Still raining, still pouring …

Dear readers, how many times in the history of this website have I pointed out that Michelle Malkin, for all her many columns and her book on illegal immigration, had never said anything about legal immigration and seemed to have no opinions and no thoughts on the subject, leading me to the conclusion that as long as immigration was legal she would have no objection to it regardless of the numbers and the source countries of the immigrants?

In the July 4th New York Post Malkin has a column utterly unlike any she has written before. It concludes with this:

As our Founding Fathers recognized, fulfilling these fundamental duties [stated in the Preamble of the Constitution] is impossible without an orderly immigration and entrance system that discriminates in favor of those willing, as George Washington put it, to “get assimilated to our customs, measures [and] laws.”

Malkin is calling for discrimination against prospective legal immigrants who cannot be reasonably expected to assimilate into our culture. This of course is the essence of what I have been saying in my published writings about immigration since 1990.

Meanwhile, directly beneath Malkin’s column in the Post, Michael Gerson, President Bush’s brain for the last seven years, has a column which argues in essence that America, apart from its universal ideals, is racist filth. Gerson makes it clear that he despises everything about America other than its inclusion of blacks, Mexicans, etc.

An amazing thing is happening before our eyes. Mainstream conservatism is splitting into two highly differentiated camps on the immigration issue. One camp, represented by such as Michael Gerson and John McCain, states in extreme, radical form the neoconservative view that America is nothing but a universal idea. The other camp, represented by some of the National Review people and now by Michelle Malkin, puts forward the non-liberal, non-neoconservative view that America is a country defined by a particular culture; that not all people from all cultural backgrounds in the world can fit into that culture; and that U.S. immigration policy should reflect these realities.

- end of initial entry -

James S. writes:

Michelle Malkin is A-Ok and fine by me. But this is the second time she’s brought the Preamble into a discussion on immigration and left off the part about “ourselves and our posterity”. I really think she’s making a conscious decision to leave it out.

Otherwise it’s a fine article; she does make the case for discrimination in our immigration system and those are interesting quotes from the Founding Fathers. But as for all that talk about assimilation: OF COURSE we should assimilate. It’s like that line from Chris Rock about Black women who proudly proclaim (he quotes them) “I *take care* of *my* kids.”

“But you’re supposed to take care of them!” Who doesn’t think immigrants should assimilate?

LA replies:

No question. I noticed the rather stunning deletion of “our posterity” as I was reading the column, but wrote the entry late at night and couldn’t go into details.

Another thing she gets badly wrong is that she defines America as “rule of law.” She had just quoted the founders on our being a culture and a people, then she reduces that to “rule of law.”

But I disagree with you that her point about assimilation is just routine. The standard statement about assimilation from conservatives is that “immigrants must assimilate,” or that “immigrants are assimilating.” The possibility of their not assimilating is never raised.

Here Malkin is saying something distinctly different. She’s saying that WE must discriminate among prospective immigrants based on whether they are likely to assimilate. She’s no longer saying they “must” assimilate or that they “will” assimilate. She’s saying that many people will NOT assimilate and that we should NOT admit such people. That is a radical departure from the libera and neoconservative view that has governed us since the 1965 Immigration Act.

James S. replies:

Yes, you’re right, she’s saying something different by emphasizing in that one sentence that we should discriminate against those who won’t or can’t be assimilated. It’s a small, concluding part of the article but it is a critical difference from the others.

I still have a problem with the article but maybe now’s not the time. I hope I haven’t rained on your “it’s pouring” parade.

LA replies:

LOL.

To continue with watery metaphors, it would be ungenerous of me to see the glass as half empty instead of half full, now that Goldberg, Malkin, and others are evidencing exactly the change in thought that I’ve been advocating for years.

KPA writes from Canada:

I think the whole rhetoric of the mainstream conservatives you have been praising is based on the Muslim and Hispanic immigrants’ criminality (illegality), not the traditionalism of which you speak.

Malkin’s prose is telling in that a lot of her writing is focused around legalistic issues, and she ends her crucial quote on “liberty,” which conjures up ideas of suing someone else to get what I believes is “rightly” mine. Her thoughts haven’t really changed from the book on illegal immigrants she wrote.

Although they may vociferate about getting the immigrants who “fit in,” I bet at the end of the day these commentators will have nothing contrary to say about the Hindu Indian middle-class second generation American who travels back and forth to India and gives his children Hindu names. Or the third generation Chinese Americans who insists that America recompense them for all the labor building those railroads. The Chinese in Canada did just for that , and got it—from a “Conservative” leader.

These are just some thoughts, since I wonder if they will ever have these kinds of questions about the posterity of the land.

Still, it is a blessing in disguise, the twin evils of Muslim terrorism and Hispanic illegals. I wish we had the same with which to wake up, at least partially, our Conservative alliances here in Canada.

LA: replies:

KPA writes: “I think their whole rhetoric is based on the Muslim and Hispanic immigrants’ criminality (illegality). And not the traditionalism of which you speak.”

I can’t agree. If KPA were right, then the mainstream conservatives would still be speaking about illegal immigration and what to do about it, while ignoring immigration as such. But several of them have clearly gone beyond illegal immigration. There was no necessary reason why their opposition to the Bush-Kennedy bill, which mainly had to do with the amnesty aspect, should have led them to a re-thinking of immigration itself. But it did. Why? I think it’s because for the first time in their lives they had the experience that every serious immigration restrictionist has had at some point: they saw and felt that our very existence as a country and a culture is threatened by immigration. They saw it not only in the actual immigration invasion that the Bush-Kennedy forces were inviting, they saw it in the anti-American fanaticism of the Bush-Kennedy forces themselves.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 04, 2007 11:49 PM | Send