In particular, people more knowledgeable about immigration issues, and the right wing scare tactics and lies which are being passed around on email lists to conservatives.
Why? Because my Dad asked me to respond to the following screed he received in the mail from one of his neighbors which paints a picture of an America being overrun by the brown menace (text below the fold).
My father is a very intelligent man (Ph.D in math), but as he’s gotten older, and his contact with younger people with diverse backgrounds and opinions has become increasingly limited, he’s slowly been turning to the hard right, echoing the sentiments of those older people (Fox News’ strongest demographic) with whom he now primarily associates. So, I want to give him the best, fact-based reply that I can to this piece of pure neo-fascist propaganda:
(cont.)
Subject: FW: American Suicide ……Very Sobering
…… Makes sense!We know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado.
In that his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last
week there was an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of America ‘s finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor by the name of Victor Hansen Davis talked about his latest book, “Mexifornia,” explaining how immigration – both legal and illegal was destroying the entire state of California . He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream. Moments later, former Colorado
Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America . The audience sat spell bound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, “If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that ‘An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'”“Here is how they do it,” Lamm said:
“First, to destroy America, turn America into a
bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country.”
History shows that no nation can survive the tension,
conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing
languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an
individual to be bilingual; However, it is a curse
for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar,
Seymour Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of
bilingual and bicultural societies that do not
assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and
tragedy.” Canada , Belgium , Malaysia , and Lebanon
all face crises of national existence in which
minorities press for autonomy, if not independence.
Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed
an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with
Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans. “Lamm went on:
Second, to destroy America , “Invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. Make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. Make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.
Third, “We could make the United States an ‘Hispanic
Quebec’ without much effort. The key is to celebrate
diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said
in the Atlantic Monthly recently: “The apparent success of our own multi-ethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” Lamm said, “I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America enforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities.”“Fourth, I would make our fastest grow ing demographic
group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school.”“My fifth point for destroying America would be to get
big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of ‘Victimology.’ I would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority
population.”“My sixth plan for America ‘s downfall would include
dual citizenship, and promote divided loyalties. I
would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress
differences rather than similarities. Diverse people
worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other –
that is, when they are not killing each other. A
di verse, peaceful, or stable society is against most
historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it
takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient
Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the
same race; they possessed a common language and
literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All
Greece took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy,
Persia , threatened their liberty. Yet all these
bonds were not strong enough to overcome two factors:
local patriotism and geographical conditions that
nurtured political divisions. Greece fell. “E.
Pluribus Unum” — From many, one. In that historical
reality, if we put the emphasis on the ‘pluribus’
instead of the ‘Unum,’ we will balkanize America as
surely as Kosovo.”“Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits;
make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult
of ‘diversity.’ I would find a word similar to
‘heretic’ in the 16th century – that stopped
discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like ‘racist’
or ‘xenophobe’ halt discussion and debate. Having
made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having
established multi-culturism, having the large
foundations fund the doctrine of ‘Victimology,’ I
would next make it impossible to enforce our
immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That
because immigration has been good for America , it
must always be good. I would make every individual
immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact
of millions of them.”In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped
his brow. Profound silence followed. Finally he said,
“Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis’s book
“Mexifornia.” His book is dangerous. It exposes the
plan to destroy America . If you feel America
deserves to be destroyed, don’t read that book.”There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose
like an ominous cloud above every attendee at th e
conference. Every American in that room knew that
everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding
methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across
the United States today. Discussion is being
suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the
foundation of our educational system and national
cohesiveness. Even barbaric cultures that practice
female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate
‘diversity.’ American jobs are vanishing into the
Third World as corporations create a Third World in
America – take note of California and other states –
to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast.
It is reminiscent of George Orwell’s book “1984.” In
that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry
of Truth building: “War is peace,” “Freedom is
slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.”Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on
everyone at the conference that our nation and the
future of this great democracy is deeply in trouble
and worsening fast. If we don’t get this immigration
monster stopped within three years, it will rage like
a California wildfire and destroy everything in its
path especially The American Dream.
I’ve quickly sent my father this book review of Hansen’s book Mexifornia …
It is not surprising that Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, has transformed him into the new darling of the anti-immigrant movement. Unencumbered by the references, footnotes, facts and figures which clutter most books about immigration, Hanson relies largely upon personal anecdotes and emotional tirades to create a pastiche of fearful imagery: unassimilated Mexican hordes overrunning California, rampantly breeding entire generations of gang bangers and welfare recipients, goaded on by corrupt Mexican elites and U.S. multiculturalists awaiting the rise of a new Chicano nation in the southwestern United States. In general, Hanson’s arguments are wildly inconsistent, informed more by stereotype than substance, and characterized by a remarkable unfamiliarity with Mexican history and culture. Despite his experience as a historian and professor of classics, Hanson’s primary qualifications on the topic of Mexican immigration seem to be that he knows a lot of Mexicans and has worked on a farm. As a result, Mexifornia is a confused, confusing and often bizarre diatribe by one angry, frightened man rather than a meaningful contribution to the immigration debate.
A notable feature of Hanson’s stream-of-consciousness style, and the fact that Mexifornia is admittedly “not an academic study with the usual extensive documentation,” is his propensity to contradict himself. As a result, the book often degenerates into an argument in search of a point. … He says Mexican immigrants are “industrious” and “hardworking,” sympathetically observing that many become “wounded veterans of some of the hardest jobs in America,” but – in explaining the “superiority” of the United States over Mexico – notes that the United States doesn’t have a siesta and that Americans ‘live to work’ while Mexicans ‘work to live.’
To the extent a unifying theme can be discerned in the rambling text of Mexifornia, it is that the rise of multiculturalism has consigned undocumented immigrants and their children to “ethnic enclaves of the mind and barrios of the flesh,” where they become part of an “underclass” dependent on government subsidies. For Hanson, the multicultural ideology propagated by “liberals and ethnic activists,” who seek out the undocumented immigrant “as a future ‘progressive’ voter or as another statistic in their loyal ranks of needy constituents,” has been “the force-multiplier of illegal immigration from Mexico,” turning “a stubborn problem of assimilation into a social tragedy stretching across generations.” In Hanson’s view, the varied manifestations of multiculturalism – “de facto open borders, bilingual education, new state welfare programs, the affirmation of a hyphenated identity, a sweeping revisionism in southwestern American history” – have “either failed to ensure economic parity or thwarted the process of assimilation” at the expense of “old methods that worked,” such as “language immersion, autonomy from government assistance, rapid assumption of an American identity, and eager acceptance of mainstream American culture.” As a result, the “social costs of having so many who turn so criminal, remain uneducated, and need highly trained doctors and professionals to clean up their mess has become exasperating.” Hanson thus offers up California as a stark example to other states that are “slowly walking the path that leads to Mexisota, Utexico, Mexizona or even Mexichusetts – a place that is not quite Mexico and not quite America either.”
In keeping with his tendency to undermine his own arguments, Hanson provides evidence to refute his central thesis that Mexican immigrants, in contrast to previous waves of immigrants, are failing to integrate into U.S. society and move up the socioeconomic ladder. He states that between 1995 and 2000, Hispanic income increased “faster than that of any other minority group – as a virtually new class of assimilated and affluent Mexican-Americans arose.” He notes that, despite relatively high drop-out rates, a majority of Mexican Americans graduate from high school, which “implies that every year, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are entering the work force in occupations other than menial labor and slowly finding their way into the mainstream, to join earlier immigrants in the American middle and upper classes.” Yet, inexplicably, he sees this as evidence that “the old assimilationist model…is working efficiently for only a minority of new immigrants.”
The disparities in average earnings and educational attainment between Mexican American and Anglo Californians are indeed urgent social problems. However, as a 2003 Rand Corporation study points out, statistical snapshots of the Latino population at any one point in time shed little light on Latino socioeconomic progress across generations. The study found that “Each new Latino generation not only has had higher incomes than their forefathers, but their economic status converged toward the white men with whom they competed.” This has occurred because “each successive generation has been able to close the schooling gap with native whites which then has been translated into generational progress in incomes.” For instance, Mexican men born during 1895-1899 who immigrated to the United States “earned 55 percent as much as native white men over their lifetimes. When their American-born sons competed in the labor market, their lifetime wage gap averaged 23 percent. By the time their grandsons worked, the Mexican wage gap averaged 16 percent.” Similarly, Mexican men born during 1905–1909 who immigrated to the United States averaged “4.3 years of school. Their American-born sons, with 9.4 years, doubled their schooling, and their grandsons were high-school graduates.”
In a related vein, a 2002 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that “only 7% of second generation Latinos are Spanish dominant, while the rest are divided between those who are bilingual (47%) and those who are English dominant (46%).” The survey also found that “Among foreign-born parents, 45% say their children communicate with their friends predominantly in English and another 32% say their children use both English and Spanish equally. Just 18% of immigrant parents say that their children only speak Spanish with their friends.” This is hardly evidence of “the stubborn resistance to assimilation” Hanson so laments. […]
Hanson’s solution to the perceived woes of Mexican immigration is “to adopt sweeping restrictions on immigration and put an end to separatist ideology.” This would be accomplished through “a domestic Marshall Plan” that imbues immigrants with “the norms and values of traditional education,” together with a “fortification and a militarization of sorts” at the border. NOTE 35 How Hanson would stamp out ideologies he finds offensive without repealing the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, is unclear. Precisely how he would create the equivalent of a Demilitarized Zone separating the United States from its second largest trading partner, particularly given the ties with Mexico fostered since 1994 by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), also remains unspecified. Hanson notes that “Under conditions of strict legality, illegal immigrants would have to be deported immediately,” but doesn’t acknowledge the social, political and economic chaos in both the United States and Mexico that would result if millions of undocumented immigrants, many with deep U.S. roots and most with U.S.-citizen family members, were summarily rounded up and dumped on the other side of the border. Nor does he say how any of this would contribute to improving economic conditions in the Mexican communities from which immigrants originate. Instead, Hanson simply says that, under his recommended solution, “our present problems would vanish almost immediately.”
In spite of – or perhaps because of – Mexifornia’s intellectual vacuity, it is being championed by anti-immigrant activists. For instance, Representative Tom Tancredo (R-6th /CO), chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, has praised the book as “fascinating,” “compelling” and “really well written,” with a “powerful” argument against multiculturalism. NOTE 38 However, in truth, Hanson abandons any pretense of scholarship, objectivity or even academic professionalism in Mexifornia. He doesn’t check his facts, repeatedly contradicts his own arguments, indulges his fears rather than his intellect, and ultimately establishes his authority as an author by reciting a litany of his friends and family of Mexican descent. However, as with so many statements that begin “Some of my best friends are Mexican, but…,” the results are predictable. [endnotes omitted]
… but I know I will need more. So, can those of you with greater knowledge of these issues help me out by pointing me to articles on the web (your own or others) which can help me convince my father his neighbor’s email is total bull-puckey? I would be forever in your debt if you can help.
Thanks,
Steven D
