By Paul Nachman
01/21/2015
In A Man Alone (Tom Sowell), Peter Brimelow was writing admiringly about Thomas Sowell at least as far back as 1987. Two decades later, playwright David Mamet i
dentified Sowell as "our greatest contemporary philosopher" (Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal', The Village Voice, March 11, 2008).
The 84-year-old Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, might best be described not as a philosopher but as an incredibly-learned scholar and, as a result, a fount of shrewdly-expressed wisdom. (For an example, spend the five minutes needed to digest "Multicultural" Education, his torpedoing of the Left’s toxic illusions about universities' curricula. And here is Sowell on the subject of writing, a lengthier essay to be savored.)
Sowell has long been making serious statements about our nation-destroying immigration. I haven’t read his 1997 book Migrations and Cultures: A World View, so I don’t know his take therein, but a brief Forbes column by him from that era [Weasel word on immigration, June 2, 1997] contains much that is memorable, especially this:
Those who adopt a “citizen of the world” air and lament the existence of national borders may enjoy a glow of self-righteousness but immigration is a virtually irreversible decision; and it is receiving nothing like the kind of careful scrutiny that irreversible decisions deserve.
Sowell often tosses off a point about immigration in his periodic "Random Thoughts" columns. Here’s an example from last fall that is especially timely right now:
Now that the Western democracies have learned the hard way what the consequences are when you admit all sorts of people into your country — including people who hate both the principles and the people of your society — will that cause zealots for open borders and amnesty to have some second thoughts, or perhaps first thoughts?
I doubt that Sowell is an expert across the entire vast subject of immigration — likely he doesn’t know about many of the "microscopic" but nevertheless very important details (e.g. "What is a matricula consular?") that VDARE.com writers' and readers' brains are stuffed with. But he’s probably unbeatable on the big themes, and his writings are rich troves of eloquence for us to use as verbal ammunition.
Occasionally, Sowell does a column that focuses on immigration. These are treasures. A current example is 'Diversity' in Action [Jewish World Review, January 20, 2015]. Here are its first five paragraphs:
Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, and European governments' counter-attacks are more than just a passing news story.Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture. And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites' Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word "diversity."
Generations yet unborn will still be paying the price, whether in large or small installments, depending on how long it takes for the West to jettison Utopianism and come to grips with reality.
Meanwhile, in the United States, no one seems to be drawing any lessons about the dangers of importing millions of people from fundamentally different cultures across our open border. In America, "diversity" has still not yet lost its magical ability to stop thought in its tracks and banish facts into the outer darkness.
Perhaps here, as in Europe, that verbal magic can only be washed away in the blood of innocent victims, many of them yet unborn.
It should go without saying, but I'll say it: Read the whole thing.
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