01/15/2016
[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]
I did not of course sit through the President’s State Of The Union address. The human frame can only bear so much. My entire concession to journalistic due diligence was to Ctrl-F through the transcript next day to see how many times Obama said "That’s Not Who We Are."
Answer: Incredibly, he didn’t say it once — at least according to the transcript. Not once, in 59 minutes of lofty moralizing!
I would naturally like to conclude that the President, or his advisers, have at last paid attention to Radio Derb’s repeated complaints about the use of this threadbare phrase as a way of affirming Cultural Marxist pieties.
But while the President may not have said "That’s Not Who We Are" but he did make two references to "Who We Are."
First reference:
[Clip, at 1h04m20s: Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together?]
Second reference:
[Clip, at 1h41m22s: When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country.]
So perhaps the President has not, after all, been heeding the groans of Radio Derb. Or perhaps he just wants to take a more affirmative line. Instead of banging on about this or that being Not Who We Are, Obama is turning towards telling us Who We Are Are … as it were.
Well, who are we? Here’s my stock answer, from that splendid 2004 book by the late Prof. Samuel Huntington titled, of course, Who Are We?:
The [American philosophical-Constitutional] Creed is unlikely to retain its salience if Americans abandon the Anglo-Protestant culture in which it has been rooted. A multicultural America will, in time, become a multicreedal America, with groups with different cultures espousing distinctive political values and principles rooted in their particular cultures.
End sapient quote.
As insufferable as the President’s speech was, the Republican counter-speech was of course even worse. It displayed the Stupid Party in all its moon-booted stupidity.
One version of the speech was delivered by a non-white female GOP politician: South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, née Nimrata Randhawa, whose parents are immigrant Sikhs from India. Everybody watching was of course instantly reminded of the ancient joke:
Q: What do you call the one black guy at a Republican gathering?
A: "Mr Chairman."
Governor Haley not only did not say "That’s Not Who We Are," I couldn’t even find the phrase "Who We Are" in the transcript of her address. Surely this is the influence of Radio Derb. I deduce that the Governor pays more attention to my organ than do the President and his advisors.
Plainly feeling that Governor Haley’s speech still left them with some pandering to do, the GOP Establishment broadcast a second speech in Spanish, delivered by Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who is of Cuban exile parentage. As numerous commentators noticed, and as we covered here on VDARE.com, Rep. Diaz-Balart’s speech differed significantly from Governor Haley’s in its references to immigration. Where Governor Haley merely suggested Amnesty and Open Borders, Rep. Diaz-Balart promised them.
And Rep. Diaz-Balart did say "That’s Not Who We Are," although of course he said it in Spanish: [Clip, at 4m24s: "No es quien somos …"]
Apparently the Congressman has not been heeding Radio Derb’s complaints. Note to self: Lean on the technical staff to speed up the launch of our Spanish-language podcast.
Rep. Diaz-Balart is male and white: very white — he is in fact a dead ringer for our own Steve Sailer, as Steve himself has noted more than once.(Right, Diaz-Balart, above, and Steve, below) The thinking of the GOP strategists seems to be: Diversity for the Gringos; but for Latinos, a confident-looking white guy. These people are geniuses, aren’t they?
The GOP Establishment could in fact have spared themselves the trouble and expense of writing up these speeches and broadcasting them by just showing still screens of a placard inscribed with the words: White English-speaking Andro-Americans: Please don’t vote for us, we don’t like you.
Who the GOP Establishment do like, obviously, are Conquistador-Americans. Thev apparently think that the future of our country belongs to white Latino elites. For one thing, there are millions of them. For another, they have centuries of experience of getting themselves to the top of multiracial societies and keeping themselves there.
In the matter of getting to the top and staying there, white Latinos are not hindered by any sentimental qualms. They will push aside us Anglos rather easily, leaving us mumbling to each other about how ashamed we are of our white privilege. They'll keep white gentiles around, along with Asians, to do technical drudge work, but they'll probably push out the Jews, whom they regard as real competitors for power.
Muslims of course they won’t tolerate. Their Spanish ancestors spent a couple of centuries clearing Spain of Muslims; they don’t want to go through that again. Blacks and Indios, whom they despise, they'll corral into favelas and leave to fight each other for scraps.
I don’t say this will happen. It’s just a possible future scenario. But my own opinion is that on a scale of possibility, it’s way more likely than the harmonious multicultural paradise our politicians have been promising for fifty years, but which never seems to get any closer.
There'd be some downsides, of course. We'd end up with an economy like Argentina’s, undergoing periodic spells of twelve thousand percent inflation; and you would of course have to flush the U.S. Constitution down la taza. But hey, you can’t make huevos rancheros without breaking eggs.
I for one shall welcome our new macho white-Hispanic overlords.
Meanwhile, I offer a heartfelt plea to Donald Trump, for when he becomes President: end the present Stalinesque extravaganza and deliver the State of the Union message to Congress in writing! — as it was for most of America’s history!
John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He’s had two books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
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