Bush still smearing Americans who want illegal immigration to be stopped

When it comes to immigration, former president George W. Busheròn is just as despicable as he was when in office.

Yesterday Fox News reported that on January 24 Busheròn spoke at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where his presidential library will be located, and weighed in on immigration:

What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some “isms” that occasionally pop up—pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the ’20s, for example, there was—there was an American first policy that said who cares what happens in Europe? … And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period.

The remarks are infuriating, because, in reality, there IS no noticeable movement at present to restrict immigration, for “nativist” or any other reasons. The only people who are advocating ethnic-conscious reductions in immigration are a tiny, powerless, and virtually invisible group of restrictionists who have been operating for many years in what Peter Brimelow once called the “restrictionist underground” and who have so far achieved zero influence on mainstream debate and attitudes. The only mainstream debate on immigration at present and for the last many years concerns illegal aliens. Since there is no significant immigration restrictionist movement at present, and since the only activism on the immigration front concerns control of illegal immigration, Bush, by saying that we’re currently going through a “nativist” period, and by calling this nativism “evil,” is in effect describing as evil nativists people who seek to stop illegal immigration. This recalls similar despicable comments made by Bush, John McCain, Linda Chavez, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, and others during the debates on the 2006 and 2007 amnesty bills.

That Bush would resort to such a contemptible smear of such a large number of Americans (almost all of whom voted for him) merely for wanting to stop illegal immigration shows again how for the same price you might as well be an all-out right-winger. Today’s conservatives are very liberal on immigration, only opposing illegal immigration, and falling all over themselves to avow their eternal, unqualified love for legal immigration, regardless of its numbers and its ethnocultural content—that same legal immigration which is steadily turning America into a nonwhite country. Yet despite mainstream conservatives’ total lack of a pro-white immigration policy or pro-white anything, despite the fact that they support and never question the current policy of mass non-European immigration, Bush accuses them—i.e., conservatives who want to stop illegal immigration—of evil nativism.

Which leads to another lesson: the more liberal conservatives become, whether on immigration or on any issue, (a) the more the political center of the country moves to the left on that issue, (b) the more the left feels encouraged and empowered to move the country even further to the left, and (c) the more the liberal conservatives are damned as extreme right-wingers and hateful bigots for standing in the way of the left’s agenda. In this case, the leftist agenda, of which Bush has been an impassioned exponent since January 7. 2004, consists of two planks: (1) there shall be open borders to literally everyone in the world who wants to come here; and (2) everyone who opposes this radical policy is a racist or nativist.

- end of initial entry -

Paul K. writes:

George W. Bush lists isolationism, protectionism, and nativism as three “evils” that have historically plagued America. Each of these “isms” is arguable on its own merits, based on a given situation, but rather than argue their pros and cons Bush is content to dismiss them as evils, saving him the trouble of giving them any consideration.

What an embarrassment Bush is.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2011 11:31 AM | Send