Do Mine Ears Deceive Me?

"What's foolish about it is when you make a statement like that and the statement itself is subject to attack and everybody forgets the point you're making, and people are piling on you for a stupid, a-historical statement...there's no up-side to something like this..."

- Pat Buchanan slamming Harry Reid's hyperbolic speech from atop a very high horse, possibly a direct descendant of one of Nathan Bedford Forrest's.

Yeah, stupid a-historical statements are terrible and should be avoided at all costs!

Incidentally, Pat Buchanan... meet Pat Buchanan.

I rue the day you learned to type

Another day, another tragic massacre of Americans, and, since the massacre-er was non-white, that must mean it's time for another edition of Pat Buchanan's Crazy Talk.

Pat starts by reminding us of the brilliant insight that in war, people have to choose sides.

"Let none but Americans stand guard tonight," said Washington at Valley Forge. Irish Catholics deserted the Union army to fight beside Mexican Catholics in the San Patricio battalion against what they thought was American aggression. Honored today by Mexico, the San Patricios were hanged when captured by Winfield Scott's army.

In Scott's march to Mexico City was Robert E. Lee. The hero of Buena Vista was Col. Jefferson Davis, who had married the daughter of his commanding officer, future President Zachary Taylor. Davis went on to serve in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce and the U.S. Senate.

Yet, in 1861, Davis and Lee would depart the service of their country to wage war against the United States on behalf of their new nation and the kinfolk to whom they belonged and whom they believed had a right to be free of the Union. Were they traitors – or patriots?

Isn't the honest answer "both?" Or maybe "Neither?" Or even the always reliable "It depends who you ask?"

This is not to compare the deeds of the San Patricios, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, all of whom declared themselves openly and fought heroically and honorably, with the crimes of Maj. Hasan.

Oh good. Wait, then why did you bring it up?

But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal.

Whence came this idea? No previous generation believed this.

How are you defining "previous generation?" Which decades are we looking at? Also, if you're trying to suggest that the Founders thought that all Americans should be white Christians, you might be right (kind of-- they weren't all as uniformly Christian as some people like to claim), but so what? Sixty years ago we didn't think blacks were entitled to vote. The fact that an earlier generation may not have thought of something or thought something was good doesn't invalidate it.

In World War I, Wilson feared that if he went to war, German-Americans might march on Washington. FDR was so fearful that the blood ties of Japanese citizens and residents would trump their loyalty to the United States he ordered 110,000 transferred from California to detention camps for the duration of the war.

So the fact that two US Presidents were paranoid AND xenophobic means multiculturalism is bad and suggests that internment was justified (despite there never being a single proven case of disloyalty from Japanese-Americans during the war). There's quite a lot of crap stuffed into that sausage, Pat. By the way, take a good look at that last line in bold. Ok, stare at it, memorize it, no, don't show your card to me, you just remember it, ok? It'll be important later.

In Arkansas last year, a Muslim opposed to the U.S. wars shot two soldiers at a recruitment center, killing one. In Kuwait, before the invasion of Iraq, a Muslim soldier threw a grenade into the tent of his commanding officer, killing two and wounding 14.

So? No one's arguing Jihad is a good thing, Pat, but those cases were never connected with a conspiracy larger than one. The bigger issue should be how is the military screening recruits and then how is it keeping an eye on the "well-being" (very broadly defined for these purposes) of its people, both for their safety and the safety of those around them.

This is not to suggest that all American Muslims or Arabs should be citizens under suspicion. Muslims have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, as German-Americans died fighting against Germany in two world wars. But it is to say this:

America is unraveling. No longer are we one nation and one people. Tens of millions have come and tens of millions are coming whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind, and to the faith they carry in their hearts. And if, in our long war against "Islamofascism," we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.

Pat assumes that everyone thinks like him, that everyone puts ethnic identity first, that no one is capable or interested in having multiple, simultaneous or interactive identities (but Pat, how can you be Catholic and identify as a Southerner?), and that essentially everyone just wants to exist in their own box. There are certainly plenty of box-people in the world, including, apparently, Pat himself. But to categorically write off the patriotism of millions of immigrants (as well as millions of future immigrants) really just shows how little regard Pat has for reality outside his own head. I'd love to see any evidence backing up Pat's implication that there are potential cells of would-be militants all over the US who could turn on us should the government decide to pursue the wrong foreign policy against their motherland. Of course, it'd be easier to check into this were Pat interested enough in specifics to mention a single immigrant group so his readers who don't live in hypothetical-rhetoric-land could actually look into his ramblings. Help me out here, Pat. Are we talking disgruntled Norweigians, or suspicious Bangladeshis? Quakers? Ba'hai? Amish? Who exactly do we need to be on our guard against? Everyone?

There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth

No Pat, the reality is that there never was a melting pot in the first place. It was a flawed model based on biased assumptions about what American culture was or should be. If the idea of America being multiracial, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural makes you mad, all I can say is the idea that the only legitimate America is one populated by white Christians (and they'd better speak English, dammit) makes me pretty mad, too. The difference is that I don't try to ascribe every crime committed before 1965 to the Melting-Pot, whereas you seem incapable of watching the news without connecting every bad thing with multiculturalism and prophesying imminent race wars.

Eisenhower's America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 million, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?

Um, Pat, Eisenhower was President in the 1950s. At that time the total population was approximately 150 million. This included 15 million African-Americans, 380,000 Native Americans, and 320,000 Asian-Americans. Out of around 135 million whites, 5 million were Jewish, and at least 2 and a half million were Latino. Clearly, 127 million white Christians is still a majority, but it takes a lot of balls to willfully whitewash 23 million people out of American history because they contradict your fairy tale that 1950s America was something out of a Lincoln Rockwell painting. Also, you're living in a fantasy land if you don't think that "American culture all its own" wasn't affected by white Christians interacting with different kinds of people.

Now, think back to Pat's earlier comments. You know, the ones about Wilson and FDR worrying about German and Japanese Americans and foreign nationals. Funny thing, Pat, according to my calculations, these messy moments in multiculturalism relations happened BEFORE Eisenhower was President. How could Eisenhower have been President of White-landia when just ten years earlier FDR was interning Japanese-Americans?

Truth time: there have always been different races in America. African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619. There were Chinese men in California as early as the 1820s. Indians were in the US in the early 1800s. Native Americans were here long before the US was formed and didn't disappear just because we stopped thinking about them. Some of Pat's German ancestors didn't immigrate until the 1830s. Who is he to write off anyone else as not being American enough?

There are other races and cultures whose presence in America predate Pat Buchanan's family, but because they were denied the opportunity to identify as Americans, Pat assumes that they never have considered themselves American. He thinks being an American is synonymous with being a white Christian. Never mind the historical record or the experiences of millions of Americans that says otherwise.

Maj. Hasan may have been a wacko. He may have been a terrorist. He may have been both. Ft. Hood may signify that there is something very dangerous happening within the military, or perhaps within American society itself. But it is not the fact that we welcome people here or encourage ethnic diversity (What is the alternative, exactly? Refuse to allow anyone into the army but white people? Step on down, Pat, and sign up.) America has benefited when it has expanded its vision of who to let into its cultural tent, and when we have persecuted each other for our national origins, as we did with Germans during WWI, and Japanese during WWII, we have come to regret it.

There may indeed be some American Muslims who use multiculturalism as a screen to protect their true intentions. I still say it's worth it. Multiculturalism may not be a perfect system, but it is far more benign an approach to American identity than aggressively enforcing a pan-whiteness on millions of people who have earned the right to live however the hell they please. And at least it's based on the reality of America being composed of many different people and cultures, as opposed to the revisionist whitewashing of history that Buchanan uses to try to show how far we've fallen. We've always been multicultural, Pat. People like you just never wanted to see it.

Play it again, Pat

Actually, don't.

I had the misfortune of reading Pat's 9/11 column the other day, in which Pat engages in a tiring and repetitive display of self-flagellation-- or, rather, it would be self-flagellation, if Pat still identified with this mongrel mess we call a country. Typically, Pat has the gall to piss all over the country, reviling his political and cultural opponents, then shed crocodile tears that we are so divided.

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

Egads, people are strongly disagreeing with each other! In America, of all places! It's the end of civilization as we (or rather, Pat) know it!

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Better question: does it really matter if a country's people all listen to the same radio station? Methinks not. What happened to the free marketplace? What difference does this make to anybody, aside from 70-plus year old cranks like Buchanan?

The issue is not about whether people have common roots, but if they share common values. I know you're not a big fan of "Diversity is Our Strength," (which you inaccurately attribute to Dan Quayle) but it looks like E Pluribus Unum is out. Of course, a common language is important to facilitate interaction and communication between fellow citizens. But there is no reason why immigrants should be forced to abandon their native language, or any other non-harmful element of their home culture. Who are you to arbitrarily decide what works of literature, poetry, music, or art, are authentically American? Was there an election I missed?

By the way, Pat, there are plenty of places in the world where people speak multiple languages and do just fine. Officially bilingual Canada seems to still be doing fine, despite constant Quebecois grumbling. The citizens of Ghana include at least eight major tribes and anywhere from 250-580 languages (with one official language, English) and is considered one of the most successful countries in Africa. Somehow, they make it work, as does Israel.

As an aside: given that the top four spoken languages around the world include Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish, aren't we actually doing U.S. kids a disservice by demonizing bilingualism (to say nothing of the stigma we place on immigrant children through rushed ESL classes)?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

And? Irish-Americans celebrate Saint Patrick's day, which commemorates a Saint about whom most Americans (including the Irish) know next to nothing aside from his love of clover and pathological dislike of snakes. Northern and Eastern-Europeans have all sorts of weird Christmas and Easter-related customs, traditions and folklore. Some elements of national culture are universal, others are specific to an ethnic or religious culture. Not only don't you not explain why this is so terrible, I'm dumbfounded as to what your proposed alternative would be. State-enforced church services, Puritan-style? Personal freedom means just that.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

Boo-freakin' hoo, Pat. This is the logical result of having a democratic state which includes non-Christians in its body politic, and which has no official church. You don't like it, try moving to England, Ireland or Saudi Arabia.

Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

What? Only if you buy into the bogus argument that only certain kinds of people can enjoy or listen to certain kinds of music. How many white folks have listened to Bob Marley in the past fifty years? How many white teenagers listen to rap? How many non-Indians were turned onto Indian music through the Beatles? Who CARES?

...Also, Pat, come on now. Just how much Jazz have you really listened to over the years?

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

Here Pat gets back on his revisionist and pro-Confederacy high horse again. Look Pat, I don't object to looking to history to provide role models. But I think we can do a heck of a lot better than Columbus and Stonewall Jackson. That isn't about loving or hating history but about looking it square in the face-- exactly what values do you think are communicated to schoolkids when you start praising the Confederacy? States rights? Please.

Pat continues in this vein ad infinitum. Frankly, the whole thing sounds plagiarized from his outrageous columns following the VA Tech shootings.

The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.

“E pluribus unum” — out of many, one — was the national motto the men of ‘76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?

What chance do we have attracting immigrants to the idea of American unity when the image we present is of hysterical mobs ranting about the evils of foreign food or of "outsiders" speaking another language? When the clear, undisguised goal is not a (theroetically respectful) "melting pot" or a give-and-take tossed salad, but an out-and-out whitewashing? You want to make Asians, Latinos and Africans into WASPs. It's an offensive idea, and it also has no chance of succeeding. So get over it.

Calling out Pat Buchanan

Dear Pat,

It has now been over two years since the shooting at Virginia Tech, in which you accused and maligned immigrants and illegal aliens (typically never bothering to differentiate between the two) as being fundamentally different from the European immigrants who came here before them. For two years, I have watched you railing against the evils of multiculturalism, and claiming that the elemental fact of ethnic nationalism will invariably lead to the Balkanization of America as individual ethnic groups decide to declare war on America to recreate their homelands (apparently these same immigrants are too oblivious to notice that they went to a lot of trouble to leave those same homelands and live freely here). Two years of distortion, fear-mongering and outright race-baiting as you have desperately tried to show that there is something inherently alien about non-white Americans. And very often, you have shamefully gone back to the same shameful argumentation you used after the murders in April 07-- the idea that America was some sort of Caucasian utopia before we opened our doors (after having closed them) and let the colored hordes invade, and that problems in our culture, particularly crime, can all be laid at the feet of these evil, foreign outsiders.

So my question to you, Pat, is this. Exactly which immigrants, legal or otherwise, were responsible for this madman ? He doesn't seem all that different from Cho Seung-Hui: both were longtime loners, burning with the anger stemming from years of rejection, both were deep narcissists with violent inner thoughts, and both ultimately blamed others for their life's problems and sought to achieve immortality through the slaughter of innocents. George Sodini and Cho Seung-Hui, and for that matter, James von Brunn, were not products of their race, or even, arguably, their cultures, but of their own psychotic selves. (How ironic, I thought Pat was supposed to be the straight-talking paleoconservative and I the bleeding-heart, moral relativism liberal?)

Look in a history book or read the news, Pat. White people are just as capable of being crazy and violent, Pat. Legal, naturalized, established American citizens, with no seeming "culture war" motivator, are also capable of slowly, or quickly, snapping, and killing their fellow Americans. And if anyone were to make the same inane connections you have between non-white spree killers and "cultural determinism"and apply it to white people, something tells me you'd be (rightly) frothing at the mouth. Think about that the next time you open yours.

Postscript to Pat Buchanan

I was still steaming about Pat Buchanan's crack about Los Angeles' crime problems (specifically with gangs) being related to the fact that it has so many different nationalities living in it.

Funny thing, is, I just saw "Public Enemies" last night, and the more I read about Dillinger and his cronies, the more apparent it becomes that a pure European-American melting pot is hardly a guarantee against crime. Dillinger associates included Belgians (Baby Face Nelson), Lithuanians (Alvin Karpis), Canadians (Karpis and Red Hamilton), Dutchmen (Homer Van Meter) Scotch-Irishmen (Barker gang) and, of course, the obligatory half-dozen plain old WASPs or as Pat might prefer, unhyphenated Americans.

But wait! There were plenty of other notorious Depression-era gangsters, who, wouldn't you know it, were like, totally white! Mad Dog Coll (Irish), Bugs Moran (Polish-Irish), Charles Dean O'Banion (go on, guess), the Gusenberg brothers (German), Louis Alterie (French), Shotgun George Ziegler (Polish), and so on. That's without even mentioning the obvious ones like the Italian and Jewish mafias (or the new ones popping up in the 80s and onward from the USSR, the Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc). Hell, apparently even the Greeks have a mafia.

Bad news, Pat. All the criminals I mentioned were white, and most were committing fairly atrocious crimes as far back as the 30s, and it doesn't seem to have had a thing to do with immigrants, legal or otherwise. In fact, in a time of severe economic crisis, all these white folks seemed to mainly target other white folks (granted, almost certainly not because of color). It's almost like ethnonationalism played no role at all in their thought process! For a real treat, Pat, why not read Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York. You'll get to hear about all sorts of white-only gangs, going as far back as the 1860s-- long before Latinos ever darkened our door step.

Well Pat it's looks like yet again we've seen that race, immigration and crime have almost nothing to do with each other, or certainly aren't causal, as you delight in implying.

Your move.

More on Pat and his weird ethnic nationalism fetish, and the strange places it takes him, here. Apparently even neocons think it's creepy.

Pat Buchanan's weird, weird, ideas

I made the mistake of finding Pat Buchanan's blog. On the one hand, this is good because it's one less reason for me to check out WorldNetDaily. On the other, now I have access to all of Pat's brain farts for the past several years.

Pat had one article a while ago which caught my interest, because it happened to combine two of my least favorite things: stupid neologisms, and creepy alter kocker race-baiting.

The larger issue here is the enduring power of ethnonationalism — the drive of ethnic minorities, embryonic nations, to break free and create their own countries, where their faith, culture and language are predominant.

Now, at first blush, this might seem a tad obvious. Yes, ethnic ties and nationalism have historically played a significant role in independence movements and struggles.

But wait! Pat has more.

Ethnonationalism caused the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, triggered World War I in Sarajevo, and tore apart the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Ethnonationalism birthed Ireland, Turkey and Israel.
Ethnonationalism in the 1990s tore apart the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and broke up Czechoslovakia, creating two-dozen nations out of three. Last August, ethnonationalism, with an assist from the Russian Army, relieved Georgia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia has its own ethnic worries in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, whose Moscow-installed president was nearly blown to pieces two weeks ago and where a Chechen convoy was ambushed last week with 10 soldiers killed.
The ethnonationalism that pulled Ireland out of the United Kingdom in 1921 is pulling Scotland out. It split the Asian subcontinent up into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are all threatened.
Persians are a bare majority against the combined numbers of Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baluch. Each of those minorities shares a border with kinfolk — in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Turkey has fought for decades against Kurd ethnonationalism.
If one were to wager on new nations, Kurdistan and Baluchistan would be among the favorites. And Pashtun in Pakistan outnumber Pashtun in Afghanistan, though in the latter they are the majority.

So now ethnonationalism is starting to become a dangerous specter, destabilizing the world? I can't tell if Pat is pro ENism or not.

The contrast between insouciant America and serious China today is instructive. China is protectionist; America free trade. China is nationalist; America globalist. China’s economy is export-driven; America’s base is consumption. China saves; America spends. China uses its foreign exchange to lock up overseas resources; America uses foreign aid for humanitarian assistance to failed states. Behaving like ruthlessly purposeful 19th-century Americans, China grows as America shrinks.

So... China is a bunch of amoral jerks, and that's a good thing we should emulate?

Where Beijing floods its borderlands with Han to reduce indigenous populations to minorities, and stifles religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity, America, declaring, “Diversity is our strength!” invites the whole world to come to America and swamp her own native-born.

Ah. Here we go. ENism is a useful bludgeoning tool. With ENism, Pat can argue for race-based determinism, showing that multiculturalism is naive at best, and national/race suicide at worst. Incidentally, Pat, America doesn't really have native-born people, that's kind of the point.

Observing the lightning breakup of the Soviet Union, the Chinese take ethnonationalism with deadly seriousness. American’s elite regard it an irrelevancy, an obsession only of the politically retarded.

Uh yeah, pretty much. After all, our country's civic culture is kind of predicated on the concept that American nationalism is not based on ethnic background.

After all, they tell us, we were never blood-and-soil people, always a propositional nation, a nation of ideas. Our belief in democracy, diversity, and equality define us and make us different from all other nations.

First of all, why does America have to be different "from all other nations?" I thought we had moved beyond bizarro Puritan "New Israel" theological views on government a while ago. Why don't we shoot for "functional democracy that respects and protects invidividual rights while also balancing them with the interests and rights of the group," and then if we wind up not being unique in that regard, so much the better? Second, yes, America IS supposed to be a nation of ideas and principles. The way in which this is potentially different from other countries is that there is no officially privileged culture, religion or ethnic group in America, as opposed to other countries that were founded specifically for a religion or people. Even from its earliest colonial days, America was being divied up by different groups-- including the French, Spanish and English (all of whom would be very suprised to be lumped in together by the likes of Buchanan).

Indeed, we now happily predict the year, 2042, when Americans of European ancestry become a minority in a country whose Founding Fathers declared it set aside for “ourselves and our posterity.”

So what, Pat? The Founding Fathers said and did a whole lot of things that aren't that relevant to today. Dueling and powdered wigs come to mind.

Without the assent of her people, America is being converted from a Christian country, nine in 10 of whose people traced their roots to Europe as late as the time of JFK, into a multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural Tower of Babel not seen since the late Roman Empire.

That's right, it turns out that America isn't white, or Christian, enough for Pat Buchanan. Which is funny, because a lot of the illegal immigrants he bitches about are Latinos, most of whom are ethnically white and Catholic. But never mind that, Pat's mad that we aren't all WASPS, (or at least people that can pass for-- or be declared-- WASPs), anymore. Oh for the days of the 50s, where non-whites, non-Christians, and non-heterosexuals at least had the good sense to stay hidden from public view! Incidentally, Pat, maybe the reason there isn't that much immigration from Western Europe to America is that Western European countries have finally started getting their acts together (which is funny, given how much you complain about those govts' horrible pseudo-Socialist policies).

The city farthest along the path is Los Angeles, famous worldwide for the number, variety, and size of its ethnic and racial street gangs.

Yes, of course, Pat. Because we all know that diversity leads to street crime. That must be why there was never any crime in, say, lily-white England, before the 1800s, when they started getting all those immigrants in. Or why when people in England today see large groups of strapping young white lads cavorting in the street, they are filled with nothing but feelings of peacefulness and serenity.

I dig a little digging, and wouldn't you know it, Pat's been down this road to Crazytown before. Here's an article from 2008:

Muller argues, ethnonationalism may be a precondition of liberal democracy. Only after all the tribes of Europe had their own ethnically homogenous nation-states did peace and comity come. And what happened in Europe in the 20th century may be a precursor of what is to come in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Really now? So how do you explain functional democracies with large numbers of different ethnic groups, like say, Brazil? And why are you ignoring that ethnonationalism seems to be the flip side of colonialism and expansionism? Maybe part of the reason the British Empire collapsed was that there was no good reason people in India would ever accept the legitimacy of a country ruling them from thousands of miles away. Maybe part of the reason Russia keeps havng to deal with breakaway republics is that the USSR's conquest of Asia and Eastern Europe was done at the expense-- culturally, economically, religiously, etc-- of the native people living there? If there are multiple causes of discontent, it stands to reason that boiling it all down to ethnic groupings is simplstic and misleading.

Americans, writes Muller, “find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that this is a product not of nature but of culture. …
“But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away.”
Indeed, we see it bubbling up from the Basque country of Spain, to Belgium, Bolivia, Baghdad and Beirut. Perhaps the wisest counsel for the United States may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.

Like how, Pat? I thought you were against interventionism. Wait, don't tell me... does it involve reservations? No? How about ghettos? Miscegenation laws?

And we should look to our own land. According to Pew Research, there will be 127 million Hispanics here by mid-century, tripling today’s 45 million – and almost 100 million new immigrants. No nation faces a graver threat from this resurgence of ethnonationalism than does our own.
Look homeward, America.

Um, Pat... first off, what evidence do you have that all those millions of Hispanics are united towards any common goal other than jobs and living conditions? Second, I like that Hispanics "and new immigrants" are both seen and treated as vague omnipresent threats against America without you ever bothering to explain why. If all those different immigrants come from different places, there is no reason to assume that they will be motivated by ethnic nationalism one way or the other. This is just a rehash of the Nativist song and dance spewed 100-plus years ago about some "horde" or another attacking America's shores. Amazingly, those racist bozos were wrong. Given reasons and opportunities, immigrants will become Americans, and Americanized. Notice that this does not mean that all Americans can, or should, become the same.

One last one. Yes, it gets worse. Back in January, plugging the same professor, Pat claimed that Obama's view of a post-racial America might actually lead to the dissilution of the union and possible race war:

Barack won the African-American vote 97 percent to 3 percent over John McCain, and 90 percent to 10 percent over Hillary Clinton in the later primaries. McCain ran stronger than George W. Bush only in Appalachia, the laager of the Scots-Irish.

So... we can therefore conclude that only the Scots-Irish still see themselves as white? Or could it be that those sneaky German-Americans were really energetic in pulling for "their" candidate, seeing as he descends from Stuttgart emigres? Doesn't Obama's election (made only possible by many, many white voters casting their ballots for him) suggest that, at least in at this point in America, ethnic background may not be the primary concern when it comes to elections for higher office?

In Jerry Z. Muller’s “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,” in Foreign Affairs, his thesis is summarized:
“...Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.”
Disaggregation or partition, the man said.
Are we really in a post-racial America, or is our multicultural multiethnic America, too, destined for Balkanization and break-up?

No, because he said that this only happens when ethnic nationalism CAPTURES THE IMAGINATION of members of that society. So unless we start seeing large groups of Americans declaring individual states "Blackville", "Casa del Second Generation Hondurans" or "Scots-Irish Free State", I don't think we have much to worry about, as much as you enjoy being an alarmist crank.

Sorry to break it to you, Pat, but yes, the days of "Americans" being synonymous with "WASPs" are over (actually, they never really existed). And it happened a long time ago. If the Founders had wanted to stay "pure" and European, they should have all stayed on the East Coast and build a little wall around themselves, stopped having sex with Indians, stopped bringing over slaves, and oh yeah, stopped admitting immigrants in. Then we could be pure like Greenland. But shucks, that's not the way things turned out. You can whine about it, but the fight is long over. And, psst! For the record, we're better for it.

More 'dangers of a multi-ethnic state' hogwash

From everyone's favorite mutt:

Muller contends that this is a myth, that peace came to the Old Continent only after the triumph of ethnonationalism, after the peoples of Europe had sorted themselves out and each achieved its own home.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three multi-ethnic empires in Europe: the Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian. The ethnonationalist Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 tore at the first.
World War I was ignited by Serbs seeking to rip Bosnia away from Austria-Hungary. After four years of slaughter, the Serbs succeeded, and ethnonationalism triumphed in Europe.
Out of the dead Ottoman Empire came the ethnonationalist state of Turkey and an ethnic transfer of populations between Ankara and Athens. Armenians were massacred and expelled from Turkey.
Out of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires came Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In the latter three nations, however, a majority ethnic group ruled minorities that wished either their own national home, or to join lost kinsmen.
In Poland, there were Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians and Jews. In Czechoslovakia, half the population was German, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Ruthenian or Jewish. In Yugoslavia were Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Albanians.
The Second World War came out of Hitler's attempt to unite all Germans in one ethnonational home – thus the Anschluss with Austria, the demand for return of the Sudeten Deutsch, and the pressure on Poland to return the Germans' lost city of Danzig, and for Lithuania to give back German Memel and the Memelland it seized in 1923.
World War II advanced the process in the most horrible of ways.
The Jews of Europe, with no national home, perished, or fled to create one, in Israel. The Germans of the Baltic states, Prussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and their own eastern provinces, almost to Berlin, were expelled in the most brutal act of ethnic cleansing in history – 13 million to 15 million Germans, of whom 2 million perished in the exodus.
At the end of World War II, Europe's nations were more ethnically homogenous than they had ever been, at a horrendous cost in blood.
After 45 years of Cold War, the remaining multi-ethnic states – the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – broke up into more than two dozen nation-states, all rooted in ethnonationlism.
...Perhaps the wisest counsel for the United States may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.
And we should look to our own land. According to Pew Research, there will be 127 million Hispanics here by mid-century, tripling today's 45 million – and almost 100 million new immigrants. No nation faces a graver threat from this resurgence of ethnonationalism than does our own.

Pat, most of you will recall, is more mixed than a double chocolate Ovaltine, but presumably this doesn't matter because all of his Hun/Celtic forebears were white. Well, sort of.

Incidentally, isn't the Hispanic separatist movement most prevalent among Mexicans? I have a hard time understanding how someone from Honduras or Puerto Rico is going to seriously claim that they have some ancestral connection to Arizona or Texas. And if uber-ethnonationalism is so extreme (precluding even longtime regional neighbors like Basques and Spaniards or Serbs and Croats from coexisting), I'm not sure how it fits in with Pat's alarmist specter of massive (and supposedly unified) Hispanic hordes. The Hispanic community is no less monolithic- or, it seems, organized- than the Germans or Irish were before them ("You're from County Kerry? I'm from County Cork, you bastard! Now where did I leave my gun...?").

If anything, ethnonationalism should help split up the greater Hispanic separatist movement by reminding Hispanics that there's no place in a pure Atzlan for those dirty Guatemalans.

Can't have it both ways, Patty.

WND idiot round-up

At this point it's just so predictable:

- Pat Buchanan defends a scientist who says Africa's problems are related to the fact that blacks' IQs aren't as high. Responding to the professor's "recantation", Buchanan opines:

In the England of Henry VIII, heretics were beheaded and their heads put on spikes. Many men, like Thomas More, did not recant.

From the time of Tiberias to the 17th century, men gave up their lives rather than renounce a belief in God. Others gave up their lives rather than renounce a disbelief in the Church. Why could Watson not stand up for his disbelief in the ideological myth of the inherent equality of all men, cultures, creeds and civilizations?

Maybe because he isn't a numskull like Pat Buchanan? Yeah, prof, how dare you, like, realize that you said something bone-headed and apologize for it!

- David Limbaugh, Rush's slightly less-obnoxious (and, by comparison, considerably more attractive) brother, decides he doesn't like Christopher Hitchens. Some of Limbaugh's points are decent- it is, in fact, incorrect to say all religions are basically the same (when was the last time the Quakers launched a jihad?), and it is particularly moronic to attribute evils committed in the Soviet Union as another indication of religion's perniciousness by arguing that its secular totalitarianism was sort of like a religion by venerating heads-of-state.

On the other hand, Limbaugh is an idiot:

Hitchens sets up a straw man when he says it's "contemptible" for people to maintain that their religion is good in providing comfort to people – for example, in times of personal loss – even if their religion isn't true. I know of no Christians who make this argument. To the contrary, Christianity provides comfort precisely because it is true and allows a personal relationship with an eternal, omni-benevolent God.

Yeah, good luck proving that one.

Limbaugh's abilities to talk without bothering to think are really at their best when he gets into Christ dying for mankind's sins:

Hitchens rejects that he is responsible for Christ's flogging and crucifixion, in which he had no say and no part. He rejects that Christ's agony was necessary to compensate for the sin of Adam, of which he also had no part.

The Original Sin Doctrine has always bothered me a bit, too. But it's hard to deny in light of the human condition, which only the biblical worldview accurately describes. This condition also renders the secular humanist's utopian belief in the perfectibility of man to be the kind of wishful thinking at which Hitchens' derisively scoffs. Whether or not you believe man is condemned for Adam's sins, doesn't the universality of our own personal sins make the matter moot?

Not if you don't believe human fallibility is the same thing as immortal sin, numnutz. Oh, and there's no original sin in Judaism, Dave. Nice try, though.

I respectfully suggest that Hitchens is looking at this backward. We are not condemned for Christ's death but for our own sinfulness. Christ's death and resurrection are not our condemnation. They are our avenue to deliverance.

Hey there friend, I've got some good news for you! You don't know it, but it turns out that brown is an evil color and every time you wear it, you anger the Supreme Banana-Split in the sky. Luckily, you can get out of this through a special avenue to deliverance, wearing a uranium crown shaped like Elvis Prestley's butt, conveniently available at my online store. What? I can't believe you don't find this convincing! You jerk.

Hitchens apparently believes skepticism is a badge of intelligence and reserved for nonbelievers, yet many believers have their fair share of it, too. They don't fear it; they embrace it, as working through it invigorates rather than undermines their faith.

While Hitchens mocks the faith of Christians in "myths," Christians believe their faith is strongly supported by evidence. Hitchens wholly ignores that evidence as well as the great leaps of faith antitheists must take to assume away the limitations of science and naturalism in explaining man's origins.

Let's review: Skepticism, good; claiming evidence that can't be proven and then getting mad when people pointing it out, bad.

Also, antitheists? Ow, ow, ow.

(There's more, from another WND numnutz. I'm too bored to poke this one. Enjoy.)
- WND decides to endorse populism, sort of, kind of. First it champions a Michigan town that is voting on whether or not to have a Nativity display:

Former Mayor Fraser, in a letter prepared to city residents, said such traditions should be preserved.

"Of course, it's fair to ask … why in the world does Berkley have to go to all the trouble of having a ballot measure and running a campaign just so we can keep our Nativity scene at city hall where it's been for generations?" she wrote. "Especially when neighboring communities such as Birmingham, Clawson, Madison Heights, Troy, Southfield, and Warren display Nativity scenes at their city halls each Christmas as they always have. Some of these communities include religious symbols to celebrate Hanukah during this season as well."

Simply because of the ACLU, she said.

"Putting the issue on the ballot lets the people who live here in Berkley decide – not ACLU lawyers – but rather, We The People, you and I, and our families... Nearly a thousand of us who actually live in Berkley signed the petition that put keeping our Nativity scene on the ballot, and now over a hundred Berkley residents have felt strongly enough about voting 'yes' to contribute financially," Halloran said. "It's clear that citizens of Berkley feel strongly about voting 'yes' to keep our Nativity where it's traditionally been and saying that those of us who actually live here get to decide, not ACLU Grinches from Detroit."

Yeah, in your face, Detroit!

Something tells me that Devil's Asshole, Michigan, population 15,000, is probably going to have a pretty sizeable tilt towards the Nativity display. Of course, the problem with this is that the whole idea of legal watchdog groups is to stand up for the minority, especially in an area where they're feeling persecuted. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but the idea that the best response to a legal challenge is to put the issue to a popular vote seems to miss the point. When things go the way WND wants, we're supposed to shrug and call it Federalism. Funny thing, though, is that while WND is championing the power of the popular vote, they're also freaking out at "The Rise of Atheist America"- and somehow I doubt that they're going to "respect" liberal and/or atheist communities who decide they don't want religious, or specifically Christian, symbols, around them.

- Joe Farah has a "scary Halloween Quiz" where he tries to demonstrate that Hillary Clinton is a bigger Commie than Marx. (Seasoned readers will remember that is old hat for WND.) Farah gets extra weirdo points by also including prominent Nazis as options. Maybe my ignorance is showing, but I don't recall Mussolini or Idi Amin representing themselves as champions of Democracy. Money quote: "As you're watching Freddy Krueger movies tonight or answering the doorbell for the little ghouls and goblins, consider how close America is to turning over the reins of power to a real monster." Got that? Bush is pushing through an Attorney General nominee who can't decide if water boarding is torture, but Hillary's a monster because she thinks there might be some merit to taxing the rich. Be afraaaid!

- Guess who doesn't like porn? WND says pornography causes brain damage. But wait, there's more, conveniently placed in list form:

Jill Manning, a former visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, charted the cost in a paper she presented to a special U.S. Senate subcommittee. Her review of the peer-reviewed research reveals that children who consume pornography tend to:

• Develop tolerance toward sexually explicit material, thereby requiring more novel or bizarre material to achieve the same level of arousal or interest.
• Overestimate the prevalence of less common sexual practices (e.g., group sex, bestiality and sadomasochistic activity).
• Abandon the goal of sexual exclusivity with a partner.
• Perceive promiscuity as a normal state of interaction.
• Develop cynical attitudes about love.
• Believe that raising children and having a family is an unattractive prospect.
• Develop a negative body image, especially for women.

Are you kidding? Cynical attitudes about love? Have you MET teenagers? Not want to have kids, heaven forbid! And a negative body image, wow, it's not like they encounter any of those by say, turning on the television or picking up a magazine.

Ah, WND. Without you, I don't know what I'd do. Probably get more done, though.

Flogging Dead Koreans

Apparently today was supposed to be blog of silence day. Sholom has more, including the reasons why he thinks this is horsecrap.

Following his lead, I once again feel the need to yell about VTech- or rather, more BS the right is throwing at it.

Pat Buchanan, take it away.

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would be heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

Pat, are you high? You're half German and a quarter Scots-Irish and Irish each. Does that make you an alien? Cho was a legal immigrant to this country, and there's no suggestion that the fact that he was an immigrant was what set him off. His whole family had the same status as him, and I don't know of any information that suggests they hated America. Besides, Cho came here at age eight. How do you know if he hated America then?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

People said the same thing about the Irish in the 1800s and Jews in the 1900s, Patty. Just because you think so doesn't make it true.

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.

What immigrants AREN'T strangers? It's a new country with new customs and, in all likelihood, a new language. Am I missing something here?

To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas – ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: "Who is this guy? What's the matter with him?"
Teachers would have taken action to get him help – or get him out.

That's bullcrap, Pat. The fact is that America is a huge country with a large population. Add new technology and an influx of people to urban centers and you're going to have cultural alienation and a breakdown of community. That's just how it goes. Not only that, your conception of peoplehood and community is flawed. Even a supposedly ethnically homogenous country like England or Germany still has all sorts of divisions based on geographical, cultural and linguistic differences (watch a soccer game sometime if you don't believe me).Furthermore, there were violent rampages before 1970. Like, say, Bath School (1927), Howard Unruh (1949), Charles Starkweather (1957), the University of Texas (1965), and Richard Speck (1966).

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

As I said, Pat, go to England, go to Germany, go to Scandinavia. There are always differences and rivalries within cultures. Besides, that's like saying that Italian-Americans and German-Americans can never get along because they have nothing in common. This is just crap. Faith? That's hysterical considering how much infighting there's been in America between Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Protestants against each other, not to mention various outsider groups like Mormons, Amish, Quakers, etc. Music? Are you serious? Yeah, if only we all could learn to appreciate waltzes, military marches and country music that would fix everything. If you think music is going to fix the problem of immigrants not assimilating, you're really off your rocker.

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation.

And? Don't they have that right? Why is this not ok? Who decided the melting pot was the only legitimate model?

And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here.

Prove it!

The 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the killers of 9-11 were all immigrants or illegals.

First, an illegal is not the same as an immigrant, Pat. Even a moron like you should be able to understand the difference here. And those guys were terrorists whose goal was to infiltrate the United States as a strategic maneuver to inflict damage. That's not even close to coming here and then "going berserk."

Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican who massacred six and wounded 19 in an anti-white shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad, was an illegal. John Lee Malvo, the Beltway Sniper, was flotsam from the Caribbean.
Angel Resendez, the border-jumping rapist who killed at least nine women, was an illegal alien. Julio Gonzalez, who burned down the Happy Land social club in New York, killing 87, arrived in the Mariel boatlift.
Ali Hassan Abu Kama, who wounded seven, killing one, in a rampage on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, was a Palestinian. As was Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy.
The rifleman who murdered two CIA employees at the McLean, Va., headquarters was a Pakistani. When Chai Vang, a Hmong, was told by a party of Wisconsin hunters to vacate their deer stand, he shot six to death. Peter Odighizuwa, the gunman who killed the dean, a teacher and a student at the Appalachian School of Law, was a Nigerian.
Hesham Hadayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, killing two and wounding four, was an Egyptian immigrant. Gamil al-Batouti, the copilot who yelled, "I put my faith in Allah's hands," as he crashed his plane into the Atlantic after departing JFK Airport, killing 217, was an Egyptian.
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the UNC graduate who ran his SUV over nine people on Chapel Hill campus and said he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," was an Iranian.
Juan Corona, who murdered 25 people in California to be ranked with the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, was a Mexican.
Where does one find such facts? On VDARE.com, a website that covers the dark side of diversity covered up by a politically correct media, which seem to believe it is socially unhealthy for us Americans to see any correlation at all between mass migrations and mass murder.

Nice cherry-picked stats, Pat. Of course, anyone willing to do a basic google search will quickly discover that us Native Americans aren't too shabby in the killing each other department. What about other mass murders that "real" Americans committed? Like the Amish schoolhouse murders, or all those postal workers, or all those school shootings in the 80s and 90s, or Hastings Arthur Wise, or Brenda Ann Spencer or Mark Barton or James Pough or Theodore Strelski or John List or Brian Uyesugi? (Wait, are we counting Hawaiians as Americans? What about American Indians?) Are you really going to blame this all on immigrants? What about other serial killers, like Bundy or Gacy? What is this supposed to prove, exactly?

are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore Roosevelt called "a polyglot boarding house for the world"?

The two have nothing to do with each other, Pat. There will always be crazies, there will always be assholes, and there will always be criminals. The BS factor comes in when you try to act as if the problem is with crazy berserker immigrants instead of us lilly-white "real" Americans, a position particularly ironic since the original Nativists would have run a kraut-mick like yourself out of town as soon as look at you.

Get a clue, Pat.