Recent News

The War In Chicago, the 48 Hours special with Maureen Maher and Armen Keteyian reporting that aired Saturday May 18, was a breakthrough—of sorts. It even had a logo that would make George Zimmerman blush: three hoodie-wearing thugs (eat your heart out, Trayvon Martin), one brandishing a gun, with a DEA Agent facing them.

Strikingly, the report candidly admitted that the city’s drug problem—heroin—is almost entirely driven by Mexican cartels; that only 26 percent of the more than 500 homicides in 2012 had been solved; and that in wake of the murder of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton—you know, the black girl that Barack and Michelle Obama tried to make the face of the gun control movement—the police surge launched by the city to try to make the streets safer is already threatened by budget concerns:

But like many big cities, Chicago has serious budget problems. The extra police on the streets is costing the city millions. Can they afford to keep up the fight?

There are lines of demarcation in every city. For this uniquely American city, the death of Hadiya Pendleton may well be one of them. Since her murder on Jan. 29 in Chicago, the number of extra police on the streets has doubled to 400. Officers are working seven days a week, but this is a relative peace that comes with a price: an estimated $1 million a week in police overtime.

The CBS special quoted a 28-year veteran of the DEA, Jack Riley, as saying:

"We've got people dying ... and I'm not rolling over, I have not thrown the towel in," said Riley, who thinks he knows why so many of Chicago's children are dying.

"I wanted to retire a few years ago ... my wife's naggin' me every day... get outta the job," he said. "I can't do it!"

… Riley says many Chicago shootings are carried out by the area's roughly 70,000 gang members who are going to war over one thing in particular: drugs

Is this America?

Yes—the very heartland of this nation…if America can be called a nation anymore

But one thing doesn’t ring true –“The War in Chicago” made this contradictory point:

Chicago is the gang capital of the United States. According to the Chicago Crime Commission, a 2012 Chicago Police Department gang audit found there are more than 600 gang factions in the city, with a minimum combined membership of 70,000. As the number of gangs in the city increase, it's difficult for gangs to control large areas. Instead, gangs cling to streets. Territory disputes mean increased rivalry and as a result, more shootings.

In 2011, a quarter of the 433 homicides in Chicago were gang-motivated according to Chicago Police Murder Analysis; 83 percent of all homicide victims died as a result of shootings.

But that means only 108 or 109 of the homicides in 2011 were “gang-related” i.e. due to drugs. (Update: in 2013 to date,

[See earlier Is the Rule of Law Immoral? Ask Archbishop José Gomez!]

Last week we looked at the Catholic Church and its advocacy of legislation granting amnesty to illegal aliens. Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, who leads the Church's campaign, has condemned the "nativism" and "bigotry" which in his view often motivates the advocates of the rule of law.

This is not the first time that bishops have taken sides on a political issue that divides Catholics. For two years and more, Bishop Stephen Blaire, who also hails from California, has lambasted Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, for authoring a budget that Bp. Blaire calls "unjust and wrong."

As Timothy Cardinal Dolan, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) observes, bishops have the right to hold personal opinions on political matters. However, in their role as shepherds, they must teach "precepts," not take partisan positions. Bishops Blaire and Gomez, seemingly oblivious to the Cardinal's assurances, have conducted their political advocacy not as individuals, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Bp. Blaire is Chairman of the USCCB "Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development," while Abp. Gomez chairs the USCCB "Committee on Migration."

The language that the two bishops use to advocate their personal legislative agendas is so specific in nature and so strident in tone that an unsuspecting listener might be led to assume that their views represent the authentic, magisterial teaching of the Church.

If they do, a question arises: in the words of Canon Law, must a Catholic "adhere with religious submission of mind" to these bishops' political views with the same fervor with which the faithful are called on to believe in the truths of the Creed or the objective evil of abortion?

Bishop Blaire has repeatedly refused to answer that question, but two other key prelates have, as the Rubble reported last fall when it examined the Ryan issue at length.

In May 2011, Cardinal Dolan affirmed Ryan's rights as a layman. "We bishops are very conscious that we are pastors, never politicians. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, it is the lay faithful who have the specific charism of political leadership and decision," he wrote.[PDF]

In addition, Bishop Robert C. M

Commenting last week on the Heritage Foundation’s despicable firing of Jason Richwine, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow wrote:

The facts about the differing average IQ levels of the various post-1965 immigrant streams have been settled science for many years. The original draft of my huge 1992 National Review cover story Time to Rethink Immigration, which eventually resulted in my 1995 book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, contained a discussion of IQ and immigration policy, alluding to Richard J. Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve, which I knew was in preparation. The reaction of my dear friend John O'Sullivan, NR's Editor in those happy days, was very instructive. Not only did he insist on cutting out the discussion, but he also hunted down every copy of the original draft in NR's office and had them destroyed. His argument was that any mention of IQ or heredity at all would result in the issue monopolizing all response to my article, plunging the rest of my very broad case against contemporary immigration policy irretrievably into the dark.

At the time, I accepted that he was right. But I now think that, had we fought that battle then, Jason Richwine might still be able to support his family today—and, who knows, American might be a very different place.

Brimelow also mentioned but declined to press the immigration-IQ linkage in Alien Nation. He wrote in a footnote on Page 57:

As this book was in galleys, the greatest intellectual uproar for many years was caused by the publication of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life  (Free Press), which argued that scientific evidence shows human intelligence exists in a measurable way, is profoundly important in society, is largely hereditary, and differs, on average, between races. In a little-noticed passage, Herrnstein and Murray blamed the 1965 Immigration Act for a sharp deterioration in immigrant quality. They estimated that the current influx has an average IQ of 95, at least 5 points below the white American mean. If they are right, of course, this suggests the consequences of current policy are far more disastrous than anything argued in this book. However, I figure I’ve taken enough risks already and merely report their view for what it is worth. There are quite enough reasons to worry about immigration without using Herrnstein and Murray's work. Would-be demagogues should note that I do not so use it here.

(What Herrnstein and Murray had said, by the way, was "The rules that currently govern immigration provide the other major source of dysgenic pressure" [The Bell Curve, P 341])

You'll note that there's a hyperlink on "Would-be demagogues" above because I copied the section from the recently-released Kindle edition of Alien Nation, to which we added hyperlinks. That one goes to the U.K. Guardian's review of Alien Nation—a book that did not use the IQ argument, remember—entitled "The Far Right Leans Into The Bell Curve" (by Mark Taub, May 5, 1995).

Mark Taub is a good specimen of the "would-be demagogue." He described Brimelow as "one of the most fervent Bell Curve supporters,” which means he wrote a Forbes Magazine story about the controversy. (It was supposed to be a cover story but Steve Forbes had a last-minute hissy fit and insisted on burying it inside and excising all references to race. Come to think of it, Forbes is now a Heritage board member. Hmmm.)

But Taub was not as bad as Reason's Glenn Garvin [Email him], who wrote about Alien Nation

Self-preservation is colliding with a suicidal ideology within the American Right. The outcome of this battle will determine its future—and the future of the historic American nation.

Prior to last week, immigration patriots had growing reasons for optimism. Despite the best efforts of Grover Norquist and other corporate shills within Conservatism Inc., the American Right was slowly lining up against the Obama/ Schumer/ Rubio push for an Amnesty/ Immigration Surge. Even National Review featured a cover story written by CIS’s Mark Krikorian, which actually blamed Mitt Romney's defeat on the decline in white turnout. Drudge, after a period of silence, was prominently featuring anti-immigration stories. After Ann Coulter's declaration of war at CPAC 2013, other leading pundits, most critically Rush Limbaugh, joined the battle. Opposition to amnesty was becoming the default conservative position, with even the Weekly Standard joining the fight.

Maybe it’s simple partisanship. Unlike in 2006-2007, President Barack Hussein Obama is now leading the charge. After budget battles, gun control, Benghazi, the Boston terrorist attacks and the liberal MSM’s lust for white male villains and the IRS’ admitting it targeted Tea Party groups, Republicans were getting fed up.

But more importantly, a talking point that has made a real impact on the conservatives is the objective reality that “undocumented Americans” will never vote for Republicans—and that Amnesty ensures a blue Texas and a permanent Democratic majority.

Signs of discontent were coming from within the Congressional GOP. Pat Buchanan lookalike Ted Cruz proposed banning all illegals from ever obtaining American citizenship. Treason Lobby dallier Senator Rand Paul, as predicted, was showing signs of abandoning “reform” in order to protect his own Presidential ambitions. Even Marco Rubio, watching his lobbyist-promised path to the White House evaporating before

[Previously by Susie Green: Harmony before Insight? The Destruction of Western Man ]

There can be no better statement on the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration Surge War than this:

The level of lying that has become common in the illegal alien debate is truly frightening and bespeaks an America that has passed some new threshold on the road to self-destruction.

One of these lies is intrinsic to the Senate bill and its variants: that these bills combine “enforcement” with amnesty. Given our current systematic failure to enforce the law and protect our borders, and given the president’s own palpable lack of interest in enforcing the law, and given the nonchalant or celebratory statements about illegal immigration by many of the president’s supporters, such as William Kristol and Michael Bloomberg, no intellectually honest person could believe that the enforcement side of the bill would be seriously acted upon.

Therefore the only way to establish the president’s and the government’s bona fides in this area is to pass an enforcement-only bill first and see if it is enforced. Otherwise we will inevitably end up with a vastly worse repetition of what happened in 1986, an amnesty of millions of illegal aliens, with no improvement in enforcement, leading to continued mass illegal immigration, followed by further calls for yet another amnesty.

Another big lie is the establishment’s denial that their various proposals are, in fact, amnesty proposals. Starting with the stinking head of our body politic…down to every liberal newspaper reporter, it is now simply taken for granted that a bill is only an amnesty bill if it involves giving the illegal alien instant citizenship. Anything short of that, such as giving him legal status in the United States with the option to pursue citizenship, is not, the establishment insists, amnesty.

Thus Jonathan Weisman writes in the Washington Post about a compromise bill that is now being floated:

The compromise could satisfy some conservatives opposed to any program that offers illegal immigrants a way to stay in the country and work toward citizenship, which they term “amnesty.”

See? A bill to allow illegal aliens to stay in the country legally and work toward citizenship is not amnesty. It is only falsely described as “amnesty”—by conservatives. See Weisman’s scare quotes. Thanks for straightening us out on that, Mr. Weisman.

In reality, amnesty means removing the penalty or the due consequence for a wrongful act. Under our law, the due consequence for a person who has illegally entered the United States is to be removed from the United States. Therefore to give illegal aliens legal residency in this country is amnesty, period.

All the bills that are on the table to give illegals some kind of legal status in the U.S., however that legal status is defined, are amnesty bills, period.”

[Hyperlinks added by VDARE.com]

Actually, wait a moment... that isn't about the Obama Administration's push for an Amnesty/ Immigration Surge at all! It’s about the second President Bush's efforts to push a nation-breaking legalization program in 2006, by my old friend, the late Lawrence M. Auster. [We must stop lying to ourselves or we will die, View From The Right, April 04, 2006 ]

It tells us something, both about Larry and about the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill, that not a word needs to be changed—and once again, Larry’s View From the Right blog cuts to the core of the issue.

Immigration patriots have been here before. This isn't the first and may not be the last time Americans will have to face down a “stupid and evil” effort to push through amnesty. Luckily, we have a guide to waging the long war in the writings of the late and lamented Lawrence Auster, who never stopped

The firing of Jason Richwine by the Heritage Foundation is the most depressing thing that has happened in American politics for many years—and that’s a very hot competition.  Heritage was in an impregnable position:

The collapse of legitimacy in Washington continues, and the immigration debate is no exception. The rule of law withers away, while partisans wallow in sentimentalism, with curious consequences: consider the religious leaders who are at the forefront of the pro-amnesty movement. Somehow, they're on the same side of the issue as Big Business, the banksters, and the Wall Street Journal.

How did this come to pass?

A little history helps. In the past 40 years, evangelicals have made significant inroads into the once-Catholic populations of Mexico and Latin America. This was due in large part to the Catholic political detour into liberation theology that swept across the continent a generation ago. Protestant missionaries, often sponsored by small, independent congregations in the United States, had a simple message: "the Catholics preach politics, we preach the Bible." Tens of millions of Latino Catholics left the Church.

In the United States, the accusation rings true all too often. The Catholic Church has a strong political presence in Washington. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) spent some $26.67 million on political advocacy in 2009; only AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent more ($87.90 million). Most recently, this activity focused on the bishops' battle against the HHS Contraceptive Mandate and homosexual "marriage." But over the long haul, those advocacy efforts have supported key elements of the Left's agenda: national health care, amnesty for illegal aliens, and expansion of the welfare state.

Several studies confirm that Catholics are leaving the pews—on both sides of the border. What happened in Latin America is also happening here: Timothy Cardinal Dolan, President of the USCCB, observes that some thirty million Americans today identify themselves as former Catholics. That is almost half the number of self-identified Catholics (some 60-70 million).

Post-Christian or Post-American?

We have entered a "post-Christian era," says Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin. The bishop was addressing the legalization of homosexual "marriage" in Rhode Island, but I wonder if his insight might also be playing a prominent role in the U.S. bishops' campaign for amnesty.

When it comes to immigration, America's bishops support an agenda so vast that its passage would quickly create some thirty million new Americans, once "family reunification" kicks in (with all of the reunions taking place stateside, of course).

I wonder, do the bishops want all those new Americans because they're so unhappy with the Americans they've already got?

Maybe so. Consider Los Angeles Archbishop José  Gomez. He's the point man in the USCCB's amnesty campaign. Born in Mexico, he loves his homeland and his people. Like his predecessor, Roger Cardinal Mahony, he has made amnesty his prime political cause. He has a parochial interest—the Los Angeles Times reports that ten percent of the residents of LA County are in the U.S. illegally—but his vision goes much further.

Archbishop Gomez avoids the terms "illegal" and "amnesty," advocating instead "comprehensive reform." More importantly, even when addressing legislative particulars, he speaks with authority, in the name of the Catholic Church. Occasionally he admits that Catholics can differ on the issue, but opponents of amnesty seldom hear an encouraging word from his pulpit.

Is the "Next America" the "New Mexico"?

According to Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan research group, the average rate of immigration from the 1950s through the 1970s was three million a decade. Since 1990, the rate has been 11 million per decar]de. Of the immigration bill proposed by the "Gang of Eight" passes, 33 million new green cards will be issued in the next decade.

Such a large wave of new Americans raises serious questions regarding the challenge of assimilation, but Archbishop Gomez simply bypasses it—because he opposes it.

Three years ago, Archbishop Gomez described his vision of "The Next America" at a conference in the Napa Valley. For him, the "Next America" will be decidedly better than the current one. Echoing Bishop Tobin, he says that

"Our culture is changing…We have a legal structure that allows, and even pays for, the killing of babies in the womb. Our courts and legislatures are redefining the natural institutions of marriage and the family. We have an elite culture… that is openly hostile to religious faith."[Immigration and the “Next America”: Perspectives from Our History, August 10, 2011]

All too true. So what is to blame for this travesty? Pope Benedict XVI blamed

For generations, Massachusetts was ruled by a demographic that could proudly trace its heritage back to colonial times. Indeed, it was once a considerable challenge to get elected to higher office in Massachusetts if you were not considered a “Proper Bostonian.”

Perhaps the best example of a Proper Bostonian legislator: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924). A staunch defender of American sovereignty, Lodge is best known for being the lead opponent of U.S. membership in the League of Nations. But people forget that Lodge was also a vocal critic of immigration policy, even when it was still exclusively European.

Senator Lodge believed that immigration policy should be tailored to benefit the historical American nation, not just the immigrants themselves. In those days, that was an opinion no one was afraid to express.

Incidentally, Lodge also strongly supported greater rights for blacks—but in those days goodwill toward minorities did not require subordinating oneself to them.

The Proper Bostonian’s views on immigration and race mirrored the late Samuel Huntington’s distinction between settlers and immigrants. We are not a “nation of immigrants”; rather, we are a nation of “settlers” (the Anglo-Protestants who founded the country) and “immigrants.” And those who immigrate into this established Anglo-Protestant society are obligated to assimilate into it. (I say this as a New England Catholic of substantially Irish descent.)

But things began to change around the turn of the century, when Boston’s James Michael Curley (1874-1958), the American-born son of Irish immigrants, began stoking resentment against America’s founding demographic. But Curley didn’t just incite resentment among the Irish—he also successfully instilled guilt in the Yankee Protestants. And that’s where the real damage was done.

Seemingly overnight, being a Proper Bostonian became a moral weakness while membership in the “oppressed” immigrant class became a moral strength—a bandwagon the plutocratic Kennedys rode all the way to White House.

In due course, Henry Cabot Lodge’s grandson, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., was defeated in 1952 by then Rep. John F. Kennedy. And Lodge’s great grandson, George Cabot Lodge, was defeated by Ted Kennedy ten years later. As Cardinal William O’Connell triumphantly put it: “The Puritan has passed. The Catholic remains.”

Future historians will certainly be dumbfounded