Speckled inexorable
Mass immigration makes the United States increasingly “diverse”. Now Daniel Henninger, a member of the open borderist Wall Street Journal editorial collective and a supporter of mass immigration, has discovered:
Henninger doesn’t limit himself to diagnosing the problem, he offers a simple remedy:
Henninger closes with a figure of speech I like to call the sad touché followed by cliché:
“People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. “Social capital” erodes. Diversity has a downside.”What’s to be done? Henninger suggests:
“What's needed now is for a younger black, brown or polka-dot writer to recast the idea in a way that restores the worth and utility of assimilation. Somebody had better do it soon; the first chart offered in the Putnam study depicts inexorably rising rates of immigration in many nations.”He recognizes we are already at the point where certain arguments won’t be fairly heard unless advanced by non-whites (notice the absurd inclusion of a “polka-dot writer”, done to maintain the pretense race never matters, even when it’s being argued race matters). He recognizes the situation is only going to get worse. But instead of making the sane conclusion, that immigration restrictions should be enacted, he believes:
“The idea that the U.S. can wave into effect a 10-year "time out" on immigration flows is as likely as King Canute commanding the tides to recede.”Because unlike the modest projects the WSJ supports, like creating democracy in Iraq (where democracy never existed), more immigration is “inexorable” and limiting immigration is impossible (even though it’s been done before), so give up (when it comes to immigration, the WSJ thinks conservatives should stand athwart history saying “What’s the use?”).
Henninger doesn’t limit himself to diagnosing the problem, he offers a simple remedy:
“My own model for the way forward in a 21st century American society of unavoidable ethnic multitudes is an old one, a phrase found nowhere in the Putnam study or any commentary on it: the middle class. Its assimilating virtues may be boring, but it works, if you work at getting into it.”In other words, all that needs to be done to assimilate the “ethnic multitudes” into the middle class is for the “ethnic multitudes” to assimilate themselves into the middle class.
Henninger closes with a figure of speech I like to call the sad touché followed by cliché:
“Of course Hillary Clinton believes this can't happen here because the middle class has been "invisible" to George Bush. As with diversity, progress is always just beyond the horizon.”QED, and so too is the land of the polka-dot people.
We need a black or brown writer to carry the white man's burden. I picture a bunch of neocons in safari outfits with a poor black trailing behind them carrying a Wal-Mart on his back.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, a writer? In what era does this guy live? Hell, a Mexican hockey player would probably have even a better shot in this day and age.
king S.
That’s a common one with parts (usually on the "Right") of the we-can’t-stop-immigration crowd: we can and must solve some other problem for its combination with immigration will destroy us all. And yet, though they never admit it—never even recognize that there’s a question—the other problem is always far more intractable than immigration.
ReplyDeleteIt's often the welfare state and public schools and whatnot. Yes, immigration is costly for them, but the problem is with those things. Oh, okay then. Just scrap the whole welfare state. Just pull out of the entire modern social democratic era. A much more level-headed way to do it than trying something impossible like restricting immigration.
And here’s the other big one—ethnic tension and immigration will undo us but fortunately there’s no problem with diversity that we can’t solve by writing a lot of columns about how everyone should get along. Immigration is unstoppable so we’ll just have to change human nature.
"Oh, okay then. Just scrap the whole welfare state."
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing resoning by them, isn't it? They plan on getting rid of the welfare state after importing tens of millions of people more in favor of it politically and more predisposed to use it.
"there’s no problem with diversity that we can’t solve by writing a lot of columns"
And yet Danny recognizes immigrants won't listen to his columns, because he's a honky. You think this would concern him a bit.