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Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow 
Recent News
Jonah Goldberg And The Historians: Whose Schlock Is Being Gored?
In a recent assault on the intellectual Left, Jonah Goldberg complained about “the dreck” that is circulating in our culture courtesy of anti-American Leftist historians. [The Stone Truth: Left-Wingers Are Boring, National Review, December 7, 2012]
Jonah is especially exercised by Oliver Stone and his co-author, American University historian Peter Kuznick, who have published a “miasmic 700-plus-page tome”, called The Untold History of the United States Goldberg, whom we are led to assume is a maven on American history, the way he is on “liberal fascism,” is exasperated by how the Left, which he deems “boring,” dares to recycle the same stuff again and again as “new, fresh, and courageous.” He criticizes not so much the “substance” of Stone’s book but “the manufactured rebelliousness, the kitschy nostalgic play-acting of the thing.” He cries out against the “kitsch of leftism” and the “hackneyed left-wingery” which passes for scholarship on American campuses.
Far be it from me, as a forty-year veteran of college teaching, to deny Jonah’s charges about those boring leftists who micromanage American campuses and academic publications.
Indeed, the idiocies of this breed become exponentially more intolerable the farther you descend into the academic cesspool. Those in charge of our less-esteemed colleges have begun to emit the same kind of Cultural Marxism that now dominates the better schools, but in a garbled fashion two generations later.
But I see two problems with Jonah’s screed.
For one thing, I can’t see why he thinks that he and other minicon commentators are more interesting than Oliver Stone. For all his nuttiness, Stone is a talented movie maker.
Moreover, I enjoy watching his intricately-contrived movies more than I do reading Jonah and his buds at NR. Even without seeing their columns, I could easily
John Derbyshire’s Vade Mecum For Diversity Conversations
[VDARE.com note: His what? Helpful definition of vade mecum here).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens, observes one of Schiller’s characters sagely: “Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
We all know the feeling.
And those of us in the tiny minority who keep up with race-realist and patriotic immigration reform websites know the feeling particularly well. So comprehensive is the Main Stream Media [MSM] blackout that policies we have been patiently promoting for years, facts we have long since uncovered, ideas we have worn so threadbare with discussion that we can no longer be much bothered with them, strike too many unreflective ordinary Americans as: astonishing! Radical!! Impossible!!!! Outrageous!!!!!!!! (I have been reading Tom Wolfe.)
Contrariwise, when we engage in discussion on these topics with that Ordinary American, we know with dreary certitude the slogans we shall hear:
Nation Of Immigrants! Culture of poverty! Fix the schools! Etc.
This is what the Ordinary American has heard from the MSM and not bothered to reflect upon. From Fox News or MSNBC, the New York Times or Weekly Standard, it makes very little difference—any more than it makes a difference which party’s politician he most recently heard them from. Seven years ago, a Republican Administration was vowing to “reform our immigration system” (by which it meant amnesty). Now a Democratic Administration is vowing the same thing, in well-nigh the same words.
We live in a one-party state, adrift on an ocean of clichés.
Readers often ask me how to counter the commonest points that opponents make.
There is a misconception there: I am a retired and uncourtly scholar with only meager argumentative skills and a tendency—fatal to success in verbal combat—to see the other guy’s point of view.
A couple of years ago I was invited on The View to discuss something or other. The opportunity for a moment’s fame tugged at me briefly; then I realized what easy meat I would be. I all too clearly saw myself ineffectually mumbling “Well, yes, you may have a point, but...” to some snarling Gyno-American gargoyle who wouldn’t know a database from a dildo. I politely declined the invitation.
But in arenas less fevered than daytime-TV screech-fests, the clichés are, in fact, easy to refute. Here are counters for the half-dozen commonest. I have kept the wordage low enough that you can print them up on a two-sided sheet to laminate and carry round with you as a vade mecum.
But that just shows my age: you will actually bookmark it on your iGadget.
It’s not race, it’s poverty. (By far the most common assertion when black-white gaps in school achievement or criminality are discussed. A third to a half of all race-denial arguments are some version of this. Vast multi-billion-dollar federal programs are premised on it.)
Of our 40 million self-identifying blacks, 25 percent are on food stamps; of our 268 million self-identifying whites-plus-Hispanics-plus-Asians-plus-Amerinds, nine percent are. Put it another way, blacks “commit poverty” at 2.8 times the rate of non-blacks, if we take food-stamp usage as the proxy and ignore the one-in-seven Americans who write “human” or “Klingon” in the census race box.
So if blacks commit crimes at 2.8 times the rate of non-blacks, then crime-wise it could indeed be that “it’s not race, it’s poverty.” But if the multiplier is much different, then the assertion is false.
Guess what? The multiplier is way different, depending on the crime. For homicide it’s about seven; for robbery, eight and a half. Even for white-collar crimes like fraud and bribery, it’s in the four-to-five zone. The statistics are easy to find.
For school achievement, you can remove the poverty factor. Just study test results in an integrated middle-class suburb. It’s been done, years ago. John Ogbu wrote a book about it. Years ago.
And empiricism aside, pure logic tells us that if the poor are more characteristically X (criminal, low-achieving, addicted, whatever) than the non-poor, three possibilities are in play:
(1) Poverty causes X;
(2) X causes poverty;
(3) Some underlying factor causes both poverty and X.
For crime I’d guess all three are at work, weighted about 10-20-70, with feedback loops from one to another. (Try getting a job when you have a prison record).
It’s not race, it’s culture. Notwithstanding that it’s one of the phrases most commonly heard from the inattentive, this is in fact empty of meaning—what logicians call a tautology, like “All bachelors are single.”
“Culture” in the properly anthropological sense, means “the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group.” So if you say: “This group characteristically behaves and thinks like this because of their culture,” you are saying “they behave and think like this because this is how they behave and think.”
This invoking of culture as an “explanation” of culture is a bastard child of some genuine anthropology. The sire of the bastard seems to have been Alfred Kroeber, fl. 1900-1950. Prior to Kroeber’s time—and indeed in his own early writings—what we nowadays call “culture” in this context was called “history.”
Fine, OK: then it’s not race, it’s history. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. If there’s a big, long migration in your group’s history, then geography comes into play, affecting subsequent history—more feedback loops. So it’s history and geography.
And then, if the environment in which your group lives—geographical, climatic, zoological, nutritional, or social—undergoes some big change, the group’s genetic profile may be affected. But then it is race, because that’s what race is: the genetic profile of a mostly-inbreeding group.
One of the greatest advances in our understanding this past few years is that group genetic change can happen more quickly than was previously thought. Dmitry Belyaev bred the wildness out of Siberian foxes in just ten years.
That’s anecdotal. (Said in rebuttal when you mention some particular anti-white outrage by illegal aliens or other malefactors.)
Oh, you don’t like anecdotal? Fine, let’s talk statistical, then. Which database would you prefer to use: NCVS, Uniform Crime Reports, Supplementary Homicide...? I’m pretty familiar with them all, as I’m sure you are…
The guy who shot up a school just recently was white. Anecdotal!
OK, but serial killers and spree killers are predominantly white. Americans are predominantly white, so if all else were equal, this is what you’d expect.
But all things aren’t equal. Justin Cottrell’s book Rise of the Black Serial Killer does a proper statistical analysis. Conclusion: Per capita, there are at least twice as many black as nonblack serial killers. VDARE.com has reported extensively on the topic: here, here, here...
The only people with any right to be in this country are the Native Americans. If true, this suggests two possible courses of action:
Memo From Middle America| “Oceanside Couple” With Mexican Sex Slave Also Immigrants— How Come MSM Didn’t Say?
The Main Stream Media follows a definite script on immigration. Immigrants are, by definition, good. Therefore, if immigrants have troubles, they must be victims. And if immigrants and native-born Americans have conflict, the native-born Americans must be at fault, probably because of racism and intolerance.
But what happens when real life doesn’t follow the script? Well, in that case, the MSM simply covers up. Reporters with agendas don’t even have to lie—they can just suppress the truth.
Look at an example that’s recently come to light—the disgusting case of the “Oceanside Couple”. At least, that’s what the MSM calls them, since they reside in Oceanside, a city on the California coast in San Diego County.
Here are the basic facts from NBC's San Diego affiliate:
A married couple in Oceanside was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking Thursday, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department confirmed. Inez Martinez Garcia, 43, and her husband, Marcial Garcia Hernandez, 45, were arrested by officials as they left their home in Oceanside at around 7:20 a.m.
Oceanside Couple Accused of Human Trafficking, By Monica Garske [Twitter] and Chris Chan [Twitter], November 30, 2012
Here’s the latest update:
VISTA — An Oceanside couple pleaded not guilty on Tuesday at the Vista Courthouse to felony charges of enslaving a young Mexican girl for sex. Each of the defendants faces up to 390 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges.
Inez Martinez Garcia, 43, and her husband Marcial Garcia Hernandez, 45, allegedly enslaved a 12-year-old girl for forced labor and sex for over two years after she was smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico in the early 2000s.
Oceanside couple pleads not guilty to enslaving young girl, by Rachel Stine, The Coast News, Dec. 20, 2012
What this “Oceanside couple” did was sick, no doubt about it. They deserve to be punished. (Note, however, that their alleged crimes took place twelve years ago—more on this later).
More details from the NBC story:
Marisa Ugarte of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, a non-profit that provides support to trafficking victims, said her organization brought the case to the Sheriff's Department because the victim wanted justice. The alleged crimes happened in 2000. The female victim in this case—who’s now an adult—came forward with allegations of forced labor and physical and sexual abuse by the Oceanside couple.
Here’s what the “Oceanside Couple” did to this poor girl:
Deputies say the investigation revealed the girl was smuggled into the United States at the age of 12 with promises of a better life and receiving an education.
According to investigators, when the victim arrived at the Garcia household, she was allegedly forced to care for the couple’s three young children, cook and clean the house under constant threat of physical abuse.
Officials said that over the course of a 20-month period, the young girl was also forced to have sex with Marcial Garcia Hernandez.
When she refused to participate in the sex acts or didn’t complete her household labor in a timely manner she was beaten, said investigators.
The victim was also allegedly forced to lie about her age when the couple found work for the girl at a local restaurant. She had to turn over all of her wages to Inez Martinez Garcia, investigators said.
Over time, the couple also allegedly forced the girl into having sex with other older men for monetary gain.
What we have here is a classic case of the exploitation of an illegal alien. She was brought to the U.S. under false pretenses, she was enslaved, sexually abused, and even pimped out to other men.
And apparently the neighbors didn’t
Happy New Year from VDARE.com!
VDARE.com’s first New Year’s message of the new millennium contained an asterisk[ Happy New Year* From VDARE!, December 31, 2000] since, as Editor Peter Brimelow warned, “the Supreme Court may determine at any moment that use of the Gregorian Calendar violates the separation of Church and State, demonstrates Eurocentric bias and is quite probably a hate crime. ”
Here are two quotes for the new millennium:
Mark my words. I am going to have more problems with members of my own party than I will with Democrats…If anybody comes to me demanding this and telling me to do that, they'll be finished. They tried to do that in Texas with English-only [an attempt to dismantle bilingual education]. But I said: "No. You are going to destroy this party by being extremist"…I had to change the imagery in [sic] my party. I had to change the idea that my party was against things. Against immigrants. Against public schools. I wanted people to know I was for something, so that people wanted to hear what I stood for.
- George W. Bush, quoted in London Financial Times, December 12, 2000.
Q: At independence, Bangladeshi women averaged six to seven children. Today, that rate has been halved by a strong family planning program. Yet, Bangladesh still has 120 million people and by the year 2050 will have at least twice that number, according to the U.S. State Department. How will Bangladesh feed, educate, employ and house those kinds of numbers?
A: Sheika Hasina [the (lady) President of Bangladesh]: We'll send them to America! [Laughter].
Interview with Robin Wright, the Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2000
Nothing much has changed since then—the leaders of the Stupid Party are still being stupid, and Bangladesh is continuing to export people. Just this October, a Bangladeshi with a student visa was arrested for plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
We ourselves have changed, and now insist on providing citations for stories like those above, which look like this:
- Sheika Hasina |Bangladesh Leader Aims to Make Nation More Than a Symbol of Poverty, By Robin Wright, December 03, 2000
- Personable leader aims to bridge divide, By Richard Wolffe, FT.com, December 14 2000
That’s the kind of service you don’t get from the MSM, or for that matter from most bloggers. And that’s what you’re paying for, if you’re one of our donors. (Many thanks to those who donated, and a reminder to those who didn’t that, new calendar year or not, donations are still tax-deductible.)
We hope with your aid to continue this year as we have done in years past.
Happy New Year!
Previous New Year’s Columns
12/31/00—Happy New Year* From VDARE!
12/31/01—Happy New Year – Unhappy Old Nation? By Sam Francis
12/27/02—View From Lodi, CA: A Patriot's New Year Resolution, by Joe Guzzardi
12/31/03—Happy New Year
Democrat Wonders: Why A WaPo Christmas Sob Story About Being Illegal in America—Compared To Being A U.S. Soldier In Afghanistan?
I was lucky to be celebrating Christmas with family and friends gathered about me. Made me think with pain about Americans serving in those cul de sac wars in the Middle East that Messrs Bush and Cheney got us stuck in, starting in 2003.
And about those who made it home alive, but carrying physical and mental scars that will linger all their lives.
It thus particularly annoyed this Democrat (as it would any thinking citizen) to read yet another sob story from one of America’s leading purveyors of such stuff, my hometown Washington Post.
Steve Hendrix [Email him] emitted it: For many a season of separation | record numbers of deportations sunder immigrant families—right there on page B1 on Christmas Day:
Her husband had always put up the Christmas tree, but this year the 36-year-old wife and mother is on her own in Silver Spring. He offered what guidance he could by cellphone from Honduras, but eventually she gave up on the metal stand with the rusty bolts and just plunked the trunk in a five-gallon bucket filled with rocks.
“It has not fallen over yet,” Rosalda said with a mix of pride and fatigue. “It is very, very difficult at this time of the year. My daughter keeps asking when he will come back. I tell her, ‘Next Christmas, we will be together.’?”
She paused, then began to cry. “I hope to God it is true.”
Rosalda, a pizza cook who entered the United States illegally, doesn’t want to give her last name for fear of making her family’s immigration calamity worse. Her husband of five years, Arturo, was deported in January after being picked up in a sweep of undocumented workers.
Golly—Mr. Obama ordering the government to do its job!
But why is “Rosalda” still here herself?
And if she is so anxious to be with her husband, why not go join him?
She could take her anchor babies along. Oh, yes, there are two:
“It’s been hard all year, with most of the family’s meager income gone and wrenching “Where’s Papa?” questions from their two U.S.-born children, 3 and 2. But December is even worse.
“We will have Christmas on the phone with him,” said Rosalda. “I can get a card for 30 minutes.”“
If your big salty tears aren’t pouring out yet, Hendrix has more:
At a time when political momentum for significant immigration reform seems to be building, the holidays remain an especially difficult stretch for families caught up in the system’s fractured, grinding machinery. After record numbers of deportations in recent years, tens of thousands of families find themselves split at Christmas…
“It’s a difficult time for them,” said Marianne O’Riley,[Email her] director of the Herndon Community Resource Center. “We have one grandmother who is trying to take care of two kids, with both of their parents having been deported. They have so little—a lot of times they have to worry about putting food on the table before they can even think about presents.”[Links added by VDARE.com.]
Doesn’t sound like life in the good old USA is all that great. So why stay?
WaPo’s Hendrix continues:
Portillo had her father [immigration status unspecified] move in to help pay the bills and told the kids not to expect much for Christmas. They have a small tree but no lights. She’s taken extra shifts at the Reston hotel where she works
Deport Piers Morgan—Along With About 8 Million Hispanic Immigrants?
In the wake of British journalist Piers Morgan’s over-the-top rants (even by MainStream Media standards) rants in favor of gun control after the Newtown tragedy, over 60,000 Americans have signed a petition to the White House urging that Morgan be deported. The petition states
“British Citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment. We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.”
In our 140-character-limit culture, Morgan responded on Twitter:
Ironic U.S. gun rights campaign to deport me for ‘attacking 2nd Amendment rights’ – is my opinion not protected under 1st Amendment rights?
—to which James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal tweeted back:
“Your opinion is protected, your presence in the U.S. is not. See Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972).”
[Wall Street Journal columnist explains on Twitter how to deport Piers Morgan, By Patrick Howley, Daily Caller, December 23, 2012.]
Taranto’s little zinger is correct on constitutional grounds. But contrary, to the Daily Caller’s headline, the article does not actually give us any guidance about getting Morgan deported.
In Kleindienst v. Mandel, to which Taranto refers, the Supreme Court held that a Communist professor who was (surprise) invited to speak by many elite American universities, could be denied a visa based on his advocacy of world communism.
But just because the Executive Branch was not barred from excluding Mandel does not mean that it is able to deport all aliens at its own prerogative. Congress had already excluded all aliens who advocated “the economic, international, and governmental doctrines of world communism.” However, there is no statute that authorizes the deportation of liberals, supporters of gun control, or those who generically want to “undermine the Bill of Rights.”
If we want to deport immigrants who oppose the Second Amendment, Piers Morgan, is of course, not alone. Polls consistently show that Hispanics support gun control at a higher percentage than other Americans. A Pew Research poll asked if it were more important to protect the rights of Americans who own guns or control gun ownership. Fifty seven percent of whites said protect the rights of gun owners. However, only 29% of Hispanics supported gun ownership rights, the lowest support from any ethnic group. [More Support for Gun Rights, Gay Marriage than in 2008, 2004, April 25, 2012]
Similarly, last year a poll by Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that 69% of Hispanics believed gun control laws should be stricter.
Admittedly, these numbers could be skewed, given the source. However the group found that only 42% of all Americans (this number includes Hispanics, so the overall non-Hispanic support of gun control would be much lower) supported gun control. [Latino Attitudes Toward Gun Safety and Gun Laws, October 25, 2011]
USA Today’s editorial board’s token Hispanic, Raul A. Reyes, argued after the Aurora Colorado shootings this summer that “Perhaps in the future, as our numbers continue to grow, Hispanics will demand laws to limit the possibility of senseless gun violence.” [Latinos may lead the way to gun control in the future, NBC Latino, July 22, 2012]
James Taranto has appeared to improve over the last few years and occasionally has made some insightful points. But by and large he has been a relentless promoter of mass immigration. I found his tweet amusing, and in fact it was the exact same thought I had when Morgan complained about his supposed First Amendment rights. But I found the fact that Taranto seems advocating for the plenary powers in immigration in this particular case is paradoxally emblematic of the problem with the whole “Deport Morgan” meme.
Piers Morgan is just one person— we are letting in hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country who will eventually become citizens and vote for gun control laws. Yes, Morgan has
Seven Things Parents Can Do Post-Newtown Without Government
These simple common-sense steps are adapted from a post I published on my blog after the horrific Newtown, Conn., massacre. Our hearts ache, but we are not completely helpless or hopeless in the face of evil and the unknown. And we are not alone. This Christmas, cherish life, keep faith and practice self-empowerment.
Christmas in an Anti-Christian Age
For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible.
This date has been the separation point of mankind's time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., anno domino, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today?
Merry Christmas From VDARE.com!
We first went live with VDARE.com on Christmas Eve, 1999, with a leaked internal memo from Clinton Administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, (now Governor of New York). VDARE.com editor Peter Brimelow wrote at the time that
The ongoing Kulturkampf against Christmas has now extended to any direct mention of it at all, even when other "holidays" are ritually specified.
Google’s logo for today is a picture of Christmas toys, and the message “Happy Holidays from Google."
That same logo is used by Google all over the world, frequently with messages that mean “Merry Christmas” rather than Happy Holidays. The problem for Google is that those other countries don’t necessarily have a War On Christmas, so that there isn’t even a phrase for “Happy Holidays” in the sense of “Don’t mention Christmas!”
You can see the same thing in this Craig Nelsen photograph of the Main St Post Office in Queens, NY, ca. Christmas 2000.
No matter how you say it, “Happy Holidays”? Well, the people saying “Buon Natale," "Joyeux Noel," and "Fröhliche Weihnachten" think they’re saying Merry Christmas.
VDARE.com has been here for a good many Christmases past, and continues celebrates the Christmas Present. (What Charles Dickens called the Christmas Yet To Come will depend largely on your generosity.)
Many heartfelt thanks to the people who have already donated, and donors yet to come.
No matter how you say it, Merry Christmas From VDARE.com!
VDARE.com’s Christmases Past
2011 VDARE.com Remembers Christmas Eves Past, Broods About The Future By Peter Brimelow
2010: The War Against Christmas 2010: God Bless Us, Every One! By James Fulford
2009: Christians Against Christmas? By Tom Piatak
2008: A Nebraska Atheist Wishes VDARE.COM A Merry Christmas!
2007: Merry Christmas From VDARE.COM! By James Fulford
2006: Diversity Is Strength! It's Also…War Against Christmas By Tom Piatak
2005: Resistance Rampant, Whether National Review Likes It Or Not! By Tom Piatak
2004: Merry Christmas By Peter Brimelow
2003: From The Lawns Of Iowa To The Sands Of Iraq By James Fulford
2002: Christ, The "Other", And Counterfeit Citizens By John Zmirak
2001: A Christmas Meditation: St. Augustine on the National Question By Chilton Williamson Jr.
2000: Merry Christmas From VDARE! By Peter Brimelow
1999: How the HUD Stole Christmas by Peter Brimelow
WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS 2012: The Eight Stages Of Christophobia
[See also The War On Christmas, by Tom Piatak. Audio here]
See also: War Against Christmas 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Merry Christmas!
The War Against Christmas is one of my favorite topics. Reporting on it has got me, at least as of this writing, one of my few mentions in Wikipedia (right up there with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly—wow!). More important, daring to discuss what VDARE.com sometimes calls the "Khristmaskampf" —after the Kulturkampf, Bismarck's drive to eliminate Catholic influence in the German Empire—gets the American Left really M-A-D.
M-A-D!!!!
Even madder than they used to get when contemplating Sara Palin.
And probably for the same reason: both the resistance to the Khristmaskampf, and also Palin’s wasted but extraordinary moment of popular fame, are in some sense symptomatic of the historic American nation’s inchoate struggle against its progressive dispossession.
I watch Google news alerts on the War Against/On Christmas all year. Very few days go by without some Main Stream Media fool fulminating furiously that
- the War on Christmas doesn’t exist!!! (we call this War On Christmas Denial); and
- anyway, it’s necessary because of the need for “inclusion”
These are obviously the current, absurdly contradictory, talking points issued by whatever took the place of Journolist, the notorious secret ListServ group for Leftist MSM journalists.
This MSM fury is particularly notable because it’s rarely triggered by anything specific: there is now strikingly little actual MSM reporting of the Khristmaskampf atrocities, and what little there is remains local. (Which is a reversion to the pre-2000 phase of the War—see below).
This repression, of course, is the pattern perfected by MSM news managers for handling black crime. Perhaps significantly, the one MSM outlet that regularly breaks the embargo and reports on black crime—the London-based Daily Mail—has also been one of the best MSM sources of stories from the Christmas battlefront.
But this year, alas, the Daily Mail seems to have fallen silent: all we have found recently was Parents declare war on Christmas by branding caroling at school a form of bullying (by Leslie Larson, December 18 2012), a prototypical story from Montana of what seems to be just one Christophobic parent demanding that the majority adjust to the minority.
As far as I can see, apart from the special (and much exaggerated) case of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, there have been absolutely no national MSM defenses of Christmas this year. (In contrast to 2004—again, see below).
But, although they can no longer count on publicity, there are now several organizations defending Christmas. VDARE lists them here in our collegial way (let’s see if they link back!):
- Liberty Counsel, founded by Jerry Falwell, has a "Friend or Foe" Christmas Campaign
- Liberty Institute takes up religious liberty causes, including defense of Christmas rights, for example here.
- The Thomas More Society a group of Catholic lawyers who sponsor crèches as well the defense of Christmas
- The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights frequently defends Christmas
- The Rutherford Institute, defends religious liberty in schools. Its The Twelve Rules of Christmas—which perhaps should be called “ The Twelve Rulings of Christmas”—delineates the rights that schoolchildren actually have under various court rulings in cases that should never have had to be brought in the first place.
- The Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE), whose Robert Sibley wrote recently that
I’m not a big believer in the “war on Christmas” rhetoric…But every so often in my work…I see an example of seasonal political correctness so ridiculous that it makes me want to put my head down on my desk. Such is the case at Western Piedmont Community College (WPCC) in North Carolina, where a Christmas tree sale fundraiser for a student group was unilaterally changed to a ‘holiday tree’ sale by campus administrators….
WPCC has therefore revealed itself to be another adherent of what I have called the “magic words” or “Lord Voldemort” school of censorship. In the massively popular Harry Potter books , most characters will not say the name of the main villain, “Lord Voldemort,” instead calling him “He-who-must-not-be-named.” Their worry is that if they say Voldemort’s name, they will magically attract his attention, with dire consequences.
College to student group: No selling Christmas trees, only ‘holiday’ trees, Daily Caller, November 28, 2012
(Links added by VDARE.com. WPCC was forced to retreat by a lawsuit threatened by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Note that, although this is a genuine Khristmaskampf atrocity and it happened this year, there was absolutely no national MSM pickup).
- The American Family Association has been campaigning against retailers trying to cash in on Christmas without either calling it that, or even allowing their employee to mention it. See its Naughty or Nice Christmas List 2012
God bless them, every one. (Any group that wants to be added to this list, let us know.)
In retrospect, it's now clear that the backlash against the War On Christmas was a precursor of 2009's Town Hall insurrections and 2010's Tea Parties, and before that intense public reaction that stopped the Bush Administration's Amnesty drives in 2006 and 2007. A more recent example: this summer’s Chick-fil-A eat-in.
All were spontaneous, grass-roots, leaderless-resistance movements that took the entire American elite, liberal and "conservative", entirely by surprise. (Ludicrously though the latter scrambled to catch up—and ignominiously though it failed to capitalize on these movements in the 2012 Presidential Election).
The root cause in all cases is the same: an American elite which is increasingly divergent, culturally and even ethnically, from the rest of the country.
This divergence has been long interesting to us here at VDARE.com. But, since the 2012 election, it seems to have finally made it into Main Stream debate. Usually it takes the form telling the GOP that it is “too white” (i.e. looks like 70% of the country), and even into public consciousness—hence the flaring interest in secession.
After the Democratic and Republican conventions last summer—during which the Democrats loudly booed a motion to insert a reference to God into their platform—I wrote that that the Republicans and Democrats in effect represent, of course imperfectly, two separate nations: America and Anti-America.
Similarly, after the 2012 presidential election, the blogger Larry Auster wrote ingeniously of America 2.0, which he argued had just displaced the Founders’ White Christian America 1.0; and of the need to salvage the historic American Nation to form what he calls America 3.0.
Simply put, the War On Christmas is a symptom of the struggle between these two Americas—as is anti-America’s periodic attempts to repress political debate as “hate speech” and, of course, its hysterical opposition to any suggestion of cutting the immigration which is steadily strengthening its hand.
Wikpedia currently dates my involvement in the Khristmaskampf to the “early 2000s.” But in fact I got John O’Sullivan, then Editor of National Review, to start a War Against Christmas Competition in 1995. (We called it “War Against Christmas”, but “War On Christmas” has obviously won out in popular usage, so I’ve adapted, with characteristic grace).
The last NR competition ran in 1997, at which time William F. Buckley for his own discreditable reasons had already fired O’Sullivan, but not yet leaked the disinformation that O’Sullivan was “resigning to write a book.” The War Against Christmas Competition was promptly dropped, along with the cause of immigration reform—not coincidentally. In 2000, NR itself actually published a “Holiday Edition.”
But VDARE.COM was launched on Christmas Eve 1999, and one of our first postings was Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo’s elimination of the word “Christmas” from HUD’s “Celebration of Holiday Traditions” party. In 2000, we re-started the War Against Christmas competition.
By an amazing coincidence, 2000 now seems to have been NR’s Nativity nadir. In 2001, Christmas reappeared at NR—if only, a VDARE.COM reader mordantly suggested, because Christians were now needed to fight a (real) war. In 2003, to our great amusement, NR’s Jay Nordlinger actually started a War Against Competition in his column. (This was the—rather weak—result). In 2004, however, he announced “I'm not going to go on any, or many, can't-say-‘Christmas’ tirades this year. That is my gift to you!” Just what we needed! And NRO’s Kathryn Ann Lopez similarly signaled surrender in 2006.
We haven’t found any original NR mention of the Khristmaskampf this year.
While I've been watching it, the Khristmaskampf has gone through eight distinct phases
1. Guerilla War 1990s-2000. During this period, there were almost no MSM stories about the War On Christmas and readers mostly supplied us with items that they'd seen with their own eyes—for example, Craig Nelsen's 2000 pic of the "Holiday Greeting Board" outside the Queens NY Main Post Office, from which one "greeting" was conspicuously missing. (Hint: it wasn't "Feliz Navidad".)
2. Gathering resistance, 2001-2003. As Americans became aware of what was being done to them, outbreaks of resistance to the Christophobic onslaught began to occur, which in turn was followed by MSM reporting. At the time—let the record show—this was a remarkable development, very heartening to us Christmas cranks.
3. The Khristmaskampf goes Mainstream, 2004. As Tom Piatak wrote in summing up the year on VDARE.com:
Bill O'Reilly made a big deal about it, and even Charles Krauthammer wrote about it…I think those of us who have been writing about this for a while can take credit.
The counterarguments have been mixed. Some, like Frank Rich in a December 19 New York Times column (attacking both Mel Gibson and those defending Christmas) argued that this is much ado about nothing, since Christmas is the same as ever….
Others, such as Cathy Young of Reason and Jonah Goldberg of National Review, urged everyone to 'lighten up', which, although seeming at first glance to be a 'plague on both your houses' argument, actually trivializes Christmas as something no one should be concerned about. They don't write many columns urging people to 'lighten up' about things they actually care about."
Finally some, such as Julian Sanchez at Reason, take a different tack at trivializing Christmas, by saying our concerns represent an absurd attempt by a still-overwhelming majority to claim 'persecution.' But, obviously, just because no one is being fed to the lions doesn't meant that what's going on isn't worthy of noticing.
My conclusion about the War Against Christmas in 2004:
There is finally a widespread awareness that it exists. But as with the immigration debate, I believe, it will next emerge that the War Against Christmas is not merely an accident. Its backers really want it.
Next year, they will get nasty.
4. War On Christmas Denial 2005-2007
But I was too early, as usual. They didn't get nasty immediately, they just got
Something Needs To Change Alright! “Conservative” Joe Scarborough Turns Coat On Gun Control
The so-called conservative talking head at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, railed that the Connecticut shootings “must change everything.” Scarborough’s inference is that America needs stricter gun control laws. He said, “They [politicians] must . . . be forced to defend our children,” by enacting more gun control laws. Scarborough went on to rant, “I say good luck to the gun lobbyists, good luck to the Hollywood lawyer who tries to hide behind twisted readings of our Bill of Rights.”
Can A Country With A Million Legal Immigrants A Year Ever Afford GOP Tax Cuts?
"God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function."
Columnist Robert Novak was speaking of the party that embraced the revolution of Ronald Reagan, who had hung a portrait of Calvin Coolidge in his Cabinet Room and set about cutting income tax rates to 28 percent.
