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John Derbyshire On Homosexual Marriage: Could The Pendulum Swing Back?
At a Library of Congress function some years ago I encountered the well-known British historian Paul Johnson. This was not long after Michael Fumento’s 1990 book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS came out, and people were still discussing that issue. I asked Johnson whether homosexuality would one day be seen as perfectly normal.
It might, he allowed—but it could also be the case, for all anybody knows, that fifty years in the future we shall be burning homosexuals at the stake: “You can’t second-guess History.”
This may not seem the most obvious reaction to the wall-to-wall triumphalist Main Stream Media [MSM] coverage of this week’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings on gay marriage. But it is worth remembering that pendulums swing both ways.
Of course, it is depressing to compare the progress made by the patriotic immigration movement with the progress made by homosexual activists.
When VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow published Alien Nation in 1995, twenty states still had anti-sodomy laws on the books. It was a mere nine years since Chief Justice Warren Burger's opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick: “To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching…” etc.
Now, two further nine-year spans on from 1995, the homosexualist cause has advanced with astonishing speed, to the point where the U.S. Supreme Court is solemnly pondering whether homosexual marriage is required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
If the speeds of advance of the two causes had been reversed, we would still today have anti-sodomy laws in twenty states, but we would have an Israeli-style fence along our entire southern border, a foolproof visa monitoring program, universal compulsory E-Verify, birthright citizenship annulled by either congressional action or constitutional amendment; and, of course, an immigration moratorium.
Talk about being on the wrong side of history!
The contrast is even more striking if you consider that immigration restriction is, or ought to be, a much less emotional matter than sexuality and marriage.
From a viewpoint of, say, thirty years ago an American might have supposed that constitutional accommodation of homosexuality would be fought over with much heat and passion, while the control of voluntary population inflows could be debated in a spirit of calm rationality.
You would expect people to feel really strongly about their teenage sons being taken off on a camping trip in the woods by an openly homosexual scoutmaster. But the requirement for skilled foreign workers ought to be a matter of cold arithmetic.
But well-nigh the opposite has been the case. The public has acquiesced meekly to the normalization of homosexuality, while immigration restriction has been fought with venomous passion.
Why? Possible explanations:
- Immigration restriction would cost major businesses a lot of money by tightening the labor market. Homosexual “rights” are probably a wash economically.
- With homosexuals at three or four percent of the population, they are also a wash politically. Just legal immigration at current levels increases the population by three percent—equal to the entire homosexual cohort—in less than ten years. And recent immigrants vote overwhelmingly Democrat, explaining the party’s enthusiasm for Electing A New People.
- Aversion to homosexuality, while frowned on by the Overclass, none the less has religious sanction, which still counts for something in the U.S.A. Scriptures of the major religions have little to say about immigration (although not quite nothing). This might have worked against the homosexuals and in favor of immigration patriots—except for the dramatic Political Correctness infection of church bureaucrats, especially in the major denominations, which has essentially reversed the effect.
- Immigration restriction is easily smeared as racism, which has been propagandized over the past half-century as an evil beyond compare, motivated by “hate.” You can work up a thesis that disapproval of homosexuality is likewise driven by “hate,” based on scattered incidents of violence, but it’s more of a stretch, and some “anti-racists” think the comparison is offensive because it trivializes their pet cause.
- The dominant current ethic of Cultural Marxism—“Who? Whom?”—demands sympathy for the Whom, the oppressed, the victim. Both homosexuals and immigrants can plausibly be cast in that role: homosexuals, because of the social disapproval they labored under in most times and places until a few years ago, immigrants because “they come here to better themselves,” their former lives in their home countries having presumably been wretched.
Given that Cultural Marxist association, it is not very surprising to find that homosexual activism was one of the “ugly roots” of immigration enthusiasm listed by James Fulford in his classic March 4, 2013 piece here on VDARE.com.
In strict logic the two issues are orthogonal: you might take any position on the one without your position on the other being inconsistent. In political practice there is, as James showed, strong linkage.
The source of that linkage is not hard to find. In Tuesday’s hearing before the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia asked lawyer Theodore Olson when it had become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage: “1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Was it always unconstitutional?”
Olson replied that “when we as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control” then at that point limiting marriage became unconstitutional.
Supreme Court hints that it won't issue sweeping ruling on same-sex marriage, By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News, March 27, 2013
While by no means conceding the marriage point, I believe Olson identified there the main factor in the swift relaxing of attitudes to homosexuality: a change in thinking about human nature, a more punctilious distinguishing between what we do and what we are. Homosexuality, in the common perception, shifted decisively from the former zone to the latter.
Thence also the linkage with race and immigration issues. Probably the black Civil Rights movement did most of the work.
But there was always awareness at some level that homosexuality “is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control.” I can remember people in the 1950s saying “they can’t help it.”
And one’s race or place of birth is likewise
How To Reduce HIV/ AIDS In America: Stop Third-World Immigration
Gay marriage, which was argued before the Supreme Court Tuesday (March 26), is outside VDARE.com’s immigration patriot focus—and, as a member of the webzine’s Democratic Caucus, I am probably less distressed than most. But that is not the case with HIV/ AIDs. Increasingly, it is being imported through immigration policy.
Last summer’s International AIDS Conference centered on spending billions more for prevention and treatment. New vaccines raise hopes that this may be the last generation to see a rise in AIDS cases, but paying for these vaccines is a costly business. Typically, attendees at the AIDS conference believed that throwing money at illiterate people will solve the problem. This is bogus, in the U.S. no less than in Africa. [Money will turn tide on AIDS, conference attendees say, Washington Post, July 27, 2012]
HIV/AIDS continues to kill thousands in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports as of 2010, 1,129,127 people have died of AIDS since the epidemic began 30 years ago. Approximately 50,000 American residents are infected with HIV each year. [CDS Factsheet, PDF]
Nationally, most people afflicted with HIV/AIDS are men who have sex with men (MSM in CDC parlance). But rates of infection vary dramatically by race and ethnicity. According to the CDC:
“In 2009, the estimated rate of new HIV infections among black men was six and a half times as high as that of white men, and more than two and a half times as high as that of Hispanic/Latino men and of black women. In the same year, the estimated rate of new HIV infections among black women was 15 times that of white women and over three times that of Hispanic/Latina women.”[HIV At Glance (PDF)]
The CDC does not break out cases by country of birth—except for Hispanics. Table 9 of the 2009 surveillance report shows that of the total 5,830 new AIDS diagnoses among Hispanics in 2009, 2,645 or 45 percent of the cases were adults and adolescents born in other countries. [Diagnoses of HIV Infection and AIDS in the United States and Dependent Areas, 2009, CDC HIV Surveillance Report, Volume 21]
The ranking of the number of new cases by place of birth is: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central America, South America and Cuba.
For Hispanic male homosexuals, foreign-born cases made up 60 percent of all new AIDS diagnoses in 2009.
Two areas which are greatly affected by HIV/AIDS are immigrant-impacted: California’s Los Angeles County and Florida’s Miami/Dade metropolitan area.
In Los Angeles County, in the last two decades, blacks and whites have moved out and Hispanics and Asians have moved in. Los Angeles County is an immigration epicenter, especially for Mexicans.
According to census data, the population of Los Angeles increased by 955,441 residents between the years 1990 and 2010. In that period, the population of Hispanics increased by 1,336,647. White and black residents together declined by over 1 million people. According to census data, 36 percent of LA’s residents were foreign-born in 2010, and 56 percent of the residents over 5 years speak a language other than English.
In the Los Angeles County Public Health HIV/AIDS surveillance report for 2011, Table 23 shows that between 2004 and 2011, the number of persons living with AIDS increased by 5,257 cases. Hispanic residents accounted for over half of the added cases. According to the commentary in the surveillance report, 40 percent of the total of those infected with AIDS are Hispanics; 34 percent whites and 21 percent blacks. [Annual HIV Surveillance Report for LA County, February 17, 2012 (PDF)]
In short, Mexican immigration is a prime reason the HIV/AIDS cases are on the rise in Los Angeles County.
On the other side of the country, the population changes in the Miami/Dade metropolitan area have been equally dramatic. In the decade 2000 to 2010, 41,161 foreign-born residents moved in and 24,525 domestic residents moved out. The Dade County Planning Department projects that this trend will continue. [PDF]
In 2010, over half of the residents in Miami were foreign- born and over two-thirds of the residents spoke a language other than English. Hispanics comprised 65 percent of the population, blacks 19 percent and non-Hispanic whites 16 percent.
For most of the last decade, Miami has held the number one position among metropolitan areas with the highest level of HIV/AIDS cases.
The Miami-Dade Comprehensive Plan for HIV/AIDS [PDF] shows that together blacks and Hispanics make up 89 percent of the affected population (blacks-48% and Hispanics-38 percent).
Many Miami residents are not eligible for Medicaid because they are immigrants, both legal and illegal. Some of these HIV/ AIDS victims are treated with federal funds via the Ryan White Program, Part A. The comprehensive plan states on page 29, that among this HIV/AIDS population, a majority
“. . .are foreign-born and among Haitians and Hispanic MSMs almost 90% are foreign-born. Large numbers of immigrants increase the need to provide services in three languages: 36% . . .are Spanish speaking and 11% speak Creole.”
In Miami, among Hispanic MSM AIDs/HIV vicims, Cubans comprise 40 percent; Central and South Americans 45 percent and Mexicans 3 percent.
“Similar to the Haitian population, there is a reliance on folk medicines and healers as a means of treatment and there is substantial misinformation concerning the transmission of HIV/AIDS along with a high incidence of ‘no symptoms, no problem’ thinking . . .” (comp plan, p. 34)
The Haitian and Hispanic populations are especially difficult cases to treat for a variety of reasons. In 2007, among those who were not Medicaid-eligible, Haitians made up 12 percent of the caseload and of these, 8 percent had TB, 18 percent were mentally ill, 70 percent had no health insurance and 66 percent had an AIDS diagnosis. Among Hispanic MSMs (23% of cases), 14 percent were substance abusers, 33 percent were mentally ill, 69 percent had no health insurance and 56 percent had an AIDS diagnosis. (Comp Plan, p.32)
A research project by the University of Miami found that among Haitians, (Comp Plan, p. 32
“. . . a persistent feeling of stigma about HIV/AIDS exists. . . a sense of vulnerability to deportation and/or incarceration, a complex non-western system of beliefs about health behavior. . . .
Eighty percent of Haitians have less than a high school degree [my emphasis—LT] and 45% do not speak English. Although written materials are often translated into Creole, the estimate is that 35% of Haitian adults cannot read or write in either Creole or English.”
Another behavior that contributes to the difficulty of prevention of the disease among Haitians and American blacks in general: the “down low” practice. One slang dictionary defines down low:
Down Low is used to describe the behavior of American Black men who have sex with other men, as well as with women, but who do not identify as gay or
Reminder: How Mexico Treats "Undesirable" Foreigners
American politicians in both parties are stampeding all over themselves to pander to Mexico and adopt mass illegal alien amnesty schemes. But while the Mexican government lobbies for more "humane" treatment of illegal border crossers from their country into ours, Mexico remains notoriously restrictionist toward "undesirable" foreigners who break their laws or threaten their security.
Exit Tracking: The Obama Administration’s Bodyguard Of Lies
Winston Churchill famously said, “"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” The Obama Administration thinks A Big Lie needs a bodyguard of smaller lies.
Washington is waging a war, but the enemy is its own people: the traditional American nation. The horrible truth about the Obama/ Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge is that it is advanced precisely because it will dispossess Americans. That unmentionable reality is concealed with a bodyguard of smaller lies, petty deceits in service to the larger deception that immigration laws cannot be enforced.
A recent example: we are told that the federal government cannot fulfill a Congressional mandate to establish a biometric entry-exit system to allow the government to fulfill its basic responsibility of ensuring which individuals are complying with their period of admission and which are not. Instead, even though this system is not in place, the Department of Homeland Security assures us that the government is still mysteriously capable of identifying “those who overstay their visas” even though the basic infrastructure does not exist. 
The frontman for this particular falsehood: one David Heyman, a senior Democrat operative who is Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. Since being sworn in June 2009, Hayman has developed a certain amount of expertise in relatively obscure areas of immigration law enforcement. Not bad for a former Clinton Administration junior official and biology major at Brandeis University.
Heyman's responsibility for “policy” means administering the multifaceted and complex Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty. Well-trained in the art of the lie, Heyman does not go big, but goes small, in the Gramscian manner of the “Long March through the institutions,” step by step.
There's a host of these small lies in this USA Today op-ed by Heyman. He wrote:
For two decades, the federal government has worked to obtain accurate and timely data on individuals who have overstayed their period of admission to the U.S. After 9/11, Congress passed a law to develop a biometric entry-exit system, requiring some form of biometric—fingerprints, for example—be collected when non-citizens enter and leave the U.S. The point is to match entry and exit records and determine which individuals are complying with their period of admission, and sanction those who are not.
DHS: We Can Identify Those Who Overstay On Visas, February 25, 2013
In fact, a mandatory exit verification system was first required by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) and reiterated
Who Killed the "New Majority"? The GOP's Self-Inflicted Wounds
The Republican National Committee has produced an "autopsy" on what went wrong in 2012, when the party failed to win the White House and lost seats in Congress.
Yet, the crisis of the Grand Old Party goes back much further.
First, some history. The Frank Lloyd Wright of the "New Majority" was Richard Nixon, who picked up the pieces of the party after Goldwater's defeat had left Republicans with just a third of the House and Senate.
In 1966, Nixon led the GOP back to a stunning victory, picking up 47 House seats. In 1968, he united the Rockefeller and Reagan wings and held off an October surge by Hubert Humphrey, which cut a 13-point Nixon lead to less than a point in four weeks.
In 1972, Nixon swept 49 states. The "New Majority" was born. How did he do it?
Nixon sliced off from FDR's New Deal coalition Northern Catholics and ethnics—Irish, Italians, Poles, East Europeans—and Southern Christian conservatives. Where FDR and Woodrow Wilson had won all 11 Southern States six times, Nixon swept them all in '72. And where Nixon won only 22 percent of the Catholic vote against JFK, he won 55 percent against George McGovern in 1972.
What killed the New Majority?
- First, there was mass immigration, which brought in 40 to 50 million people, legal and illegal, poor and working class, and almost all from the Third World. The GOP agreed to the importation of a vast new constituency that is now kicking the GOP into an early grave.
When some implored the party in 1992 to secure the border and declare a "timeout"
Ann Coulter’s CPAC Speech: The Transcript (With Links) That The MSM Somehow Forgot To Post
James Fulford writes: Ann Coulter's March 17 speech at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] was one of the best on immigration in years. Naturally, CPAC and the MSM haven't bothered to provide a transcript. This transcript is therefore exclusive to VDARE.com, as well as the links, all of them added by us.
Ann Coulter has always been good on immigration (see the list of her columns on immigration) One of my favorites was Read My Lips: No New Amnesty. She also gets in on legal immigration.
This was not only an important speech, it was a brave one. The Daily Caller's Mickey Kaus pointed out that Senator Marco Rubio (Conquistador-FL), who is supposed to be betraying both his country and his party in the Amnesty deal, didn't have the nerve to get up at and say that to the young people at CPAC. Ann Coulter, on the other hand, has a lot more nerve (Kaus uses a different word) than Rubio is ever likely to grow.
Maybe it’s not that courageous to defy the near-perfect Elite Media Consensus favoring “comprehensive immigration reform”–i.e. amnesty. But it takes balls to do it a) at a conservative conference rigged to push amnesty; b) if you value your relationship with amnesty-supporting FOX News; and c) if you ridicule Roger Ailes’ old patrons, the Bushes, in the process.
…The Coulter video is here on Politico. … Don’t expect it to be featured on Fox! … P.S.: Hmm. I can’t find it on Daily Caller either. It’s lucky I’m not paranoid. …[Coulter blasts amnesty at CPAC, March 17, 2013]
Well, I'm not paranoid either, but as I say, there's no transcript anywhere but here on VDARE.com.
Ann Coulter:
As some of you know that with the turmoil in North Korea our regularly scheduled ambassador Dennis Rodman will not be here so I’m filling in.
I’m Ann Coulter, the author of NINE massive NYT Best sellers. Boy, the sequester has really ruined everything hasn’t it? Little kids can’t go on White House tours, the Muslim Brotherhood has been deprived of $250 million…oh no, that’s safe. Even CPAC had to cut back on its speakers this year … by about 300 pounds.
After all Obama’s hard work and wrangling over the budget, he’s managed to cut the growth of federal spending by 2%.
Congratulations, Mr. President!
Even that was imposed on him by the sequester. And Roger Ailes calls Obama lazy!
Did you see that? A new biography of Roger Ailes quotes him as saying that Obama is lazy. Van Jones said that was racist, but Obama himself said he was lazy. You know why Van Jones didn’t know that? Because he’s lazy. I’m just kidding, I love Van Jones. I do!
Liberals say the word “lazy” is a racist code word, as is “Chicago,” the word “apartment,” mentioning that Obama golfs. No, these are all—according to liberals—racist dog-whistles. That may be why only Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews can hear them.
But you know, Obama has his own code words. He says “investment”—he means government spending. He says “revenue,” he means taxes. He says “Dr. Livingstone is in the library,” he means “Distract Michelle I’m going out for a smoke!”
Even after Republicans gave Obama his tax hike he still won’t cut spending. This is becoming what’s known as “a pattern.” Remember? Republicans agreed to raise taxes and in exchange, we’re supposed to be taking an axe to the budget. No, he wants to raise taxes again. Remember this the next time some journalist asks a Republican, “Are you saying you wouldn’t take ONE DOLLAR in tax hikes in exchange for ten dollars in budget cuts?!” No, see the problem is, we’re the Indians and the Democrats are Andrew Jackson. We’ve been through this before.
Back in the 80s, Ronald Reagan made that deal with Tip O’Neill, he said he’d raise taxes, Tip O’Neill said, oh yeah, we’ll slash the budget. Oh, yeah. The Democrats TRIPLED the budget. So it is not true that Reagan’s tax cuts led to the deficit. The problem was that for every additional dollar that came in to the IRS the Democrats were spending another $3. Then Reagan’s knucklehead of a Vice President, the first George Bush, unable to learn from the first kick of a mule, made the exact same deal with Democrats, breaking his “No New Taxes” pledge. He raised taxes in exchange for promised cuts in spending.
“I’d gladly take a tax hike today for a cut in spending on Tuesday.”
And once again, Democrats raised spending. So it would be like journalists going to tribal chiefs circa 1890 and saying sarcastically, “Are you telling me you would not give up ONE acre of land for a guaranteed promise ten acres of land?” And then ten years later, “Oh yeah we’re going to be needing Nebraska and South Dakota, too.”
Obama claims he wants to keep taxes low for the middle class and let me tell you, for the 400 people left in the middle class they could not be happier. But Obama also said he had to shut down White House tours because of the sequester—do not worry though! The $250 million for the Muslim Brotherhood, that’s safe. The federal grant to study the sex habits of gophers, that’s safe.
We also apparently have enough money to spy on American’s personal finances. Did you see that Reuters reported—yesterday, I think— that Obama is drawing up a plan to allow our spy agencies to scour the finances of Americans? But most Americans don’t care, after four years of Obama they don’t really have any personal finances to scour. Most of them told Obama ”Hey, let me know if you find anything!”
I don’t know why Republicans keep saying we have to cut spending to save these entitlement programs for our grandchildren. We have to cut spending to save the entitlements for today’s 45 year olds. In our current spending rate, 45 year olds will not receive any Medicare. And liberal’s response is to say “Well, but Medicare is the most popular program in US history.” Which, by the way, isn’t saying much, “the most popular government program!” They determined what the most popular program was by asking the recipients of Medicare, do you like Medicare? That’s like asking six year olds, are birthdays a good idea? Can we include the neighbors and the friends who are forced by buy gifts?
Despite the non-Fox Media’s claim that we have become a center-Left nation, in fact the Republicans still hold the House of Representatives. There’s a reason that’s called “the people’s house,” it is most representative of the people of America, they are up for election every two years. And the reason we don’t have the Senate is because the Republicans keep screwing up. I can think of about 10 Senate seats in the last three election cycles that we just pissed away through narcissism, greed or stupidity.
Show me one example in the last ten years of the Democrats giving up a winnable seat. No, that hasn’t happened. Passion is great, but remember that in politics, scoring is all that counts. We can’t anticipate every candidate’s mistake but we can stop encouraging candidates to show off for the base by taking positions that aren’t even our positions. It is not the position of the National Right to Life Committee that a woman should be forced to carry the baby of her rapist. I think our position is no, absolutely, exceptions for rape and incest, and now let’s talk about the other 99% of abortions. Hey, where did all the Democrats go?
I think our position is also and let’s talk about locking up the rapist and not giving him the right to vote the way the Democrats want to. But on the basis of this one bone-headed statement
Trolling or Transformation?—CPAC, Matt Heimbach, Scott Terry, And The End Of Conservatism Inc.
Two students “ruined everything” for Conservatism Inc. at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC], in the words of Slate’s David Weigel. [CPAC Diary: Meet the White Nationalists Who Ruined Everything, March 16, 2013] Matt Heimbach and Scott Terry torpedoed any hopes that the American Conservative Union (ACU) had of disassociating “conservatism” from its essence as an implicitly white movement when they brought up racially sensitive topics at a farcical panel dedicated to white self-flagellation.
Heimbach and Terry both have extensive experience in the wonkish student-training processes of Conservatism Inc. But, understandably frustrated, Heimbach started a White Student Union at Towson, which inevitably attracted Cultural Marxist Enforcer attention. (Why can’t whites have a student union when blacks, Hispanics etc. etc. do? Welcome to Anti-America!)
The CPAC fun all started at a panel ludicrously entitled “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You're Not One?” The moderator: K. Carl Smith, a professional minority conservative, was hawking his book Frederick Douglass Republicans and recycling the somewhat strained Conservatism Inc. narrative about how Democrats during the nineteenth century were racist and how Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights movement. A typical and predictable applause line: Smith recounting his shock at discovering that the evil George Wallace had been (gasp!) a Democrat.
The panel was sponsored by Tea Party Patriots. This was an odd choice to teach conservatives about avoiding charges of racism: TPP has been repeatedly smeared by the Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC to VDARE.com) as extremists and conspiracy theorists. Nonetheless, the panel would have gone down as another example of Conservatism Inc. fleecing the rubes by telling them what they want to hear—if Heimbach and Terry had not attended.
The panel spun off the rails when Scott Terry pointed out from the floor: “It seems to me that you're reaching out to voters at the expense of young white southern males like myself."
This turned into a larger debate about the history of the conservative movement. Matt Heimbach subsequently noted that National Review and William F. Buckley were defending segregation during the 1960's. (See “Why the South Must Prevail.” NR, August 24, 1957 and Can We Desegregate Hesto Presto?, by WFB, November 11, 1961 and the work of James Jackson Kilpatrick.)
Ironically, the duo was joined by a liberal black woman named Kim Brown who works for Voice of Russia. She made similar charges, though obviously she had a different take on their significance.
What generated most of the Main Stream Media [MSM] sound and fury: Smith, who typically for CPAC framed his egalitarianism in Christian terms, waxed poetic about how Frederick Douglass had forgiven his slave-owner. Terry responded: "Did he thank him for giving him shelter? And food?"
You can’t even imply anything positive about America’s slavery experience nowadays. The room exploded. (See video)
(Any fair viewer will note, however, that Smith and Terry, both Southerners, conducted themselves like gentlemen.)
Order was eventually restored, and Smith later was quoted by TalkingPointsMemo.com to the effect that he and Terry had “left as friends.” Meet The Moderator Behind CPAC’s Race Panel Gone Wrong, Benjy Sarlin, TPM, March 18, 2013
But Leftist journalists rejoiced—this is exactly
When Does the White Working Class Get Amnestied?
Late Friday afternoon, there were reports that the Gang of Eight’s secret plotting to work out the details of the bipartisan 2013 Obama/ Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration surge is stalled—because labor unions are balking at a business lobbyist/ Republican attempt to add a massive low-skilled guest worker program below prevailing wages. [Immigration Talks Hit Snag Over Business and Labor Concerns, by Ashley Parker, New York Times, March 22, 2013.]
But regardless of this theater, here’s my personal testimony that the white working class in America is in trouble—which this proposed amnesty and increased workplace competition can only exacerbate.
Four weeks ago, I saw a local contractor doing recovery work in my neighborhood in New York’s Rockaways. An old, bald Irishman, he was running a bulldozer or similar rig, clearing out one of the storefronts that had burned down between Beach 113th and Beach 115th Street in Rockaway Park the night of October 29, when Hurricane Sandy hit. All of the other contractors had been from out of state.
I remarked on how he was the first local guy I’d seen. We exchanged waves.
The company was called Concannon, and was located nearby, in Breezy Point, the affluent gated community at the western tip of The Rockaways, overwhelmingly Irish (and accordingly recently smeared by the New York Times) which got hit the worst by Sandy. [New York Times Slimes Hurricane Sandy Victim Neighborhood as “Apartheid” for Being Too White, By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPageMag, February 20, 2013 ]
The driver (Concannon himself?), had a couple of workers—little, chubby, brown-skinned guys.
There are plenty of young blue collar Irishmen and Italians with strong backs in this area. Why couldn’t he have hired a couple of them? Where was his loyalty?
In fact, since the Sandy crisis, I have not seen any white, New York workingmen doing repair work in my Rockaway neighborhood. Most of the workers were Hispanic “immigrants” a.k.a illegals with a couple of black West Indians sprinkled in.
Many of my neighbors get their lawns mowed by a man named Castellano. Nice Italian name. Except that Castellano hires only Hispanic “immigrants.”
Black propagandist Ta-Nehisi Coates recently pulled a racial profiling hoax in the pages of the New York Times. [The Good, Racist People, March 7, 2013]
Coates implied that some racist white worker in a deli in his Manhattan neighborhood near Columbia University had racially profiled actor Forrest Whitaker.
I’ve lived in New York City since August, 1985 and though I’ve bought stuff in Manhattan delis hundreds of times, only once can I recall being served by a white worker (downtown, about 20 years ago).
And, indeed, a Manhattan-based friend of my VDARE.com colleague Steve Sailer confirmed that the deli in question, Milano Market, had no white employees.
That’s what it means to be white and working class in New York today—you get refused work and blamed for the crimes of non-whites.
This is not a recent development.
Back in the mid-to-late 1980s when I attended grad school at CUNY, although I was officially on a “full ride” through a fellowship (at its height, $6,000, less $2,000 for tuition), I used to run out of money every spring semester, and have to disappear from classes, scrounging for work.
I learned the hard way that, between Affirmative Action and ethnic nepotism, if you were a white man, and neither well-to-do nor well-connected, many workplaces would never consider you for full-time work. (My personal doctor, who died in 1990, may she rest in peace, used to tell me, “You’re a writer. You need a civil service job!”)
During the late 1980s or early ‘90s, I interviewed for a job at a drug counseling agency. The interview was a group situation, and the interviewer, who if memory serves was Hispanic, told me in front of the other candidates that he would never consider me for the job, because I was white. He clearly felt he had nothing to fear.
And he was right.
Getting hired wasn’t always much better. Already in the late 1980s, New York’s “voluntary” (private) social work agencies hired mostly, even overwhelmingly, blacks and
John Derbyshire On Rand Paul And Ann Coulter: Lose Some, Win Some, The War Grinds On
“One in, one out,” my mother was sometimes heard to remark after her regular evening perusal of the Northampton Chronicle and Echo. We knew, without needing to ask, that this was a reference to her favorite section of that newspaper, the “Births, Marriages, and Deaths” columns—the “Hatched, Matched, and Dispatched” in our household’s micro-dialect. Her meaning was that some family we knew had been blessed with a new baby while some other family had suffered a bereavement.
This past week was a bit like that on the patriotic immigration front. We lost one big name, but gained another.
The “one out” was Rand Paul. Was he ever actually in, though? My colleagues think not. He had depressed me, too, with his response to the State of the Union speech in February.
Two and a half years before that I had actually asked Paul face-to-face for his thoughts on immigration. This was during his Senate run in 2010. He had dropped in to the National Review offices to give us face time, as candidates do. (See Ten Things You Should Know about Rand Paul, by Kevin D. Williamson,[July 13, 2010] which doesn’t mention immigration).
I can’t locate any video of the meeting, and all I can find in my notes is:
immigr: not much clue
…but I am a poor note-taker, so that can’t be taken as dispositive as to Rand’s 2010 immigration position.
Paul made his exit from the zone of immigration patriotism—or, if you prefer, made it indisputably clear that he had never really belonged in that zone—with a disgraceful speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
For Senator Paul to speak at all to an organization whose name contains the word “Hispanic”—a bogus ethnicity concocted for political purposes by Nixon-era bureaucrats—was sufficiently regrettable.
But Paul compounded the offense by delivering part of his speech in Spanish. John Quincy Adams refused on principle to use his fluent German when courting German-speaking voters. However, “on principle” is not a phrase that leaps to mind when one surveys the present-day Republican Party. (With a few honorable exceptions.)
Nor does the actual content of Paul’s speech bear very close inspection. One-third of the Spanish-language section was given over to a quotation from poet Pablo Neruda. Like Paul, Neruda served in his nation’s Senate…but representing the Chilean Communist Party. Neruda’s poetry may be first-rate for all I know, and it has often been remarked that politics makes strange bedfellows; but it seems odd for a libertarian to seek inspiration from a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize.
The rest of Paul’s speech is a drivel of clichés, drawn about equally from George W. Bush’s fatuous “compassionate conservatism” (“we also must treat those [illegals] who are already here with understanding and compassion”) and from the left-activist prompt book (“the struggle for a good education is the civil rights issue of our day”). (In regard to that latter, I note once again in passing the now-routine yoking of the two great soft-headed feel-good fantasies of our time: educational romanticism and immigration romanticism).
Of course, Paul’s defection—clarification, whatever—is a blow to
Dumb and Dangerous: America's Fast Pass for Saudi Arabian Tourist Visas
It's business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens.
And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled "racists," "xenophobes" and "Islamophobes," political correctness remains the handmaiden of terror.
According to a new report released this week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), President Obama's Department of Homeland Security plans to bestow "trusted traveler" status to travelers from Saudi Arabia. Yes, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers will soon enjoy the exclusive privilege of new entry shortcuts into the U.S.
Fox News points out: "Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program: Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled."
Saudi suck-up Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, hailed "the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" and pledged to work with the government to facilitate "legitimate trade and travel."
This foolish move is astonishing but not unprecedented. As I noted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had created its own fast-pass system for Saudi elites called "Visa Express." Thanks to this GOP idiocy, three of the 9/11 hijackers
Memo From Middle America | Eric Holder’s DOJ Finds Some Foreigners It Wants To Deport—White Evangelical German Homeschoolers
[See earlier, by Allan Wall Obama’s Administrative Amnesty Not Applicable To White, Legal, English Girl. And While We’re On The Subject, Aren’t British Immigrants Preferable To Mexican Immigrants Anyway]
The Obama administration, to put it mildly, is keen on not enforcing immigration law. But it’s not that the administration neglects immigration enforcement, it’s that the Obama administration actively works to impede the enforcement of immigration law. It actively supports the illegal invasion. It’s electing a new people.
The Obama administration refuses to get operational control of the border. It won’t track visa absconders. It attacks Arizona and other states that try to enforce the law.
The administration hardly deports any illegal aliens. There are at least 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S., but that’s the low estimate, many suspect it could be 20 million or more. Only a small fraction of that entire number is deported. You have to try extra hard to get deported these days.
Then there’s the unilateral Dream Act Administrative Amnesty, which in effect legalized the under 30 crowd of illegals that are supposedly all going to become students.
On top of that is the proposed amnesty/immigration reform being pushed by the government (with plenty of Republican supporters.)
We’d have to conclude that the Obama administration is anti-deportation.
Not entirely, however. The administration has found a few foreigners it would like to deport.
Eric “My People” Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is actively working to deport a German family who had already been granted refugee asylum status.
It’s not an oversight. It’s not a technicality. Eric Holder’s DOJ has gone out of its way to get this family deported.
Here’s an index of articles which provide more information on the plight of the Romeike family:
- US grants home schooling German family political asylum
By Daniel Nasaw, The Guardian, January 27, 2010 - Deportation of German homeschool family affects US homeschool freedom
By Bryana Johnson, Washington Times, February 12, 2013 - Homeschooling Not a Fundamental Right, Justice Dept. Argues
By Napp Nazworth, Christian Post, February 14, 2013 - Justice Department: Home Schooling not a 'Right'
By CBN February 19, 2013 (with video) - German Homeschoolers Appeal Decision on Asylum in US Court
By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post, February 26, 2013 - German family seeking asylum in US to homeschool kids,
Fox News, March 3, 2013 (video) - Obama Admin Wants to Deport Christian Homeschoolers
By Todd Starnes, Human Events, March 5, 2013 - Obama Justice Department Fighting to Deport Christian Homeschooling Family Seeking Asylum
By Heather Clark, Christian News Network, March 6, 2013
In a nutshell, here’s the story. Uwe Romeike and his wife Hannalore are both music teachers who fled their native Germany in 2008. They settled in Tennessee and applied for asylum. The couple currently has six children (five school-age). Here’s a recent photo, via Christian News Network,.
The Romeikes left Germany because of the harassment they received from the government for home schooling their children. They had been fined and were facing the possibility of
Stand With Rand—Or Fall With Paul? His Awful, Stupid, Hispandering Speech Shows He’s Really Part Of Conservatism Inc.’s Cheap Labor Racket
During her tremendous CPAC address, Ann Coulter called out fake anti-Establishment Republicans who refused to stand against mass immigration. She said:
The scapegoat of a fake Republican Establishment which is allowing the real Republican establishment to plot and scheme undetected. My example of this is, 'What public policy will harm average Americans, drive up unemployment, change America permanently in negative ways, and on the other hand, is supported by businessmen who will never vote for a Republican anyway?' Amnesty for illegal aliens. And half of elected Republicans support it, as far as I can tell most talk radio and TV hosts support it.
There is no better example of this “fake anti-Establishment Republican” than Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the hero of the Tea Party movement, the “Liberty Movement” (not the same thing), and winner of this year’s CPAC straw poll. Paul recently cemented his putative anti-Establishment credentials by filibustering Obama CIA nominee John Brennan—to the indignation of John McCain who blustered that Paul was a “wacko bird.”
Paul has been blundering around on the immigration issue since the 2012 election. At one point, he appeared to couple Amnesty with a moratorium on future legal immigration, and at another he cited Milton Friedman on the incompatibility of mass immigration and the welfare state. But he’s also repeatedly endorsed the so-called Path To Citizenship, since at least last November. After an earlier Paul “plan,” VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow noted that Paul was apparently confusing citizenship with legal residence (the “Green Card”) and commented:
My impression of Rand Paul is that he literally hasn't thought about the immigration issue (not unusual for cloistered libertarians) and doesn't really understand it.
So Paul’s speech today (March 19) before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is not quite the bombshell breakthrough that is being played up in the Main Stream Media [MSM] as part of its Shock-and-Awe Amnesty marketing campaign.
Paul did officially came out in favor of total Amnesty (again) and increasing legal immigration (again); and against E-Verify. But, typically, within hours he was backpedaling [Rand Paul: I didn’t back faster path to citizenship, by Aaron Blake and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post, March 19, 2013]. And, evidence of his continuing chaos, while Paul was assuring the Hispanic Chamber that “if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you,” his Senate website still carried his campaign claims that he opposed Amnesty and viewed illegal immigration as “a clear threat to national security.”
Nevertheless, Paul’s speech was not merely awful, but stupid. Despite setting himself up as the great enemy of Obama/McCain bipartisan establishment, Paul parroted every cliché voiced by Obama/McCain on immigration—and then became even worse.
Paul even filled his speech with bits of Spanish (which he left untranslated, saying “Republicans who criticize the use of two languages make a great mistake”—although creeping institutional bilingualism is a direct threat to his overwhelmingly monolingual Kentucky constituents). And, of course, ridiculous fawning anecdotes about hard-working Hispanics (“Growing up in Texas I never met a Latino who wasn’t working.”) He even quoted poet Pablo Neruda in Spanish, presumably not realizing he was a Communist, and went on at lachrymose length about the pedagogical achievements of Jaime (Stand And Deliver) Escalante, presumably not realizing that these have been questioned—or that Escalante, homesick, eventually went home to Bolivia.
Let’s review a few clichés:
On Deportations
- Rand Paul: “Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.”
- John McCain: “‘There are 11 million people living here illegally,” he told the crowd. “We are not going to get enough buses to deport them.”’ [John McCain Defends Immigration Plan at Testy Town Hall, By Jordan Fabian, ABC News, February 20, 2013]
- The Truth: With employer sanctions, and strategic deportations, most illegals will self-deport.
"De Facto Amnesty"
- Rand Paul: “But what we
Trayvon Martin was Barack Obama’s Son, and Kiki Gray was Jumaane Williams’ Son, but Why Will No Politician Adopt Bailey O’Neill?
“NYPD/KKK, how many kids did you kill today?”
Chant by black East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY rioter/looter/robbers, in support of the late Kimani Gray, alias (according to various reports) Kiki, alias Sha-Pow:
Kimani Gray was 16 when he was shot and killed, yet the Main Stream Media [MSM] have refused to publish any photographs of him taken less than four or five years ago.
On Saturday night, March 6, two decorated undercover cops, one Egyptian immigrant (this is a job Americans won’t do?), Sgt. Mourad Mourad (who was initially identified as black), and one Hispanic, Officer Jovaniel Cordova, saw Kiki/Shapow/Kimani (K/S/K) on the sidewalk, fussing with the front waist of his pants—a dead giveaway that he was packing heat. The cops called out to him, at which point he pulled a .38 revolver and pointed it at them. They blew him away, firing 11 rounds, hitting him seven times, four in the front and/or side, and three in the back.
Blacks rioted, looted, and robbed, and tried to kill policemen with bricks and bottles for three straight nights, demanding “Justice!” Controversy continues, as evidenced by these telling comments on a YouTube post by HipHopWired: NYPD Shooting of 16-year-old Causes Brooklyn Riot, March 12, 2013
Did the community think that this bright young kid really had his whole wonderful life ahead of him? He was Bloods member; this is the happy ending he signed up for. He even gets martyr status. That's a pretty good deal considering he pulled out a gun and started shooting at policemen.
“...this is an 11 year old baby. they said that he shot at the police but he is the 1 that shot dead. SMH Have some sensitivity.”
Another YouTube commenter
"As a mother... I want to speak of Kimani. Kimani Gray is my son. My baby. My 16-year-old baby... He’s not the public’s angel, but he’s my angel and he’s my baby and he was slaughtered and I want to know why."
Carol Gray, on March 14
K/S/K’s mother, Carol Gray, and partisans assert that the cops fired too many shots.
First, 41 shots were too many (Amadou Diallo, in 1999). Then 50 shots were too many (Sean Bell, in 2005). Now, 11 shots are too many. The truth is that for too many blacks, a policeman firing one shot at a black man, in defense of his life, is one too many.
According to the Bizarro World propaganda of the MSM and Gray’s white high school principal, which is indistinguishable from gangbanger propaganda, K/S/K was a dear little lamb who, unarmed and without provocation, was murdered by two racist New York City policemen. [Kimani Gray, 16, student killed by police in East Flatbush, remembered by school principal in heartfelt letter, By Corinne Lestch, New York Daily News, March 16, 2013 ]
Note that Gray’s supporters can’t keep their lies straight. “He had no gun” (purported eyewitness who later changed her story). “He begged for his life” (purported earwitness and his mother). “He never would have had a gun” (family). “He was trying to alert police that he was carrying a gun for someone else when they shot him” (family). “He might have pointed a gun at police, but he never would have fired it’ (friend).”
Back in the real world, K/S/K was, like at least one older brother (there are conflicting reports as to whether he is alive), a member of the racist Bloods gang, had been arrested four times prior to his death (including larceny, inciting a riot, and grand theft auto), and at the advanced age of 16, was a career criminal. [Cops shoot teen gunman dead in Brooklyn, By Kenneth Garger and Larry Celona, New York Post, March 10, 2013]
Kimani’s supporters assert that the NYPD is racist, and is hunting and murdering black angels. And what is true of blacks is equally true of the MSM.
NBC New York calls the riots “protest marches.” We repeatedly hear that the demonstrations were “peaceful,” but that “splinter groups” rioted. (Using that sort of sophistry, there has never been a riot in history. It’s all “splinter groups.”) They insist on calling the rioters “protestors” and “demonstrators.” Oh, and “teens”—“Angry teens.”
The MSM have used the Trayvon Martin Method: showing pictures of the deceased when he was only 10-12 years old. He was a cute kid, but he already had an air of menace about him. But that’s what
Ann Coulter's Tremendous Speech At CPAC And The Decadence Of Conservatism, Inc.
According to several sources within the conservative movement, the American Conservative Union (ACU) had to pay close to one million dollars to the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel for breaking their contract. The justification was that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had grown too large, requiring a bigger venue.
The vice-chairman of the American Conservative Union said that CPAC this year would get away from the “glamor” of past conferences and bring it back to “substance”.[ Does Conservative Political Action Conference matter anymore? By Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, March 13, 2013] Apparently, this meant hosting it at the spacious Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, the largest non-gaming hotel and convention center on the East Coast. Even though campaign consultants and political hacks like Karl Rove were popular targets at the panels, the location itself made it impossible to take any thought of “reform” seriously. With colorful indoor fountains, embarrassingly opulent accommodations, and almost comical prices ($8 for a small lemonade from room service, not including tip), Conservatism Inc. is flying high, even as the conservative movement flounders.
But as the party continues, the cracks in the foundation are growing ever greater. This was to be the CPAC where the movement coalesced around a program of minority outreach, moderation on social issues, and a singular focus on economics. Instead, it showed that Conservatism Inc. may be incapable of holding the coalition together.
Immigration patriots knew that the fix was in from the beginning, as the main panel on amnesty was a unanimous celebration of cheap labor, a refreshingly honest admission that Conservatism Inc. is essentially one giant corporate lobbying firm. None of the so-called conservative superstars at CPAC so much as mentioned the topic of immigration, except with vague promises to reach out to minorities.
The real debate on immigration took place in the side panels. Mark Krikorian laid out a careful, fact based case against Obama's lawless executive amnesty at a panel sponsored by Judicial Watch. Unfortunately, the Judicial Watch panel was sparsely attended, perhaps because the official CPAC guide didn't list the panel. An accidental oversight, I'm sure.
Breitbart.com organized a panel entitled “The Uninvited” to discuss controversial issues at CPAC.
This panel only featured one immigration speaker, Rosemary Jenks of Numbers USA. In the limited time she was given, Jenks argued that “According to all polls, Hispanics vote for larger government, more gun restrictions [and other aspects of] the liberal agenda.” Jenks outlined policies that went unmentioned throughout the rest of the conference, including mandatory E-verify, entry/exit systems at ports, and tracking visas to prevent overstays. This was essentially the only treatment that details of serious immigration policy that took place over the weekend.
The lone exception among elected officials from the main stage at CPAC 2013, was Congressman Steve King. King bravely condemned Ronald Reagan's 1986 amnesty, warned against the Left's attempts to “deconstruct” America, and said “economics isn't the most important issue.” Steve King also served as a surprise introduction speaker at “The Uninvited” where he slammed the idea that the GOP must abandon immigration enforcement to win the Hispanic vote. King noted, “If the Hispanic vote had gone to Romney in all swing states, he still would have lost.”
Nonetheless, none of the elected conservative “superstars” on the stage including Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz even mentioned amnesty, to support or condemn it. The ideological thrust of the conference can best be summarized by Rubio's defiant cry that the conservative movement doesn't need a new idea. “The idea's America, and it still works!”
With this kind of wishful thinking, it's no surprise that immigration patriotism has been decisively purged from movement conservatism, at least among elected officials and organization heads. At the same time, none of these figures advocated amnesty from the stage. Movement conservatives are afraid to take a stand against amnesty—but also too afraid to confront their restive base.
Thus, the only criticisms of amnesty from the main stage came from figures not wholly dependent on Conservatism Inc. Legendary conservative organizer Phyllis Schlafly received a positively cold reception from the young CPAC crowd when she slammed the “North American Union” and the push for amnesty. Sadly, most of the crowd probably did not understand who she was. (Those who did probably identified her with “homophobia” and opposition to free birth control.)
Donald Trump went off the reservation and also criticized amnesty, but he is seen as a celebrity and entertainment figure, rather than a conservative intellectual leader. It says something that Donald Trump probably did have more substance to offer than any of the movement's so called intellectuals.
It fell to Ann Coulter to save the day by using her prime speaking position to deliver a message CPAC desperately needed to hear. The most important point Ann Coulter made in her masterful address condemning amnesty was not the singular importance of the amnesty issue, the deliberate malice of the 1965 Immigration Act, or the doomed dreams of Republicans
Caught In The Black Undertow: Detroit—And America?
This week’s Detroit headlines:
- Former Mayor of Detroit Guilty in Corruption Case, by Mary M. Chapman, New York Times, March 11, 2013
DETROIT — Kwame M. Kilpatrick, a former mayor of Detroit, was found guilty on Monday of a raft of charges, including racketeering, fraud and extortion, capping a five-month public corruption trial against him and two co-defendants.
The jury found Mr. Kilpatrick guilty of 24 of the 30 charges against him, including the most serious charges of racketeering and extortion, which each carry maximum sentences of 20 years.[VDARE.com note: This is Mr. Kilpatrick's conviction on Federal charges. He's already done time under Michigan law for perjury, etc., and then again for violating probation
- Kevyn Orr Named Emergency Manager of Detroit by Governor, by Chris Christoff, Bloomberg.com, March 14, 2014
Governor Rick Snyder named Washington lawyer Kevyn Orr as emergency manager to lead Detroit out of a financial crisis that threatens to make it the largest municipal bankruptcy in the U.S.
Orr, 54, previously a partner at Jones Day who worked on the 2009 bankruptcy of the former Chrysler LLC, will tackle a city in a downward spiral of shrinking population and revenue, whose municipal government opposed a state takeover. Detroit’s deficit hit almost $327 million last year and its long-term obligations have grown to more than $14 billion, according to a recent state review.
When I purchased Charlie LeDuff's new book, Detroit: An American Autopsy, I assumed from the cover that I was buying a fearless examination of the causes of Detroit's decline by a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, which has been highly rated by Amazon and the New York Times Sunday Book Review. [Breakdown, By Paul Clemens, February 22, 2013]
Normally in an "autopsy," a forensic pathologist will dissect a body in an attempt to determine its cause of death. But, unfortunately, LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy is more of a montage of his reportage at The Detroit News, personalized by weaving the story of his own family into the arc of Detroit's demise.
In the course of this book, the reader will learn a lot about Charlie LeDuff, his staunchly Catholic mother who worked at a now ruined flower shop, his wife who was born and raised in Detroit, his dead sister Nicole (a streetwalker), his dead niece Ashley (a heroin addict), his three brothers who are high school dropouts (one of whom sold thousands of subprime mortgages for Quicken Loans), and his great-grandfather Henry LeDuff (aka "Frenchie"), a Louisiana mulatto who crossed Jim Crow's color line and reinvented himself as a white ethnic in Michigan. (LeDuff reportedly is also a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa tribe).
LeDuff is at his best in sketching vivid, compelling portraits of Detroit's power elite, its beleaguered public employees, and the ordinary people who are living and dying among the blighted ruins of a city that used to be called "the Paris of the West": Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (just convicted…again) and Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, who were both indicted and sent to prison amid sex, corruption, racketeering, and bribery scandals; Walt Harris and Mike Martel, a black firefighter who lost his life fighting arson, and a white homicide detective caught on the front lines of senseless gang violence.
We are introduced at the outset to Jonnie "Dollar" Redding (a cousin of soul singer Otis Redding), a black homeless man who died "frozen in indifference" at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned warehouse while "urban explorers" played hockey around his body, and later we learn the stories of Je'Rean Noble and "Little Martha Burnett, “who are just homicide statistics on the Forbes list of the most miserable city in America. [Detroit Most Miserable City In America: Forbes Ranking, Reuters, February 21, 2013]
It is clear that Charlie LeDuff cares about these people. He cared enough about Detroit to throw away his career as a big-shot journalist in Los Angeles so that he could return home and report on the "losers" who are left behind there. He wants us to care about them and succeeds with this series of hard-hitting anecdotes and vignettes in pulling our heartstrings for people like "Big Martha" who couldn't afford to bury her baby.
LeDuff doesn't shy away from dropping bombs on individuals. He goes after incompetent GM executives whose corporate offices in the GM Renaissance Complex face Canada so they don't look down upon the ruins of Detroit. He goes after the brass in the Detroit Police Department for fudging homicide statistics. He put his own life in jeopardy by getting involved with an informant in the Deandre Woolfolk case. He systematically went through financial records to expose the corruption under black Fire Commissioner James Mack who was ultimately fired as a result of his reporting.
Similarly, Charlie LeDuff has no problem offending the small enclaves of Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) who are always complaining about Detroit's negative publicity and the lack of coverage of positive developments like the opening of their new Detroit Whole Foods store:
"But these things are not supposed to be news. These things are supposed to be normal. And when normal things become the news, the abnormal becomes the norm. And when that happens, you might as well put a fork in it."
Later in the book, LeDuff serves up his definition of "normal":
“My wife and I loaded up the baby in the SUV and drove to my aunt’s funeral in a rural corner of Oakland County, where the land rolls like a ship on the swells. A boat, a house, a lake, a foreclosure sign.
“Jesus, it’s Whitey McWhiteville out here,” my wife said distractedly, noticing a white-faced lawn jockey. My woman is a white girl who grew up in Detroit—not the suburbs—which makes her a special kind of white person. …
The funeral for my aunt was weird in the fact that it wasn’t weird. It was normal. It was white. It started on time. Everyone wore a tie and
CPAC Day Two: The Dam Breaks!
[See also: CPAC's Immigration Panel—Wishful Thinking, Lies, And Attacking The Base, and CPAC 2013: Conservatism Inc. vs. Libertarianism Inc.? by James Kirkpatrick. Follow Kirkpatrick’s tweets from CPAC here]
The 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference's carefully managed image collapsed on Friday, as some attendees and speakers went off the reservation.
The morning began with reality-television-star-turned-conservative-celebrity Donald Trump addressing the audience in the main conference room. The American Conservative Union (Al Cardenas, conquistador-in-chief) had responded to criticism of its decision to host him by bragging that ticket sales had increased after the announcement that he was coming. However, it was certainly not happy after hearing what he had to say.
Trump launched a blistering attack on Amnesty for illegal immigrants, calling it a “suicide mission” for Republicans. “Every one of those 11 million people will be voting Democratic,” he cried. He also called for bringing in more high-skilled immigrants—especially from Europe, where they are “hard working” and “tremendous.”
Trump went on to demand that America rebuild its manufacturing capability and heaped scorn upon Apple for putting all of their factories in China. “China should be more proud of Apple than we should,” he said.
Of course, Europeans are the wrong kind of immigrants and Americans are not supposed to have jobs anymore. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—one of those organizations that by its sheer existence validates the existence of VDARE.com. Its chairman, one Ruben Hinojosa of the soon-to-be-subverted state of Texas, was very unhappy that Donald Trump had expressed moderately pro-American sentiment: he moaned to The Hill that “[Trump's] bigoted comments at CPAC have no place in the discussion for realistic solutions to our country’s immigration problems.” Hinojosa wailed about “extremist rhetoric” before calling for “responsible, reasonable colleagues” to further help him dismantle the country he is occupying. [Trump criticized by Democrat for ‘bigoted’ immigration message, By Jonathan Easley, March 15, 2013]
Other conservatives are sneaking into CPAC with positive comments. Former Senator Jim DeMint emphasized putting border security first in the immigration debate and stood against calls for citizenship. [Jim DeMint’s Speech at CPAC 2013, March 14, 2013] David Bossie of Citizens United also condemned Amnesty from the main stage, quoting Senator Jeff Sessions to support his case. On Thursday night, Rick Perry tried some talk about outreach, but was booed from the audience.
During Friday afternoon, a “women's panel” focused on “outreach” with the usual suggestions about more minority spokespeople, playing identity politics, and lots of “reaching out.” Your humble correspondent dutifully live tweeted throughout this entire sad affair. Of course, we've heard all of those since the days of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, and probably before.
Meanwhile, in another room, the grassroots group Tea Party Patriots held a panel entitled (and I'm not making this up) “Trump the Race Card: Are You
John Derbyshire: Ron Unz’s Social Darwinian Take On China May Help Demolish Egalitarian Taboos
I don’t have sufficient experience or knowledge to call myself an Old China Hand, but I can claim to be something of an authority on China punditry—an Old “Old China Hand” Hand, as it were. I think I’ve read ’em all at some time or other in the past forty years, from Matteo Ricci and the Abbé Huc to Bill Gertz and Richard McGregor.
The spectrum of opinion on China and her prospects is, and always has been, very wide. At one end of the spectrum is the “sleeping giant” school arguing that if China can get her sociopolitical ducks in a row and keep them there, she will bestride the world like a Colossus, at least commercially.
This view has deep roots in the Sinophilia that swept 18th-century Europe (and was derided by the unfoxable Sam Johnson). Its present-day proponents include Thomas Friedman and practically all educated young Chinese people..
At the other end of the spectrum are the China skeptics. Forbes.com Asia columnist Gordon Chang holds the current franchise, but he has had many predecessors.
A personal favorite of mine among those predecessors is Rodney Yonkers Gilbert, a Harvard-educated American businessman and journalist who went to China shortly after the 1911 revolution and stayed through the ensuing two decades of chaos. Gilbert’s 1926 book What's wrong with China is a bracing antidote to Sinophilia; or perhaps, depending on your point of view, a sad record of “China fatigue”—a psychological ailment known to afflict many Westerners who stay too long in that country.
Gilbert leaves no positive stereotype unexploded. The hard-working Chinese?
The Chinese day labourer, working for another at a daily wage without adequate supervision, would furnish a striking cinema picture of slow motion. He will move no faster than he is driven, and it is no exaggeration to say that a dozen Chinese pick-and-shovel men, left to their own devices, will do less work in a week than two white labourers will do in a day.
(On the same theme, here is a scrap from the notes I took while living in China thirty years ago. It is extracted from an article titled “Studying in the United States,” which appeared in The World of English, a bilingual magazine published in Peking for advanced students, January 1983 issue: “Work in general is something that is highly valued in American society. Since hard work is believed to help people get ahead, Americans often work long hours and do not take afternoon naps as we do . . .” My italics.)
Gilbert was experiencing China at the lowest point of a dynastic cycle, though. For a cooler view, somewhere around the middle of the spectrum, I recommend Robert Fortune, an English botanist who traveled around China in the 1840s, in the lull between the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion.
Fortune adopted Chinese dress and spoke the language well enough to pass himself off as a traveler from a distant province. His observations overlap somewhat with Gilbert’s of eighty years later. Both authors, for example, note how extremely rare it was to see a Chinese person reading a book for pleasure—another stereotype exploded.
Fortune is less bombastic and more just than Gilbert, though. Occasionally he is rhapsodic:
I fully believe that in no country in the world is there less real misery and want than in China. The very beggars seem a kind of jolly crew, and are kindly treated by the inhabitants.
One lesson I have taken from all that reading is that it is a mighty difficult thing to make accurate predictions about China. The Chinese themselves are not much good at it, as I noticed in the case of Liu Binyan five years ago. For foreigners it’s a mug’s game.
That game, though—let’s call it the Great China Guessing Game—is irresistibly fascinating to many of us, and new rounds of it are constantly being played.
Especially popular recently are debates about whether China’s managerial authoritarianism is competitive with,
