By Paul Nachman
06/23/2013
In his recent piece at VDARE.com, James Kirkpatrick wrote, "We are not free, because you can’t have freedom and multiculturalism."
Indeed. But to flesh out that conclusion, I recommend the classic one-minute essay* Mass Immigration and Basic Freedoms, by John Vinson of the American Immigration Control Foundation. Here is Vinson’s 2004 piece, in its entirety:
Freedom is what makes America special. Our Constitution affirms such fundamental freedoms as speech, assembly, and worship. To protect our liberties, it also limits the power of government.
But the Constitution alone cannot guarantee that we will remain free. Freedom requires that Americans share a common loyalty to the principles of the Constitution. If we don’t embrace these principles as society, they will pass away — despite what any document says.
The excessive levels of immigration we now have are overwhelming our ability to assimilate the newcomers to our culture. In 1997 President Clinton observed that immigration was removing our "common … culture," but claimed that we should not worry about it. He was quite wrong. Diversity under a common culture can be beneficial. But immigration-propelled "multiculturalism," which destroys our common culture, is a threat to American liberty.
These are the reasons:
(1) Many immigrants today come from countries with little or no history of political freedom. While they may appreciate freedom, they often do not have the knowledge and habits of long practice to sustain it. Their growing numbers and lack of assimilation make them a strong influence outside the mainstream of free America.
(2) Multiculturalism means the rise of diverse ethnic and political groups with little in common. With the decline of English as our standard language, they won’t even be able to speak to one another. In this situation, a powerful government — one not respectful of liberties — may be the only force capable of holding the factions together.
To cite an example: free speech among people with little in common can easily cause someone to take offense. For the sake of keeping peace, some people will say "we must limit free speech." European countries and Canada, influenced by multiculturalism, have already moved in this direction. We Americans still enjoy legally protected free speech, but for how long? We must make a choice. We can have the multiculturalism made inevitable by mass immigration, or we can have freedom. But we can’t have both.
The warning in Vinson’s closing four sentences wasn’t far out ahead of events. There are probably examples significantly earlier than the following, but hark back to the spring of 2011 and what transpired after Rev. Terry Jones burned a Koran as an educational demonstration: the beyond-gutless statements by Gen. David Petraeus and by the gibbering goober himself, Sen. Lindsey Graham. The acclaimed reaction of Ann Barnhardt to Graham was tonic, a must-see video.
And less than a month ago, two functionaries serving our "depraved political class" attempted to instruct a large audience in Manchester, Tennessee about the requirements of multicultural accommodation in the presence of Muslims:
U.S. Attorney Bill Killian gave a power point presentation on hate crimes and hate speech. From beginning to end it was full of condescension, smears, charges that the crowd was racist, and thinly-veiled threats that truthful speech about Islam could be prosecuted.
Fortunately, according to reports, this particular crowd was having none of it. But the gall of Tennessee’s U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District and his accompanying FBI Special Agent Kenneth Moore is worth keeping in mind as an example of the state being at war with the nation.
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* I've dubbed the articles in the collection Common Sense on Mass Immigration "one-minute essays" because each takes about a minute to read. If you're unfamiliar with the resource, you may find this list of its titles useful:
The collection is also available in the form of a small physical booklet that can be conveniently mailed without an envelope, using a single first-class stamp. The brief essays can be read in any order, so it’s a great resource for sending to your ignorant but educable friends, even those who have short attention spans.
The price in bulk for the booklets is 40 cents apiece. See the image and the order forms at the bottom of that contents page.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.