multicult art 2005

8/2/2019 Multicult Art 2005

1/24

Multiculturalisms Context and Ideological Implications

Dwight D. Murphey1

It is becoming increasingly recognized that the changing demographic caused bylarge-scale immigration and the declining birthrate among the peoples of the West is

challenging the long-term continued existence of Western civilization as we haveknown it. This challenge is given voice today by the ideology of multiculturalism,which deflates Western culture while exalting the perspective and ways of life ofnon-European peoples who are coming to live in the West. This article explores thehistoric forces that provide the larger context for this challenge, the facts about thedemographic shift that is occurring, and many (though by no means all) of thenuances and implications of multiculturalist ideology.

Key Words: multiculturalism; intellectual alienation; slavery; colonialism;globalism; demographic changes; immigration; balkanization; classical liberalism;neo-conservatism; political correctness; ethnic perspectives.

The word multiculturalism had no special ideological connotation until recently.As a name given to an ideology, it has come into existence since the 1960s. In its morestrident forms, the ideology expresses a reservoir of alienation against the cultures,ethnicities, religions and mores of Europe and of peoples who derive their origins fromEurope (such as those of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada), whilechampioning the perspectives and ways of life of non-European peoples. When expressedless stridently, it praises diversity as a high value and supports the substitution of non-European customs for those that have heretofore prevailed in the West. This is a diversitythat is advocated for Western nations, but is not at the same time pressed upon othercultures such as those of China, Japan or Latin America.

The ideology does not exist in a vacuum. It is accompanied by, and encourages, avast demographic shift that is rapidly bringing non-European peoples into the West. Thisprovides the ideology with numbers and on-the-ground realities that give it substance,making it far more than merely academic. Moreover, the ideology has become theconventional wisdom of the worlds governing academic, managerial and professionalelite. All of these things together make it an almost irresistible force.

As Patrick Buchanan argues in The Death of the West, what is at issue is thecontinued existence of Western civilization.2 The geographical locations now occupied byEuropean peoples will, of course, continue to exist; but the human content of those placeswill be very different. For those who prefer to speak in terms of race, it is not too much tosay that the same forces pose an existential challenge to the Caucasian race, which maycease to be identifiable within the coming century.

1 Dwight D. Murphey is now retired as a Professor of business law at Wichita State University. He has forseveral years been the associate editor of this journal.2 This concern needs, of course, no apology. It is in no sense an apology to point out that a concern overthe effects of the demographic invasion of the nations of European origin is fully compatible with respecttoward and affection for non-European peoples. My affection for my Chinese students from Malaysia, say,does not require me to welcome a migration of 50, 100 or 200 million Chinese into the United States.Caring people from any culture will feel the same toward their own right to continue.


2/24

Our tasks in the present discussion will be to gain some perspective about thehistoric forces that have come to bear on the present situation, to grasp the fact ofdemographic swamping, and to explore some of the facets and implications ofmulticulturalist ideology. Needless to say, much that is pertinent must necessarily beomitted.

Historic Forces That Provide the Larger Context

1. The Many Implications of the Alienation of the Modern Intellectual

The modern world cannot be understood without taking into account a force thathas provided the motive-power for much that has occurred since before the FrenchRevolution: the intense dislike (alienation) that the intellectual subculture of the West(the intelligentsia) has felt toward virtually every aspect of modern Western society.Rousseau captured its scope well in hisDiscourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Menwhen he argued that men lived in contented simplicity in a state of nature, but thoroughlymessed things up when they entered into civilization. It is not too much to say that,beginning with Rousseau, the social critic has stood outside the predominant civilization

voicing dissatisfaction with all its essential features. The alienation is often referred to ashaving been against the bourgeoisie, the predominant middle-class, commercial strata;but, regardless of the breadth of that middle class, this is too narrow: farmers have by nomeans been immune, but have been pictured as louts; whole sections of the United States,such as the South, have been portrayed as rednecks; Dadaistic and post-modernist art hasmilitated against all conventional art forms; and even the various classes of have-nots theintelligentsia has championed have been seen not as exemplars in themselves, but as ahumanity sorely in need of making-over. Susan Sontag was speaking in the spirit of thissweeping condemnation when in 1967 she wrote that the white race is the cancer ofhuman history.3

During the nineteenth century, this alienation gave rise to the angry ideologies that(in varying degrees of anger) have so characterized the modern period. These haveincluded the Left in its various forms: left- and right-wing Hegelianism with theirextensions, respectively, into Marxism and German Volkish thought; the blood-and-thunder points of view described by Julien Benda in The Treason of the Intellectuals;Russian nihilism; and, in the United States, modern liberalism, when the alienationcoalesced into an ideology in the late nineteenth century under the influence of the GermanHistorical School after a great many American students went to Germany for graduatestudies. This School (not to be confused with the later Frankfurt School) was socialist butnot Marxist; supported the Bismarckian welfare state; favored statistical and quantitativerather than deductive methods in the social sciences; and critiqued classical and neo-classical economics relativistically as being merely statements of how things would workin a bourgeois system rather than a universally valid science of economic behavior.

Much of the content of the Lefts and of modern liberalisms thinking has beenmolded by their perpetual seeking of allies to give the intellectual subculture politicalstrength. Many of the concepts are formed by the resulting necessity to take the point of

3 Quoted in Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West(New York: St. Martins Press, 2002), p. 55. Thisarticle is not the place, of course, to rehearse at length the manifestations that have occurred of thealienation. See this authors discussion in his Understanding the Modern Predicament, chapters 10-12;Socialist Thought, chapters 8-13; andLiberalism in Contemporary America, chapters 1-4. With minoromissions, these are available on the Web at www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info.


3/24

view of those allies. In The Ordeal of Change, Eric Hoffer wrote that the modernintellectual has consistently sought a link with the underprivileged. So far, his mostpotent alliance has been with the masses. The coming together of the intellectual and themasses has proved itself a formidable combination.4 Auguste Comte said it is with theworking class that the new philosophers will find their most energetic allies.5

Even as early as World War I, however, many disillusioned Marxists came to knowthat the proletariat was a less-than-reliable ally. Not only did the proletariat prefer tomarch to its own drummer, but the great mass of Europeans marched off ecstatically insupport of their respective nations despite the Marxists expectation that they would refuseto fight the bourgeoisies war. Over a period of several years, the alliance becametattered. In the United States, the New Deal coalition fell to pieces after World War II,so that by 1972 George McGovern was seeking a new coalition.

The effort has been to forge an ideological-political coalition with any group that isdisaffected and/or unassimilated. The point that is most worth noticing about all this so faras understanding multiculturalist ideology is concerned is that since World War II the mostpropitious target of opportunity has been non-white ethnic groups. Some of these, such

as American blacks, are situated within the society itself; others are from massimmigration. Lawrence Auster comments on both the intensity of the alienation and therecent cultivation of Third World immigrants when he says that there is no doubt that thecultural left hates America and wants to destroy it; and there is also no doubt that the leftsee mass immigration from Third-World countries as a handy way of achieving that.6 Theintellectual culture, the penumbra of which is now expanded to embrace the managerial,professional, academic elite, is sponsoring a massive, bloodless demographic invasion thatover time will remold society in a new image.

What does this ideology say? Much by way of devaluing Western history,symbols, norms, folkways, religious beliefs, heroes; and much more, too, by way ofelevating the same cultural ingredients of the championed groups. As a bare minimum,the evolving concept of multiculturalism holds that Western civilization merits nospecial consideration, according to classics professor Victor Hanson, author ofMexifornia: A State of Becoming.7 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., though himself prominentwithin American liberalism during the second half of the twentieth century, dissents fromthe ideological cultivation of ethnic allies, and writes about multiculturalism that the cultof ethnicity exaggerates differences, intensifies resentments and antagonisms, drives everdeeper the awful wedges between races and nationalities. The endgame is self-pity andself-ghettoization.8 For those who preach the ideology, assimilation is no longer the ideal.Diversity is sought in its place.

There is irony in all this. It is by no means certain that the incoming ethnicities willin the long-run embrace those who now cultivate them as allies. Several years ago, I wrote:There is no assurance that the alienated intellectual culture will like the results. Who is to

4 Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (New York: Perennial Library, 1963), p. 39.5 Quoted in George Lichtheim,A Short History of Socialism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 178.6 Lawrence Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are the Conservatives Silent?, View Fromthe Right, www.Counterrevolution.net, December 6, 2002.7 The quote from Hanson is in his talk Frank Talk About Mexifornia, published inImprimus,November 2003, p. 3.8 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), p.102.


4/24

say that in the end a non-white America will give the intellectuals the social role theycrave? Or that the new immigrants will not value precisely the bourgeois materialismthat the intellectuals have found so distasteful in American culture for almost twocenturies? Most of the intelligentsias alliances (as with organized labor, say) have gonesour, running afoul of the desire of people just to be people. Indeed, considerable

resentment arises among the members of any disaffected group against the intellectualsthemselves. Ultimately, few people like to be led by those who feel superior to them.9

One of the best examples came in the 1960s when the black militants kicked the whiteliberals out of the Civil Rights movement.

An analysis of all this leads one to reflect on yet another factor. It is that theattacking ideology is met not with an opposing force, but with lethargy, indifference andacquiescence. One of the major facts about modern life has been that the predominantculture since the downfall of the medieval consensus has had no (or very little, relativelyspeaking) intellectual culture supportive of, and appropriate to, itself. This has been true ofthe bourgeoisie (the commercial middle class) in virtually every phase of history, goingback to the Greeks and Romans. There has been little intellectual defense of the

mainstream society of the modern West.The alienated subcultures main enemy hasnt come from an opposing ideology, butfrom the fact that the mass of humanity simply goes about its life. Events roll on, not reallydictated by what the ideology yearns for. Instead of feeling exhilarated with their success,most of those who have shared in the alienation have been depressed by how little controlthey really have. As I studied the history of modern liberal thought in the United States,I was surprised by the almost-chronic despondency I found in it. And yet they press on,now armed with a coalition that gives them a renewed chance of success at least so far asthe process of social deconstruction is concerned.

2. The Emergence of a Long-Buried and Overlooked Corpus of Humanity

In the multiculturalist ideology, one of the central concepts of the Left before themiddle of the twentieth century that of exploitation, which asserted that the owners ofcapital in a market economy took systematic advantage of those they hired has beenreplaced by victimization, which in one context after another asserts that non-Westernpeoples have in effect been plundered and raped by Europeans and Americans. As withexploitation, victimization builds on resentment, this time by virtually all non-Westernethnic groups. It is the perfect concept by which to tie together the intellectuals alienationand the perceived interests of those ethnicities. The spirit of victimization is now sopervasive, spreading beyond non-white ethnic groups, that a university professor finds thatmany students who dont study and hence dont do well blame the professor and feel thedespondency and resentment of victims.

What is not generally understood is that this perception of victim status is utterlyperverse. It turns inside-out what has actually occurred. The masses of people who havemost benefited from developments within recent centuries are precisely the ones who feelmost put upon, and they are blaming the very forces that have elevated them.

Until recent centuries, the great corpus of mankind was a submerged giant. Invirtually all societies throughout history, participation in the political and social society

9 Dwight D. Murphey,Liberalism in Contemporary America (McLean, VA: Council for Social &Economic Studies, 1992), pp. 22-3.


5/24

was limited to a relative few. For vast numbers of people, this has changed. Even thoughit is true that within the past century horrific tyrannies have swept over mankind, resultingin enslavement or death to many tens of millions, the historic forms of slavery, peonage,bonded labor and serfdom that for millennia held most of humanity in subjugation have,with a few exceptions, disappeared.

It is is not generally appreciated that for thousands of years a vast proportion ofpeople were slaves or the equivalent. An excellent scholarly account of the subject waswritten in 1858 by George S. Sawyer. Some excerpts that give part, at least, of the picture:By the law of nations the whole ancient world regarded captives taken in war as slavesThe traffic in slaves was certainly tolerated and practiced by the ancient Egyptians, as wellas by the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, Hebrews, and surrounding nations [During theCrusades,] for centuries the two religions waged a merciless war upon one another; andChristian, Saracen, Jew, and Infidel, were indiscriminately sold in countless numbers intoirredeemable slavery. The number of slaves in ancient Greece was so great that a censusin Attica listed 21,000 free citizens, 10,000 aliens, and 400,000 slaves. In Rome, the slavescame to vastly outnumber the freemen; there were 60 million slaves during the reigns of

the Caesars, and they included Medians, Moesians, Bithynians, Celts, Germans, andBritons (which is worth noting because it contradicts todays nave notion, born out of afailure to see things in a larger time-frame, that slavery has centered on black Africans).The public works which were so magnificent in ancient Rome were constructed by massesof slaves. Sawyer wrote that in West Africa in the mid-nineteenth century cruelty andoppression everywhere prevail. It is estimated that one-sixth of the population own andenslave the balance of the entire population.10

Robert Ryal Miller, in hisMexico: A History, informs us that Classic Maya societywas stratified At the bottom was a large component of slaves who were convictedcriminals, or prisoners of war, or those who sold themselves or were sold by their familiesinto servitude. Among the Aztecs, Miller says, a warrior could acquire former enemyproperty and slaves, have a harem, and eat human flesh. Portions of sacrificial victims,cooked with squash and flowers, were served to warriors. How many slaves were there?They constituted about five percent of the population but this was what was left aftermale captives taken in warfare were usually sacrificed. Following the Spanish conquest,thousands of Mexican Indians were made slaves.11

Writing recently, James Jamieson sums it up: Slavery was practiced widelythroughout the world in societies that had advanced beyond hunting and gathering anddeveloped pre-industrial agriculture, fishing and advanced pastoralism as methods ofsubsistence. He describes a broad spectrum about how cruelly or humanely the slaveswere treated.12

But we need not limit our discussion to slaveryper se. Whatever their status, thegreat bulk of people occupied the lower stations in pre-modern societies. It was only twocenturies ago that Samuel Johnson in England was able to argue that subordination is verynecessary to society A man is born to hereditary rank Subordination tends greatly to

10 George S. Sawyer, Southern Institutes; or, an Inquiry into the Origin and Early Prevalence of Slavery andthe Slave Trade (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1858), pp. 23, 25, 28, 61, 94, 98, 76, 179.11 Robert Ryal Miller,Mexico: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 20, 52, 54,117.12 James Jamieson, in a review of Robinson A. Herreras Natives, Europeans, and Africans in Sixteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala,Mankind Quarterly, Fall 2004, pp. 119-120.


6/24

human happiness. Until the relatively recent attack on the principle of social hierarchy, ifa mans father was a chimney sweep, he too would be one; and so would be his son.

Thus, the perspective fostered by multiculturalist ideology and that makes up muchof the psychology of Third World peoples that those people are victims who deserveredress against the West is based on a compressed time-perspective. It fails to understand

their condition and recent liberation in the context of a much longer history.We see this illustrated remarkably well in the thinking of those women who aremost influenced by feminist ideology. There is a psychology of victimization there, too.They point to the fact that women didnt get the vote in England and the United States untilthe Suffragette movement forced it more or less a century ago. They have nocomprehension of the fact that even wealthy middle class males in England didnt get thevote until the Reform Act in the 1830s, and that universal male suffrage wasnt introduceduntil it came in in successive stages in the 1860s and 1880s. In historical terms, both menand women got the vote at nearly the same time. Before that, it had been an age ofaristocracy.

The worldwide resentment against colonialism lacks perspective in much the

same way. What is forgotten about Africa, for example, is that the European scramble forAfrica didnt occur until the last quarter of the nineteenth century (although of coursethere was a long period of penetration before that), and that the dismantling of the coloniestook place rapidly after the end of World War II in 1945. The period of colonization was,in historical terms, very short. It was longer in other places (such as in Mexico and the restof Latin America), but again was brief in historical context. Indeed, the short-liveddomination by European countries can be seen much as Marx saw capitalism, which hethought to be a mid-wife to the age of the proletariat. European colonialism was indeedan instrument of passage for a number of peoples from pre-modern cultures into thecosmopolitanism of the modern age. Thus, it was the Spanish conquest that carried theinhabitants of Mexico from the Aztecs to modern Mexico.

3. The Ease of Migration Made Possible by the Industrial and Cybernetic

Revolutions, and by Modern Transportation, Commerce and Mobility.

As long ago as the 1920s, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset sawenormous significance in the fact that the world has suddenly grown larger, and with itand in it, life itself. To start with, life has become, in actual fact, world-wide in character; Imean that the content of existence for the average man of to-day includes the whole planet;that each individual habitually lives the life of the whole world. 13 Since then, it hasbecome commonplace to remark how the world has become smaller (which, oddlyenough, means the same thing as Ortega meant when he said it had become larger) becauseof the worldwide extension of rapid transportation, communication and trade.

The vastly enhanced mobility no doubt plays a large role in the demographicinvasion of the West. In his bookDark Star Safari, Paul Theroux more than once tellsabout conversations with blacks living in the miserable conditions of eastern Africa inwhich they say I want to go to America. A century ago, and most certainly two centuriesago, the mass of mankind were so rooted to the land of their particular locales that theywould never have entertained such a thought.

13 Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1957), p.38.


7/24

On a national level, we recall the nineteenth-century opening up of Japan andChina. Before that, they had existed unto themselves. They are now part of a globalsociety.

4. The Wests Ubiquitous Cultural Influence on Other Cultures.

There would be some tunnel-vision involved in speaking only of the Third Worldsgrowing impact on the West. The impact runs the other way, too, with all heretoforeculturally autonomous peoples undergoing virtually irresistible influence from outsidethemselves.

Fifty years ago the United States was washed over by the cultural influence ofThe Beetles from Britain. In turn, France and Germany have long exhibited concern overthe dissipation of their respective cultures, which they have sought to preserve against theflood of American and British influences. Imagine, then, the impact upon non-Westerncultures.

A recent article by Peter Hitchens tells of the Kingdom of Bhutan, squeezedbetween India and Chinese-occupied Tibet, which has managed to remain apart from the

rest of our globalized world, partly because of its naturally fortified position thousands offeet on the edge of the great Himalayas. He tells how for many years, the kingdomsought to keep out television, which it saw as a great danger to its people. But five yearsago the king abandoned the struggle Everything from wrestling to ultra-violence, badlanguage, and pornography now comes howling, hissing, and roaring down from thesatellites that can reach even into the most guarded and secluded valley. An Americanteacher told me of a ghastly event at one school, where he had watched little Bhutanesegirls wearing make-up and western dress, bumping and grinding to the sound of rockmusic. Hitchens concluded ruefully that perhaps there is, in the end, no defense againstthe hot rage of the modern world that endangers every good thing. 14

5. Arab Pressure to Expand Its Reach.The demographic invasion of the West includes as one of its ingredients a rapid

movement of Islam into Europe and the United States. It was of some interest to me, then,when I received a copy of an article written recently forPakistan Today, said to beCalifornias most outspoken South Asian paper. The author, a friend of mine since hisschool days at Wichita State University, is from Bangladesh. He writes of the threat toBangladeshi culture from Arab encroachments: In the past, in the Levant and Africa thecultural genocide was effected with a sword under the guise of religion. Today inBangladesh and elsewhere, as the religious mask of the Arab invader remains intact hissword has been replaced by his abundant cash Many poor children in the hinterlands andmetropolises alike find no avenue for education but the mushrooming madrassas andmaktabs run by Wahhabi funded clerics who transmit their misogyny, hatred, and prejudiceto a brand new generation that is growing up to despise the culture of its forefathers. Theauthor speaks of this frontal assault on our heritage.15

6. The Desperate Migrations that Will be Driven by the End of Work.

14 Peter Hitchins, Wiring Shangri-La, TheAmerican Conservative, January 17, 2005, pp. 14-16.15 Esam Sohail, Poems Of The Tresses: The Arab Assault On Our Culture,Pakistan Today, February 27,2004.


8/24

At the present time, there is much concern in the United States about the loss ofjobs to much-lower-cost workers, many in educated and technical areas, in China, India,Central America and elsewhere. But this is a transitory phenomenon. As Jeremy Rifkinhas explained in his bookThe End of Work, the need for millions (indeed, tens andhundreds of millions) of people to work is progressively being done away with through

the development of non-labor-intensive technology. Because until now the great mass ofmankind has supported itself through income from work, an upheaval of unprecedentedproportions looms as a possibility in a world that will have an abundant capacity forproduction but no established method for distributing that abundance to the billions whoexpect to eat.

Unless each society solves this problem for its people, great masses of them will bedesperate to migrate from the places of their misery to the worlds centers of affluence.The advanced economies will have their own distribution problems, but, as important asthey will be, they will be dwarfed by the tsunami of desperate migration. This will greatlyexacerbate the demographic invasion of the West.

The Demographic Invasion of Europe and the United States1. Statistics About the Influx.

Before 1965, United States immigration laws gave preference to Europeans, whohad historically been by far the largest source. A radical redirection occurred, however,with the 1965 Immigration Act. It removed the preference, putting the whole world on anequal footing.

Since then, there has been a tidal wave of immigration from the Third World, mostespecially from Mexico. In 1960, Buchanan tells us, only sixteen million Americansdid not trace their ancestors to Europe. Today, the number is eighty million.16 TheMexican National Population Council has reported, based on Mexicos 2000 census, that9.9 million people born in Mexico now reside in the United States (a number equivalent tonine percent of Mexicos population). An additional 400,000 stay every year. Of the 9.9million, almost 80 percent have not become American citizens.17

We are told that between eight and 12 million illegalimmigrants, from allcountries, are now in the United States.18 In March 2004, 42 Mexican governmentemployees, including some immigration agents, were arrested by the Mexican governmentand charged with smuggling people from several countries into the United States.19 Thefollowing October, the [U.S.] Border Patrol said that it nabbed nearly 600,000 illegalimmigrants coming into Arizona [just one of the border states] in the last year, anincrease of nearly 184,000 compared to the previous year.20 American televisioncommentator Lou Dobbs says that many illegal aliens are no longer held in jail to awaitdeportation or processing. Rather, they are simply handed a notice to appear in court andreleased into the country. The result: The Department of Homeland Security admits thatnearly a half a million people have been arrested and released, and failed to show up incourt.21

16 Buchanan,Death of the West, p. 3.17 Newsbriefs,Middle American News, October 2004, p. 9.18 Article by Michael Riley ofTheDenver Post, in The Wichita Eagle, May 4, 2004.19 The Wichita Eagle, March 24, 2004.20 The Wichita Eagle, October 1, 2004.21 Immigration Briefs,Middle American News, October 2004, p. 9.


9/24

This has an impact most particularly on certain places, such as California, but isreshaping the demographics of the United States as a whole. Thirty-two percent of illegalimmigrants 2.2 million people live in California. The INS [Immigration andNaturalization Service] reports that during the ten years between 1990 and 2000, Georgiasshare of illegal immigrants increased from 34,000 to 228,000, while in North Carolina the

figure jumped from 26,000 to 206,000.22

The Census Bureau has reported that in just threecounties in south-central Kansas the number of Hispanics grew from 19,773 in 1990 to40,353 in 2000.23

What is expected for the future? In March 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau madepreliminary projections that by 2050 whites will be just 50.1 percent of the U.S. population,which compares with 75 percent in 1990 and 90 percent in 1960. The number of Hispanicsand Asians will almost triple, to over 100 million and 33 million, respectively. Blacks willexperience a 71.3 percent increase, adding over 25 million to their present numbers.24 Arecent article on the political impact of immigration into the United States says the Centerfor the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the University of California at Los Angelesestimated that by 2019 the majority of young adults living in California turning 18 years of

age, and thereby becoming eligible to vote, will be Latino.

25

In The Death of the West, Patrick Buchanan recites in detail the similardemographic revolution occurring in Europe. The birthrate of the white population is solow that, without immigration, the population is expected to fall from 728 million in 2000to 600 million in 2050. Mass immigration, Buchanan says, has already begun. In 2000,England took in 185,000 immigrants, a record. In 1999, 500,000 illegal aliens slipped intothe European Union, a tenfold increase from 1993.26 Elsewhere, he says that 20 millionMoslems now live in Europe.27 Anthony Browne in The Observersays that whites will bean ethnic minority in Britain by the end of the century. Analysis of official figuresindicates that, at current fertility rates and levels of immigration, there will be more non-whites than whites by 2100 Whites will be a minority in London by 2010.28

2. The Many Practical Impacts.

The scope of this article will not permit us to explore exhaustively the impact onthe various aspects of American life, except as they affect the conceptual issues discussedlater. The magnitude of the consequences, however, is suggested by a few representativedetails: An article in a Claremont Institute publication says that it is estimated that thestate of California spends nearly $6 billion per year on services for illegal aliens In 2002alone Los Angeles County spent about $350 million providing health care for illegalimmigrants.29 An article in the San Diego Tribune says that in 2002 the percentage ofHispanics in the San Diego County schools came to exceed that of white students for the

22

American Renaissance,March 2003, p. 14.23 The Wichita Eagle, September 21, 2003.24 America Goes Brown,American Renaissance, May 2004, p. 13.25 Yeh Ling Ling, Mexican Immigration and its Potential Impact on the Political Future of the UnitedStates, The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Winter 2004, p. 425.26 Buchanan,Death of the West, pp. 12, 99.27 Pat Buchanan, Culture War Comes to Holland,Middle American News, January 2005, p. 14.28 The Observer, September 3, 2000.29 Edward H. Erler, Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Is Not Compassionate, The Proposition, March 2004, p.1.


10/24

first time.30 Jerry Seper of the Washington Times reports that nationwide, the JusticeDepartment says about 40,000 illegal aliens are being held in the federal prison system,about 25 percent of the prison population.31

There are positive effects, of course, but they are not to be seen in isolation fromthe cost of health care delivery, the expense of educating immigrants children, the impact

on unemployment and wage-rates, the spread of ethnic gangs, heightened rates of crime,poverty, welfare, racial conflict, the bringing in of new or long-defeated diseases, andenvironmental effects. As to the last of these, it is to be remembered that former Coloradogovernor Richard Lamm recently ran for election to the national board of the Sierra Club, amajor environmentalist organization, on a platform of limiting immigration as an essentialto environmental protection. The fact that he was strongly opposed, and defeated, by thosein control of the Sierra Club gives some indication of how much those leaders have tiedenvironmentalism to leftist ideology. Lamms point seems an obvious one: that if thepopulation of the United States goes to 600, 800 or 1,000 million, the environmentaldegradation will inevitably be much greater than it is today.

3. The Role of a Peoples Unwillingness to Do Certain Types of Work,Importing Vast Amounts of Labor from Outside.

The importation of cheap labor, such as the Chinese to work on railroadconstruction in the American west in the nineteenth century and Mexicans to pick grapes inthe American southwest, seems to have been an important part of the economies of manysocieties. White South Africans generally looked with disfavor on manual labor, and thisled to encouraging immigration into South Africa of large numbers of blacks who had notpreviously been there. We have already noted the extent to which slavery, peonage,bonded labor and serfdom provided labor-power throughout pre-modern history.

A huge pool of near-subsistence labor has often been thought economicallyessential. The point is made today that Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are willingto do work that Americans arent willing to do. Victor Hanson, author ofMexifornia,says that millions of us who used to cut our own lawns and clean our own houses nowconsider such tasks beneath us, as if Americas middle class has embraced as its birthrightthe culture and leisure once confined to an aristocratic elite. Suddenly our young people,our poor and our unskilled find jobs picking apples or laying tiles somehow demeaning.So-called dead-end jobs are no longer a rite of passage for our youth, but are deemedproper only for unskilled laborers from Mexico, whose toil, we are assured, keeps ourproduce, restaurants and hotels inexpensive.32

There is a significant ideological twist to this, however, that is not often recognized.In the pro-immigration literature recently, the low-cost labor has been presented as a boon.What is not seen is that eventually the low remuneration and poor accommodations arepresented quite militantly, by the alienated intellectual culture and by activists representingthe workers themselves, as exploitation. What previously the main society perceived asbenign is then seen, from another perspective altogether, as morally depraved. So it is thata Cesar Chavez comes to be seen as an ethnic saint. A hue-and-cry goes up that the peoplewho came in to perform the low-pay work are victims; and this is a moral point of view for

30 This report was summarized inAmerican Renaissance, December 2003, p. 13.31 Quoted by Pat Buchanan in his column in theMiddle American News, September 2004, p. 13.32 Hanson, Frank Talk About,Imprimis, November 2003, p. 2.


11/24

which the main society has no principled reply. The grape boycott led by Chavez receivedwidespread support by those who proclaimed the change in moral perspective, and he is ahero whose portrait is prominently displayed in the American southwest.

We need not think back so far as to Chavez and his grape boycott. The WashingtonTimes reported in 2004 that in California a class action suit has been filed against major

supermarket chains by large numbers of Mexican workers asserting discrimination.Columnist Samuel Francis asks, with appropriate sarcasm, Well, what else would youexpect? What, after all, is the point of hiring illegal aliens if you can't exploit them in waysthat you can't exploit Americans?"33

4. The Existential Threat to the West and to Others.

What is at issue, of course, is the continued existence of the peoples, as peoples,who are being demographically invaded. If they dont care about their continuing, no onewill; certainly it is not something that bothers the millions who are arriving, or theintellectual culture that for ideological reasons welcomes the undercutting of the existingsocieties. This is not a matter of science, but of the heart. It relates to values, loyalty,

heritage.Former Colorado governor Lamm gives a speech on How to Destroy America.In it, he says that history shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, andantagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for anindividual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. He points toCanada, Belgium, Malaysia and Lebanon as among those who all face crises of nationalexistence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan andCyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties withBasques, Bretons, and Corsicans.34

Kosovo provides an excellent example. As a place, it is a virtually sacred site toSerbians. But demographically it came to be populated very heavily by immigrants fromAlbania, and their descendants. This posed an unanswerable conundrum: Which has themost valid moral claim as between a peoples national mythology and love of place, and adiffering populations right of self-determination?

Once the majority population of the American southwest (or perhaps more than amere majority) comes to be Latino, what principle that Americans embrace will stand inthe way of their moral claim to autonomy or independence? Short of asserting aLincolnesque preservation of the Union position and resisting autonomy by force, it willbe too late to argue the point about the then-populations right to be self-governing. Tothose for whom such balkanization seems undesirable, the time to oppose it is before, notafter, the demographic change has occurred.

5. The Prospective Role of a Tipping Point.

The statistics we gave earlier about the extent of the demographic change presentedsomething of a static picture (except to the extent forecasts were made for future years). Itis likely, however, that the rate of change will not remain constant, but will accelerate,because of the phenomenon of the tipping point. Both in terms of moral sensibility and

33 The Washington Times report and quotation from Francis are found in Samuel Francis, MexicosMessage to Big Business,Middle American News, May 2004, p. 17.34 Lamm is quoted by Hal Netkin in A Chilling Commentary on America, March 11, 2004, [email protected].


12/24

practical politics, the more immigrants there are, the more irresistible the introduction ofadditional millions becomes.

Lawrence Auster comments on the ideological tipping point. He observes that onceAmericans had affirmed that the only thing that defines us as a people is non-discrimination toward other peoples, there was no longer any justification for saying that

maybe its not such a great idea to import people adhering to radical Islam or Mexicannationalism Having cast aside our own culture, we had no choice but to yield, step bystep, to the elevation of other cultures [emphasis added].35

The political tipping point is evident in the United States when in 2004 thepresidential candidates of both major political parties favored eitherde jure orde factoamnesty for the millions of aliens who are in the country illegally. Political competitionrages for the support of the immigrant populations. This leads away from restriction andtoward an even more open-door policy.

If under these pressures the influx accelerates, the forecasts for 2019, 2050 and2100 cited earlier will be found ultimately to have been seriously understated. The loss ofmajority white status will occur much earlier than projected.

6. For Some Considerable Time, the Affected Societies Will Continue to Live

Off of the Accumulated Cultural Capital of the Past.

It is doubtful whether Europe or the United States (or Canada, Australia and NewZealand) will be transformed overnight into Third World cultures. There is much culturalcapital already present, and it takes a long process to empty a society of it. This process isalready underway, as in the growing prohibition of Christian symbols from public placesand the elevation of ethnic heroes and myths (such as in the delighted publicity given to thenewly-created Kwansaa holiday, the Cinco de Mayo celebration, the attacks on honoringColumbus, and the like). But there is much farther to go.

A factor that will preserve European identity, albeit in increasingly circumscribedareas, is that of white flight, by which whites flee from cities to suburbs, from wholestates to other states, and indeed from country to country. This produces oases in the formof walled communities. Because it shelters the erstwhile majority population from whatthey see as the less desirable features of the demographic invasion, and gives that majorityan easy out, it prevents widespread opposition. Nobody stands and fights. Thataugments the tipping point phenomenon. At the same time, it will provide continuity,within the oases, for Western culture for so long as the oases last.

7. The Growth of Political Blocs, Separatisms and Balkanization.

Examples are legion of the extent to which ethnic bloc-formation and separatism(something very different from assimilation) are present in American life today.Separately, many of the instances are small; but together they are significant:

The Mexican immigrant population has their own radio and TV stations,newspapers, films, and magazines, which according to Buchanan means the MexicanAmericans are creating an Hispanic culture separate and apart from Americas largerculture. They are becoming a nation within a nation.36

35 Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are?, p. 5.36 Buchanan,Death of the West, p. 126.


13/24

Spanish-language commercial directories listing Hispanic-owned businesses arecirculated within the Hispanic community.37

There is a separate Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.38

Hispanic leaders organized a national boycott of California in September 2004 toprotest Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggers veto of a bill that would have allowed

illegal aliens to drive lawfully.39

When the governor of Kansas abolished a small Advisory Committee on HispanicAffairs and created a multicultural affairs office to assist all minority groups,Hispanic leaders objected on the ground that this would dilute the attention given toHispanic interests. Black leaders similarly called for a committee centered on blackneeds.40

In 1996, Ebonics, also called Black English, was recognized as a secondlanguage in Oakland schools. This followed the American Speech, Language andHearing Associations classifying Ebonics as a social dialect with its own lexicon andsyntax.41

Emulating the black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, buses carried more than

1,000 people to Washington, D.C., in September 2003 as the Immigrant FreedomRiders. The objective was to gain public and congressional support for legislationthat would legalize millions of illegal immigrants.42

Kwanzaa is widely promoted each December as an African-American holiday toreflect on their heritage. J. R. Clairborne in The Wichita Eagle explains: Thekaramu feast concludes the week-long celebration, and features the beating ofAfrican drums and the display of the red, black and green colors introduced by theblack nationalist Marcus Garvey. The name Kwanzaa is Swahili for firstfruits,and stems from the African harvest festival. It was created in 1966 by MaulanaKarenga, the executive director of the Institute of Pan-African Studies in LosAngeles.43

The Associated Press told in 2003 of a Census analysis showing that the givennames for blacks have diverged to where there is now scarcely any racial overlap inthe most popular names. Until the 1960s, whites and blacks gave their children thesame names.44

It was estimated in 1993 that 50,000 people in South Florida are followers ofSanteria, a Caribbean cult that practices animal sacrifice. The U.S. Supreme Courtruled in that year that animal sacrifice is a religious practice protected by the FirstAmendment, so that it cant be declared criminal.45

Victor Hanson tells of Californias new apartheid communities like Orange Cove,Mendota and Parlier, communities where Mexican immigrants make up the vast

37 The Wichita Eagle, January 30, 2004.38 The Wichita Eagle, September 21, 2003.39 The Wichita Eagle, September 26, 2004.40 The Wichita Eagle, February 20, 1996.41 The Wichita Eagle, December 22, 1996.42 The Wichita Eagle, September 28, 2003.43 The Wichita Eagle, January 1, 1993.44 Recapped inAmerican Renaissance, November 2003, p. 16.45 Border Watch, August 1993, p. 5.


14/24

majority of the population and struggle with dismal schools, high crime, little revenueand other social problems akin to those in Mexico.46

Lawrence Auster gives other examples: the town in Texas that declared Spanishits official language; or the thousands of Hispanics at an international soccer match inLos Angeles who booed and threw garbage at the American team; or the decline in

educational and environmental standards in areas dominated by Hispanics; or theHmong people from Laos who bring shamans and witch doctors into hospital rooms; orthe customs of voodoo and animal sacrifice and forced marriage and female genitalmutilation that have been imported into this country.47

President Clinton signed an executive order mandating the provision of governmentservices in foreign languages. President George W. Bush left this intact, and startedhis own presidential bilingual tradition, delivering a Spanish version of his weeklynational radio address, according to Auster. Even the White House web site is nowbilingual, with links to speeches translated into Spanish.48

As all this proceeds, there is no offsetting majority white bloc acting self-consciously as such. Indeed, anything on behalf of the majority is considered racist and

hence morally reprehensible.Ideological incoherence on an international level results in a similar double

standard applied to different peoples with regard to whether it is legitimate for them toassert separate ethnic identity. Without any principle to rationalize the differences, theworld community has supported independence for ethnic groups in Bosnia, Kosovo andEast Timor, but has thought independence beyond question for, say, the Kurds, theCongolese province of Katanga several years ago, and Flanders.

8. The Threat of Entry by Terrorists.

In June 2004, a press report said the Department of Homeland Security figures that2.3 million people are in the [United States] on expired visas, but the GAO [General

Accounting Office] said the real number is considerably higher because federal officialsdidnt count millions of Mexicans and Canadians, and because the government tracksexiting visitors haphazardly.49 The relevance of this to the terrorist threat inside theUnited States is obvious. It is illustrated by the fact that Mohammed A. Salameh fromPalestines West Bank, who was considered the main suspect in the 1993 bombing of NewYork Citys World Trade Center, had in 1988 entered the United States on a one-year visa and had stayed as an illegal alien.50

Staying after the expiration of visas is one way for terrorists to arrive. Anotherpossibility appeared when U.S. officials discovered that between 1999 and 2002 theoperator of a Lebanese caf in Tijuana, Mexico, smuggled no less than 300 Arabs into theUnited States.51 If, as we have seen, as many as 600,000 illegal aliens entered the country

in just one border state recently, an indeterminate number of them could be coming asterrorists. The inescapable conclusion is that this fact alone makes a charade out of U. S.homeland security efforts.

46 Hanson, Frank Talk About,Imprimis, November 2003, p. 4.47 Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are?, p. 1.48 Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are?, p. 3.49 The Wichita Eagle, June 4, 2004.50 Border Watch, April 1993, p. 1.51 Middle American News, February 2004, p. 5.


15/24

9. Creation of a Two-Tiered System of Rights.

Ironically, Americans have championed a colorblind society at the same timethey have permitted their legal, political elite to create a two-tiered system with one set ofrules for the majority and another for minorities. The most egregious expression of this

came when Mary Berry, the Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said that civilrights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.52

The legal double-standard had its origin in Justice Harlan Fiske Stones famousFootnote Four to the decision in United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144(1938). Arguably, this footnote constitutes a third Constitution for the United States, ifthe original Constitution and the post-Civil War amendments are counted as, in effect, thefirst two. The 1938 decision laid down a revolutionary paradigm that has now governedthe United States for two-thirds of a century.

What Footnote Four said was that governments can do almost anything they wish inregulating economic relationships, since the governmental action there will be judged by ajudicially unquestioned rational basis test. Three other areas of governmental activity,

however, would be subject to strict judicial scrutiny. These three are (1) where aspecifically enumerated Constitutional right is involved, (2) where something relates todemocratic process, and (3) where the rights of discrete and insular minorities areconcerned. This has given rise to a double track, as distinguished from a unified, system.The mainstream society has virtually no judicial protection from governmental power,while at the same time certain specific liberties are given exaggerated emphasis (as wherethe First Amendment is said to bar a libel suit against a cartoon depicting Rev. JerryFalwell having intercourse with his mother), and minorities have stringent protection thatothers dont receive.

In late 2004, Hispanic newspaper columnist Mary Sanchez pointed out a 1954 U.S.Supreme Court decision that to Hispanics matched in importance the historicBrown v.Board of Education decision, the 50th anniversary of which was then being celebrated. Shespoke ofHernandez v. Texas, which she said was the first time Mexican-Americans wonthe legal argument that they were a distinct ethnic group worthy of constitutionalprotection Before, the fact that they were white racially was used to muffle the reality oftheir situation.53 In other words, they were defined as a discrete and insular minorityunder the Footnote Four distinctions.

The double-track system of rights has been reinforced by legislation and socialdouble standards. Thus, as Victor Hanson tells us, California extends in-state tuitiondiscounts to resident illegal immigrants, even as it charges nearly triple the in-state amountfor American citizens from Arizona, Nevada and other states.54 And at the same time thatcollege scholarships set aside specifically for white students are strictly forbidden, it isacceptable, according to a press report, that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledgedThursday to donate $1 billion for college scholarships for minority students.55

The two-tiered system is not limited to the United States. In an article on Race inScandinavia, Mikael Widmark says that in Sweden in more and more cases they[immigration opponents] have been imprisoned for violating the Swedish law against

52 Quoted in Buchanan,Death of the West, p. 205.53 Mary Sanchez column, The Wichita Eagle, November 23, 2004.54 Hanson, Frank Talk About.,Imprimis, November 2003, p. 3.55 The Wichita Eagle, September 17, 1999.


16/24

incitement to ethnic hatred to which he adds that it is a law used only against Swedesand never against immigrants. For their part, immigrants can write just about anything.He tells of one article where the author says, may the western world of the white raceperish in blood and suffering. The author has not been charged with incitement ofethnic hatred.56

Nuances of Multiculturist Ideology

1. The Ideology is Ubiquitous Among the Academic-Managerial-Professional

Elite.

Continuing stress on multiculturalism and the goal of diversity is everywhere tobe found within academic life, American corporations and professional circles. Thenumber of examples is so great that we will content ourselves here with simply giving acouple of illustrations.

The Wichita, Kansas, newspaper carried a story recently reporting that SedgwickCounty will begin an initiative this week that will place more emphasis on diversitytraining, including classes, discussions and cultural community events Manager Bill

Buchanan said he would like to see it become mandatory The transition may result inrequiring managers to earn a diversity certificate through training.57 It is difficult toimagine that in such a context managers or employees will not endanger their careers byvoicing any opinion contrary to those taught as mandatory.

Typically, at Wichita State University there is a Multicultural Resource Center.Among its activities, it publishes an annual Diversity Calendar, offers minoritymentoring and circulates a quarterly newsletter.

2. Sources of Ideological Support.

Two significant sources of support for the ideology come from what many wouldsuppose to be the conservative side: many classical liberals, who support anindividualistic perspective; and libertarians, who take their individualism to even greaterlengths. Historically, each has focused almost exclusively on what used to be calledpolitical economy, not feeling it necessary to inquire into the cultural preconditions ofthe free society they advocate. Their ideologies are universalist in positing truths that theysee as good for all mankind, and in that context they reject any particularlist concern abouta specific nation or people. (Here we are speaking of the ideological proclivity of manyadherents, and certainly dont wish to suggest that there have not been other thinkers forwhom these generalizations dont hold true.) Victor Hanson expresses his surprise at thelack of cultural conservatism among those who hold to free market and/or libertarian ideaswhen he speaks of the Orwellian alliance of many libertarian-leaning conservativeswith the race industry of the Left.58 As always, Lawrence Auster has an excellent grasp:The reason Americans cannot effectively oppose the transformation of our culture is thatthey subscribe to the belief system that has led to it What is that belief system? At itscore, it is the quintessentially American notion that everyone is the same under the skin

56 Mikael Widmark, Race in Scandinavia,American Renaissance, December 2003, p. 4.

57 The Wichita Eagle, July 11, 2003.58 Victor Hanson, Frank Talk About,Imprimis, November 2003, p. 4.


17/24

that people should only be seen as individuals, with no reference to their historic culture,their ethnicity, their religion, their race.59

The global market, with jobs and capital flowing to the places of lowest-costproduction, has brought to the fore an aspect of classical and neo-classical economics thathas always been present, but that under other conditions has not precipitated a split

between those who do and those who do not take culture into account. Hal Netkin tellshow when he was a head hunter in the professional employment business he talked withone executive about out-sourcing, and was told the purpose of corporate globalization isnot to enhance the number of jobs in the U.S. It is to maximize the corporations profits.60

The newsletter of the Acton Institute expresses the core idea in more theoretical terms thatare traceable to the classical economist David Ricardo, when it says that world economicintegration permits workers in all countries to specialize in what they do best and totrade with others based on the division of labor. Overwhelmingly, the intellectualtradition coming out of classical economics has embraced this view and has rejected thenationally-particularist theory of a market economy formulated in the early nineteenthcentury by Friedrich List.61

Another ideological source of multiculturalism today comes from the neo-conservative school that is so influential in the George W. Bush administration.Representative of this viewpoint is Ben J. Wattenbergs bookThe First Universal Nation.In a review, Daniel Vining says that to Wattenberg the first universal nation means thatthe U.S. is rapidly becoming a country with all the diverse races and ethnic groups of theworld in it According to Wattenberg, the U.S. is made up of immigrants and thedescendants of immigrants Because [of this], he argues, it is therefore uniquely able toprosper.62 Along the same lines, Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden has writtenthat immigration is the lifes blood of the nation, the source of the vitality and industrythat is the envy of the world.63

Closely tied to the free-market and neo-conservative groups just mentioned insupporting massive immigration are American big business and agricultural interests.Television commentator Lou Dobbs has provided extensive coverage to business andagricultures support for large-scale immigration. He says the ethnic advocacy groupsprovide the moral outrage and racial politics, while the business community provides thepolitical influence, the big guns and the big money to prevent law enforcement [againstillegal entry].64 The support from business and agriculture comes from the competitive

59 Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are?, p. 4.60 Netkin, A Chilling Commentary, p. 3.61 Those who are interested in this variant of classical liberal thought should see especially Lists The

National System of Political Economy (Fairfield, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, 1991 reprinting). Ihave given recent support to Lists views in my essay A Critique of the Central Concepts of Free Trade

Theory. See www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info. A hard copy appears as Chapter 9 in Murphey,Understanding the United States: Illusions that Guide Contemporary America (Washington: Council forSocial and Economic Studies, 2003).61. Daniel R. Vining, Book Review Article, Surveying Multi-Ethnicity,Mankind Quarterly, Fall/Winter1994, pp. 151, 152.6262. Pruden is quoted inMiddle American News, March 2004, p. 10.6363. Dobbs is quoted in Immigration Briefs,Middle American News, October 2004, p. 9.6464. Quoted in the review of Samuel FrancisAmerica Extinguished: Mass Immigration and the

Disintegration of American Culture (Americans for Immigration Control, 2002) inAmerican Renaissance,October 2003, p. 7.
http://www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info/http://www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info/


18/24

pressure of the global market that makes it imperative to be the low-cost producer, andfrom a mindset, born out of the ideologies just mentioned, that does not regard identifyingwith cultural continuity as a part of loyalty to ones country.

3. The Concept that the United States is a Creedal Nation (also called a

Proposition Nation).The idea that the United States finds its essence in a set of ideas, and at the sametime denies any role to culture or continuity as a people, was succinctly expressed in 1994in a statement written for neo-conservatives William Bennett and Jack Kemp: [T]heAmerican national identity is notbased on ethnicity, or race, or national origin, or religion.The American national identity is based on a creed, on a set of principles and ideas. 65 Inhis First Inaugural, President George W. Bush said America has never been united byblood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals.66 Although he is highly critical of theposition, Lawrence Auster explains the concept well: Since the end of World War II, andespecially since the 1960s, conservatives have tended to define America not in terms of itshistoric civilization and peoplehood, but almost exclusively in terms of the individual the

individual under God and the individual as an economic actor.

67

(Of course, I indicatedabove that this omission of the role of culture actually goes back as far as the origins ofclassical liberalism as found in classical and neo-classical economics.) This combinationof affirmation and denial is the basis for the term creedal nation, or its twin propositionnation.

If we analyze the creedal nation concept, we see that it ignores the distinctionbetween early-American immigration and that now occurring. The American colonieswere formed by migration to the New World of peoples from Great Britain and northernEurope. These peoples had a great deal in common, and assimilated in a melting pot intosomething easily identifiable as the American people. For a number of years beginningwith the revolutionary year 1848 in Europe, extensive immigration entered from EasternEurope, Russia and the northern-Mediterranean countries. This altered the culture andethnic nature of the American population in countless ways. Since 1965, there has been athird source for immigration the Third World. Large numbers have come in from Asia,Africa and Latin America. Simply to say that we are a nation of immigrants obscuresthese distinctions in American history, and in effect shows no affinity for the peoplehoodthe American people once represented.

The concept further brushes aside the fact that the American creed is verydifferent from what it was a century ago, and will almost certainly be very different in afew years from what it is now. To proclaim that the conventional wisdom amongAmericas current elite has an ultimate truth to it that allows it to serve as an anchor fornational identity is suppositious in the extreme. Nothing is shakier or of more recentinvention than the current mix of ideas and double standards. (A realization of this isimportant in critiquing the idea of a creedal nation, and it is equally important inrecognizing one of the fallacies behind the doctrine that the United States should nowcrusade to make the whole world over in its current image. Conventional thinking in theUnited States today would certainly not want to crusade to refashion the world in the image

6565 Quoted in Buchanan,Death of the West, p. 145.66

67 Auster, Immigration and Multiculturalism: Why Are?, p. 4.


19/24

of what the United States stood for even so recently as fifty years ago. There is a certainarrogance in the presumption that suddenly the United States has hit upon a mix of ideasthat is so much nearer to perfection that it can be made the standard to which all nationsshould be pressured to repair.)

Further, the creedal nation concept fails to understand the richness and virtually

existential differences among cultures worldwide. The assumption is that immigrants fromanywhere in the world will be anxious to adopt the American creed (whatever it happens tobe at the time). This means they will be quick to drop all that is deeply engrained in themfrom their own cultures. They will drop their heroes and myths and compact experiences,and take up reading about the battle of Bunker Hill and Teddy Roosevelts charge up SanJuan Hill. One can only reflect on the fact that this naivete stems from the provincialismand profound cross-cultural ignorance of those who preach the concept. This provincialismhas long been a ground of complaint by the alienated intellectual culture (see thecommentaries by the various writers in the 1922 bookCivilization in the United States).68

At the same time that the idea of a creedal nation is proclaimed, its proponents normallyaccept passively the idea of diversity, not realizing how much the two conflict. They

have no idea, really, how deep the differences among peoples are.No doubt the denial of any role to a distinctively American racial or culturalidentity shows the extent, too, that the creedal nation proponents have accepted withoutquestion the central premise of conventionally-accepted Anthropology since Franz Boasthat there is no such thing as race. Something worth noting about Boas thesis is that, inthe world as we know it, the denial of race is applied solely to Caucasians, and never toother ethnicities. Most of the peoples of the world are acutely aware of their ethnicidentities. It is a part of the ideological assault on Euro-American society that it, and italone, is denied the right to think of itself in terms of an ethnicity, race or culture worthdefending. That places it at a distinct disadvantage in terms of its own survival.

4. Taboos Against Expressing Dissenting Opinions political (i.e.,

ideological) correctness.

The demand for ideological conformity on all aspects of the demographic invasionis so well known under the name political correctness that it hardly needs illustration.Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., notes that a code of ideological orthodoxy emerges. Thecodes guiding principle is that nothing should be said that might give offense to membersof minority groups (and, apparently, that anything can be said that gives offense to whitemales of European origin).69

It isnt generally realized, however, that the same insistence on conformity, orcomfortable acquiescence in it by a great many, was present in American society as longago as 1920. One of the major journals of that time was The Worlds Work, and in itsDecember 1920 issue it ran an article by Lothrop Stoddard entitled Is AmericaAmerican? pointing to the flood of immigrants brought in by Big Business in a search foran abundance of cheap, ignorant labor. Stoddard quoted the observations of a Londonjournalist, who said that by free use of the business slogan, America, the Land of theFree, the American employer was able to comb the ghettoes of the world. What is

68 Harold E. Stearns (ed.), Civilization in the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1922).69 Schlesinger,Disuniting of America, p. 115.


20/24

pertinent of our present point is that the writer, Oliver Madox Hueffer of the LondonNational Review, noted the political correctness and conformity of that day. He wrote:All thinking Americans realize these facts and the menace which they carry with them;very few admit them. It would be dangerous, for one thing. The man who undertakes totell an unpleasant truth to a mixed American audience takes his life and his reputation in

his hands. Furthermore, the vast majority even of white Americans have that curiousform of faith which the classical schoolboy defined as believing in something which youknow is not true.70

If this is so in the United States, with its long tradition of free speech, it is evenmore evident in Europe, with its various incitement to ethnic hatred laws and ostracismof political parties and movements that seek restrictions on immigration. An illustration:that in Belgium the Vlaams Blok party was declared racist by a court and banned fromparticipating in elections.

The taboo is enforced in part by cries of racism. The lead paragraph in a Kansasstory two years ago reported that seven Hispanic organizations in Wichita are calling forthe resignation of a State Board of Education candidate, saying that her plan to refuse to

educate children of illegal and undocumented immigrants is racist and illegal.

71

Much information incompatible with political correctness is simply not given tothe public, a particularly insidious form of censorship. Afrikaner author Dan Roodt saysthat since 1994, at least 1,500 Afrikaner farmers have been killed in horrible atrocities bymarauding black gangs responding to the ANCs slogan, kill the Boer, kill the farmer, and adds: Yet not a single editorial has been written in the West condemning thesekillings. He compares that silence to the worldwide publicity given to the 1977 death ofblack activist Steve Biko while in police custody.72 The Middle American News tells howU.S. news outlets preferred to bury the story when at a soccer match in Zapopan,Mexico, to determine who gets to go to the Olympics in Athens, Mexican fans booed theStar Spangled Banner as the American team left the field. Then they chanted, Osama!Osama! Osama!73 In Arizona in the 2004 election, the voters passed, by a 56 to 44%vote, Proposition 200, under which an individual would have to show proof of citizenshipto register and vote, and to prove that he is eligible for government benefits, includingwelfare. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, the strongest voice in Congress forimmigration control, has noted the lack of press coverage to the Arizona vote: I amdisappointed but not surprised by the lack of media attention.74

It all leads to a fact of major significance: the impotence of majorities in Americansociety. Many speak with pride in the United States of being the worlds oldestdemocracy, but the claim is presented as so many things are, as a platitude, despite thesubstances being far wide of the mark. A lawsuit immediately delayed implementation ofArizonas Proposition 200, and predictably the measure will never be allowed to go intoeffect. In 1994 the California voters approved Proposition 187, cutting off public benefitsto illegal aliens, by a 60% majority but a federal judge struck it down.75 For years, polls

70 Lothrop Stoddard, Is America American?, The Worlds Work, December 1920, pp. 201-203.71 The Wichita Eagle, September 5, 2002.72 Dan Roodt, Afrikaner Survival Under Black Rule (Part II),American Renaissance, June 2004, p. 7.73 Middle American News, March 2004, p. 3.74 Tancredo is quoted in Elizabeth Howards Capitol Offenses,Middle American News, December 2004,p. 12.75 Samuel Francis column,Middle American News, July 2004, p. 17.


21/24

have shown that a large majority of Americans want immigration reduced; in 1993, a USAToday/CNN/Gallup survey placed it at 65%, and aNew York Times/CBS poll at 61%.76

And yet the demographic invasion has continued and accelerated, with the leadingpoliticians of both major parties ignoring that majority.

5. Idealizing Other Cultures.For several years, the history, heroes and myths of the American mainstream priorto the 1950s have been deconstructed and rendered despicable. The perspectives of othershave been raised in their place. Nothing captures this better than a plaintive cry from awhite mother, who wrote: My 7-year-old son attends the Wichita public school system.Recently he was informing me of what he had learned during Black History Month,detailing various black Americans and their accomplishments. Afterward, I asked him ifhe knew what George Washington was famous for. He replied, I think he plantedpeanuts. Whatever happened to American history?77

At the same time this denigration of the one and elevation of the others isproceeding apace, the concept, inconsistent with it, is put forward that all cultures are

equal, with none meaningfully better than another. Note that this denies any primacy to thecultural achievements of the West, literally placing Beethoven and Brahms on the sameplane as the jungle drums of the Congo or St. Pauls Cathedral on the same plane as awigwam; simultaneously, it makes it ideologically obligatory to welcome all culturalvariations, whatever they are. The concept is a good example of the hyperbole an ideologymay engage in when it has the field of ideas all to itself. It is difficult to imagine that thosewho voice it really mean to endorse as equal a culture such as is found in some parts ofthe Islamic sphere where the following can occur, as noted inAmerican Renaissance:Nuran Halitogullari, a 14-year-old Turkish girl, survived kidnap and rape, but her fatherMehmet believed her defilement stained the family honor, so he garroted her. MissHalitogullari is the latest victim in the centuries-long tradition of honor killings in Turkeyand other Islamic countries.78 The same journal, which has the temerity to report muchthat is never mentioned elsewhere, reports that the Southern Chinese have bizarre taste infood There is even a delicacy called three-screams rat, in which rats are eaten alive.The rat is said to scream once when it is grabbed by chopsticks, the second time when it isdipped in vinegar, and the third time when it is bitten.79 The taboo on airing such thingshas not barred widespread awareness, because of feminist attention to them, of theclitoridectomies done on infant girls in such countries as Egypt, Syria, Jordan and SaudiArabia.80 Examples could go on endlessly. They show that those advancing the conceptof cultural equality are either very ignorant of what human beings do or are playing looselywith ideology, counting on others unquestioning acceptance.

On similar footing is the taboo in the United States today against consideringdifferences in intelligence. A teacher writes, One of the first things I learned was that inour jurisdiction you cannot give a black child an IQ test. 81 A Florida judge recentlygranted class-action status to a suit based on the premise that the Equal Protection Clause

76 Border Watch, August 1993, p. 1.77 The Wichita Eagle, May 8, 1995.78 American Renaissance, June 2004, p. 15.79 American Renaissance, January 2004, p. 15.80 See Paul Theroux,Dark Star Safari, p. 57.81 American Renaissance, August 2004, p. 4.


22/24

of the 14th Amendment is violated by any difference in the races academic achievement.82

A part of the denial of differences is the assertion that the differences are caused by suchthings as differences in wealth. American Renaissance reports, however, that in 2002,whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had average test scores [on theScholastic Aptitude Test] 46 points higher than blacks from families with incomes between

$80,000 and $100,000.83

The premise that all students are capable of performing equallywell, if only the schools serve them as they should, lies behind the No Child Left Behindinitiative of the George W. Bush administration. Domestically, it has set the United Stateson a quest that is quixotic for precisely the same reason that it is quixotic to think the worldcan be made over in the image of todays United States. There is reason to expect thateach, based on a denial of differences, will come to smash on unpalatable realities.

6. Differing Cultures Varying Perspectives, Compact Experiences and Senses

of Self.

We dont have to indulge in a destructive polylogism, such as was once asserted forproletarian science or the Teutonic soul, to appreciate that peoples from different

cultures bring to the table widely varying perspectives that fundamentally define them forwho they are.On a trip to Mexico last year, I was impressed by the intensity of the revolutionary

culture that even at the beginning of the twenty-first century harks back to the earlynineteenth century overthrow of Spanish domination and the early twentieth centuryoverthrow of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship. Monuments to martyrs, on or off horseback,are everywhere to be found; and large murals that adorn public buildings tell the stories ofmassacre and oppression. If someone were to study the extent to which victimology iscentral to the thinking of a people, he would no doubt find that the Mexican people rankhigh in any comparison.

I lived in Mexico for three and a half years when I was a young boy. My thoughtswere entirely on the United States. I can understand it as quite natural, then, when aMexican high school boy in California writes in a school essay that, I am a young manwho represents the history, culture, unity and pride of the Mexican people. I am Mexicanand an American. Each time I accomplish something or reach a new goal, I am remindedof who I am, whom I represent and from where I came.84

Some of this perspective is decidedly anti-Western. The perspective aboutColumbus, say, has shifted 180 degrees, no longer representing the European point of view.A newspaper report carries the sub-head Columbus memorials have been targeted sincecelebrations in 1992. It says that all over the hemisphere statues of the 15th-centuryexplorer have been defaced 500 years of genocide was the message left on the statue inColumbus Memorial Park outside Washingtons Union Station.85

In 1993 a white Jewish teacher wrote a striking op-ed piece forThe WashingtonPost. She told how she had been hired by a community college in the Washington, D.C.,area to teach black history. She quietly withdrew from teaching the course after she raninto a wall of hostility from the students, who were 90 percent black. The studentscontinued to assert that they did not have anything to learn from me and that it is

82 American Renaissance, August 2004, p. 15.83 American Renaissance, November 2003, p. 15.84 The essay is set out inBorder Watch, January 1994, p. 3.85 Los Angeles Times/Washington Post Service report in The Wichita Eagle, January 18, 1998.


23/24

impossible for a white person [to understand] the nature of the black experience. Nearthe conclusion, the teacher asked, Does a people own its history?, a position she calledintellectually bankrupt. These students have clearly been taught that they are entitled toa haven away from a white mans interpretation of past evidence.86

Equally striking is the way the mainstream society, still heavily white, has adopted

this reversal of perspective. In TheDeath of the West, Patrick Buchanan devotes elevenpages to examples:

That Washingtons Birthday has been replaced by Presidents Day.

That Thomas Jefferson was last year declared persona non grata in NewJersey.

That the Custer National Battlefield has lately been renamed Little Big HornNational Battlefield.

That San Jose, California now boasts a new statue of Quetzalcoatl, a featheredgod of the Aztecs.

That in St. Augustine, Florida, removal of Ponce de Leons statue is beingdemanded by American Indians.

That in Richmond Robert E. Lees portrait was ordered removed from a displayof famous Virginians.

That the Confederate battle flag [has been] ordered down from the South Carolinacapitol. In Texas, on orders of Gov. George W. Bush, two plaques to Confederatewar dead were removed. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush removed the Confederatebattle flag from atop the state capitol in Tallahasee.

That The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been removed from schoolreading lists across America.

That the war on the past is not unique to America. He recounts how the newmayor of London wants to knock off their pedestals British generals whose namesare associated with empire and rule of peoples of color.

That plans advance to erect in Trafalgar Square, where Adm. Horatio Nelsonscolumn stands, a nine-foot statue to Nelson Mandela.87

This is the context in which we find U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, a reputedlyconservative Republican from Kansas, introducing a Senate Resolution that apologizes onbehalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances ofviolence, maltreatment, and neglect.88 And in 1995 , according to an Associated Pressreport, Betty Crocker, the white-bread-and-mayonnaise symbol of middle America, isgetting a multi-ethnic makeover to brown her skin and make her look more like aminority.89

Counter-evidence that shows moves toward assimilation has been cited bycolumnist John Leo. He has written that a lot of very different peoples come under the

86 Nina Gilden Seavey, Multiculturalism breeds new racism, special to The Washington Post, run in TheWichita Eagle, February 7, 1993.87 Buchanan,Death of the West, pp. 160-171.88 Middle American News, July 2004, p. 2. For a study that examines the history of U.S.-American Indianrelations and the reasons for their having been what they were, see Dwight D. Murphey, The Dispossessiono f the American Indian and Other Key Issues in American History (Washington, D.C.: Scott-TownsendPublishers, 1995), pp. 7-26.89 Associated Press, A new mix for Betty Crocker, The Wichita Eagle, September 12, 1995.


24/24

general heading of Hispanic, but if you look at surveys of Hispanic attitudes, they seemvery close to traditional American values. Family solidarity, the work ethic, religion andpatriotism rank very high. Polls show that 90 percent of Hispanics think anyone living hereshould learn English as quickly as possible. About 75 percent think we have too manyimmigrants Most [in a focus group] wanted to be called American.90 If we are to

reconcile the instances of ethnic separateness cited above with Leos point, we confront theissue of just what America are they assimilating into? Given all the factors at work, itis a very different America from what it was just a few years ago.

Conclusion

A vast literature has developed on multiculturalism, immigration and diversity.This article has sought to add additional points to the discussion, examining the context inwhich the ideological and demographic challenge to the continuing existence of Europeanpeoples has come about and clarifying many of the conceptual issues raised bymulticulturalist ideology. The challenge to the West is one of the great issues facing theworld today, and deserves a far more serious discussion than is to be found in the double

standards and platitudes that inform popular discourse on the subject.

90 John Leo column, The Wichita Eagle, June 18, 1997.

multicult art 2005

Documents