I don’t think most prospective immigrants think of the USA as a place where they can “assimilate.” I think they, in keeping with modern “multicultural” thinking, regard America as a place where they can go on being themselves and maintain their native culture, but in the context of a safer and more prosperous society. People don’t really want to give up who they are just because they move to another country, at least not if their main motive in immigrating has to do with escaping an unpleasant economic or political situation at home (as was the case, for example, for my in-laws, who left Mao’s China as the Cultural Revolution was getting underway). The “melting pot” image of America is nothing but rhetorical nonsense, especially for those who do not share our Western European heritage.

When you note that most Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first, and Americans second, you fail to ask whether this is in fact how it should be, not only for Muslims, but for anyone who is a serious believer in any religion. Are you not a Christian first and an American second? If God tells you one thing, and the Supreme Court or Congress tells you differently, which should you believe and, more importantly, act on?

As Patrick Buchanan once observed, we haven’t even assimilated the Indians!

Scott makes an excellent point here, regarding the myth of assimilation.  Sure, some ethnic European immigrants did assimilate, and one can even find examples of more exotic immigrants who are more or less assimilated.  However, those cases of assimilation are the Exceptions that prove the Rule, the Rule being that assimilation doesn’t really happen. 

Once we face reality on this issue, we can see how the lack of assimilation has adversely affected American culture, politics and even the economy.

@Craig:

“When you note that most Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first, and Americans second, you fail to ask whether this is in fact how it should be, not only for Muslims, but for anyone who is a serious believer in any religion.”

Yes, I did fail to ask that, because it wasn’t relevant to this discussion.  There’s another whole essay to be written on this point, and Mr. Sarto keeps asking me to write it (and I will!).  Suffice it to say, for the moment, that, as a Catholic, I’d rather than Muslims in America were not thinking of themselves as Muslims first.

What is relevant is that, in terms of the relations of Muslims to American society, both secular and Christian, this self-identification as Muslims should give us pause.  There’s no reason to believe that Islam is compatible with American constitutional republicanism, much less with European-American traditions, much less with Christianity.

In an abstract sense, the commitment of American Muslims to their religion is admirable.  I only wish that we saw such commitment among American Christians.  If that were the case, however, there would probably be fewer Muslims here.

Good rebuttal.  Look forward to your subsequent responses.

I am always weary of Anglo/European Americans, often liberals or neocons, who so easily will write off Europe.  If Europe falls, the West, Western man, and our traditions are doomed.

“There’s another whole essay to be written on this point, and Mr. Sarto keeps asking me to write it (and I will!).”

Now that is something to look forward to. In the meantime, I think Mr. Richert will hold us over with his usual excellent writing.

I am a Catholic Christian first,God before the state for me anytime.

@Jack:

But would you rather that Muslims put Allah before their country?  I wouldn’t.

Scott P. Richert might be correct. I have no reason to think that he’s not. He’s also not making a “Rivers of Blood” speech, thank goodness. But is it unreasonable to say that the Middle Eastern Arab and Iranian Muslims hate us because of the Neocon policy?  Do Kuwaiti, Indonesian, Bosnian, and Albanian Muslim’s hate us?

Something else bothers me.  Just change the words “Muslim” to “Irish” and “Islam” to “Catholic”, and could the same article could have been published by the Know Nothings in the 1840s?  There’s a Puritan haunting these pages who might say “yes.” Ditto the debate on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?  The Chinese weren’t Christians or Westerners either Ditto Wilson’s treatment of German-Americans in 1917-18, most of whom along with Irish-Americans supported the Kaiser, some of whom may have been named “Richert”?

@Karl Muck:

But is it unreasonable to say that the Middle Eastern Arab and Iranian Muslims hate us because of the Neocon policy?

Not at all.  That’s one reason, certainly, and for many of them, it’s the main reason.  But where have I suggested otherwise?

Do Kuwaiti, Indonesian, Bosnian, and Albanian Muslim’s hate us?

Some do, in fact.  And don’t forget that Osama bin Laden traveled throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990’s on a passport issued by the Bosnian Muslim government.

Just change the words “Muslim” to “Irish” and “Islam” to “Catholic”, and could the same article could have been published by the Know Nothings in the 1840s?

Look, if you want to argue for open immigration, argue for open immigration.  But these “Oh, my, you talk just like the people who would have kept my ancestors out” lines are not arguments; they’re emotional outbursts at best.

Immigration policy should be made in the best interests of the country.  Period.  If that meant that my German Lutheran ancestors were kept out in 1832, or my Polish Catholic ones at the end of the 19th century, it wouldn’t have hurt my feelings. Especially since I wouldn’t exist today.  But unlike the kinds of people who whine about “exclusionary” immigration policies, I don’t consider myself so important that the mere fact of my existence justifies open immigration.

I’m not Peter Ramus, but I’m not John Zmirak either.  Out of all of the immigrant groups that came to America in the 19th century, I’d say that German Catholics were the best of the lot.  And while many German Catholics didn’t “assimilate” they didn’t upset the apple cart either.  In other words, the German Catholics were both closely enough related to the original stock Americans that they fit in, and the culture of German Catholics was pretty much one that didn’t seek to subvert the pre-existing social order.  So that even many critics of immigration in the 19th and early 20th century didn’t have much to complain about concerning German Catholic immigrants. 

That being said, the almost unique nature of German Catholic immigrants (among the largest group ever to migrat to the USA) doesn’t tell us much about other immigrant groups. 

Making arguments that because we let people immigrate here in the past we must continue to do so isn’t a rational argument.  It is as Scott says, an emotional argument and is often advanced by those who exactly wish to subvert whatever of the old order still exists in the USA. 

BTW, I’m not a German Catholic.

I don’t buy the argument that if Europe falls, the West is doomed, but a lot depends on what you mean by the West.  It would not mean the end of Christianity or the end of the Catholic Church and this is what matters most.  Best case scenario, it might mean the end of the Enlightenment and all its evil fruits and a great revival of pre-modern Western culture, both classical and medieval.

@Kirt Higdon:

Belloc was right: “The Faith is Europe.  And Europe is the Faith.” The papacy can go in exile from Rome, but the destruction of what remains of Christian Europe would mean very dark times for the Church.

“Best case scenario, it might mean the end of the Enlightenment and all its evil fruits and a great revival of pre-modern Western culture, both classical and medieval.”

And are you going to pull these, shall I call them “Revivalists” out of your pocket?  The destruction of Western culture leads to the destruction of Western people. What good can come of that? What differentiates this sort of thinking from the woolly headed apocalypse mongering of the Christian Zionists? I trust I need not expand on this…

Western culture (or at least its better aspects) has already been destroyed or abandoned.  I’ve never been able to understand Belloc’s statement about Europe and the faith, especially since it was made around the time that Europe had almost completed its abandonment of the faith, a process already well underway for centuries.  At this moment, in the era of post-Christian Europe, the statement simply rings of European conceit and a will to ignore the growth of Christianity in many parts of the world other than Europe.  I hope and pray for the re-conversion of Europe.  This may well be accomplished by African and Chinese missionaries sent to the dark northern continent by an African or South American pope.

Well I guess if Europe is post-Christian there’s nothing wrong with it being post-European as well.  And why not condemn all Western man while you’re at it?  Honestly why do some people seem to see the death of the West through the lens of a 12 step program?

The fact that our common plight cannot be honestly discussed leads to a vacuum of serious thought.  I mean really, a lame semi-quotation from an E. Waugh short story? You are going to pin your hopes on that? The spiritual rot is indeed deep and long established, I won’t discount that.  But, is hoping that some sort of invigorating chastisement at the hands of the Moslems, et al the best that can be hoped for?

My apologies for the above, to clarify:

But, is some sort of invigorating chastisement at the hands of the Muslims, et al the best that can be hoped for?

I don’t see the basis for this alarmist argument. Terrorist violence or affiliation with terrorist groups is a statistical rarity among American Muslims. Despite a population that ranges from three to six million, from 9/11 on, there isn’t a single incident of terrorist violence attributable to an American Muslim. Moreover, consider this fact in light of the prejudice directed toward Muslims since 9/11, the one-sided support of Israel by the US, the invasion and destruction of Iraq, the repression of civil liberty by the government,.... Obviously, American Muslims are well integrated and fairly supportive of the US. To support his (bigoted) position, Rickert cites a few polling questions and a single anecdote about a Dr. Siddiqui who supposedly expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden 5 months after 9/11 and headed a mosque and Islamic school in Rockford, Illinois. As for the polling questions, the significance being assigned is greatly exaggerated. Any religious person--Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Hindu, Mormon--would by definition probably weigh his or her religious identity more than his or her dual status as an American citizen. The question is where are the conflicts, if any, between the individual’s religious identity and national identity? The alleged 26% support of suicide bombing in defense of Islam is a bit more worrisome, but again what type of situations are we talking about. It isn’t clear. Certainly, Christian, Jews, Hindus, and so on might resort to extreme actions to defend their faith. Are they wrong to do this? Not necessarily. You have to look at specific situations to draw conclusions. As for the personal anecdote regarding the apparent radical views of Dr. Siddiqui, Rickert should have simply reported him to the FBI and perhaps the Illinois Department of Education for investigation and monitoring, but I don’t see why people in general have to freak out every time they see a guy with a beard and turban.

One last point on the polling questions that I forgot to mention. Richert claims that “only 40 percent of Muslims in America believe that September 11 was carried out by Arab Muslims.” American Muslims probably are to some degree in denial about 9/11 or are being too paranoid about the Bush administration/Oil companies/Mossad, but if memory serves me correct a majority of (non-Muslim) Americans disputes the official 9/11 story pushed by the government, and Alex Jones sure has a lot of fans out there.

Although that figure about how many muslims may support suicide bombings is worrying, what is more worrying is the number of ‘Christians’ supporting presidential candidates that think using nuclear weapons against Iran would be A-Ok. Seems wrong to point the finger at Muslims when there are plenty of even more psychopathic Christians out there.

“If Europe falls, the West, Western man, and our traditions are doomed.”

Too late. Europe has failed. Western Civilization is doomed. Our duty now is to preserve that which is best from our Western tradition and use it to form the new civilization that is to be born.

Christianity is very much alive in the Southern Hemisphere, growing in Asia and there is a remnant in Europe. We are headed for a very interesting times.

The belief that the Third World is some kind of model of virtue is an idea that has long been at the heart of the New Left that came on the scene in the 1960s.  It is of course related to the left wing notion of the noble savage or the virtuous primitive, the natural man free of the contamination of civilization and its institutions.  Any conservative of course rejects that idea. 

John Lukacs wrote the following concerning the relation of the European world to the Third World. 

QUOTE:

For more than one hundred years after the establishment of the United States most Americans saw themselves as representing something that was opposite of the Old World and its sins.  After about one hundred years this gradually transformed:  the United States was the advanced model of the Old World…perhaps of the entire world.  Neither of these visions is meaningful any longer.  Will the American people have the inner strength to consolidate, and to sustain, the belief that their civilization is different not from the so-called Old but from the so-called Third World, and not merely its advanced model?  At the beginning of the third century of American independence that is or rather ought to be the question.  UNQOUTE

I am a bit curious as to whether the Muslim’s
anti-assimilationist stance has more to do with
nationalism, religion, or just rejection of modernity.

After all, the Muslims here do not run so much into
Christianity than across the secular world (which in
many quarters is just sleazy). They walk the same
streets we do, watch the same TV programs, see the same
magazines on display.

Then do not discount the pull of nationalism - the
unfortunate effect of extended family is that there is
at least a member of your family that has access to
extremists beliefs and literature, and is too glad to
pass it along. And that includes family living in the
old country, seeking liberation from what they see as
foreign domination (remember the Irish lobby?  How
many Irish Americans have a warm spot in their hearts
for the IRA while fully accepting the ruleof law in
the USA?)

I think that it is a bit early to attribute all those
mixed up motives to religion alone.

But, remember, if they assimilate, they will assimilate
into modernity.

@Martin:

Although that figure about how many muslims may support suicide bombings is worrying, what is more worrying is the number of ‘Christians’ supporting presidential candidates that think using nuclear weapons against Iran would be A-Ok. Seems wrong to point the finger at Muslims when there are plenty of even more psychopathic Christians out there.

So, even though the very first article I wrote for this website criticized precisely those “psychopathic Christians,” and several other articles and blog posts I’ve done for this site have done the same, it’s still “wrong to point the finger at Muslims”?

If you want to make a pro-Muslim argument, make it.  If you want to accuse me of hypocrisy, go ahead--the presence of those articles means that you will fail.  But saying it’s wrong to criticize radical Muslims when there exist “psychopathic Christians” whom I happen to have criticized as well is simply silly.

@GM:

What’s “alarmist” about what I wrote?  Seriously--point something out, rather than throw out words like alarmist.

Despite a population that ranges from three to six million, from 9/11 on, there isn’t a single incident of terrorist violence attributable to an American Muslim.

Really?  So all those cases of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” that I’ve written about on this website and others, and those that Srdja Trifkovic has written about in Chronicles and on our website, simply didn’t happen?  I’m sure the victims at the L.A. Airport, and the Jewish community center in Seattle, and in Salt Lake City feel much better knowing that the Muslims who attacked them weren’t engaged in terrorist violence--even when they said they were.

Oh, except for those victims who are dead.  I guess they don’t get the chance to feel better, now that you’ve set the record straight.

Moreover, consider this fact in light of the prejudice directed toward Muslims since 9/11, the one-sided support of Israel by the US, the invasion and destruction of Iraq, the repression of civil liberty by the government,.... Obviously, American Muslims are well integrated and fairly supportive of the US.

Consider what?  Are you saying that the things you listed, all of which I have opposed, would have justified that terrorist violence that you claim hasn’t happened?  If not, what are you saying?

By the way, in your attempt to downplay what’s going on at our local mosque, why didn’t you respond to the Derrick Shareef case?  Or did Shareef not exist, either?

To support his (bigoted) position, Rickert cites a few polling questions . . .

From a Pew Research Center study that is widely considered the most extensive one ever conducted on the demographics and attitudes of Muslims in America.  And one that has been extensively cited by people who believe, as you do, that Muslims are “well integrated and fairly supportive of the US.”

. . . and a single anecdote about a Dr. Siddiqui who supposedly expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden 5 months after 9/11 and headed a mosque and Islamic school in Rockford, Illinois.

How many anecdotes about Dr. Siddiqui and the school would you like?  Over the past five and a half years, I’ve published a half-dozen articles on my day-long visit to the school.  Dr. Siddiqui (who has received copies of my articles) has never denied a single quotation.  So much for “supposedly.”

The point about the school and mosque here is that it is often held up as a shining example of mainstream Islam.  The Chicago Tribune and the Rockford Register Star wrote glowing articles on it in the wake of September 11.  Somehow, they failed to have the same discussions that my colleague Aaron Wolf and I had with Dr. Siddiqui and his colleagues and the students at the school.

Chronicles did the work; the others didn’t.

The alleged 26% support of suicide bombing in defense of Islam is a bit more worrisome, but again what type of situations are we talking about. It isn’t clear. Certainly, Christian, Jews, Hindus, and so on might resort to extreme actions to defend their faith.

Put up or shut up, GM: Show me one defense of suicide bombing, under any conditions, by a mainstream Christian.

@Scott

Be careful about defense of terrorism by mainstream
Christians. While you will not find defenders of
suicide bombings per se, you will find plenty of
terrorist apologists from Irish and Irish Americans,
who are very much mainstream catholics.

And Latin America is full of mainstream catholics who
defend terrorism, wether the subversive or the state
kind (need I remind you of that military chaplain in
Argentina who assuage the moral doubts of torturers,
telling the that they are doing God’s work?)

When it comes to politics, religion is just another
excuse to commit atrocities - or rather provides the
vocabulary that allows you to feel virtuous for doing
the unspeakable.

@Adriana:

I wrote what I wrote (and I didn’t, as you imply, defend “terrorism by mainstream Christians").  GM thinks that the fact that 26 percent of Muslims in America believe that suicide bombing is sometimes justifiable is understandable, and no different from Christian attitudes.

Even defenders of the IRA (which, at the height of its terrorist activities, was only marginally Catholic) never defended suicide bombing.

And no Christian has ever defended suicide bombing from a Christian standpoint.

@Scott:

The IRA may not be fully catholic, but those who
make excuses for it usually are.

As for not liking suicide bombing, do you mean that they
prefer that the terrorist keeps alive so that he can
do it again???

@Adriana:

As for not liking suicide bombing, do you mean that they
prefer that the terrorist keeps alive so that he can
do it again???

Surely, you jest.  Suicide bombing is abhorrent, because of what it represents.  Christians cannot sanction such actions even in the course of a just war, because suicide is a sin against God.  What does it say about a religion when leaders of that religion can justify such a horrendous action?

And from the purely practical standpoint of defending yourself, suicide bombing makes self-defense much harder.  Just ask the American sailors and Marines who were the target of kamikaze attacks in the Pacific during World War II.  That 26 percent of Muslim in the United States under the age of 30 believe that suicide bombing is sometimes justified is cause for concern.

@Scott

Of course, you ran across my peculiar sense of humor,
which not many people recognize as such.

But I hope you recongizne that non-acceptance of
suicide bombing is not the same as non-acceptance of
terrorism. There are more armchair supporters of
terrorism out there that we may like to think about.

I say look at the Irish (it always surprises me how
people always forget about Ireland when making their
theoretical constructs - mainly, I think, because it
does not fit into their parameters). Most Irish Americans
today have gone more thoughtful about supporting the
IRA or applauding anyone who beat up the English. But
their grandfathers were not so moderate, and their
assimilation into the American political machine and
society did no dampen their ardor (think about Joe
Kennedy, who by most parameters could be called an
assimilated Irish American, quite unwilling to let go
of his hartred of the English). It took a couple of
generations to tame that beast.

It does not seem sensible to say that a group is
congenitally unable to assimilate when they are at the
stage our grandparents were.

@Adriana:

“It does not seem sensible to say that a group is
congenitally unable to assimilate when they are at the
stage our grandparents were.”

One doesn’t have to say that “a group is congenitally unable to assimilate” to know that assimilation has not occurred, except in short periods of American history during which immigration was strongly restricted.  And those were European Christians who did not assimilate.

Today, we’re talking about Muslims, at a time of unprecedented mass immigration.  The prospects for assimilation are very slim.

And, again, assimilation to what?  The historic American identity, of which Christianity is a part?  Of course not.  As you’ve pointed out, any “assimilation” that will occur will be to what is worst about America today.

And that’s just asking for a backlash when, as Dr. Siddiqui did, those Muslims who have assimilated rediscover or revivify their faith.

Scott Richert misses my point. The Know-Nothings were wrong about Catholics and Irish. The anti-Chinese were wrong about the Chinese. Wilson was wrong about German-Americans.  FDR was wrong about Japanese Americans.  Ought we not be careful about other nativist claims until their denigration of newcomers has serious documentation?

So I would like to see some statistics.  How many Muslims are there in America?  What is their per capita crime rate for violent crimes?  How does it compare to other ethnic groups, including German-Americans?  Is there a breakdown into Arab-Americans (subdivided by country of origin), Iranian Americans, Turkish Americans, Pakistani, and Albanian Americans?  Statistical evidence, not anecdotal, would help Scott Richert’s case. Then the question would be, Is such criminal behavior typical or exceptional?  Southern Italian and Sicilian Catholics who came to America also had crime rates higher than “average”.  Did that merit the immigration restrictions of the 1920s?  Maybe it did at the time.  We today know the real outcome.

Could it be true that Islam hates decadent civilizations, ones that Christians would also recognize as decadent?  And could it be that they hate the USA because of what we are doing to them in Iraq?  If so, this surely does not excuse crime.  Yet it does suggest what might be causing crime, and what measures might stop it.

@Karl Muck:

I didn’t miss your point at all.  But why should the default position be in favor of mass immigration?

“Could it be true that Islam hates decadent civilizations, ones that Christians would also recognize as decadent?  And could it be that they hate the USA because of what we are doing to them in Iraq?”

And could it be that only someone who hates the country he lives in would want to let more people into that country who also hate it?

Surely someone who loves his country wouldn’t want to do so.

While I agree with Adriana on the essential nature of the IRA as a terrorist organization, I would note that there wasn’t much concern in the Mainstream Media about the IRA even when it nearly killed British Prime Minister Thatcher in 1983.  However, the Irish Catholics aren’t the only group to seek political goals, including national independence, via the means of terror attacks.  Take the case of Count Folke of Bernadotte of Wisborg (Sweden).

Count Folke Bernadotte was assinated by members of the Stern Gang while attempting to negotiate a peace agreement in Palestine in 1948.  Here is the Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

After World War 2, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen by the victorious powers to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by members of the underground Zionist terrorist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties.

More on the Lehi group here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)

About 15 years ago Transaction publishing, a branch of Rutgers, published a book on immigration and crime.  The finding was that both German and Scandinavian immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries had the lowest crime rates of any immigrant groups. 

I don’t think this really tells us much, as most immigrants today don’t come from cultures that have anything in common with 19th century German or Scandinavia societies of that time. 

The United States has long since passed the point at which it should be taking in millions of immigrants each year.  Nothing healthy keeps growing, certainly not in an unlimited fashion.  Growth out of control is really just a form of cancer.

Ah, Scott, Scott. You really have to reread about the
nineteenth century and early twentieth, to get a feel of
how difficult to assimilate Catholics seemed to be.

It was not only the Irish, with their terrorist ties,
their tendency to drunkenness and to fistfights (it took
many nuns armed with rulers to teach Irish boys the
basics of what not to do if you wanted to make it in
America). It was also de Italians, with their contribution
to American Pop culture: the Mafia. Please point out
to me any Muslim group that is as much trouble as the
mob of Al Capone, or Lucky Luciano, or any of other
names which have been inmortalized thanks to Robert
Stack.

One would think that, given their proclivities, Italians
could not be easily assimilated into American society
(no one at that time thought about polling them, so we
do not know how many Italian boys idolized gangsters and
took them for role models).

My point is that we are only a couple of generations away
from behaving the way Muslims are behaving, and that
we should be more humble about our roots.

@Adriana:

“My point is that we are only a couple of generations away
from behaving the way Muslims are behaving, and that
we should be more humble about our roots.”

Not my ancestors, but even if this were true of mine, how exactly does that make this any different?  Our ancestors were a bunch of hooligans, so we shouldn’t give any thought to the national-security implications of mass immigration?  Or the implications of importing a foreign religion that has a history of conflict with Christianity?

Here is an excerpt from Russell Kirk’s essay The Marriage of Rights and Duties, from 1991.  Note that Kirk objected to the Open Borders insanity, by rejecting the notion that the virtually everyone in the world has a “right” to migrate to the United States. 

http://www.mmisi.org/ir/27_02/kirk.pdf

Nowadays, new alleged rights spring up mushroom like; and entitlements, too.  Zealots for animal rights burst into departments of zoology and public zoological gardens to rescue their oppressed brethren of the animal kingdom.  Or there are discovered global rights; everybody in the world should enjoy the right to shift to the United States, should he so choose, to partake of the American cornucopia. 

We approach the point at which it will be emphatically declared that everybody has a right to anything he desires at public expense.  Belligerent and malignant “minorities” can claim rights not possessed by the common man:  thus homosexuals claim, and in some states and municipalities obtain, the right to be employed, “regardless of sexual preferences;” and potential employers hesitate to deny such applicants, lest they fall under penalty of law.  But employers labor under no compulsion to engage the services of mere run of the mill adulterers, or polygamists.

@ Scott, “Even defenders of the IRA (which, at the height of its terrorist activities, was only marginally Catholic) never defended suicide bombing.”

But they do defend bombing, and that’s the problem.  If all the IRA simply committed suicide the world would be a better place.

I don’t think “suicide” bombing is intrinsically immoral.  If aimed at a military target (e.g. the US Marines barracks in Beirut or Japanese kamakazi pilots against US warships) then the principle of double effect applies.  At least that is what I was taught by more than one Catholic priest in high school catechism and college theology classes.

Bombing is immoral if aimed at civilians or if not enough care is taken to exclude civilians as “collateral damage”.  It doesn’t matter if the bomber is dropping or guiding his bomb or personally delivering it.  Between the USAF and Al Qaeda or the IRA, the main difference is that the USAF has scored an incomparably higher body count of innocents.

@Kirt Higdon:

“At least that is what I was taught by more than one Catholic priest in high school catechism and college theology classes.”

Seriously?  If so, you had some poorly trained priests.  The principle of double effect does not apply when the intention of the act includes the commission of something that is intrinsically immoral.

It is one thing to launch an assault on an enemy’s position, knowing that the likelihood of your survival is very slim; it is another to intend to die in the assault (e.g., by strapping explosives to your body and running into the enemy line).  The latter is not acceptable under Catholic moral theology, and I’d sure love to see a text that your priests used that claims that it is.

This is entirely true. Most of our Muslim terrorists here in the UK are lower-middle or middle-class; indeed they are more dangerous than the lower-class ones since they are usually smarter.  Huntington in TCoC points out that fundamentalism is a middle-class phenomenon.  Let 15 million middle-class Muslims into the USA and you’ll be no better off than Europe is now.

Re Irish-Americans and the IRA - the important point is that the terrorism they supported was against a foreign power (the UK) not against their own country (the USA)!  Look, here in the UK we have Tamil immigrants.  They support terrorism against the govt of Sri Lanka.  No one cares, because they don’t support terrorism against the UK.

That’s the difference with Muslim terrorist supporters - they support terrorism against *us*.

Scott:

The capacity of the US to absorb more inmigrants at this
time is not the subject of the debate. The debate is
the ability of Muslims to assimilate. My point is that
if Irish IRA supporters and Italians with Mafioso links
could assimilate, then I do no see why Muslims could not
do equally well

(Actually I think that Muslims will assimilate faster
than certain Irish)

And while suicide it is a sin, frankly the part most
feel unconfortable with suicide bombing is the *bombing*
part. And like it or not, if the terrorist does not die
in the attack, we see this not as a proof of moral
superiority over the one who dies but as a reason to
worry, since he can do it again. And again. And again.

“The principle of double effect does not apply when the intention of the act includes the commission of something that is intrinsically immoral.” - Scott Richert

Well, then you are into reading people’s intentions rather than examining the act itself.  Ultimately it is only knowable by God whether the person intends his own death or simply intends the death or destruction of his target and accepts his own death as an inevitable but unintended consequence.  The excuse for “collateral damage”, even on a vast scale, caused by US bombings is that innocent civilian casualties are unintended, albeit inevitable.  In a suicide bombing, the bomber himself is collateral damage although he is not an innocent bystander, but a combatant.

@Kirt Higdon:

“Well, then you are into reading people’s intentions rather than examining the act itself.”

I don’t have to read people’s intentions; you told me that the priests had said that “suicide bombing” fell under the principle of double effect.  The “suicide” part of “suicide bombing” declares the intention.

Adriana:
“My point is that
if Irish IRA supporters and Italians with Mafioso links
could assimilate, then I do no see why Muslims could not
do equally well “

See my point above - the IRA was never at war with the USA, Muslim terrorists are.  The IRA want a united Ireland under a fascistic govt (Sinn Fein), while Muslim fundamentalists want a global caliphate, including America.

Besides which, the Italian mafia clearly *have* established in the USA, much to the USA’s detriment.  And the Irish had a corrupting effect on the politics of many American cities, then with the Kennedy clan on American federal politics.  In my opinion the USA would have done better with neither group.

I again ask Scott Richert to provide the statistical percentage of Muslims in the USA and the statistical per capita evidence of Muslin violent crime in the USA, and to break it down into country of origin.  I really do wish to believe his thesis. I cannot do so until it is proven. To call someone childish or a hater of his country isn’t the proof, to do so and would be the very emotionalism that Scott Richert rightly opposes.  The evidence, quantified and the source cited, please.

“and to do so would be the very emotionalism...” is how the sentence should read. Sorry.

Let me clarify, Mr. Richert.  I was not quoting these priests word for word and the term suicide bombing was not used in those days.  Japanese kamakazi attacks, however, were still fresh in everyone’s memory and those were the examples used in the discussions I was referring to. Since you yourself made that comparison in one of your posts above, I assume you consider it comparable to contemporary “suicide” bombings.  And I might add that some commentators refer to “homicide bombings” rather than suicide bombings.  They seem to grasp that the intent is to kill others - not oneself.

I am trying to provide a bit of perspective to the statistic that 26% of Moslems in the US approve of suicide bombings under some circumstances.  Under what circumstances?  Were they asked whether or not they approved bombing civilians?  I rather suspect that if American Christians were asked if the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, a far higher percentage than 26% would say yes.  The “poorly trained” priests who were my instructors were unanimous in condemning the bombing of civilians, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I favor the immigration to the US of Catholics, but not of Moslems.  But I see no way to prevent the latter while permitting the former, short of formally amending the US Constitution to permit religious discrimination.  What never seems to be advocated in dealing with Moslems is evangelizing them.  It is simply assumed or explicitly stated that they are incapable of receiving the Gospel.  Now that is determinism.

@Kirt Higdon:

“I am trying to provide a bit of perspective to the statistic that 26% of Moslems in the US approve of suicide bombings under some circumstances.  Under what circumstances?  Were they asked whether or not they approved bombing civilians?  I rather suspect that if American Christians were asked if the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, a far higher percentage than 26% would say yes.”

And those American Christians are wrong, as I have discussed many, many times on this site and elsewhere.  But their immoral belief does not in any way minimize the immoral belief of those Muslims who support suicide bombing.

“I favor the immigration to the US of Catholics, but not of Moslems.  But I see no way to prevent the latter while permitting the former, short of formally amending the US Constitution to permit religious discrimination. ”

Srdja Trifkovic has offered one way to do this, in article in Chronicles and on our website.  The Supreme Court upheld immigration restrictions based on membership in the Communist Party; treating Islam as a political ideology for the purposes of immigration would allow similar controls.

“What never seems to be advocated in dealing with Moslems is evangelizing them.  It is simply assumed or explicitly stated that they are incapable of receiving the Gospel.  Now that is determinism.”

Not by me.  Of course, we need evangelization, especially of those who are already here.  Instead, we get self-identified Christians who simply declare that Muslims will assimilate (without, apparently, need for conversion), and other self-identified Christians who seem to desire that Muslims neither assimilate nor convert, because they want to use Islam as a way of cleaning up our decadent culture.

What no one is willing to talk about is the need for all of us to convert.  If our culture is decadent (and it is), the answer isn’t a solution imposed from the outside (or imported by the forces of that decadent culture), but true conversion (or reversion) to Christianity.  But that requires action on our part.  Better to let someone else (say, the supposedly nondecadent Muslims) clean up our mess for us.

@Karl Muck:

“I again ask Scott Richert to provide the statistical percentage of Muslims in the USA and the statistical per capita evidence of Muslin violent crime in the USA, and to break it down into country of origin.  I really do wish to believe his thesis. I cannot do so until it is proven.”

Since I haven’t made my argument on this basis, but on the incompatibility of Islam with the historic American identity and with Christianity and on the historic failure of immigrants to assimilate, how would such numbers prove or disprove my thesis?

(As a side note, such numbers aren’t available--the FBI, which compiles the statistics on violent crimes, does not compile information on the religious adherence of criminals.)

As for the remarks about hating one’s country, that wasn’t emotionalism; it was a logical argument based on what you had written:

“Could it be true that Islam hates decadent civilizations, ones that Christians would also recognize as decadent?  And could it be that they hate the USA because of what we are doing to them in Iraq?”

Since you wrote that, its reasonable to take that as your position, correct?  But it’s also your position that we shouldn’t restrict the immigration of Muslims to the United States:

“The Know-Nothings were wrong about Catholics and Irish. The anti-Chinese were wrong about the Chinese. Wilson was wrong about German-Americans.  FDR was wrong about Japanese Americans.  Ought we not be careful about other nativist claims until their denigration of newcomers has serious documentation?”

So you argue that “Islam hates decadent civilizations” (such as ours) and Muslims “hate the USA because of what we are doing to them in Iraq,” yet you don’t want restrictions on Islamic immigration to the United States.

So, again, what does such an argument say about how you regard your country?

I wonder if you know of the extensive literature that
proved that Catholicism was inimical by its nature with
American democracy (after all, the Pope is an absolute
monarch, who claims to be infallible, and all Catholics
are supposed to obey him - which means allegiance to
a foreign power).

When you add the behavior of the Irish and Italian
troublemakers, you may suspect that you could make
a better case for excluding Catholics than Muslims, if
you bothered to do it.

Aren’t you glad that those who wanted to exclude an
ideology inimical to America did not carry the day then?

@Adriana:

“I wonder if you know of the extensive literature that
proved that Catholicism was inimical by its nature with
American democracy (after all, the Pope is an absolute
monarch, who claims to be infallible, and all Catholics
are supposed to obey him - which means allegiance to
a foreign power).”

Not only am I aware of it, I’ve written about it on several occasions in Chronicles.

“Aren’t you glad that those who wanted to exclude an
ideology inimical to America did not carry the day then?”

I can only repeat what I wrote above:

“Look, if you want to argue for open immigration, argue for open immigration.  But these ‘Oh, my, you talk just like the people who would have kept my ancestors out’ lines are not arguments; they’re emotional outbursts at best.

“Immigration policy should be made in the best interests of the country.  Period.  If that meant that my German Lutheran ancestors were kept out in 1832, or my Polish Catholic ones at the end of the 19th century, it wouldn’t have hurt my feelings. Especially since I wouldn’t exist today.  But unlike the kinds of people who whine about ‘exclusionary’ immigration policies, I don’t consider myself so important that the mere fact of my existence justifies open immigration.”

But it’s also your position that we shouldn’t restrict the immigration of Muslims to the United States

Scott Richert puts words into my mouth.  I did not say this.  I have only one position, that Scott Richert’s claim is not warranted by his data. To say that a claim in unwarranted does not itself prove that a counter claim becomes warranted.

I am neither hostile nor amiable to Scott Richert’s resolution and claim.  His resolution is that Muslims are to be treated as the Chinese were in 1884 with the Chinese Exclusion Act.  His secondary resolution may be that Muslims should be treated as the Indians were with the Indian Removal Bill.  His claim to support his resolution is that Muslim-Americans are a likely threat to my life, my property, my liberty, my church, my synagogue.  If criminal statistics show that Muslims-Americans are more likely to kill me and family, steal or burn my property, or burn down my church or synagogue, then Scott Richert’s claim is warranted and I would be grateful to him.  If the criminal statistics say the opposite, then I can live peaceful with Muslim-American neighbors.  That any immigrant can be my peaceful neighbors is what assimilation means to me.  But he says no such statistics exist to prove one claim or the other.  So we thus cannot make either claim about Muslim-American violence and thus we cannot support any resolution about our policy to them.  Now there may be other problems with massive immigration.  Assimilation as I have defined it is not one of them.  Also Muslim immigration into America is not massive. 

So the real clash between myself and him is neither a question of fact nor question of policy but question of definition. Just what does “assimilation” mean?  I have said what it means to me, to live in peace with my neighbors.  Where I see isolated and anecdotal incidents of Muslim violence in America, it happens because of defamation of Muslims or war against Muslim countries.  This does not excuse such violence.  It only explains it.  This explanation may suggest a remedy.  In turn, what does “assimilation” mean to Scott Richert?  Why is his definition of “assimilation” the best one for the common peace?  Augustine says in the nineteenth chapter of the City of God that for the City of this World, the goal is peace; the goal is not religious conformity.

Scott Richert’s resolution and claim regarding Muslims is identical to a Neoconservative one.  The Neoconservatives also present insufficient data to warrant their claim.  I ask Scott Richert if he has another similarity to Neoconservatives, that of a Leo Strauss hidden teaching.  Is it his hidden resolution that the policy of extremist groups in Serbia toward Muslims in the Balkans is supported by warranted claims?  If so, I see no reason that he should hide it.  He would need to argue that this is a matter of concern to Americans.

@Karl Muck:

“Scott Richert puts words into my mouth.”

Really?  Who wrote these words that I quoted:

“The Know-Nothings were wrong about Catholics and Irish. The anti-Chinese were wrong about the Chinese. Wilson was wrong about German-Americans.  FDR was wrong about Japanese Americans.  Ought we not be careful about other nativist claims until their denigration of newcomers has serious documentation?”

If you do not mean by that that we should not be restricting Muslim immigration, what do you mean?  It’s reasonable, is it not, to think that if someone claims a certain policy was wrong in the past, and he’s using that as evidence for his current argument, that he intends us to think that a similar policy would be wrong today?

As for your brilliant logical fallacy--some neocons oppose Muslim immigration; you oppose Muslim immigration; therefore you are similar to a neocon--that warrants only one answer: Read my work.

I have no hidden teaching. Period. I argue in the open, unlike you, who apparently wants to have it both ways--arguing against those who argue in favor of restrictions on immigration, while claiming not to be opposed to such restrictions.

As for putting words in other people’s mouths, Karl, you write:

“ His claim to support his resolution is that Muslim-Americans are a likely threat to my life, my property, my liberty, my church, my synagogue. ”

Really?  Where did I make that claim?  Would that have been when I wrote:

“Since I haven’t made my argument on this basis [criminal statistics], but on the incompatibility of Islam with the historic American identity and with Christianity and on the historic failure of immigrants to assimilate, how would such numbers prove or disprove my thesis?”

Again, Karl, if we want to talk about hidden teachings, what’s yours?  Surely, you understand Augustine better than to make this claim:

Augustine says in the nineteenth chapter of the City of God that for the City of this World, the goal is peace; the goal is not religious conformity.

What was peace, for Augustine and for the other fathers of the Church?  A commonwealth divided among those who worshiped the true God, and those who worshiped false idols?  Or was true peace, in fact, the fruit of the conversion of men to Christ?

Anyone who would distort Augustine to try to make the City of God an argument for religious pluralism certainly has an agenda.  What’s yours?

Again I am misquoted.  I did not argue for Muslim immigration or for exclusion. I am neither opposed or in favor of Scott Richert’s claim.  I did argue that nativist claims in the past were wrong.  I asked, to use my very words, ought we not therefore be “careful” when we make nativist claims again without statistical evidence that Muslin-American immigrants are a significant harm to life, liberty, property and free exercise of religion (which is what “incompatibility” means to me)? Such evidence, Scott Richert says, is not available. So no evidence = no warrant = no claim = no resolution = no action, one way or the other.  The rest of his attacks are me are irrelevant.  In absence of evidence, our clash is on definition of “incompatibility” and “assimilation”.

@Karl Muck:

“our clash is on definition of ‘incompatibility’ and ‘assimilation’”

Precisely.  So why did you waste so many words on an entirely different argument?

“So no evidence = no warrant = no claim = no resolution = no action, one way or the other.”

But in the face of historically unprecedented Muslim immigration (or, to take it out of the question of Islam altogether, in the face of historically unprecedented levels of immigration, legal and illegal), “no action” is, in fact, action.  By definition, anyone who does not favor immigration restriction favors the current levels and makeup of immigration.  This really is an either/or situation; you can’t have it both ways, Karl.

I’ve asked this before, but no one has answered it: Why should the default position regarding immigration be open borders?  Where is the evidence that, from the standpoint of the national interest, mass immigration of any and all who wish to come should be the norm, and restriction (whether across the board or targeted) should only be considered under extraordinary circumstances (i.e., when statistical evidence such as that which Karl would like to see can be produced, which is effectively never, since such statistics aren’t compiled)?

And again words put into my mouth.  I have never argued for a “default position” of any kind whatsoever about any of the matters under discussion, unless it is caution upon hearing xenophobic defamation without proof. I am arguing for no position at all.  I am not having it both ways.  I am having it no way until proof of a way is offered.  I said that Scott Richert has offered no proof that Muslim Americans are harmful in a significant statistical way to the personal safety and security of their neighbors. They may well be, but the burden of proof is upon Scott Richert to prove this significant statistical harm. Were he to prove his case, I would be the first to cheer for it.  He himself says that such proof is not available.

Does he mean by “incompatibility” that Muslim Americans have bad ideas?  Since when does the Constitution forbid bad ideas? The question is not of words but of actual deeds of violence, of which, he says, we have no statistics. And so we have no proof. 

Instead of proof, or admitting that he has none, Scott Richert resorts of irrelevant arguments and putting words into my mouth, the old debator’s trick of “time-wasters”.  Readers deserve more than to have their time wasted.

Until we get proof (look for this in Scott Richert’s reply), my case of no case remains proven, and I’ll waste no more of my time.

@Scott

If you want to say that there are prudential reasons
to restrict inmigration, or to restrict certain groups,
I am quite in agreement.

But I refuse to allow to build ideological constructs
over what should be pragmatic reasons.

The US at some time needed cheap labor and now does not
need it is a good reason.  The beliefs systems of those
cheap laborers are not agruments. Cheap laborers have
beliefs systems that we are prone to find primitive and
barbaric (that’s because they are uneducated - since
educated ones would be more expensive).

I can see why at the moment you would say that Muslims
would not be the best inmigrants to have. But when it
comes to the suitability of Islam to live within the
US Constituion, they cannot be worse than Catholics, at
least the poor, uneducated kind, whose beliefs systems
were superstitious and barbaric at the time, and who
had an excessive tendency to resolt to violence.

@Karl Muck:

“I am arguing for no position at all.”

Which means that you would make what changes to our current immigration policy?

@Adriana:

“I can see why at the moment you would say that Muslims would not be the best inmigrants to have. But when it comes to the suitability of Islam to live within the US Constituion, they cannot be worse than Catholics, at least the poor, uneducated kind, whose beliefs systems were superstitious and barbaric at the time, and who had an excessive tendency to resolt to violence.”

What kind of argument is that?  Other people should have been kept out for pragmatic reasons ("an excessive tendency to resort to violence"), but since they weren’t, no one should be now?  (Of course, much of the impetus behind the immigration restriction of the 1920’s was precisely for this reason, but we’ll let that slide.)

Let me approach the question I raised a few comments up from a different direction: From the standpoint of the American interest, why shouldn’t the default position be that of no immigration, or severely restricted immigration?  Why shouldn’t the burden of proof be on those who wish to loosen immigration restrictions, to prove that additional immigrants, or additional immigrants of a particular type (ethnic background or skill set), are needed for the good of the country and those who currently reside here?

In other words, why shouldn’t the default position on immigration be essentially what it was between 1920 and 1965?

Certainly immigration should be regulated and immigrants screened, just as any normal activity is subject to social regulation for the common good.  But this is a long way from having a default position of no immigration at all or severely restricted immigration.  Why is that necessarily in the national interest and should the “national interest”, however that is contrued take precedence over every other consideration?  After all, we are not dealing here with an activity which is intrinsically evil or immoral.  I don’t see how it is in anyone’s interest to turn the US into a transcontinental hermit kingdom.

@Kirt Higdon:

“should the ‘national interest’, however that is contrued take precedence over every other consideration?”

If the American interest (the phrase I used) shouldn’t take precedence over other considerations when determining immigration policy, what should?

“I don’t see how it is in anyone’s interest to turn the US into a transcontinental hermit kingdom.”

I’ve never heard anyone classify the United States between 1920 and 1965 that way before.

@Scott

You forget, the national interest at that time was for
admitting inmigrants, as they brought badly needed
manpower for the industrial expansion.  There were problemss,
true, but they were thought to be worth the price of
getting so many cheap workers to do the necessary job
of building a strong industry.

Now, the national interest changed (or not, as too man]
people still want cheap labor), but that has nothing to
do with the quality of inmigrants.

So, the equation is whehter the value of cheap labor
for economic growth is greater than the social costs
of adjusting the new inmigrants to live within society’s
norms and not go into messianic violent movements. The
particular belief systems of any particular set of
inmigrants are irrelevant. All belief systems have the
potential to wreak havoc, not just Islam, and if you
insist too much on that point, I and others will be
forced to remind you of hte havoc that Catholics brought
to the US, and what that may say about Catholicism as
a belief system.

Scott, the law of God, including considerations of justice, should have precedence over “the American interest”. In his encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII stated that people have a right to immigrate to other countries for just reasons.  While it was not stated what would constitute a just reason, it seems to me that escaping persecution or wanting to provide a decent standard of living for oneself or one’s family would be just.

Also (and I guess here I’ll confirm every suspicion which Peter Ramus has of me) I put Catholic interest ahead of the “American interest”.  I can’t see any Catholic interest in preventing Catholics from immigrating to the US.  This topic began with a discussion of Moslem immigrants.  While I don’t have a dog in the fight between the US global new world order and the global Islamic insurgency (Mike’s Scheuer’s term) being waged against it, all Americans have an interest in the US not becoming a battlefield.  So fine, exclude Moslems if possible.  But a default position of no immigration at all means that Catholics will be excluded over Moslems by a rate of 20 to 1 or more.  That should be unacceptable to anyone who wishes to see the conversion of the US to the Catholic faith.

Finally, it is a myth that no immigration to the US took place between 1920 and 1965.  There was plenty of immigration.  About a million Mexicans fled to the US as refugees from the revolution there and the failed Cristero rebellion.  There were also a couple of million who came after WWII as economic migrants, although most of these were expelled during the Eisenhower regime.  In the aftermath of WWII and (a little later) the failed Hungarian revolt, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Communism arrived in the US, as did well over a million in the wake of the Castro takeover in Cuba.  The overwhelming majority of these immigrants were Catholic, just as are the overwhelming majority of immigrants today.  I certainly don’t favor keeping them out.