I have always been fond of our neighbor to the north, in part perhaps because my favorite TV show in high school was the incomparable SCTV, still, to my mind, the best and most intelligent comedy program ever on television.  But today’s Canada is a far more sinister place than the one gently lampooned by the alter egos of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, Bob and Doug McKenzie. 

Today I came across a story in the Catholic press reporting that Canada has bestowed its highest honor, the Order of Canada, on Henry Morgentaler, a man who has made his living by personally killing tens of thousands of innocent unborn human beings.  Morgentaler was responsible for the legal challenge that resulted in the overturning of Canada’s abortion law, leading to perhaps the most liberal abortion law in the West.  All this butchery has made Morgentaler a rich man:  Morgentaler earns millions of dollars from his abortion clinics.

In addition to the fame he has garnered by killing unborn children, Morgentaler is also famous in Canada for being a strident atheist.  Indeed, Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada “for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist [read “atheist”] and civil liberties organizations.”  Any country that would give its highest honor to a man such as Morgentaler truly deserves to be known as Soviet Canuckistan.

This afternoon, I attended an AIE forum on Mark Krikorian’s excellent new book, The New Case Against Immiagration: Both Legal and Illegal.

Krikorian’s argument is summed up in the first two sentences of the volume: “It’s not the immigrants—it’s us. What’s different about immigration today as opposed to a century ago is not the characteristics of the newcomers but the characteristics of our society.”

That is, immigrants into America are still mostly unskilled, mostly undereducated, and coming from under-developed parts of the world, as they were in the past. And Krikorian believes that they are just as assimilable as the Irish and Italians of the 19th century. What’s changed is modern society. And here Krikorian paints a picture of a perfect storm of factors that make mass immigration—both legal and illegal—a very bad thing.

• There’s the welfare state and its programs, which close to half of Mexicans immigrants are drawing from.
• There’s our modern economy, with growing technology and cerebral sectors on top and a glut of cheap labor on the bottom, which more immigrants are only making worse.
• There’s our educational system, with its emphasis on multi-lingualism, multiculturalism, and group rights.
• There’s healthcare, there’s… well, everything. 

In Krikorian’s mind, mass immigration is much like the settling of the frontier—a historical phase which we’ve now outgrown.

On an emotional issue, Krikorian remains level-headed and, thankfully, reality-based. There was one thing about his presentation that did bother me, however: in choosing this line of argumentation, Krikorian seems to be implying, “We shouldn’t let too many immigrants into the country because they’ll overtax the welfare state and perhaps even push it towards collapse.”

One can certainly say this and still be an advocate of limited government (after all, no one wants political breakdown and chaos.) The problem is that this argument presumes that the welfare state operates with a fixed amount of resources that it can doll out, and if, say, too many goodies are given to too many illegals, then there won’t be enough for the rest of us. But this is obviously false. The government can’t afford the new immigrants, you say? Well, when as not being able to afford something stopped Washington in the past!?!

I think that Peter Brimelow is on the right track with his concept of immigration as the “Viagra of the State”:

[Immigration] has reinvigorated the state, when it was otherwise losing its powers because of collapse of socialism and the triumph of classical liberalism. It’s an aspect of what should be called neosocialism—the statists’ argument for government control of society, not in the interests of efficiency—not because government can prevent another Great Depression etc.—but in the interests of equity, rooting out discrimination, racism and so on.

Milton Friedman might actually have been wrong when he said “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” To the contrary, the two might actually re-enforce one another.

Instead of claiming to be protecting the welfare state, we should be arguing that we’ll only be able to limit government once we’ve gotten immigration under control.

This criticism aside, The New Case Against Immigration is a must-read. 

* * *

One pleasant surprise this afternoon was the inclusion of Harvard doctoral candidate and AEI visting fellow Jason Richwine on the panel. This young scholar was actually brave enough to broach the topic of the intersection of race, genetic differences in intelligence (IQ), and immigration. Richwine generally agreed with Krikorian’s conclusions but took him to task over the idea that “it’s not the immigrants—it’s us” and that there are no fundamental differences between the immigrants of yesteryear and those of today. 

One DC-based immigration reformer (ahem, Marcus Epstein) asked Richwine to comment on one of Pat Buchanan’s more provocative moments, when in 1991 he asked whether 1 million Zulus or 1 million Englishmen would more quickly and easily assimilate into American culture if each group washed up onto our shores. Richwine turned this into a counterfactual, asking whether if millions of Zulus immigrated to America in lieu of the Irish, they’d be as indistinguishable from the native population as your average McGregor or McCarthy.

Measurements of cognitive ability can be integrated into policy in surprising ways. For instance, when another questioner brought up the issue of the “brain drain” (that is, the most well-educated and highly skilled of the Third World leaving for America), Richwine suggested that American immigration policy focus on bringing in younger, more cognitively talented immigrants, regardless of their skill or education levels, and allowing trained doctors, lawyers, and scientists remain in their home countries where they’re needed.     

Well, it’s fun to be on a Web site where people take offense when I compare white racialists to a group as appalling as the neocons—in talking about the dangers of cozying up to “allies” who don’t share the fundamental moral principles of Christian conservatives. Evan McClaren rightly points out the intolerance which neocons with power show toward dissenters to their Right. (Paul Gottfried regularly reminds us how they positively suck up to the Left at the slightest excuse—see Christopher Hitchens.) He suggests that white nationalists would never act this way toward conservatives… because they are too “highly educated, civil, and civilized.”

Okay, just to be fair I won’t take as representative the vicious quality of the comments that appear on this site (though they are now thankfully filtered) every time the mildest criticism of white racialists appears. For instance, I posted a piece praising the Web site VDare to the skies, and noted in passing that there were three writers on the site (one of them a white nationalist) “with whom I disagree.” That’s all I said. This provoked a torrent of rage, accusations of “cowardice,” and the targeting of this site by a neo-Nazi Web site. On that site itself, one of the writers opined that he hoped that “Zmirak and his progeny find their faces crushed by the kike boot.” When I wrote another piece addressing racialism, an even bigger storm erupted—complete with nasty, anti-Semitic attacks on Paul Gottfried, until the site had to adopt its current policy of culling comments.

Of course, I’d never attribute to the courteous and thoughtful Mr. Taylor behavior of this sort. No doubt many of his colleagues are also gentlemen. But are we really to believe that if they came to control our splinter of the conservative movement (as the neos took over the creaky “mainstream” institutions) that they would be any more tolerant than the Pods, Frums, and Kristols?

The neocons were polite and deferential at first as well. They wrote detailed, even wonkish analyses of the failures of liberal social policy that read a lot like… Mr. Taylor’s well crafted piece at VDare. They played by the rules, pulled up their socks, and relentlessly promoted each other at the expense of real conservatives. That’s how you take over a movement from the inside. The ruthlessness and intolerance came later, a perk of power.

I don’t think white nats are any more immune to this temptation than Trots.

Speaking of neos and nats, David Frum wrote today in the NY Times about the role of racialism and religion in the birth of the American Right. For once, he seems to be on point—and he manages to make it through the whole review without libeling anybody.

I disagree with the suggestion that we should be evasive about reality in the interest of social peace or because certain facts might be abused.  Suppressing IQ data won’t fool anyone about what their eyes and experiences reinforce every day. People know about group trends; it’s not exactly news, especially to people whose honesty has not been suppressed by higher level education group-think.

What science can’t do, but real conservatives must, is remember that we have certain obligations to one another as countrymen, as Christians, and as beings made in the image of God.  This is true for all of our countrymen of all races. We should not descend into a pagan attempt to eugenecize ourselves into supermen and throw away those deemed inferior or more burdensome.  We should instead seek (or rather remember) to create conditions for the social flourishing of all the races based on reality.  Because of our cultural and racial differences, this means different communities will need different levels of social control, order, educational systems, and the like.  This local variation is perfectly healthy and, so long as done in a spirit of charity, need not be be an expression of nastiness, hate, or mean-spiritededness.

White nationalism, as opposed to historic American patriotism, however, is often uncharitable, ahistorical, and unnecessary. It conceives of blacks as the enemy.  It seeks to recreate America on the basis of a single unifying abstract principle, just as mass immigration seeks to recreate the historical America on the basis of an ahistorical universalist principle that prevents any recognition of our historical biracial, unicultural heritage.

Blacks and whites got along better, spoke the same langauge, sang the same songs, and worshiped the same God in the past, when a broad-minded American patriotism ruled the day. That patriotism did not demand “white power,” but it did not presume to permit “black power” either, whether in the name of justice or self-hate or whatever. It recognized instead the sovereignty of the law and majority rule; in cultural matters, the rights of wealthy, self-respecting, educated whites were recognized as those of a majority and those of the successful elite, the people who rightfully get to set standards for the whole society.  Black leaders followed their lead, setting up social clubs and institutions that worked in parallel with those of whites.  Black and white leaders both demanded the same behavior of the lower classes of both races and pursued the same goals that formed a common culture. 

I do not believe it was wise or just to have imported millions of Africans as slaves.  It is undeniable the races’ relations have often been uneasy, characterized by animosity, jealousy, hate, suspicion, and sometimes rage.  But the current degraded conditions of race relations are uniquely bad.  This is an aberrant time, made worse by a liberalism that depends on the very lies about IQ and the casue of black failure that John would perpetuate in the name of social peace and avoiding hurt feelings. 

I agree with John that we are countrymen, black and white alike. It is a cruel and ideological view that would be indifferent to the effects of public policies like free trade and mass immigration on the fortunes of low IQ native-born Americans, both blacks and white. To me, understanding IQ can make us more charitable and more realistic with one another.

While I do not believe in perpetual guilt-tripping and obeissance to ridiculous race-hustlers like Al Sharpton, my opposition to that does not prevent me from having ordinary Christian feelings of sympathy and fellow feeling with my black countrymen, folks who speak my language, fight our wars, and worship Jesus Christ.  I do not have to forget that black criminals exist in higher percentages or that black culture has become degraded since the Sixties to remember also that it produced Booker T. Washington and Ella Fitzgerald.  I can’t easily forget the L.A. Riots, but I also remember that Reginald Denny was saved by courageous local blacks who saw his beating unfold on TV.

We are in a degraded time, with unnecessary and avoidable friction fomented by race-hustlers.  We should not tolerate them, but we need not suppress truths about differences of the races to do so. Liberalissm depends on various lies about race and the cause of black social problems.  Unraveling these lies is the way to unravel liberalism itself.  As in all things, truth put into action through charity is the way forward.

* This is a re-post of a comment I wrote for John in his thread.

Not everyone needs to be convinced that white nationalism is the Right of the future. I’m certainly not. As Paul explains, white nationalists do not convince as a stable oppositional force for the medium and long term, in spite of the appeal of their intelligent and well-documented broadsides against poisonous doctrines of political correctness. As Paul writes:

Still and all, white nationalists lack a civilization, as opposed to some kind of late modern context. They resemble their opponents, as inhabitants of a disintegrated society, despite their appeals to a social hierarchy, albeit one based on racial and cognitive divisions. The materials that white nationalists bring into play seem inadequate for any serious war for civilization. The most they may land up producing is a fiercely defended critical perspective. And while that perspective can be directed against leftist and neoconservative assumptions, it is not likely to carry our society toward a new vision of order. The structure that white nationalists invoke is rooted in nothing concrete or historical; nor can it be when the family, gender roles, and a good deal else that kept societies together in the past is now under massive and largely successful attack.

White nationalists seem to be following American Republicans when they assume a high degree of social and cultural continuity among mainstream Americans. From their perspective, the fact that professional women have a single child in midlife or stay for a time with a single spouse is interpreted as a victory for the “traditional” family. Also white nationalists typify what I have described elsewhere as “baseless conservatism,” the attempt to create alternatives to the Left without being able to attract a firm social base. Because of this lack of a social foundation for their ideas, white nationalists may not be able to help us to get beyond our present disintegration.

Since that’s the case, and since (as Paul also points out) many whites are able to reject the bad faith of multiculturalist guilt without keeping company with white nationalists, it’s sometimes hard to discern what this orientation offers its adherents that justifies the high professional and personal price they will have to pay. White nationalists who reject this query as mere cowardice are being too hard on those who are searching for serious long-range answers to problems of civilizational decay, and who aren’t inclined to abandon that project for lesser gratifications.

On the other hand, it seems profoundly unfair to turn away so hurriedly and disrespectfully from white nationalists, as John does. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers each pronounce “tomato” differently; similarly, white nationalists have different views and enthusiasms about ethnic nationhood and the meaning of IQ differentiation than I, and I don’t think their ideas are stable footing for the counterrevolution. But they do have a degree of validity to them. Moreover, people like Taylor and Rushton do their work in good faith, and the result is always well-argued and excruciatingly well-documented.

It is simply unfair to suggest a comparison between people like Taylor and Rushton on the one hand, and proto-neoconservative Trotskyites on the other, in order to level a gratuitous insult. John is not merely identifying the potential risks of associating too closely with white nationalism, which would have been a valid line of inquiry. Instead he is incorrectly suggesting a similarity between neocons and white nats. Allow me to correct him. Neocons are people who have nothing but contempt for John and his ideas about society based on ordered liberty, European Christianity, localism, and Constitutionalism. They are not prepared to tolerate open debate, and if their grip on institutions like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute were complete and not merely partial, John would not be invited to publish his books there.

White nationalists, meanwhile, are authentic in their hatred of the regime of political correctness. And, though they may not always cherish John’s Christianity or his non-racial solutions to political problems, unlike him (in this moment, at least) they do not go out of their way to insult well-meaning people with whom they do not fully agree. They are highly educated, civil, and civilized, and their commitment to open and respectful debate is amazing, especially relative to the situation inside an unprincipled conservative movement. I am an admirer of John’s books and his writing for TakiMag. But he overreaches, to say the least, when he’s straining to shove white nationalists entirely beyond the pale.

Kent Snyder, who helped run Ron Paul’s campaign and was planning great things for the Paul movement in the future, died suddenly this past week. 

Jonathan Bydlac, the campaign’s fund raising director, has a thoughtful remembrance over at Ron Paul Blogs.

National Review’s latest cover story is on four prominent Veep possibilities—Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, Charlie Crist, and Mike Huckabee—who have all been deemed “untouchable” by John J. Miller (and presumably the editors). With each, the argument gets down to this: they’re good on the war, but they’re all big-government centrists whose conservative credentials are in doubt and who’d likely push the party leftward and couldn’t be relied on to appoint solid conservative judges.

Agreed. These guys are bad news. But then, why are we supposed to support McCain again?   

In his Friday column on immigration Cal Thomas wrote:

[P]oliticians — Republicans and Democrats — have been reluctant to offend Hispanic voters, so they have dragged their feet. Democrats, especially, wish to import votes and so they welcome illegals and seek to help them become citizens. Their message: vote for Democrats, or your relatives won’t be able to come and mean Republicans will try to throw you out. It’s a twist on their demagoguery about Social Security, which has worked for them over many election cycles.

It’s true that both parties worry about the Hispanic vote. But if that voting bloc didn’t exist and the Republicans and Democrats were free to operate without the risk of offending Hispanic supporters or the temptation to pander to them, would the two parties suddenly return to normalcy? Would they drop their multiculturalist narratives and begin defending what remains of the country’s ethnic and cultural nationhood? To raise the question is to answer it, and to notice the difficulties with a “conservative” storyline that treats multiculturalism and political correctness as flies in an otherwise virtuous liberal democratic ointment. If we beat the Democrats, Thomas seems to say, we’ll have done our citizenly duty—even if that means electing left-reaching Republicans like McCain. We get a picture of a regime that is basically healthy—in which self-government is still the order of the day and nationhood itself is intact, except for the distractions of Democratic open-borders noisemaking.

Thomas also tells us that “President Bush waited until his last year in office to begin to get serious about stopping illegals, and Republicans generally seek to avoid controversy so it doesn’t appear the GOP will be much help.”

How could anyone mistake Bush for someone who has always been interested in border integrity?

A brief word of caution to my American friends with heterodox views on politics, ethics, and religion.  If you are planning to speak in any public forum in Canada in the near future, you may be under pressure to seek permission from the “Human Rights Commission” in the province that you intend to visit.  An American Christian couple who planned to speak on the biblical view of homosexuality in a church in Alberta has just acquired a taste of the statist process which speakers may have to navigate in order to exercise their right to freedom of speech. 

Of course, paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians who are dying to spread the gospel in Canuckistan but worried about their liberties can take consolation from the fact that the number of paleos up north could probably fit inside a school bus.  The paucity of paleos may be getting worse, if more Canadians accept the view that freedom of speech is just an outdated, right-wing, American idea. 

Is it any wonder that the novelist Tom Wolfe has claimed that fiction can no longer compete with reality for sheer fantasy and absurdity?

The shady powers that control the world wide web have announced that everything you now know about the internet is about to change. Top level domains, or TLDs, are things such as .com, .org., .us and so on. Some are descriptive — .com, commercial; .edu, education — and others are geographical — .ca, Canada; .de, Germany — while still more are both — .com.au, commercial & Australian; .ac.uk, academic & British.

Now that you have gotten used to them all, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) have decided to open the floodgates and are planning to allow almost anything to be a TLD. Veteran ICANN-watchers will not be terribly surprised by this, as the consortium has tended towards greater laxity and disorder. First they introduced “.info”, extending TLDs to four letters straight, then they introduced the horrendously unhandsome “.museum” (would not “.mus” have been more sensible?). The do-gooders over at ICANN have now simply thrown up their hands and said “Feck it all, sort yourselves out”.

Libertarians will, no doubt, rejoice, but I think there was a certain harmony and order to the current (soon to be previous) set-up. The stalwart .com, the stately .co.uk, the exotic .co.za, the “we weren’t quick enough to get a .com address” .net, the slightly suspicious .cn — all these will stay, but they will be diminished by the addition of God knows what. Perhaps .sex, or .drugs, or .rocknroll. Maybe we will see the heralds of progress change their URLs: weeklystandard.neo and thenation.lib? How about johnmccain.war and obama.tax? The ever-fading National Review might try to recall its better days with nationalreview.wfb.

And what about we conservatives? There is at least some comfort for Knickerbocker reactionaries like me in that we may one day have email addresses that end in @yahoo.nn (for New Netherland), and I know of at least a dozen Europeans who would love to have to have @yahoo.sri addresses (that’s Sacrum Romanum Imperium, not Sri Lanka). I just hope the good people of Newfoundland grab .nfl before the football people do.