The Art of Self-Marginalization

Reihan had some sharp comments on this Pat Buchanan column when it first appeared, and now Eve Fairbanks chimes in. The piece in question, in which Buchanan blames the Virginia Tech shootings on the Korean hordes who have entered the country in the past few decades, is a good example of why it's so lonely over here on the moderate-restrictionist side of the immigration debate - because all the other restrictionists seem determined to take every chance they get to act like, well, the liberal caricature of an immigration opponent.

In theory, the position that low-skilled immigration levels are too high, and that we should do more to control our southern border and reduce the unprecedented numbers coming in before we consider implementing an "earned legalization" program, seems like one that lots of reasonable people could take. But in practice, almost nobody does: You're either a sunny comprehensive-reform optimist, or you're writing darkly about the mass-murdering tendencies of "the 864,000 Koreans" in our midst.

Comments

Ross,

Both legal and illegal immigration are being used to drive down American wages

http://www.bluedogdemocrats.us/

The marriage of big business and multiculturalism has screwed over the American worker.

Blue Dog

Posted by Blue Dog | May 11, 2007 12:21 PM

You're either a sunny comprehensive-reform optimist, or you're writing darkly about the mass-murdering tendencies of "the 864,000 Koreans" in our midst.

this is an elite dynamic. the socialization process in the overclass is so powerful pro-open borders that the only ones who can resist are racialists.

Posted by razib | May 11, 2007 12:29 PM

I disagree with you on Buchanan. He is a true patriot and a true friend to the real West. He is definitely the best commentator of our age.

A third-world invasion of the West is taking place, and Cho is part of this invasion. And if we do not stop it, we are all doomed.

Just read Jean Raspail's _Camp of the Saints_.

Posted by Patriot | May 11, 2007 12:32 PM

A third-world invasion of the West is taking place, and Cho is part of this invasion.

but south korean is not "third world." just be honest, say colored. no one will bite you ;)

Posted by razib | May 11, 2007 1:02 PM

all the other restrictionists seem determined to take every chance they get to act like, well, the liberal caricature of an immigration opponent.

Possibly this means that it's not much of a caricature, no?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 11, 2007 1:09 PM

Patriot:

Q.E.D.

Posted by LarryM | May 11, 2007 4:20 PM

The U.N. may not classify S. Korea as third world, but I've been there and it's about as much of a shit hole as Mexico. And Koreans, like all non-whites, despise the beautiful and noble white race, hoping for its demise.

Posted by Bertrand Russell | May 11, 2007 4:47 PM

I spent a couple of years teaching at a learning center that served the Korean-American community in suburban D.C.

My previous job was teaching math at a public school in the Virginia Piedmont.

The difference between teaching American kids and teaching 1st & 2nd generation Korean immigrant kids was like the difference between night and day - night being the Americans, day being the Koreans.

While a select few of the former were smart, engaged and intellectually ambitious, in the main, they were proudly ignorant, puffed-up with unearned self-esteem, and as contemptuous of the life of the mind as they were of authority.

The latter, by contrast, were, with very few exceptions, modest, respectful...and hopelessly geeky, in the very best sort of way.

I will never forget working through Genesis, and the interesting parts of Exodus, and *Julius Caesar* and *Romeo & Juliet* and *Hamlet*, line by line, with a brilliant young Korean girl, whose mastery of English, after only a couple of years learning the language, surpassed that of *any* of my native-born American high-school students.

Look - I think there are good reasons for cracking down on immigration to the US (both legal and illegal) But *not* because there's anything wrong with Koreans.

Posted by Steve Burton | May 11, 2007 5:57 PM

The piece in question, in which Buchanan blames the Virginia Tech shootings on the Korean hordes who have entered the country in the past few decades,

No, he did not. What he said was that Cho's rage was a function of his alienation and said alienation was derived from an incapacity to communicate and daid incapacity to communicate was derived from the circumstances he found himself: in a foreign country due to emigration and immigration.

Buchanan is to be faulted for trying to make a point about social policy using as examples extreme outliers. If the outliers show mundane social relations in intense relief and the characteristics of said relations are delineated and distinguished from the behavior of the outliers, that is a legitimate mode of argument.

Mr. Buchanan did not explore the palpable costs (to be weighed against the benefits) of 'diversity' in everyday life. He merely gave an inventory of how a select list of immigrants added a few bodies to the annual pile-up of 16,000 homicide victims in the country. That is words wasted in the course of an argument. It does not mean he has no (non-racialist) argument.

Posted by Art Deco | May 11, 2007 6:02 PM

I think Buchanan's point concerned the burgeoning of alienated and foreign populations generally, not anything about Koreans in particular.

Your portrait of ethnic Koreans you have taught is replicated in my much more limited personal experience (and in the fragmentary social statistics I have seen). I suspect Koreans-in-general have a good reputation in the public at large.

Posted by Art Deco | May 11, 2007 6:18 PM

The U.N. may not classify S. Korea as third world, but I've been there and it's about as much of a shit hole as Mexico.

South Korea has a per capita income (at purchasing power parity) 2.4x that of Mexico, and a far more equalitarian distribution of income. The least affluent decile in South Korea enjoy household incomes 4x their Mexican counterparts. No country not possessing a natural resource bonanza has seen a more rapid aggrandizement in its capacity to produce goods and services as has South Korea since 1953. That s*** hole is now more affluent than the America in which I came of age a quarter-century ago.

And Koreans, like all non-whites, despise the beautiful and noble white race, hoping for its demise.

Hesh up.

Posted by Art Deco | May 11, 2007 6:36 PM

South Korea may not be Third World now, but it still was at the time a great deal (most?) of South Koreans came over. I'm not familiar with the immigration stats of the last few years, but my sense is that the bulk of Korean immigration happened before South Korea had achieved First-World levels of income and wealth. This would be sensible, after all--why emigrate en masse unless your country is still pretty poor? And keep in mind that South Korea's entry into the First World was still a little rocky as late as the 1998 bailout. The rapidity of Soth Korea's economic rise means that it's First World status is still less than a generation old.

This having nothing whatsoever to do with the pros and cons of Korean immigration to the United States.

Posted by withywindle | May 11, 2007 6:47 PM

Mr. Burton,

You are missing the point, I believe. I don't care if they are smart or dumb. They are not a part of my tribe.

Bertrand,

They may not hate the West, but they would certainly not seek to preserve it. It is not their ancestral tradition. They are of another tribe, and have other ancestral traditions to preserve.

Posted by CS Lewish | May 11, 2007 8:37 PM

You are missing the point, I believe. I don't care if they are smart or dumb. They are not a part of my tribe.

Just out of curiousity, how is your tribe defined?

Posted by Art Deco | May 11, 2007 9:14 PM

And how does one become part of this tribe?

My parents are Mexican. I myself barely speak Spanish, speak unaccented English, and went through the educational system into law school.

Am I part of your tribe? Or shall I be forced to join my "proper" tribe at some later date?

I much appreciate Mr. Buchanan's thoughts on the Iraq War, but his notion of what makes an American is not ncessarily shared by the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of this country, many of whom were looked upon with the same "tribal" disgust by the "native" Americans as Mexican-Americans are today.

DU

Posted by The Mechanical Eye | May 12, 2007 2:26 AM

It's just not worth arguing with these racist pigs.

And, as suggested in my comment above, this thread is a strong vindication of the original post. I myself, on purely logical grounds, could possibly be persuaded to support a moderately-restrictionist position on immigration, but since the restrictionists are overwelmingly composed of pond scum, there is not a chance in the real world that I ever would support even a moderately restrictionist position.

Posted by LarryM | May 12, 2007 8:31 AM

Oh, and Patriot, CS Lewish and Bertrand Russell, if I was president, I'd strip you of citizenship and remove you from the country long before I'd deport a single illegal.

Posted by LarryM | May 12, 2007 8:35 AM

...all the other restrictionists seem determined to take every chance they get to act like, well, the liberal caricature of an immigration opponent.

One fine day, Ross, you will awake to realize that you ARE a liberal. You've got some heterodox views, true, but you're clearly too damned humane and reasonable to cast your lot with the pitchforks and pointy hoods crowd.

We'll leave the light on for you.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 12, 2007 9:08 AM

Doesn't anyone think this thread is being thoroughly trolled by one person, not three?

Posted by Klug | May 12, 2007 10:05 AM

Mechanical Eye,

You are Mexican. Plain and simple. The one-drop-rule says that if you have any Mexican or negro in you, you are Mexican or negro.

Whatever you call yourself, you are not white, unless you are of the Mexican upper class.

DNA tests of Mexicans show.

(1) there is a very small upper class of Mexicans of pure European blood

but

(2) around 30% of Mexicans are pure Amerindian

and

(3) around 60% of Mexicans are Mestizo (Amerindian with a little Spaniard and negro mixed in).

According to the ancient rules of European-American ancestry, or aristocratic decree, if you are Mestizo or Amerindian, you are not white.

Posted by European-American Elitist | May 12, 2007 4:05 PM

"According to the ancient rules of European-American ancestry, or aristocratic decree, if you are Mestizo or Amerindian, you are not white."
Posted by European-American Elitist

I'd like to see your genetic chart.

Most Europeans are of mixed ancestry no matter where you live.

The British and Irish have a mixed Basque genetic inheritance.

The Mediterranean peoples have Semitic and African genes. East, South and Central Europeans have mixed "non Aryan blood."

People in Finland and Hungary speak a Uralic language which is defined as:

"The Uralic languages (pronounced: /jʊˈɹɑlɪk/) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. The name of the language family refers to the location of the family’s suggested Urheimat (homeland), which is often placed close to the Ural mountains. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Sweden. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian."

I could go on. The idea of a pure European race is the figment of your insecure imagination.

Besides, in the hell whole you live you may be an
"Elitist" but on these blogs you are just another runt with a sub par IQ.

Posted by apter | May 13, 2007 12:16 AM

Apter,

It should be done in terms of ancestry, an ancient concept, central to Biblical and Greco-Roman thought.

Look at your ancestors - are they from Europe, or are they not?

I have my genealogy to the 1400s, and they are all from Europe. I am 100% European.

On the edges of Europe, they may always have been a little bleeding, but the point is what is one primarily? If one is 95% European, with a few semetic genes from N. Africa from the Middle Ages, then, well, he is still European. All of his ancestry, by and large, is European.

Mexicans, though, are not white. They are predominately Amerindian or Amerindian with a few drops of Spaniard or Negro blood. Plain and simple.

It's all about ancestry. Read your Homer.

Posted by European-American Elitist | May 13, 2007 8:23 AM

Sorry to interrupt the edifying and enlightening "my ancestors were better than yours" contest, but back to the larger point: what are the "moderate-restrictionist" voices in the immigration debate? In addition to Ross (whose position I hadn't noticed until this post, FWIW), offhand I can think of Victor Davis Hanson and Mickey Kaus. Who else occupies that ground?

Posted by Jeff Peterson | May 13, 2007 8:56 AM

Korean immigrants and their descendants are not to be lumped in the same category as Mexican illegals. They are far more economically productive and law-abiding.

Nevertheless, the cultural alienation Buchanan writes of is real, even among the most socially and financially successful tier of Korean-Americans.

Being an immigrant is hard, and money does not completely ameliorate the psychological pain caused by the process of immigration: if you're Korean-American and marry a white person, you're agreeing to have most of the cultural and biological Korean-ness removed from your line within a generation or two.

That's a tough decision to make.

Posted by Zagnut | May 13, 2007 9:07 AM

I am with Ross. I am a moderate reductionist, and I'm against legal and illegal immigration from the Third World because they are tools of big business to drive down American wages.

I am also against immigration for population reasons, and for environmental reasons. If we add another 100 million people to the US, as Microsoft and WalMart want, our forests and country side will be devastated. Our country will be endless suburban development.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265

Watch this video. A few of my liberal friends, who were previously pro-immigration, watched this video and changed their position. It's the best immigration video I've ever seen. And it's by an environmentalist.

Posted by Green Tory | May 13, 2007 10:12 AM

"Look at your ancestors - are they from Europe, or are they not?

I have my genealogy to the 1400s, and they are all from Europe. I am 100% European."

So you are saying that the descendants of a Black African brought to Europe before 1400 are also 100 per cent European?

There were Jews who have lived in Europe since the Roman Empire are they also 100 percent European?

Posted by apter | May 13, 2007 6:00 PM

"It's all about ancestry. Read your Homer."
Posted by European-American Elitist

This is funny because no one knows who Homer was.

Besides, do you read ancient Greek? The Greeks were then as now a mixed "race" and the idea that they were pure "white" is a modern fiction.

Posted by apter | May 13, 2007 6:06 PM

Apter,

The ancient Greeks were an extremely ethnocentric people, who looked down upon all others. People don't realize this...putting on the post-Enlightenment blinders...but they were more ethnocentric than any culture today on the planet.

They were not some multiracial "proposition nation," which did not even exist until modern times.

Wow, talk about historical revisionism.

Posted by Johnson & Johnson | May 13, 2007 6:38 PM

All these paleoconservatives posting are the fleas that follow Sailer over here.

Posted by Left-Wing Larry | May 13, 2007 7:37 PM

Apter is only trying to compensate for the fact that he comes from an inferior blood line. Instead of looking at the real problem - his ancestry - he is trying to criticize everyone else. Just ignore the knave.

Posted by High-Brow Anglo-Saxon | May 13, 2007 7:41 PM

I love Ross as much as every other liberal (i'm only being a little facetious, i really enjoy his stuff) but DAMN does he bring out the crazies, the atlantic must be loving this, I bet they'd never imagine this much paleocon/vdare traffic to their site, i mean, didn't the Atlantic lead the charge in yknow, fighting the civil war..

Posted by matt z | May 13, 2007 11:43 PM

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Posted by John | May 14, 2007 5:08 PM

But in practice, almost nobody does

In practice, it seems almost impossible to get most people to even mention the immigration issue at all. Most political blogs simply will not address the issue, period. Meanwhile it is, by all accounts, the single biggest issue voters bring up with candidates out on the stump.

You're either a sunny comprehensive-reform optimist, or you're writing darkly about the mass-murdering tendencies of "the 864,000 Koreans" in our midst.

Well, I think that Kaus, for example, is neither one of those. But yes, there seems to be a shortage of frank, sensible discussion of immigration. The "mainstream" blogs on both left and right won't touch the issue. Why that is is a mystery to me. The political implications of how we deal with this question are immense. But not a peep from the political bloggers.

Posted by PatrickW | May 14, 2007 5:51 PM

PatrickW,

Roy Beck at NumbersUSA is probably one of the few moderate voices on immigration.

J

Posted by JJ | May 14, 2007 7:39 PM

I am a liberal who is anti-immigration. I am pro-American worker, not pro-cheap labor.

This immigration deal is horrible - horrible for the American worker. Both legal and illegal immigration are being used to drive down the wages of American workers.

The worst thing ever to happen to the American worker is the marriage of big business and multiculturalism, and you're seeing the effects here.

Please watch this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265

It's the best video ever made on immigration, and it's only 15 minutes long. A few of my friends, who were pro-immigration, watched this video and changed their stances.

Do you know who the biggest backer of immigration is? Wal-Mart, which last year gave more money to La Raza than to any other organization. This "deal" is a joke. It is just a way for big business to drive down American wages.

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