Matthew Yglesias (June 01, 2007) - O'Reilly on the Power Structure (Media)

Boo, hoo, poor Bill, eternally frightened that the women-folk and darkies won't always take his commands.

Posted by El Cid | June 1, 2007 12:55 PM

On the other hand, at this point in time there's really nothing more cliché and, frankly, a little churlish than Jews and white Catholics teaming up to offer unflattering portrayals of the old regime elite we've displaced.

Only racists say things like this.

Posted by joe dokes | June 1, 2007 12:58 PM

Man, what a douchebag.

Posted by too many steves | June 1, 2007 1:17 PM

Media Matters is just another shill for the left. How dare they quote Papa Bear! You guys act like people need to be held accountable for the things they say. Poppycock!

Posted by Max | June 1, 2007 1:20 PM

Joe Dokes seems to be confused. It's not racist to point out that American politics used to be dominated by WASP men, but isn't so much anymore. That's simply a statement of fact. What's racist is thinking this change is a bad thing.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 1, 2007 1:21 PM

I happened to catch that particular bit on O’Reilly last night.

I’m no great fan of his or am I capable of a O’Reilly “apologetics.”

Howe ever, in his defense (& McCain’s) I see this kind of remark in what I believe his context to be.

Obviously academic leftists in particular and leftists in general talk about “white male power structures” I don’t subscribe to such notions myself , however in as much as they have some veracity it should be legitimate to defend “what is called” the “white male power structure” inasmuch as it is also considered proper to condemn it.

I think O’Reilly is getting at the idea that Anglo-Saxon European heritage (i.e- the culture we live in right now) is being specifically targeted as WORTHY of destruction by members of the pro-immigration left.(rhetorically more than actually in my opinion)

He is merely using their terminology as short hand for a culture he thinks A) is not oppressive B) has multiple commendable features worthy of preservation & emulation.

Posted by Fitz | June 1, 2007 1:27 PM

Man, what a douchebag.

Did you mean O'Reilly or joe dokes? Cause I was thinking the latter. Been saving that one for a while, have you joe? Pathetic. Here's a tip: Observing that different groups' relative power in society has changed isn't racist (or sexist). Claiming that one particular group is entitled to stay on top -- that is.

Posted by Ryan | June 1, 2007 1:28 PM

What's funny about this is O'Reilly's failure to understand that he's not meant to think out loud, and should instead follow the Dobbs route of dog-whistle politics and badly-sourced scare stories from white supremacists.

Still, as I elsethread elsethread, it just shows that it takes three generations for immigrants to assimilate, and four to turn them into Know-Nothing nativists. Is it rude to cite Blazing Saddles?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 1, 2007 1:39 PM

I admire O’Reillys courage in taking on the Secular Left (his term SP’s – I prefer the New Class, or simply Intellectuals)

One particular ugly feature of this debate for immigration restriction-ists is that if someone like O’Reilly talked about defending American Culture, of European American culture one would be “exposed” as “really” defending the “white male Christian power structure.” So your damned if you do & damned if you don’t.

Instead of dealing with all the discombobulated minutia of this discussion, O’Reilly simply accepts the Lefts crude characterization & defends it.

Posted by Fitz | June 1, 2007 1:47 PM

I like how he says he's calculated the number of foreign nationals who will come to America in the next 12-13 years at somewhere around 40 to 50 million. I sure would like to see those calculations.

Also, you know what? At least O'Reilly is honest about being a racist fuckhead.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 1, 2007 1:54 PM

so I think Fitz is basically trying to say that O'Reilly is trying to do to "wmCps" what queers did to "queer", i.e. take a slur and turn it around against the slurrers.

which i think is ridiculously inapposite, but in the interests of mutual understanding etc.

Posted by progga | June 1, 2007 1:54 PM

I wonder how John McCain's "black" daughter Bridget reacted after hearing what her daddy said.

Posted by Dan the Man | June 1, 2007 2:12 PM

Welcome to your Southern Republican Party.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 1, 2007 2:20 PM

I admire O'Reillys courage in taking on the Secular Left

Is that because you feel O'Reilly is taking some major career risk, here, in the form of tangible retribution from the "Secular Left" or by alienating his audience in some way?

Posted by Constantine | June 1, 2007 2:29 PM

> McCain just kind of looks on meekly, seeing no need to object to the idea...

I believe I heard McCain SAY "I agree with you." That's not exactly "looks on meekly."

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 3:10 PM

O'Reilly never seems to comprehend that his grandparents and great-grandparents would have been part of the horde of "Others" coming into this country and "taking jobs from honest Americans". A century later we don't think about how Irish immigrants were treated, but they were the scum of the earth as far as the "white Christian male power structure" of the time was concerned.

Honestly, Irish-American Catholics who rail about preserving the "white Christian male power structure" need to be shoved in a time machine to 1870 to live like their grandparents lived when they came into this country.

Posted by NonyNony | June 1, 2007 3:43 PM

Fitz has a point. As does this WSJ reader responding to Peggy Noonan's essay:

"Taking a Stand
Ben A. Trujillo - Loveland, Colo.

Peggy Noonan writes what is in my heart. I voted for President Bush twice, but I am taking a stand on the immigration issue. In the future, I will always vote against any politician, Republican or Democrat, who supports this bill. As an American who happens to be Hispanic, I am insulted beyond measure to have my patriotism questioned and to be accused of bigotry because I want American culture protected. At least I am fluent in Spanish. Good luck to the rest of you!"

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 3:52 PM

I prefer the New Class, or simply Intellectuals

None of us are surprised to learn that a man who can't write coherent sentences dislikes "intellectuals."

Jewish Mexican transsexuals or something

Hot!

Posted by Flavor Flavius Julianus | June 1, 2007 3:55 PM

As an American who happens to be Hispanic, I am insulted beyond measure to have my patriotism questioned and to be accused of bigotry because I want American culture protected.

Known as the 'zealous convert syndrome'.

Posted by abb1 | June 1, 2007 3:59 PM

Expanding Fitz's and Ben Trujillo's point, allow me to quote from someone who folks probably feel is the devil incarnate. I'll break this up into three parts for easy reading. Here's Part 1:

"Americans — at least really stupid Americans like George Bush — believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy. On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration.

In fact, the natural state of the world is Darfur. The freakish aberration is America and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world.

The British Empire once spread the culture of prosperity around the globe — Judeo-Christian values, tolerance, equality, private property and the rule of law. All recipients of the British Empire's largesse benefited, but the empire's most successful colony was the United States.

At the precise moment in history when the U.S. has abandoned any attempt to transmit Anglo-Saxon virtues to its own citizens, much less to immigrants, George Bush wants to grant citizenship to hordes of immigrants who are here precisely because they are fleeing cultures that are utterly dysfunctional and ruinous for the humans who live in them..."

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:00 PM

Here's Part II:

"Until the recipient culture is capable of doing an effective job of Americanizing immigrants, it's preposterous to talk about a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants accomplishing anything other than turning America into yet another Latin American-style banana republic. And it is simply a fact that no one is trying to turn immigrants into Americans.

To the contrary, Democrats are trying to turn new immigrants into wards of the state — and with some success! — so they will be permanent Democratic voters. Rich Republicans and their handmaidens in Washington are trying to turn immigrants into a permanent servant class.

In an astonishing exchange on Fox News last weekend, Dan Henninger of The Wall Street Journal responded to Heather MacDonald's point that Hispanics in this country have a 50 percent illegitimacy rate, the highest teen pregnancy rate of any group and the highest high school drop-out rate of any group, by asking: "Why don't we feel we are under cultural assault in New York City? You have no sense of this at all here."

You also have no sense of the existence of a middle class in New York City. The rich have hidden the evidence, transplanting all but the massively wealthy to the suburbs. Manhattan is white and getting whiter, while the boroughs are noticeably less white and more dysfunctional."

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:02 PM

Oh, hi Fred. letting your Jones out a bit more, eh?

Hey Matt? This guy posting as "Fred" is the same one that your pal Ezra kicked off his site for being a despicable putz. He called himself "Fred Jones" over there, and he always acted like this--non-stop right-wing talking points.

I know you have a high tolerance for trolls, Matt, but ask your pal Ezra why he finally pulled the plug on Fred. It's 'cause Fred here reported another commenter to the FBI for remarks he made in a thread.

So, Matt? I'd say give this loser the boot, sooner rather than later.

Posted by progga | June 1, 2007 4:11 PM

Sorry for the delay, folks -- temporary power outage here. Here's Part III:

"What evidence is there for the proposition that American culture will leap like a tenacious form of tuberculosis to today's immigrants? Americans display no evident desire to defend their culture, much less transmit it, and immigrants show no evident desire to adopt it.

To the contrary, immigrants are replacing American culture with Latin American culture. Their apparent constant need to demonstrate is just one example.

As Mac Johnson wrote in Human Events last year, these immigrant protests represent "the colonization of America by the Latin style of politics." He listed just some of the demonstrations drawing thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of protesters over the last few years in Mexico alone. Among the targets of the protests were a new regional trade pact, plans to allow private investment in the state-owned electricity industry, energy and tax reforms, and support for the mayor of Mexico City.

In 1993 — long before 9/11, before the USS Cole bombing, before the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — the eminent Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington predicted that the greatest threat to Western civilization would come from a clash of civilizations, noting with particular concern the "bloody borders" of the Muslim world.

So it ought to be of some interest that Huntington is now predicting, in his book "Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity," that America cannot survive the cultural onslaught from Latin America.

American Hispanics responded to Huntington's book with a flurry of scholarly papers and academic debates to counter his thesis that Mexicans were not assimilating.
Just kidding! They called for national protests against Huntington, his publisher and Harvard University."

And this is the author.

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:16 PM

The British Empire once spread the culture of prosperity around the globe — Judeo-Christian values, tolerance, equality, private property and the rule of law.

You could have just stopped here. People who aren't nostalgic for the Age of Empire just aren't going to sign on to any of this.

Posted by Steve | June 1, 2007 4:22 PM

C'mon, Matt, you know perfectly well that lots and lots of supporters of mass immigration, especially on the neocon right, see it as a way to undermine the White Christian Male Power Structure that they were taught to resent from the cradle up.

For example, Tamar Jacoby, the leading neocon shill for the Cheap Labor lobby, sees mass immigration as revenge for the slights that her Aunt Bea experienced as an Ellis Island immigrant at the hands of "Anglo-Saxonists."

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/jacoby.htm

Granted, it's incredibly stupid for Jews to push for immigration policies that bring in more anti-Semites, but ethnic nostalgia -- the desire to refight the battles of a century ago -- runs very deep.

One encouraging sign lately is that a number of Jewish intellectuals have come around on immigration, such as Paul Krugman, Charles Krauthammer, and Stanley Kurtz.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 1, 2007 4:24 PM

I'll break this up into three parts for easy reading.

Or you could have just provided the fucking link rather than spamming (and infringing copyright). But no.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 1, 2007 4:24 PM

Progga:

More false accusations in an attempt to stifle debate? How pathetic. For anyone who's interested, in Progga's accusation and my response, see the comments thread to the When Conservatives Fight post.

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:25 PM

Steve:

"You could have just stopped here. People who aren't nostalgic for the Age of Empire just aren't going to sign on to any of this."

You could have stopped there, but you'd be missing the point, spectacularly. Most nations were spawned in the Age of Empire; the difference is the ones spawned by the Anglo-Saxon culture of British Empire have a far better track record of being stable, first world democracies (e.g., The U.S., Canada, Australia) than those spawned by the Spanish Empire (e.g., Mexico, most of the rest of Latin America) or the Portuguese Empire (Brazil, Angola, East Timor).

You don't have to "sign on" to living in an Anglo-Saxon derived, first world democracy -- you already do. The question is whether you want to maintain it.

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:36 PM

Steve:

"You could have just stopped here. People who aren't nostalgic for the Age of Empire just aren't going to sign on to any of this."

You could have stopped there, but you'd be missing the point, spectacularly. Most nations were spawned in the Age of Empire; the difference is the ones spawned by the Anglo-Saxon culture of British Empire have a far better track record of being stable, first world democracies (e.g., The U.S., Canada, Australia) than those spawned by the Spanish Empire (e.g., Mexico, most of the rest of Latin America) or the Portuguese Empire (Brazil, Angola, East Timor).

You don't have to "sign on" to living in an Anglo-Saxon derived, first world democracy -- you already do. The question is whether you want to keep living in one.

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:37 PM

As a real conservative, I'd never vote for McCain. He is a neoliberal / neocon wackjob, and he truly hates Western Civilization.

http://www.conservativeexodusproject.com/

I have proudly signed the Conservative Exodus Project, and I'll only vote for real conservatives.

Posted by Real Conservative | June 1, 2007 4:38 PM

I'm particularly impressed with Paul Krugman's transformation in this decade from being a mass immigration supporter of the most mindlessly "ethnic nostalgia" sort to a public skeptic.

Here's Krugman's old views:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/08/paul-krugman-punts-on-i-word-again.html

And here's where his 3/27/2005 column announcing his Doubts:

""Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," wrote Emma Lazarus, in a poem that still puts a lump in my throat. I'm proud of America's immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my grandparents fled Russia.

"In other words, I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.

"First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small.... Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration — especially immigration from Mexico."

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 1, 2007 4:41 PM

Pseudonymous:

"Or you could have just provided the fucking link rather than spamming (and infringing copyright). But no."

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Let's keep things civil here. Re copyright law: maybe we should just give amnesty to everyone who infringes on it, no? After all, what are we going to do, deport everyone who has infringed on copyright?

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 4:42 PM

"Welcome to your Southern Republican Party."

The best part is that he's from Long Island.

"The British Empire once spread the culture of prosperity around the globe — Judeo-Christian values, tolerance, equality, private property and the rule of law. All recipients of the British Empire's largesse benefited, but the empire's most successful colony was the United States."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. If this was true 1) there would have been no American Revolution (also remember that one of the great cultural artifacts that he wished to blame the British Empire for was slavery in the Americas, which made it into his first draft of the DOI) 2) the former colonial subjects wouldn't talk disparagingly of the British. Remember, our ideological allies in the Revolution were the French (think of the correspondences between Lafayette and Jefferson) or Irishmen in Britain like Burke. In much of Africa, it's considered fitting that a bathroom is also called a WC like Churchill. The British were a bunch of racist fucktards that didn't give a fuck about tolerance. Balfour tried to kick out all of the Jews. Churchill was proudly racist and believed in the International Jewish Conspiracy. This is a country that is still racist against other white people - the Irish. They put other white people in concentration camps in South Africa. That doesn't even touch the massacres of innocent Asians and Africans, going to war with China to force the Qing government to accept the influx of British-owned opium, etc. Only white people in the US and Britain still buy this shit.

Posted by Reality Man | June 1, 2007 4:44 PM

i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Fred = "Charlie" from Kevin Drum's site (who also used the name "Fred" for a while, among a dozen others). same posting style, same rhetoric, same pleading for civility while handing out insults, same tendency to get into multiple threads at once, same accusations of "trying to stifle debate", etc..

Posted by cleek | June 1, 2007 4:50 PM

Sidetracking the discussion by pointlessly accusing people of being someone else from another website may or may not be stifling debate, but it certainly is pointless and immature.

Posted by pjgoober | June 1, 2007 5:48 PM

Here is some interesting info from "Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality", by By Rubén G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales et al:
"Second Generation

Incarceration rates increase significantly for all US-born coethnics without exception. That is most notable for Mexicans, whose incarceration rate increases more than eightfold to 5.9 percent among the US born; for Vietnamese (from 0.46 to 5.6 percent among the US born); and for the Laotians and Cambodians (from 0.92 percent to 7.26 percent, the highest of any group except for native blacks)......[snip]

Thus, while incarceration rates are found to be extraordinarily low among immigrants, they are also seen to rise rapidly by the second generation. Except for the Chinese and Filipinos, the rates of all US-born Latin American and Asian groups exceed that of the referent group of non-Hispanic white natives."
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=403

This corraborates the Ann Coulter quote that Fred posted. There is something wrong with the assimilation process. We need to cut way back on immigration until we can fix it.

Posted by pjgoober | June 1, 2007 5:57 PM

I think the answer you're looking for is the War on Drugs.

Posted by Steve | June 1, 2007 6:10 PM

Matt,

People like John McCain and Ted Kennedy routinely work closely on immigration with the National Council of La Raza (i.e., "The Race"), which exists, to paraphrase you, to make sure that Mexican racial power is a primary aim of US public policy.

I look forward to your denunciation of that.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 1, 2007 6:15 PM

Fred, generally the preferred method here is excerpting a relevant paragraph out of an article and then linking to the rest. Just so you know, in case you're new to this own "web" thing.

Anyway, you excerpt this passage:

George Bush wants to grant citizenship to hordes of immigrants who are here precisely because they are fleeing cultures that are utterly dysfunctional and ruinous

Now, Fred, I'm not one to defend Bush, and for the record I find a lot of the immigration reform plans to be ridiculous. However, it should be obvious here that if immigrants are fleeing their countries because they are "ruinous" in favor of the USA, then clearly it stands to reason that they prefer the USA and the American system to that in their home country. Isn't that, you know, a good thing? The "dirty immigrants ruining our country with their foreign ways and foreign religions" has been used for so long, so often that I really just don't find the claims credible and don't see a reason why I should think that this time it's "different."

Posted by Constantine | June 1, 2007 6:29 PM

power = the power to determine morality.

Posted by Zagnut | June 1, 2007 7:07 PM

but it certainly is pointless and immature.

oh noes. i've been scolded by the maturity police.

Posted by cleek | June 1, 2007 7:15 PM

Steve Sailer:

"Granted, it's incredibly stupid for Jews to push for immigration policies that bring in more anti-Semites, but ethnic nostalgia -- the desire to refight the battles of a century ago -- runs very deep."

I'm not sure Jews would much worse off if the United States becomes more like Latin America (after importing tens of millions of more Latin Americans). Jews seem to have done OK in Brazil, and (as far as I know) in Mexico. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be a Jew in Venezuela right now. There are a few groups I think wouldn't be as happy in a more Mexican-ized United States:

1) Women seeking abortions. Latin Americans tend to be far less tolerant of abortion.

2) Gays. Homosexuality is not as accepted in Latin America as it is here.

3) Unskilled African Americans. Expect unemployment rates to go even higher for them. Right now, virtually any employer who can get away with hiring illegals prefers these docile workers over African Americans. For example, here in the New York area, we have plenty of blacks and plenty of illegal Mexican immigrants. I have never seen a black landscaper or busboy; however, I do see blacks working at the local Staples and Kinko's stores, and of course in government jobs (e.g., the DMV). What happens when 10 million+ newly legalized Mexicans start competing for jobs at Staples, Kinko's the DMV, etc.?

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 7:20 PM

Constantine:

"However, it should be obvious here that if immigrants are fleeing their countries because they are "ruinous" in favor of the USA, then clearly it stands to reason that they prefer the USA and the American system to that in their home country."

It certainly indicates that they would prefer to live here, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that they support American traditions and values (e.g., learning English, aspiring to own your own home, getting married before having kids, wanting your kids to do well in school, etc.).

"I really just don't find the claims credible and don't see a reason why I should think that this time it's "different."

There are a few reasons why you should think the pending wave of Mexican immigrants might be different than the Italians, Jews, and Poles who came through Ellis Island a century ago, but for lack of space and time, let's just focus on this one.

1) After four generations here, Mexican Americans have generally failed to assimilate into the middle class. For example consider these comparisons, as of 1990:

No High School Diploma - 41% of 4th generation Mexican American adults, 23.5% of non-Mexican Americans.

Owned home - 40.3% of 4th generation Mexican Americans, 64.1% of all Americans (including Mexican Americans).

Made more than $50k per year - 10.7% of 4th generation Mexican Americans, 24.8% of non-Mexican Americans.

All these stats are from "The Hispanic Challenge", Foreign Policy (free registration required), and are drawn largely from census data.

If history is any guide, the data above suggest that Mexican Americans come here poor and tend to stay poor, even after four generations in America. This, of course, hasn't been the trend with Jews, Italians, Poles, and Irish immigrants to America.

Posted by Fred | June 1, 2007 8:03 PM

Constantine

"Is that because you feel O'Reilly is taking some major career risk, here, in the form of tangible retribution from the "Secular Left" or by alienating his audience in some way?"

Neither really. Its his forays against "SPs” and into issues like immigration and his ability to just blather on and let it all hang out that impresses me.

The leftist intellectuals have laid such a perilous minefield for conservative thought in the form of political correctness that I admire anyone who just walks right into it. (Especially when they are on national television)

I can’t recall anyone pigeon holing the cultural left in such an abrupt manner before O’Reilly came on the scene.

Substantively I prefer more of a Bill Buckley approach- but I leave that for the written word. (or C-Span)

Posted by Fitz | June 1, 2007 8:12 PM

O'Reilly is losing viewers to Dobbs. End of Story.

Posted by Olberman | June 1, 2007 9:55 PM

Notice how above the reactionary racists failed to note that 1) most Mexican-Americans end up learning English (around 88% in the last census) and 2) by the third generation, Spanish is forgotten and American Latinos are monolingual English speakers.

"Thus, while incarceration rates are found to be extraordinarily low among immigrants, they are also seen to rise rapidly by the second generation."

Incarceration rates do not equal crime rates. For instance, FBI statistics of what they believe Latino crime rates are in reality compared to other races are much lower than the percentage of the incarcerated that are Latino. Racism, classism and regional attitudes (Texas, which has a lot of minorities has the highest incarceration rate of any sub-national state in the world) play a large role. So the problem is that first generation-ers still have lower overall incarceration rates than other Americans, but that this is higher than their parents'? This is somehow such a huge problem assimilation in America isn't working? Do you even know any children of immigrants? Speaking as one, I say you're full of shit, you un-American motherfucker. You do not represent the values of this country.

Posted by Reality Man | June 1, 2007 11:57 PM

R-Man's right -- Mexicans represent the true values of this country: dropping out of high school, joining gangs, etc. That's why everyone wants to move to a Mexican neighborhood.

Posted by Harry | June 2, 2007 12:50 AM

The federal government refuses to break out crime rate statistics by ethnicity (i.e., Hispanic), which is pretty hilarious considering all the effort they put into breaking out Hispanics as a separate group in all other statistics. Therefore, the only way to estimate the Hispanic crime rate is to look at imprisonment rates. The two studies I've seen found Hispanic imprisonment rates of 2.9 and 3.4 times the Anglo white rate (and, unsurprisingly, 13 times the Asian-American rate). However, both found African-American imprisonment rates over twice the Hispanic rate.

It appears that Hispanic crime rates get worse from the immigrant generation to the second generation, although this is probably related to age. Somebody who shows up in America at 25 or so isn't likely to join a youth gang, not being a youth, but his sons are.

A general pattern is that the more facts one knows about immigration, the more skeptical one is.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 2, 2007 2:14 AM

Which part of o'reilly's analysis are people rejecting?

It is self evident that a large portion of the left do want to significantly alter american culture and its polical institutions, and that they do see immigration as a help in acheving this.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | June 2, 2007 5:26 AM

Which part of o'reilly's analysis are people rejecting?

His racism, obviously. Is it not clear?

Posted by abb1 | June 2, 2007 6:10 AM

Re: the difference is the ones spawned by the Anglo-Saxon culture of British Empire have a far better track record of being stable, first world democracies

Um, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sudan, Burma?

Re: This corraborates the Ann Coulter quote that Fred posted. There is something wrong with the assimilation process.

Anything that "corroborates" Ann Coulter, evenm if she's giving the tiem of day, should be imemdiately suspect, if not a trigger for the laugh reflex.
However, your point about crime rates is no big deal: it always has been true that immigrant communities tend to have more criminality than most long-time citizen communities (with exceptions for certain low income subcultures, as in the "trailer trash" types). Also, new-come immigrants tend to be more law-abiding than their children mainly because deportation awaits them if they step out of line and also because they have fewer opportunities for criminal activity since they have not yet assimilated well enough to know how to be criminal in our culture.

Posted by JonF | June 2, 2007 10:52 AM

O'Reilly's specter of a scheme to reduce white Christians to minority status is a bowdlerized version of the thesis, promulgated by Kevin MacDonald & widely accepted in the radical racist demimonde, that it's Jews who're behind the scheming. As the history of Lou Dobbs suggests, this isn't the first time ideas that originated in the fever swamps were transmitted to the mainstream right.

Posted by KH | June 2, 2007 5:26 PM

"Um, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sudan, Burma?"

Not every country touched by the British Empire is a first world democracy today, but it remains true that the British Empire has a better track record of creating stable first world democracies than the Spanish, Portuguese, French, or other colonial empires.

First world countries also tend to benefit from immigrants who don't drag down their averages in key areas of achievement. In Mexican immigrants, we have the worst of both worlds: a demographic group with a history of academic failure and lack of success at economic advancement, coming from a Spanish culture that has proven itself less successful at creating first world democracies than the Anglo-Saxon culture.

Posted by Fred | June 2, 2007 5:30 PM

"O'Reilly's specter of a scheme to reduce white Christians to minority status is a bowdlerized version of the thesis, promulgated by Kevin MacDonald & widely accepted in the radical racist demimonde, that it's Jews who're behind the scheming. As the history of Lou Dobbs suggests, this isn't the first time ideas that originated in the fever swamps were transmitted to the mainstream right."

I want to know why all my damn professors kept talking in terms of "white" & "male" & "power structure" - I believe they were in the fever swamps (but when did they become right wing)

Posted by Fitz | June 2, 2007 6:05 PM

Immigration and the associated cultural insecurity arguments really do bring out some crazy ideas (and rude and uncivil language.)

1. Historically, the arguments made about the Mexican and Hispanic immigration are about the same as the ones the Know-Nothings used in the 1850s about the Irish and German mass migrations that occurred in the aftermath of the famine and the defeat of the 1848 revolutions. That taking in all these foreigners would "change the country" and could not be assimilated. Well, there was some truth to that; that immigration wave did change the country (for one thing the Catholic Church became a significant institution in the United States and Jews began to play a significant role in its cultural history). It also brought a lot of crime, a lot of social disorder, and in the case of the Irish, took almost three generations to assimilate. But essentially they did become Americans because of the attractiveness of the American model to individual immigrants in contrast to the how the individual was bound by class, family, and custom in the "old country." Why this happens is no where better articulated then in David Hackett-Fisher's "Albion's Children: Four English folk-ways in North America." Eventually, each wave of immigrants since the 1850s has usually picked up and followed the dominant folkways of the region they settled.

2. The economic arguement, that mass migration of low skill, low wage workers depresses the wages for those in the lower skill part of American society made by Mr. Krugman, Dean Baker and Robert Samuelson is factually true. However, given the proximity of Mexico, until the wage gradient between the U.S. and Mexico and the rest of Central America flattens, I don't know if we will be able to curb the overwhelning urge for self-improvement that millions will feel south of the border when they compare their current misery and marginal subsistence employment with what then can make North of it. The Wall will have to be pretty ugly, nasty, and occasionally fatal, to stop that flow.

3. Ann Coulter's arguments are classic "Know-Nothingism," and of course racist and ignorant to boot. They are also disingenous because she really does not want to punish business or pay higher fees for services; she rather keep a growing population of outlaws available for exploitation with an occasional inhumane deportation to satisfy her sadism.

Posted by Rick Kane | June 4, 2007 12:48 PM

O'Reilly on the Power Structure

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