? Canada? Where?

Granted some countries are beginning to wake up—Australia and Denmark come to mind—but most are following Britain down the path to national suicide.

LA replies:

Of course. By Goldberg’s definition, there ARE no normal Western countries at present, including the United States. For the Western countries to become normal again, they would have to get rid of their ruling liberal ideology.

Goldberg, switching sides at this late date and using a bit of PR spin, wants to make it seem that America’s change back to a “normal country” has virtually already occurred, simultaneously with his own change of position. Of course that’s not the case. What has happened, as I’ve been saying for the last few weeks, has been a change in consciousness in a significant number of people. This does not yet add up to a transformation of America back into a normal country. We are very far from that. But there seems to have been a definite turn in that direction, and that is a great thing.

Spencer Warren writes (July 5):

Goldberg’s USA Today column contradicts his column of one to two months ago which I read in the LA TImes. I may have found it through a link you provided. Sorry, I haven’t got time to find it. But as I recall the columns read as if written by two different people!

This raises the question whether he is so shallow he feels a need to hitch himself to what he sees as the growing traditionalist conservative wagon. Ditto Mark Steyn.

LA replies:

That may very well be the case. Most people—particularly neoconservative columnists—don’t think deeply or independently, they respond to and reflect their social and intellectual environment. If that environment changes, they will change with it.

I’m not complaining.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 03, 2007 02:52 PM | Send