0 comment Friday, August 22, 2014 | admin
In an article titled Immigration Confusions by Steven Malanga at the City Journal, Malanga gives a lengthy answer to a pro-immigration piece from the New York Sun, The Case for Immigration, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth.
(Note: if the title of the New York Sun piece was not a giveaway, I would have guessed that the writer was a liberal, without reading a word of the article. The hyphenated name is a dead giveaway)
Predictably, Ms. Hyphenated-Liberal trots out the usual 'arguments' used by the open-borders advocates, and the big gun she hauls out at the end is the obligatory reference to the Know-Nothing Party. I challenge any of these liberal open-borders shills to tell us something about this Know-Nothing Party, since it is being used as the ultimate insult against immigration restrictionists. But I suspect that it's the open-borders shills who 'Know Nothing'.
However, Steven Malanga in his City Journal response does a thorough job of disposing of Ms. Furchtgott-Roth's arguments. It's a long read, but a substantial piece, worth reading in full, and Malanga questions the motives of the open-borders advocates on the 'right'.
On the left, advocacy for open borders is not about what's good for our economy but about immigration as an extension of the civil rights battles of the 1960s. But on the right it's hard to understand what's behind the increasingly strident advocacy other than ideology -- to be defended at all costs and by any rhetorical technique available, including branding its opponents as enablers of Know Nothingness or other disreputable movements.
I have one little quibble with Malanga, though: he accepts Ms. Hyphenated-Zealot's slur of the Know-Nothings, and objects to being classed with such 'disreputable' movements; and more, he accepts her classifications, referring, in his own words, to 'racism or nativism or some other despicable ''ism.''
If we let the leftists/liberals including the Republican liberals, (seen at their worst, here), define all the terms, we have lost from the outset. We have to try to take control of the terminology, and refuse to speak their debased language. As long as we accept their definitions and the words continue to mean whatever the liberals choose them to mean, (as with Humpty Dumpty) we will get nowhere.
As for me, I'm going to make every effort to redeem the word 'nativist'. I intend to wear the badge proudly; I plan to call myself a nativist first, and deprive our adversaries of the satisfaction of flinging that name at me as an insult. I claim it. What is the opposite of a nativist, anyway? No ready label comes to mind, but whatever the opposite of a nativist is, it's something highly unnatural.
Why on earth should preferring one's own countrymen or fellow-citizen above foreigners be a disgrace, or an aberration, or a thought-crime? To accede to this judgment is to be defeated. We have to reassert the honor and the 'naturalness' of putting our own countrymen and kin first. Just as we treat our families with greater concern than we do strangers (at least if we are normal, balanced people) we should put our countrymen first. Believe me, the Mexicans put their own people first, don't they? What's the Spanish word for 'nativist'? They probably have no word for it, because it is just considered the normal state of things. Every nationality gives preference to their own.
It's wrong to make us 'thought-criminals' if we prefer our own.
Preferring one's own does not mean 'racism' or 'xenophobia' or 'hate.' Let's not go along with such liberal distortions.
(Note: if the title of the New York Sun piece was not a giveaway, I would have guessed that the writer was a liberal, without reading a word of the article. The hyphenated name is a dead giveaway)
Predictably, Ms. Hyphenated-Liberal trots out the usual 'arguments' used by the open-borders advocates, and the big gun she hauls out at the end is the obligatory reference to the Know-Nothing Party. I challenge any of these liberal open-borders shills to tell us something about this Know-Nothing Party, since it is being used as the ultimate insult against immigration restrictionists. But I suspect that it's the open-borders shills who 'Know Nothing'.
However, Steven Malanga in his City Journal response does a thorough job of disposing of Ms. Furchtgott-Roth's arguments. It's a long read, but a substantial piece, worth reading in full, and Malanga questions the motives of the open-borders advocates on the 'right'.
On the left, advocacy for open borders is not about what's good for our economy but about immigration as an extension of the civil rights battles of the 1960s. But on the right it's hard to understand what's behind the increasingly strident advocacy other than ideology -- to be defended at all costs and by any rhetorical technique available, including branding its opponents as enablers of Know Nothingness or other disreputable movements.
I have one little quibble with Malanga, though: he accepts Ms. Hyphenated-Zealot's slur of the Know-Nothings, and objects to being classed with such 'disreputable' movements; and more, he accepts her classifications, referring, in his own words, to 'racism or nativism or some other despicable ''ism.''
If we let the leftists/liberals including the Republican liberals, (seen at their worst, here), define all the terms, we have lost from the outset. We have to try to take control of the terminology, and refuse to speak their debased language. As long as we accept their definitions and the words continue to mean whatever the liberals choose them to mean, (as with Humpty Dumpty) we will get nowhere.
As for me, I'm going to make every effort to redeem the word 'nativist'. I intend to wear the badge proudly; I plan to call myself a nativist first, and deprive our adversaries of the satisfaction of flinging that name at me as an insult. I claim it. What is the opposite of a nativist, anyway? No ready label comes to mind, but whatever the opposite of a nativist is, it's something highly unnatural.
Why on earth should preferring one's own countrymen or fellow-citizen above foreigners be a disgrace, or an aberration, or a thought-crime? To accede to this judgment is to be defeated. We have to reassert the honor and the 'naturalness' of putting our own countrymen and kin first. Just as we treat our families with greater concern than we do strangers (at least if we are normal, balanced people) we should put our countrymen first. Believe me, the Mexicans put their own people first, don't they? What's the Spanish word for 'nativist'? They probably have no word for it, because it is just considered the normal state of things. Every nationality gives preference to their own.
It's wrong to make us 'thought-criminals' if we prefer our own.
Preferring one's own does not mean 'racism' or 'xenophobia' or 'hate.' Let's not go along with such liberal distortions.
Labels: Nativists