10/26/2021
Max Boot is about as perfect a neoconservative caricature as can be conceived. Ferociously hostile to President Donald Trump, his voters, and the historic American nation, it’s fair to say that Max Boot sees America as a kind of Airstrip One from which to launch pointless wars and nothing more. He’s especially angry when people point out the obvious truth that the American people are being replaced.
Republicans continue to falsely and cynically accuse Biden of pursuing an “open border” policy. Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week openly embraced white supremacists’ “great replacement” theory, which holds that Biden is trying “to change the racial mix of the country.” Charlie Kirk, a leading pro-Trump activist, accused Biden of deliberately “diminishing and decreasing white demographics in America.”
These accusations are odious and wrong. The decline in the number of White people among the U.S. population has nothing to do with Biden; it is a long-term demographic trend.
[Biden gets no credit for making immigration more humane, by Max Boot, Washington Post, September 27, 2021]
As you might expect, The Great Replacement is obvious and good when he is talking about it.
Just imagine a country without diversity. Try North Korea, whose official philosophy revels in the ethnic purity of the Korean race and whose censors block all views that do not treat Kim Jong Un the way that Carlson treats President Trump. North Korea, one of the least diverse countries on the planet, is also one of the poorest.
The nearby countries of South Korea and Japan are far more open to competing ideas — they are, after all, liberal democracies — but they are also ethnically homogeneous. Their uniformity does lead to a strong sense of national identity, but it also threatens their long-term survival. Both South Korea and Japan are rapidly aging. Their populations are in decline (Japan is expected to go from 128 million people today to 88 million by the 2060s; South Korea from 51 million to 43 million). Both countries desperately need young immigrants but — precisely because they are so ethnically insular — it is hard for them to integrate foreigners.
As a country of immigrants, the United States has a major competitive advantage. Our median age is just 37.2 years, compared with 45.8 for Japan and 39.7 for South Korea — and that’s because of not only a higher birth rate but also immigration. Immigrants also help to provide America’s lead in cutting-edge ideas that power our economy …
It’s a good thing that diversity is such an American strength, because it is inevitable and unavoidable. No matter what Carlson may say, there is no chance we will become a white version of North Korea. We are destined to become a majority-minority nation by 2045. The only question is how we will cope with diversity: well or badly. We would be doing a lot better if cynical demagogues such as Trump and Carlson were not stoking white fear and resentment for personal gain — political in Trump’s case, financial in Carlson’s.
[Sorry, Tucker Carlson, but there are plenty of reasons diversity really is America’s strength, by Max Boot, Washington Post, September 12, 2018]
Indeed, American identity doesn’t even really exist, except as a kind of vague universal egalitarianism.
The promise of America was summed up by Ronald Reagan in his last speech as president, when he cited a letter from a man who told him: “’You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’” This, Reagan said, “is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world.”
Oh, I know that this ideal has often not been honored. We have a long, ugly history of white supremacy in this country, ranging from Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans down to the 1924 Immigration Act to keep non-Europeans out. But in recent decades, we had been making real strides toward becoming a more inclusive society. Coming here by jetliner in 1976, a Jewish immigrant from what was then a hostile state (the Soviet Union), I have never felt any less American than a Protestant whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. Trump is now telling me and millions of other immigrants otherwise.
[Why ’send her back' is even worse than 'lock her up,' by Max Boot, Washington Post, July 21, 2019]
Of course, this completely avoids the question of assimilation. The fact that Max Boot has "never felt any less American than a Protestant whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower in 1620" doesn’t negate the possibility that he’s never really felt American at all.
After all, when it comes to a country that Max Boot actually cares about, Israel, he is far more honest about the consequences of demographic change.
How will Israel survive if it cannot protect itself against terrorist enclaves located as close as Bethesda, Md., is to D.C.? That, alas, seems to be of scant concern to its most ardent critics. The BDS movement demands a “right of return” to Israel for 7.25 million descendants of Palestinian refugees, which would mean that Israel (which has 6.8 million Jews) would cease to be a Jewish-majority state. Anti-Israel activists should ask themselves why they’re fine with at least 45 Muslim-majority states in the world — including notorious human rights violators such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria — but they refuse to accept the lone Jewish state?
[The BDS movement shows its hypocrisy by boycotting Israel but not China, by Max Boot, Washington Post, October 18, 2021]
BDS demands a "right of return" that would make Jews a minority in Israel. Why are they fine with 45 Muslim-majority states — including notorious human-rights violators such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria — but refuse to accept the lone Jewish state?https://t.co/Iplip5TdFn
— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) October 18, 2021
I don’t think it’s the BDS movement that’s being hypocritical. It’s Mr. Boot. After all, why can’t Israel benefit from immigrants coming from around the world? Why wouldn’t this become Israel’s strength? He’s argued explicitly in the past that diversity, in and of itself, is good for the economy and for countries that embrace it. Why is Israel somehow different?
Besides, Boot has no one to blame but himself for the growing strength of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement. It’s mostly being driven by Third World immigrants [Are Jews Losing Control of the Media?, by Steve Sailer, Taki’s Magazine, March 11, 2015]. The likes of Max Boot aren’t going to lecture woke non-white college students on why Mr. Boot is somehow different from the dreaded Mayflower descendants that they are supposed to hate.
Of course, Mr. Boot has a country that he can flee to, evidently one he actually cares about. We don’t. America is our home, our only home. We have a stake in it. We live here, we built it, and it is ours. It’s being destroyed, and those who are destroying it tell us this openly.
Assuming Mr. Boot wants to actually have a dialogue in good faith, I can only tell him that we love this country as a real place, with a real culture, and a real history and identity. All of that is threatened by The Great Replacement.
If Mr. Boot understands that about Israel, but refuses to understand that about America, we can only conclude that he wasn’t much of an American to begin with.
Go home Mr. Boot. I think both of us will be happier.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.