Immigration

Multiple Cultures

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After Ralph’s thought-provoking post below, I’d like to take another pot-shot at the multicultural elites who seem to value any other culture more than our own.

One of the things that persistently puzzles me about the multi-cultural crowd is that, at least when I was a TA, they shied away from intellectually rigorous activity such as studying a foreign language. One would think that actually learning to speak a non-Western tongue would do more for true inter-cultural understanding than any pastiche of factoids, half-truths and generalized misinformation about other cultures that is the general Introduction to Foreign Culture claptrap at most Universities.

The cynic in me says that most multi-culturalists don’t go in for a detailed study of a foreign language for three reasons – it would take away the focus from their departments, it’s hard (non-Western languages generally come with non-Western writing systems, and in my experience, students run from those like the plague), and, to Ralph’s point, the more in-depth you study some cultures, the more you are thankful you weren’t born into them. Hardly conducive to the facile moral relativism of the multi-culti crowd.

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A Very Good Immigration Post

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Opponents of the wall genuinely think that sealing the border is impossible–at least those in the mainstream do. Furthermore, if they refuse to even entertain the notion that sealing the border is possible a) they will never be proven wrong; and b) their adversaries will never be proven right. And it doesn’t hurt that their stance will make them the favored choice at the polls for the very vocal hardcore believers who think that any attempt to close the borders is a betrayal of their ideals.
 
The argument that X is an intractable problem so we shouldn’t even try to fix it is kind of an odd argument for the left to be making, considering their faith in social engineering. Yet it’s become their fallback position in recent years.

Read the whole thing.

I was wrong about immigration, at least the politics of it. I thought the political divisions would force the competing constituencies into some kind of messy but reasonable compromise that would be an improvement over the current situation. Instead, one side used dishonest arguments and raw political leverage to try to impose its preferred outcome on everyone else, which further radicalized opponents and alienated many citizens who might otherwise have been sympathetic to Bush’s approach.

Whether a real compromise, the status quo or some kind of smaller and more incremental reform is now more likely is anyone’s guess.

Lacking Perspective

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Things are pretty grim. Armed gunmen are getting bolder. Agents of the duly elected government are at risk, with many of them being assassinated in front of their families. Police officers are specifically targeted, often being kidnapped so they can be tortured to death. The message is simple: Join the side of law and order and you will be killed. The favorite method of execution is to behead the victim, a tactic favored by terrorists.

Sounds like the most overwrought prose from a journalist describing the situation in Iraq, or maybe the Palestinian Territories. But I’m talking about the drug war being waged in Mexico at this very moment. The Washington Post article behind that last link states that 600 people have died this year.

I doubt very highly that either their figures or analysis of the situation is accurate. I have reason to believe that things are much worse. StrategyPage.com states that over 1,200 people have been killed this year. What is most alarming is that the drug gangs are actively recruiting regular Mexican Army deserters, men that have had training in combat, weapon use, and who are able to plan and carry out complex operations.

There are a few questions about this situation that need to be asked. The most important is: How did the drug gangs manage to become so powerful that they are able to take over whole towns, defy the Federal government, and assassinate important officials?

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Frank Discussion of Diversity

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As the issue of co-operation becomes ever more pressing, the quality of intellectual discourse on the topic declines—as Putnam’s self-censorship revealed—precisely because of a lack of trust due to the mounting political power of “the diverse” to punish frank discussion.

I’m relatively optimistic about immigration; perhaps, as some have noted, Texas assimilates people differently than does California. In Nebraska I saw the fruits of what had once been diverse cultures settling into relatively homogeneous ethnic communities, becoming assimilated, and blending within two or three generations. Perhaps this is also because I married into a relatively homogeneous ethnic group, coming from a family that was more diverse (having been in the country a good deal longer), and I see these strands working out in relatively useful and even lovely ways. Of course, this may partially be true because his ethnic group makes much use of the American flag, always precedes any “doings” with pledges of allegiance, singing of the national anthem and other displays that would seem cheesey to any ethnic rights group.

The neo-isolationism position of demagogues like Buchanan and Dobbs bothers me not only because it often seems unpleasant but also because it seems to me deadly to our health as a nation. (Sure we need to do something about the southern border and refusals to notice some of the really bad stuff that is going down there is not unlike our attitude after the Beirut bombing. But solutions need to recognize the vitality and love of work and even traditional family values that are pushing many of those across the border.)

So, Steve Sailer’s essay, “Fragmented Future: Multiculturalism doesn’t make vibrant communities but defensive ones”, which discusses the trust issues many Chicagoboyz analyze, is interesting (if pretty much intuitive in its discussion of human nature). The most disturbing part of the essay has less to do with diversity than with Robert Putnam’s self-censorship. Our unwillingness to look at human history and human nature without blinking is not serving us well.(In The American Conservative, and thanks to A&L.)