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Sunday December 30, 2007
Category: ImmigrationLarry Auster: Blog first, think later
Lawrence Auster is going medieval on me because I wrote the Dallas Morning News essay naming the Illegal Immigrant as "Texan of the Year." Even though the piece is not signed -- and in fact appears in the newspaper labeled...Filed Under: Illegal Immigration, Texan of the Year
posted by Rod Dreher @ 8:46pm Permalink 
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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This Larry used to be a reporter, so -- despite mostly disagreeing with Rod on the merits -- I certainly understand the process within the newspaper.
Though 33% more immigrants (more illegal than legal) in Texas since 2000? 1 in 14 Texans an illegal immigrant? That does add some perspective to what's going on in Irving and Farmers Branch, I have to admit.
The one thing we can ALL agree on: "The system is a joke."
Posted by: Larry Parker | December 30, 2007 9:40 PM
The rush to judgment seems to be typical of the anti-immigrant side -- at least it seems so to me, a man who is surrounded by anti-immigration sentiment in a state that has enacted the most draconian legislation in the country.
I know that you disagree, Rod, but I really cannot see how a Christian can support such stuff. But apparently, that's a minority position and the only thing that matters is that "the law" be obeyed -- and damn the gospel.
Posted by: fbc | December 30, 2007 9:41 PM
More than one in 14 -- seven percent of all Texans are estimated to be illegal immigrants. Almost one in 10. It's a very big deal here.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 30, 2007 9:41 PM
It was an even handed essay. I certainly didn't come away with an impression of support for illegal immigration from the DMN. I thought the article addressed a very complex issue quite well. I've found myself many times skimming articles of interest and finding I had missed key points or textual nuances that altered the direction thought, especially when it is a topic I hold dear, perhaps this blogger made a similar error, only had the misfortune of a webpage to divulge his habit. Sigh...
Posted by: Zoetius | December 30, 2007 9:42 PM
Nice piece, Rod.
Posted by: Jillian | December 30, 2007 10:47 PM
Hehe you guys have never been to south Texas. Illegals makeup far more than 7 or 10% of people in Texas. 7 or 10% is more accurate for the overall US population.
Posted by: G. Stefan | December 30, 2007 11:00 PM
My biggest complaint about the piece is actually directed at the TOY award itself: frankly, I find that these sorts of "Person of the Year" awards lose their direction and a great deal of their impact when the "Person" selected is some amorphous faceless group rather than an individual.
Like Time's widely criticized "Person of the Year" of 2006, this kind of group award tends to feel like pandering, even if it isn't intended to be. Worse, it ends up painting a whole group of people with a rather broad brush--some negative commenters I encountered elsewhere on the internet were scoffing that perhaps the DMN needed to consider that the 9/11 hijackers, some of whom got some of their flight training in Texas, qualified as "Texans of the Year" under this year's award. The obvious point of such comments is the reminder that the quiet, hardworking Hispanic illegal immigrant is a stereotype, too, and like all stereotypes fails to reflect the full picture: not all who cross our borders illegally come in peace, with no greater ambition than to improve their own lot and that of their families.
There are illegal immigrants in America whose only purpose here is to traffic in illegal drugs. There are illegal immigrants incarcerated in nearly every prison in America. There are illegal immigrants coming here from countries very far from Mexico, whose hopes, dreams, and ambitions include acts of terror or violence.
Obviously, there are hardworking illegals who only want a better life for themselves. And as the piece itself points out, even these groups are responsible for some difficult issues and situations, including the demand on the public systems of health, education, and the like. But to pretend that this is all, that our flawed and failing border system isn't seriously detrimental to the future security of the nation, is to ignore those 9/11 hijackers, who were as much "temporary undocumented Texans" as the people the article mentions.
Granted, the DMN as a Texas paper is going to focus on the largest and most visible group of illegal immigrants in the local area. In many ways, that's what we're doing as a nation, too, which may end up having dangerous consequences.
(Having said all that, I'd like to join the many commenters who have congratulated Rod and Julie on the occasion of their tenth anniversary. May you have many blessed and joyful years together!)
Posted by: Erin Manning | December 30, 2007 11:50 PM
Rod Dreher doth protest too, too much.
1. Mr. Dreher writes: "My own views on immigration are far to the right of the newspaper's consensus view." But if the essay he wrote was merely a corporate expression of the paper's editorial board, and not the expression of Rod Dreher's own views, why was he personally named as its author? A newspaper editorial essay identified as the work of one individual ceases to be seen as merely a corporate opinion and is rightly seen as reflecting the opinions of the person who wrote it.
2. Further, if it is true that Rod Dreher doesn't agree with the essay, why did he write it? How far must the positions of the Dallas Morning News depart from his own principles before he tells his colleagues, "Sorry, folks, I can't go along with this"? If a majority of the editorial board voted to designate Muslims the "Texan of the Year" and to publish an editorial supporting the establishment of sharia in Texas, would Mr. Dreher obediently write the editorial, or would he say that this was going too far? And if he did write it, while inwardly and privately supposedly disagreeing with what he was writing, and if the editorial was publicly identified by the paper as Dreher's work, would he have the right to disown the editorial after it was published and to say that it didn't reflect his true views?
3. As for his essay's supposed criticisms of illegal immigration, this is the standard tactic of liberals--and let's be clear that whatever Rod may call himself, in this instance he is functioning as the liberal draftsman for a liberal editorial board. When advancing radical agendas, liberals throw in rhetoric to create the impression that what they are doing will not radicalize society, even as the actual substance of what they are proposing would lead society in a radical direction. For example, the Congress when it passed the 1965 Immigration Act made repeated assurances that it had no intent to transform the ethnic composition of America. But of course the bill did transform the ethnic composition of America. America was an 89 percent European country in 1965, it is a 67 percent European country today, and its traditional majority population has lost so much power and control over their own national destiny that now they are told by the Dallas Morning News they must allow their country to be Hispanicized culturally as well as demographically.
Liberals ALWAYS deny what they are about, because they know that what they are about would be rejected by the public if stated plainly.
Obfuscations aside, the real meaning of Mr. Dreher's "Texan of the Year" essay is fully revealed in its last few paragraphs which I quoted and analyzed at my website: it is about Hispanicizing and Mexicanizing this country, while denying that it is doing so.
Further proof of Dreher's liberal sensibility (which he denies having) is his use of the word "medieval" to characterize me. For liberals, "medieval," like "fascist," is an all-purpose smear that simply means everything that is backward, prejudiced, reactionary and plain not liberal.
Finally, it is most ironic that Mr. Dreher would criticize me for "blogging without thinking," since he openly admitted in a blog entry last July 24:
"Having been absolutely certain that the war was the right thing to have done, and that we would prevail easily, I am no longer confident that I can discern when emotion is affecting my judgment unduly." [Emphasis added.]
In any case, readers can read what Mr. Dreher has written, and what I have written, and decide for themselves, which of us is thinking logically, and which of us drifting with the political and demographic tides.
You can find my article (which Mr. Dreher has not linked) at my website, View from the Right, under the title, "Treason at the Dallas Morning News."
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009569.html
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | December 31, 2007 1:04 AM
I know that you disagree, Rod, but I really cannot see how a Christian can support such stuff. But apparently, that's a minority position and the only thing that matters is that "the law" be obeyed -- and damn the gospel.
What part of the Gospel says that Christians should support people illegally taking other persons' property? Christians saying that illegal immigrants and local residents should ignore the law and they should just come in and work and live wherever they want to is just a larger scale version of me saying that Joe Blow has the right to squat in your house, eat your food, take your clothes and sleep with your wife, because you have no private property rights and anyone has the right to come and take and do with your things whatever he or she pleases, and you as a Christian have no say-so in the matter.
Posted by: Eric W | December 31, 2007 2:02 AM
In order to address some of Rod Dreher's points more directly, I need to speak about his essay as a whole. His article is in fact a standard mainstream liberal newspaper treatment of the illegal immigration issue. It doesn't claim to take a stand. Rather it "objectively" reflects the different and opposing views on the subject. Some people say good things about the illegals; some people say bad things. Some people say illegal immigration is necessary for the economy; some say illegal immigration is law-breaking, period. Some say the illegals are enriching America with their family values and hard work; some say they are disrupting and destroying our culture. Because Dreher is including these critical statements about immigration in his formally balanced treatment, he can claim (and many will believe him), that his article is tough on illegal immigration. Thus he says in his reply to me:
Mr. Dreher thinks his critical comments about immigration clear him of the charge of being pro-illegal immigration. In fact, it has been standard operating procedure in liberal and neoconservative articles on the immigration issue over the last 20 years to say some critical and even deeply alarming things about immigration, and then turn around and conclude we have no choice but to accept the immigration and hope for the best.
It's the same here. In the midst of Dreher's allegedly neutral, non-judgmental treatment of the illegal immigration issue, it is the standard liberal view that emerges, which is that the illegals are here, there's nothing we can do about it, and we just have to adjust to their presence. Nowhere in the article does Mr. Dreher even suggest the possibility of serious law enforcement resulting in a gradual voluntary attrition of the illegal presence. Nowhere in the article does he describe the vast Hispanic legal and illegal immigration into this country as what it really is: as an invasion, as a culturally expansive, race-conscious mass movement of Hispanic peoples into the historically Anglo-European but now officially race-blind and all-inclusive society of the United States.
This brings us to the article's concluding section. Dreher lays out two scenarios. While the two scenarios are different, they have this key factor in common: we do nothing about the illegal presence, the illegal presence is simply accepted as a given.
Dreher's first scenario:
In other words, we simply surrender to the fragmentation of America and the destruction of its common culture and national identity. There is no suggestion of doing anything to prevent this from happening.
Dreher's second scenario:
In the second scenario, we somehow incorporate the Hispanics into our culture even as they are culturally Hispanicizing our country, with their "different accent" (i.e. their different language) and their "new cultural traditions" (i.e., not the historic culture of the United States). This is sheerest nonsense. To incorporate a different culture into our culture is to change our culture into that different culture. Underneath the soothing rhetoric about a "story that's still deeply American" (which is the kind of deceptive fluff I'd expect to see in a Time magazine article about immigration), Dreher is simply describing the cultural surrender of America to the Hispanic invasion.
Thus, boiled down to their essentials, Dreher presents us with these two choices: (1) We do nothing about the illegal alien presence, and America becomes balkanized, or (2) we do nothing about the illegal alien presence, and America becomes Hispanicized. That's it. Rod Dreher offers no scenario for the defense, survival, and recovery of the American nation, only for its destruction.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | December 31, 2007 2:44 AM
Lawrence, Rod wrote this essay as a ghost writer for a committee. That's what it means to write an unsigned editorial that represents the views of a newspaper's editorial board. And yet you personalize your argument by writing such things as "Dreher's first scenario" and "Dreher offers." I don't mean to be rude but this makes it appear as if you don't understand how newspapers work.
Posted by: Robbie1687 | December 31, 2007 4:01 AM
For reasons unclear Mr. Auster first comment has never made it.
I took a liberty to post it.
Here is Lawrence Auster first comment copied from his site www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009572.html:
--------- Start of Auster comment ----
Rod Dreher doth protest too, too much.
1. Mr. Dreher writes: "My own views on immigration are far to the right of the newspaper's consensus view." But if the essay he wrote was merely a corporate expression of the paper's editorial board, and not the expression of Rod Dreher's own views, why was he personally named as its author? A newspaper editorial essay identified as the work of one individual ceases to be seen as merely a corporate opinion and is rightly seen as reflecting the opinions of the person who wrote it.
2. Further, if it is true that Rod Dreher doesn't agree with the essay, why did he write it? How far must the positions of the Dallas Morning News depart from his own principles before he tells his colleagues, "Sorry, folks, I can't go along with this"? If a majority of the editorial board voted to designate Muslims the "Texan of the Year" and to publish an editorial supporting the establishment of sharia in Texas, would Mr. Dreher obediently write the editorial, or would he say that this was going too far? And if he did write it, while inwardly and privately supposedly disagreeing with what he was writing, and if the editorial was publicly identified by the paper as Dreher's work, would he have the right to disown the editorial after it was published and to say that it didn't reflect his true views?
3. As for his essay's supposed criticisms of illegal immigration, this is the standard tactic of liberals--and let's be clear that whatever Rod may call himself, in this instance he is functioning as the liberal draftsman for a liberal editorial board. When advancing radical agendas, liberals throw in rhetoric to create the impression that what they are doing will not radicalize society, even as the actual substance of what they are proposing would lead society in a radical direction. For example, the Congress when it passed the 1965 Immigration Act made repeated assurances that it had no intent to transform the ethnic composition of America. But of course the bill did transform the ethnic composition of America. America was an 89 percent European country in 1965, it is a 67 percent European country today, and its traditional majority population has lost so much power and control over their own national destiny that now they are told by the Dallas Morning News they must allow their country to be Hispanicized culturally as well as demographically.
Liberals ALWAYS deny what they are about, because they know that what they are about would be rejected by the public if stated plainly.
Obfuscations aside, the real meaning of Mr. Dreher's "Texan of the Year" essay is fully revealed in its last few paragraphs which I quoted and analyzed at my website: it is about Hispanicizing and Mexicanizing this country, while denying that it is doing so.
Further proof of Dreher's liberal sensibility is his use of the word "medieval" to characterize me. For liberals, "medieval," like "fascist," is an all-purpose smear that simply means everything that is backward, prejudiced, reactionary and plain not liberal.
Finally, it is most ironic that Mr. Dreher would criticize me for "blogging without thinking," since he openly admitted in a blog entry last July 24:
"Having been absolutely certain that the war was the right thing to have done, and that we would prevail easily, I am no longer confident that I can discern when emotion is affecting my judgment unduly." [Emphasis added.]
In any case, readers can read what Mr. Dreher has written, and what I have written, and decide for themselves, which of us is thinking logically, and which of us drifting with the political and demographic tides.
You can find my article (which Mr. Dreher has not linked) at my website, View from the Right, under the title, "Treason at the Dallas Morning News."
---------- End of Auster comment ------------
Posted by: mik_infidelos | December 31, 2007 4:45 AM
Mr. Auster:
I substantively agree with you on the immigration issue and with your criticisms of the DMN piece. But one style point, which you commit repeatedly, indicates (1) that you really don't understand how newspaper editorial boards work, and/or (2) that your real issue is personal, as if Rod had once pissed in your Wheaties or something.
That is your whole first-posted-here note begins with "Rod Dreher's points." And then repeatedly and constantly uses personal constructions like "Dreher argues such," "Dreher does this" "Dreher's stance," etc.
No.
"The Dallas Morning News argues this," "the Dallas Morning News does that," "The DMN's stance," etc.
Yes.
And as I've noted, I pretty much agree with what you say.
But this article was NOT a signed piece by Rod. This is a basic distinction on editorial pages. The only reason you know as a point of fact who wrote it is that another person mentioned that fact in a discussion. Substantive criticisms of that execrable piece cannot be laid at Rod's feet.
Posted by: Victor Morton | December 31, 2007 5:54 AM
To the posted-second-here note:
But if the essay he wrote was merely a corporate expression of the paper's editorial board, and not the expression of Rod Dreher's own views, why was he personally named as its author?
Ask Rodger Jones.
Rod wasn't "personally named as its author," as explained above. It was an unsigned article in every forum in which it appeared, as is standard newspaper practice. That first clause of yours is not an "if" clause.
Further, if it is true that Rod Dreher doesn't agree with the essay, why did he write it?
Probably because he was assigned it. Happens at newspapers all the time -- writers write editorials with which they disagree or (to speak of something I have more-direct daily experience of) report comment from people they think are vile or liars.
As for why he was assigned it -- ask Keven Ann Willey. Maybe she thinks Rod is their best writer. Maybe Rod writes the TOY essay every year as a matter of precedent. Maybe she's a spiteful open-borders freak who assigned it to rub Rod's nose in it ("I'll *make* him swallow his own words, the evil nativist," more or less). Maybe he was the only person in the office with free time on deadline day. Or some other reason not occurring to me (in case it isn't obvious, I have no direct knowledge of why, i.e., exactly the same amount as Mr. Auster, and am merely free-associating logical possibilities without regard for their actual likelihood).
If a majority of the editorial board voted to ... [support] the establishment of sharia in Texas, would Mr. Dreher obediently write the editorial, or would he say that this was going too far?
Who knows? But what can be said for certain is that not every disagreement with a bureaucratic superior constitutes grounds for walking off the job and not every case of being outvoted constitutes cause for dissolving the polity in question. Some may be either, of course, but there is no a-priori reason to say "since writing an editorial on immigration is not a 'go-to-hell issue' for Rod [or any particular person], then he has no right under penalty of 'hypocrite' or 'double standard' jeers to say 'go-to-hell' over some other issue."
And if [Rod] did write it, while inwardly and privately supposedly disagreeing with what he was writing ... [ellipsed out falsehood] ... would he have the right to disown the editorial after it was published and to say that it didn't reflect his true views?
Looks like he already has.
Nevertheless (and this is why I suspect there's some personal vendetta here), it is simply good manners for a worker, in any job, not to walk around unpromptedly denouncing his colleagues work or the newspaper corporately. Not that these things can't be done ever, but they are sufficiently tricky. And because outsiders are ignorant of the specific dynamics surrounding any given case, they really should have the manners not to put someone on the spot. Unless embarrassing that person is rather the point.
Posted by: Victor Morton | December 31, 2007 6:20 AM
Victor, the problem is that the Rodger Jones "outing" of Rod Dreher as the writer of the editorial is used by Jones as a cover for the content of the article. Basically Jones says "If Dreher, a non-liberal writes it, then the editorial must not be liberal." So, is the article just a general statement by the editorial staff or is it Rod's opinion? Rod says it isn't his opinion by that of the board. Jones is basically saying that it's Rod's opinion as well as the board's. Plus, why would you assign writing such an editorial to the one person on the board that disagrees with it's views? This isn't some public works project editorial. It's a very serious issue in this country and in Texas. It seems that the best that can be said is that the board used Rod as some cover for airing their views.
Is it typical for someone at the DMN to state who wrote which board editorial?
Posted by: Chris | December 31, 2007 7:43 AM
All I can say is, thank God for Lawrence Auster and his website. He is one of the few bloggers / political thinkers / philosophers who is fearless in articulating the traditionalist conservative point of view and does not back down in the face of personal attacks or become distracted by red herrings that liberals love to throw at conservatives. He speaks for millions of us. Thanks, Lawrence.
Posted by: Cindy | December 31, 2007 8:26 AM
The demographic of the U.S., is changing, get used to it, (or encourage your old stock to have lots of babies.) Mexican immigration is but one component of that. It can be addressed through changes to immigration law that pass constitutional muster. That, however, is what elected representation is all about. Instead of shooting an editorial board and the writer who crafts their opinion, run for office and participate in the hard work that is politics.
And refrain from ad hominem arguments, they are fallacious. Attack the argument, not the writer. Duh!
Posted by: Zero-Equals-Infinity | December 31, 2007 8:55 AM
Let me clarify something: I agreed with the board's choice of the Illegal Immigrant as Texan of the Year, and nobody forced me to write that editorial. Had I written the editorial strictly reflecting my own views, it would have said, basically, "The Illegal Immigrant is the most important Texan of 2007, and we're going to live to regret not having dealt firmly with this problem, in defense of the law and our culture." To me, the mass migration from Mexico (mostly) into Texas is by far the most important news event of this year (of the decade, actually) to Texas.
I don't happen to agree with most of my colleagues about the nature of the problem or its solution, but they're good people. We just don't agree. My boss is very good about not making us write editorials with which we disagree, but I told her when I joined the paper that, as a matter of professionalism, the only assignment I would refuse was one in which I had to defend abortion rights.
My assignment here was to accurately reflect the illegal immigration issue in Texas from both sides of the controversy, not to take sides. If I failed at that, the failure is my own.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 9:43 AM
"Illegal Immigrants"? Properly speaking, they are illegal aliens. "Immigrant", even preceded by the term "illegal", implies a right to a sort of permanence and eventual legal status. It's similar to designating citizens of a foreign country, usually mexico, as citizens of the USA and Texas--or Texans. This designation, as the avalanche of posts on the DMN blog illustrates, gives the game away and has generated an unprecedented level of outrage at Belo and the DMN.
However much Rod Dreher may think illegals are a problem, it is Lawrence Auster who is correct about the conclusion Dreher offers: a) balkanization and conflict or b) acceptance of the hispanicization of a country built on principles derived from an Anglo-Saxon culture. Bottomline: the invaders are "immigrants" and "Texans" and we must surrender to their invasion.
Oh, and if you need anymore proof of the bias of the editorial in favor illegals, look at the two photographs to the right of the editorial here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/texanofyear/stories/123007dnedianonymous.278c46.html
The first is a "Welcome to Texas" photograph with the following cutlines from the essay: "We can't seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody's figured out how. He's the Illegal Immigrant, and he's the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse."
The second is a romantic mood piece of illegals in an onion field with the cutline: "American prosperity is built in part on the backs of illegal-immigrant labor, such as these workers picking onions on a farm in South Texas."
Sure, no position about illegal "immigration" one way or the other at all. Laughable.
Posted by: PaulC | December 31, 2007 10:06 AM
One would think that Auster, who has alienated conservatives ranging from John Derbyshire to David Horowitz and me and now you, would perhaps someday develop enough self-awareness to recognize that his prickliness, harsh tone, unforgiving and conspiracy-minded textual exegesis, and generally crummy personality might be why he's always getting into conflict with natural allies. He basically is immature and has also been a profoudnly unsuccessful professional writer. The latter is not because he's a bad writer; he's often quite good and interesting and thoughtful. But he cannot find a way to get along with other people and is always having fallouts with publishers where he wails about their cravenness and duplicity. My God, this guy needs to chill out and learn to cooperate (and, if necessary, take his meds).
He has once again revealed that his character and personality are fundamentally unsuited to decent interaction with anyone on this Earth other than the most vile sycophants.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | December 31, 2007 11:01 AM
The irony of theDallas Morning News's surrender to illegal immigration is that it also marks the slow death of that very publication. As Hispanics continue to move in and whites continue to move out, the literate and educated middle class that make up the core audience of any serious newspaper will surely dwindle away. In response, it could, of course, dumb down and/or produce a Spanish language edition, but I suspect that would only be delaying the inevitable.
Posted by: Jason Radley | December 31, 2007 11:08 AM
The DMN already produces as Spanish-language daily. Which it should, given 1/3 of people in Dallas speak Spanish.
Posted by: Daniel | December 31, 2007 11:16 AM
... but I told her when I joined the paper that, as a matter of professionalism, the only assignment I would refuse was one in which I had to defend abortion rights.
Before I got to Rod’s post, I was going to ask him, if the DMN asked him to write an editorial stating that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, would he write that? So there is at least one issue on which Rod won’t compromise; it’s just that mass illegal migration (“the most important news event of this year”) isn’t one of them.
This whole defense resting on “editorial practices” seems rather lame. Although, I’m not surprised that editorial boards would operate in this manner, as a typical tactic of the left is always to co-opt a member of the other side. As others have suggested, they probably did so to give validation to the general thrust of the editorial.
Posted by: Scott in PA | December 31, 2007 11:19 AM
"I’m not surprised that editorial boards would operate in this manner, as a typical tactic of the left is always to co-opt a member of the other side. As others have suggested, they probably did so to give validation to the general thrust of the editorial."
Paranoid, conservative whack-jobbery seems to be in full supply today.
Posted by: Daniel | December 31, 2007 11:40 AM
The DMN already produces as Spanish-language daily. Which it should, given 1/3 of people in Dallas speak Spanish.
Thanks for that. Do you have an idea on the respective circulation figures for both editions? And I'm wondering if this bilingual approach is common practice in other cities in the American SW. How about the LA Times.
And one final thing: how would you characterize the DMN's general political stance?
Posted by: Jason Radley | December 31, 2007 11:46 AM
Daniel, believe it or not, I couldn't agree with you more.
No member of this, or any other, editorial board could hold down a job here if he or she only wrote editorials with which he or she agreed 100 percent. As Victor Morton (who actually works at a newspaper) and others have pointed out, that's not how editorial boards work. We just had our regular Monday staff meeting to discuss editorial positions. I volunteered to write an editorial for Thursday's paper about foreign policy experience and presidential candidates. It will reflect the views of our editorial board, not me alone (though I played a big role in shaping our position). I will have to put things in it that I don't necessarily agree with, but I don't have a big problem with that. Our boss has a good system in which she accepts volunteers for most editorials, on the theory that people who for the most part endorse the editorial's viewpoint are going to do a better job crafting it than people who are neutral or opposed to it. Taht said, owing to this or that factor, I've had to write in the past editorials defending Bush administration policy that I oppose; it's a good exercise for any opinion writer to make the best case he can for a side with which he doesn't agree. If my boss assigned me to write, say, a pro-CAIR editorial, I would protest, and try to talk her out of putting me in that position, but if that was the assignment, I would, out of professional responsibility, do the best job I could on that editorial.
On the Illegal Immigrant editorial, even though I almost always lose when the DMN Editorial Board discusses this or that facet of the issue for daily editorial commentary, I agreed to take the assignment to write this long editorial because I believed in the choice (though for largely negative reasons), and believed I could write a piece that reflected the range of opinions in Texas about the issue -- as well as give a hint of its complexity. In reporting the piece, I phoned Tim O'Hare and Joe Loya (father of imprisoned Border Patrol guard Nacho Ramos) to get their insights, which were quoted in sidebars to the piece. It takes a very strained and ideological reading of that piece to see it as an apology for illegal immigration.
True, my newspaper's editorial stance has been in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, and I, as well as one other conservative colleague on the board, have repeatedly argued in internal discussions that the paper's line is far too soft. We haven't persuaded a majority of our colleagues. But the idea that I was given this writing assignment to "co-opt" the conservative opposition is just daffy, and a reflection of paranoia rather than any remotely accurate grasp of how newspapers work. I'm planning to write my column this weekend on illegal immigration and the powerlessness that ordinary people feel in the face of the cultural changes its causing. I'd planned to do that before this editorial ran. We have had in the past some readers complaining when editorial board members, in signed columns, take positions that oppose, or at least differ from, the newspaper's official positions. Our boss has responded by saying that bylined columns reflect only the views of their author, whereas unsigned editorials reflect only the view of the newspaper editorial board.
The reason Rodger Jones, who was the project manager for the Texan of the Year issue, "outed" me as the essay's writer was simply because our boss believes in the board being as transparent as possible to our readers. That's one reason we were the first newspaper in the country to start an editorial board blog, which revealed that there are deep philosophical and political divisions on the board -- that we are not a monolith. The paper's basic stance, in my view, is liberal Republican: more or less conservative on fiscal matters, pro-Bush (who's from Dallas, most recently, and who will return to live here), and socially liberal. I'm a religious and social conservatiave, not a liberal Republican, but then again, we have liberal Democrats on the board, a libertarian, and all kinds of people.
One more thing, for Scott in PA: if the editorial that actually appeared on Sunday had been a defense of illegal immigration, or had been intended to be, I would not have agreed to write it, and if my boss had insisted, I would have done so out of professionalism, but under protest. From the beginning of the writing process, the board set out to make it clear that we did not want this essay to do anything other than accurately reflect the controversy and its stakes. We did not want it to reflect what the Morning News editorial board believes is the correct plan to deal with illegal immigration. The only editorial conclusions of that essay are a) illegal immigration is an incredibly important issue on which neither side seems willing to compromise at all, in large part because it's a culture war; and b) that one way or another, the tide of immigrants is changing and will continue to change this country, especially Texas, profoundly, and the way we deal with it -- whether accepting it and going with the flow, or fighting back against it hard -- is going to determine the kind of state and nation we're going to be. The stakes are very high.
It's depressing to me that the people with whom I largely agree on illegal immigration read this essay as advocating illegal immigration. It's as if admitting in any way that there is complexity and ambiguity present in this issue is surrender. In the piece, I wrote about Herb Gears, the mayor of the Dallas suburb of Irving, who was denounced by anti-immigrant forces for running a "sanctuary city" because he didn't take a hard enough line against illegal immigrants, and who was also denounced by Hispanic activists as a bad man because he signed up Irving to participate in a federal program that has resulted in over 1,000 deportations of illegals. I think I know a little bit today how Mayor Gears feels.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 12:14 PM
One would think that Auster, who has alienated conservatives ranging from John Derbyshire to David Horowitz and me and now you, would perhaps someday develop enough self-awareness to recognize that his prickliness, harsh tone, unforgiving and conspiracy-minded textual exegesis, and generally crummy personality might be why he's always getting into conflict with natural allies.
Chris (assuming that is you), there's truth in what you say, but it could also explain why his blog is a lot more popular than yours. And in the case of Derbyshire and Horowitz, at least, Auster seems to be on pretty firm ground.
But he cannot find a way to get along with other people and is always having fallouts with publishers where he wails about their cravenness and duplicity.
I don't know about this. Are there specific instances, you have in mind? And weren't you yourself recently the victim of a major fall-out with a certain Internet site?
He has once again revealed that his character and personality are fundamentally unsuited to decent interaction with anyone on this Earth other than the most vile sycophants.
Come on, get it off your chest. What was your argument about?
Posted by: Jason Radley | December 31, 2007 12:19 PM
I really do not see how one can make a person or group of people "Texan of the year", when they are illegal immigrants. It is totally bizarre.
Now consider that if sometime in the future, these illegal immigrants are deported, one then has the ludicrous situation that "Texans of the Year" being deported out of not just Texas but America.
Posted by: DaveP | December 31, 2007 12:46 PM
Mr. Radley, Auster for reasons I can't fathom is very thin-skineed, does not give people the benefit of the doubt, and is always attacking fellow conservatives, lecturing people that dare to question him, and generally acting like a pompus know-it-all.
The Horowitz incident is a good example. What kind of classless fool airs all of his disputes with a publisher about editing an article on his blog, particularly when the dispute is ongoing and has not yet been resolved by other means? I don't always agree with Horowitz; but I had lunch with him once and he struck me as a gentleman with some sense of honor. Auster's public whining about all of the legions of people who have wronged him shows an entirely different sensibility, a bit more New Yorkish. It's true, I had a falling out with AFF, but I've not made it my life's mission to wage a campaign against them. I wrote one restrained letter on the incident in Vdare and had a short announcement on my blog. In contrast, Auster has brought up Horowitz dozens of times since then and his tone in this dispute with Dreher, whom I have great respect for, is appalling and juvenile and typical of his lack of sense of gradation and honest disagreement. Seriously, could you imagine Auster cooperating in a business venture of any kind with liberals and moderates, as anyone serious about mainstream journalism must do? No, he knows it all and has all the annoying self-satisfaction of people who get their wealth by inheritance, as Auster has done.
I think his beefs with NR, Chronicles, Amren, Horowitz, Robert Spencer, and every major Republican presidential candidate, numerous commenters and critics reveal someone who has no manners and no class, even though he has a world class intellect. This makes him interesting to read, so long as he's not going down the road of his all-too-frequent paranoid diatribes.
As for his blog's popularity, I'm sure it's because he's a good writer and says interesting things. There's no denying that. But that doesn't mean he's not messed up in the head, wrong in this instance, and wrong specifically because he has a mediocre, whiny, and very undignified character.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | December 31, 2007 12:58 PM
Paranoid, conservative whack-jobbery seems to be in full supply today.
Posted by: Daniel | December 31, 2007 11:40 AM
Daniel, believe it or not, I couldn't agree with you more.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 12:14 PM
------
Wilful, arrogant, and insulting, but ever so revealing.
Posted by: PaulC | December 31, 2007 12:59 PM
Rod, the problem is that the editorial doesn't read as some dispassionate explanation of why illegals were chosen as TOY. Some examples:
Especially here in Texas, his strong back and willing heart help form the cornerstone of our daily lives, in ways that many of us do not, or will not, see. The illegal immigrant is the waiter serving margaritas at our restaurant table, the cook preparing our enchiladas. He works grueling hours at a meatpacking plant, carving up carcasses of cattle for our barbecue (he also picks the lettuce for our burgers). He builds our houses and cuts our grass. She cleans our homes and takes care of our children.
He has come to view American workers as undependable, lazy and arrogant, while he finds illegal immigrants motivated and reliable.
Maybe these ambitious, hard-working immigrants, whatever their documentation, will write the next great chapter of a story that's still deeply American, though with a different accent.
On the pro-enforcement side, do we get any comments about workers displaced and how that has impacted their families. Do we here talk about hard working Americans who can't take jobs the illegals do at the wages offered and still support their families? Do we get little anecdotes about children who are citizens who can't learn because there class is swamped with Spanish speakers? No, we get dry statistics. The pro-illegal side gets the "human face." That's why a lot of people are reacting strongly to this. The editorial doesn't appear dispassionate.
Posted by: Chris | December 31, 2007 1:19 PM
I'm sure there is a backstory here about the Conservative Blogsphere that I'm missing.
Rod is a professional writer. He gets paid to write editorial pieces. Sometimes he writes editorials in his professional capacity that he doesn't agree with, but reflects the opinion of the organization he works for.
Is there a problem here?
Posted by: John E. | December 31, 2007 1:20 PM
We can further clarify the real meaning of the Dallas Morning News essay by focusing on its closing passage:
Now some may think that this passage is suggesting two options: (1) we finally get tough with the stranger and try to end the illegal alien invasion, which means that "we Americans" want to preserve our national identity and sovereignty; or (2) we let the stranger stay among us, which means that "we Americans" will lose our culture. Thus the passage could be intepreted as calling for restrictions.
But in fact the passage cannot possibly have a restrictionist meaning. This is because the phrase, "how we deal with the stranger among us," is an obvious reference to the famous verses in Exodus which are endlessly misinterpreted by open borders advocates:
Properly understood, this simply means you shall not mistreat someone dwelling temporally in your land. It does not mean that you should allow everyone in the world to enter your country against its laws and remain there. But in the context of U.S. immigration, that is the way the biblical text is interpreted.
Thus the DMN's question of "how we deal with the stranger among us" is coming from the liberal point of view. It's saying that if we don't show compassion toward the stranger (meaning, in practical terms, if we don't allow limitless millions of strangers to enter and remain in our country) then "who we Americans are today and who we will become tomorrow" is morally bad people.
Further proof that the restrictionist meaning is not implied by the essay is that, as I pointed out earlier, that option is never mentioned in the DMN/Dreher essay. The essay never even distantly alludes to the possibility of taking measures to stop and reverse the alien invasion.
Thus, in conclusion, the only options the essay leaves us with are either (1) refusing to be nice to the stranger, in which case America will culturally fragment between "Anglo" natives and Hispanic immigrants; or (2) being nice and welcoming to the stranger, in which case America will be Hispanicized as a result of our "incorporating" the Hispanic culture into our country.
Again: If we're unloving and selfish, our selfishness will cause America to be balkanized. But if we're loving and good, our goodness will let the Hispanics take us over.
That's the real message of Rod Dreher's supposedly neutral essay.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | December 31, 2007 1:24 PM
What is never mentioned in this discussion about illegal immigration is the demographic burden Hispanics nationwide impose due to their high drop out rates, high illegitimacy rates, high welfare usage rates. How any group can "write the next chapter of American history" when 50% of its young people drop out of high school is a mystery to me. Perhaps the apologists at DMN and the liberal Christians who selectively pick and choose from the New Testament can explain this to me.
Posted by: MarkJaws | December 31, 2007 1:48 PM
On the "human face" side, if you're only coming to the essay from the web, you probably missed the quotes from Tim O'Hare and Joe Loya (the father of imprisoned Border Patrol agent Nacho Ramos). Besides, those "human face" quotes you cited were hardly positive towards the pro-illegal side. One, with an illegal immigrant, reported that he spoke as if he had a "right" to be here; the second, with an Anglo construction company owner, trashed American workers as lazy and undependable. Again, we didn't cite either man affirmatively; but this is how people are talking, and as someone who favors immigration restrictions, I'm glad to know that at least one illegal immigrant views his being here as a human right, and that at least one construction company owner despises the work ethic of his countrymen.
It puts the debate in a certain perspective.
As to the "stranger among us" quote, here's Auster:
Properly understood, this simply means you shall not mistreat someone dwelling temporally in your land. It does not mean that you should allow everyone in the world to enter your country against its laws and remain there. But in the context of U.S. immigration, that is the way the biblical text is interpreted.
Thus the DMN's question of "how we deal with the stranger among us" is coming from the liberal point of view. It's saying that if we don't show compassion toward the stranger (meaning, in practical terms, if we don't allow limitless millions of strangers to enter and remain in our country) then "who we Americans are today and who we will become tomorrow" is morally bad people.
The passage I wrote is intentionally ambiguous. I believe that we should not mistreat these illegal immigrants -- that racism and violence against them are wrong, and tests of our character, but also that they should be stopped from coming into this country, and deported if they're caught here. I believe, along with others on this blog, that Christian charity does not oblige us to open the borders to illegal immigrants, or to grant them amnesty once they're here. But it does oblige us to oppose illegal immigration without losing sight of the humanity of the illegal immigrants. If someone shares my view on closing the borders and deportation, I'm glad for that, but if that person is also a race-obsessed crank, then I absolutely want to distance myself from him, and welcome his scorn as a badge of honor.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 2:05 PM
Auster is not an honorable person and his mind is too paranoid to have a profitable discussion. Your perfectly reasonably written editorial speaks for itself. Don't waste time with him; pretty soon he'll be counting up the symbols of your comments and engaging in numerological research and other Talmudic reasoning. Think about what kind of person proudly announces that he has walked out on dozens of movies over the years, undoubtedly to the annoynace of his wife, children, and friends.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | December 31, 2007 2:22 PM
From Comrade Daniel comes this ukaz:
Paranoid, conservative whack-jobbery seems to be in full supply today.
Thank you, Comrade Daniel, as always calm, logical and well sourced. May you live 1000 years and produce more brilliantukazes.
Posted by: mik_infidelos | December 31, 2007 3:06 PM
Auster is not an honorable person and his mind is too paranoid to have a profitable discussion.
I'm glad you have real arguments here and don't just attack the person.
Posted by: mik_infidelos | December 31, 2007 3:11 PM
Auster is attacking the person, and I am reminding people he lacks the character to be taken seriously and he has a bad habit of attacking all persons for the most picayune disagreements.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | December 31, 2007 3:26 PM
Ross, what's with moderating the comments? And can you answer my earlier question about the relative circulations of the DMN's English and Spanish editions?
Posted by: Jason Radley | December 31, 2007 4:22 PM
I'm glad that Rod has added that he personally believes that illegal aliens should be deported if caught here. But that idea is found nowhere in the article he wrote. Instead, Rod's main rhetorical energy is directed against the supposed racists who are the real problem:
"I believe that we should not mistreat these illegal immigrants -- that racism and violence against them are wrong, and tests of our character..."
WHAT is Rod talking about? Where is there any question of mistreatment of illegal aliens? This is a phony issue, exactly like President Bush saying that we have to treat illegals "compassionatetely"--as though, if he didn't tell us not to do so, we would be doing some terrible thing to illegals. What is this terrible thing that Bush and Dreher are talking about?
The main issue of course has been the Bush attempted amnesty and expansion of legal immigration. The people on our side have been fighting that. So how does Rod's concern about racist and violent treatment come into the issue? It seems to me that Rod is just saying this in order to suggest "bad people" to his right and thus justify the liberal essay he's written.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | December 31, 2007 4:24 PM
Robbie 1687 wrote: "Lawrence, Rod wrote this essay as a ghost writer for a committee. That's what it means to write an unsigned editorial that represents the views of a newspaper's editorial board."
Robbie, wasn't his name on the piece? His name, his piece. If he was just ordered to ghost-write something he didn't believe, then he would have a choice. He could demand his name not be put on the piece he was ordered to write, or resign. Or better yet, DON'T write the piece he did not believe in, AND resign. That is how a true conservative and man of honor would act.
A lady of the evening may not, after taking the money for the date, claim that she actually liked the guy, and the money was just incidental to their new social relationship.
Posted by: Matthew Bracken | December 31, 2007 4:36 PM
Mansizedtarget.com:
I'd like to remind people you are demonstrating a lack of character by refusing to make a substantial argument. You should discuss the "chip on your shoulder" with Mr. Auster, rather than using this comment board to air your personal grievances.
Posted by: feminizedwesternmale | December 31, 2007 4:45 PM
I'd rather insult Auster here because I think his criticism of Dreher is tactically unwise for conservatives, typical of Auster's obsession with ideological purity, and also typical of his rude "gotcha" style that he's used too often. The guy seriously has a screw loose, probably narcissistic or sociopathic personality disorder.
He knows how to reach me if he wants to explain why he's such an annoying wind-bag, but I don't expect him to and don't really care. Dreher is a good man, a good addition to DMN, and has nothing to apologize for. It's easy, like I said, to be out on a limb if you don't have a living to make and a family to feed, like Dreher, who has been both prudent and courageous in his advance of conservatism.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | December 31, 2007 4:53 PM
Your editorial disturbed me Mr. Dreher, because I really enjoyed your book, "Crunchy Cons" and actually implemented some of its main points into my routine of life. But I don't see hordes of white people forming lynch mobs and attacking illegal aliens, do you? We Americans are simply demanding that our immigration laws be enforced. End of story. And we are not denying the humanity of illegal aliens. By the way, what have you to say to the statistics I cited before about the high rates of school dropouts, illegitimacy, and welfare use among Hispanic Americans, which is turning America from the land of milk and honey to the land of bilk and money, with all sorts of welfare goodies going to four million anchor babies. Check out the study by Robert Rector's of Hertiage Foundation which estimated that each low-skilled immigrant household costs us $22K per year.
Posted by: MarkJaws | December 31, 2007 4:55 PM
Robbie, wasn't his name on the piece?
No.
As has been made clear repeatedly.
Please read.
Posted by: Victor Morton | December 31, 2007 5:13 PM
Thank you, Victor. And MarkJaws, I don't know how often I'm going to have to repeat it: I am an anti-immigration hardliner. I like Lou Dobbs. I like Tom Tancredo. I like Tim O'Hare. I wish Mark Krikorian ran US immigration policy. I even agree with a lot of what Larry Auster has to say. And when we argue about these issues among ourselves in editorial meetings, I make a case for my point of view. It is very much the minority point of view among my colleagues, but then again, as a social conservative on a socially liberal editorial board, I'm used to losing battles.
So what? Any conservative who goes to work for the mainstream media understands that that's just the way it goes. And for that matter, my liberal colleagues on the editorial board don't always get their way, either. It's in the nature of editorial writing, which is a collaborative, institutional enterprise.
Secondly, Mark Bracken, I wasn't ordered to write something I didn't believe. I accepted the assignment because I wasn't expected to write a piece approving of illegal immigration. I was expected to write a piece that fairly and accurately represented both sides of the issue, and that illuminated both the complexity and urgency of the issue. Even if I'd been asked to write a piece extolling illegal immigration, though, I would have protested, but if my editor insisted, I would have done it with a clean conscience, because that's my job when writing editorials (as opposed to signed columns): to articulate as clearly and as persuasively as I can the institution's point of view on an issue.
Do you suppose a presidential speechwriter agrees with everything his boss says or believes, or has to in order to do his job with integrity? Do you believe that a defense lawyer has to believe in his client's innocence to represent him effectively and with integrity in a court of law?
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 5:38 PM
Mr. Dreher,
I enjoyed your appearance on Bloggingheads. You struck me as a bright, well-spoken guy whose views weren't that far off from mine on illegal "immigration." But this TOY piece was a big disappointment. Far, far too much mushy, "objective" NPR-speak for me.
Posted by: Chris | December 31, 2007 5:50 PM
It is meely-mouthed tripe like this editorial that makes people subscribe to the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Then again, what else should I expect from a Limosine Liberal such as you?
Posted by: Jonathan Carpenter | December 31, 2007 6:57 PM
Any conservative who goes to work for the mainstream media understands that that's just the way it goes.
Indeed.
Do you suppose a presidential speechwriter agrees with everything his boss says or believes, or has to in order to do his job with integrity? Do you believe that a defense lawyer has to believe in his client's innocence to represent him effectively and with integrity in a court of law?
Frankly, these aren't the professions that usually come to mind when I think of the word "integrity."
Posted by: Mencius | December 31, 2007 7:33 PM
Chris, please please please understand: that essay was NOT REFLECTIVE OF MY PERSONAL POINT OF VIEW, but of the newspaper's institutional view. That's why it was not a signed essay, but clearly labeled "editorial."
Posted by: Rod Dreher | December 31, 2007 7:33 PM
Any conservative who goes to work for the mainstream media understands that that's just the way it goes.
Indeed.
Do you suppose a presidential speechwriter agrees with everything his boss says or believes, or has to in order to do his job with integrity? Do you believe that a defense lawyer has to believe in his client's innocence to represent him effectively and with integrity in a court of law?
Frankly, these aren't the professions that usually come to mind when I think of the word "integrity."
Posted by: Mencius | December 31, 2007 7:34 PM
"Chris, please please please understand..."
Wow. Shape up, Man. You're writing like a 13 year old school girl. I think you're taking criticism too personally. Rise above, and move on. This will only make us that much more interested to read in the New Year.
You're blessed to have such a voice to be heard: Use it to clarify and rectify. Drop the premises of liberalism. Most here (and you) know what I mean. Happy New Year!
Posted by: Voegelin | December 31, 2007 9:02 PM
I have to say, Larry Auster's continued refusal to make the distinction between a NEWSPAPER editorial and a COLUMNIST editorial is about the most solipsistic thing I have seen on this board, ever. As the Staples Singers sang, "You're going at the world backwards than the way that you first came here." (Think about that one.)
Not to mention being exceedingly rude. (And I disagree with Rod on 80% of issues and probably nearly as high a percentage of issues relating to illegal immigration.)
For many of the rest of you -- and you know who you are -- I'll drop the solipsistic and just leave it as exceedingly rude. (Or at least in desperate need of needing to spend a day at a newspaper viewing a full news cycle.)
Posted by: Larry Parker | December 31, 2007 9:12 PM
"The rush to judgment seems to be typical of the anti-immigrant side."
I don't know anyone who is anti-immigrant. I know alot of people who are anti-illegal-border-jumping though.
Posted by: Max Schadenfreude | December 31, 2007 9:32 PM
Mr. Dreher,
I think the point is that you really didn't represent the opposing views on the issue of immigration and that the TOY award implies an overall good that was brought forth by the individual or group of individuals named "Texan of the Year."
Because the piece started with the basic supposition that the TOY was good as opposed to a neutral or menacing character, the piece naturally followed suit and put on it's best spin. And because it was written by a immigration "hardliner," something had to give. Either you aren't the hardliner you claim (as Auster says) or the piece did not really represent the opposing views. I'm not sure we've come to a conclusion?
Posted by: thordaddy | December 31, 2007 10:03 PM
Matthew Bracken wrote:
"Robbie, wasn't his name on the piece? His name, his piece."
You can see for yourself by clicking a link that his name isn't on the web edition. I haven't seen the print edition, but Rod says his name wasn't there either, and I believe him. Do you think he's lying? It would be a pretty stupid lie since somebody would have exposed it by now.
"Or better yet, DON'T write the piece he did not believe in, AND resign. That is how a true conservative and man of honor would act."
If reporters resigned in a huff every time they had to write an article on behalf of their newspapers with which they disagreed, it's hard to see how newspapers could exist.
What sort of "conservative" doctrine makes it impossible for newspapers to exist?
Posted by: Robbie1687 | December 31, 2007 10:45 PM
Voegelin: Wow. Shape up, Man. You're writing like a 13 year old school girl. I think you're taking criticism too personally. Rise above, and move on. This will only make us that much more interested to read in the New Year.
Sorry, I guess my tone didn't come through properly in words. I didn't mean to sound like I was begging for understanding. I wanted to sound like I was trying to instruct someone who'd been overserved in a bar how to find the urinal and not pee on a booth table.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | January 1, 2008 12:20 AM
Rod:
ROFLMAO!! (And Happy 2008!)
thordaddy:
Since when does a "Person of the Year" award always go to someone GOOD (regardless of Rod's and my differing opinions on illegal immigrants)?
Time Magazine didn't give their award to Vladimir Putin this year based on his humanitarian expansion of democracy in Russia, now, did they?
Posted by: Larry Parker | January 1, 2008 12:39 AM
Larry Parker,
I don't think too many people read this stuff thinking the person(s) named received such an award due to their dubious or unremarkable ways. To venture that the TOY award implied something good doesn't really seem much of a stretch. Again, I think the argument is whether Mr. Dreher is really a hardliner and whether he presented the most popular opposing views. A closer reading of Auster gives the impression that Dreher presented 2 future scenarios, both serving as essentially capitulations to the desires of the open border fanatics and advocates for legal and illegal immigration. There are several other scenarios that are possible and certainly ones that would represent that traditionalist position in a much more rigorous fashion. It doesn't seem that the hardliner Dreher had any of these scenarios in mind. Is he really a hardliner or did his piece fall short of truly representing the opposing views?
Posted by: thordaddy | January 1, 2008 6:19 AM
So Mansizedtarget is none other than Chris Roach......who has stalked Auster over the internet for years. That explains everything I need to know. Roach's disgusting behavior is on Auster's blog if anyone wants to go into his archives.
Posted by: Mr. Smith | January 1, 2008 7:00 AM
Mr. Smith, if I've stalked Auster--it's really terrible you know, he's had to hire round-the-clock security--then what has he done to Spencer, Charles Johnson, Rod, Ann Coulter, Steve Sailer, etc.? No, I've not stalked him. But I've done something many people do to rude annoying people: I've mocked him, criticized him, ridiculed him, called him out for his undoubtedly embarassing and thoroughly hidden personal biography (i.e., draft dodger), etc. I read Rod's blog regularly; he happened to be in spat with someone whom I think is unfair and psychologically unstable.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | January 1, 2008 11:38 AM
A closer reading of Auster gives the impression that Dreher presented 2 future scenarios, both serving as essentially capitulations to the desires of the open border fanatics and advocates for legal and illegal immigration. There are several other scenarios that are possible and certainly ones that would represent that traditionalist position in a much more rigorous fashion. It doesn't seem that the hardliner Dreher had any of these scenarios in mind. Is he really a hardliner or did his piece fall short of truly representing the opposing views?
Why don't you quit reading Auster and actually read the essay I wrote. I'm going to say for the last time: the essay I wrote does not argue for my own position on illegal immigration. It is an EDITORIAL, not a column, and as such, represents an opinion of the Dallas Morning News. There are colleagues of mine on the editorial board who think that piece was too kind to immigration critics; the editorial is EQUALLY THEIRS.
Besides which, Auster is wrong. The essay does not propose solutions, one way or the other, to the problem. The Dallas Morning News is on record supporting comprehensive immigration reform, a la the plan Bush and McCain favored. I oppose the newspaper's position as offering amnesty without sufficient enforcement. You will notice, though, that this Texan of the Year essay doesn't even argue for the newspaper's own position. It posits two scenarios for what illegal immigration could do to America: it could ultimately ruin the country by balkanizing it, among other things; or it could make America stronger (but then, only if these immigrants are assimilated). The impression it was intended to leave the reader with was that we should either a) take decisive action to stop the inflow, or b) if we're not going to do that, then get about the business of making these new immigrants part of life in mainstream America. The status quo is unacceptable, was the bottom line of the essay.
I believe that anybody who follows the immigration issue has to agree that we can't keep going like this. But what to do about it? As the essay says, the choice is necessary, and how we choose to deal with the problem reflects the kind of country we are now, and the kind of country we will become. Again, why is this controversial? Speaking for myself, I want to be in a humane country, but one that does not see itself primarily as an economic entity, and therefore one that will do what it takes to protect the sovereignty of its borders and enforce its laws -- even at increased economic costs to its citizens. I do not want to be associated with people who treat these lawbreaking illegals as less than human, or regard them with racist spite. I don't see a contradiction between supporting strict border security and enforcement of immigration laws, and treating illegal immigrants with basic human dignity, even as we send them back home to their country of origin.
But that's getting beyond the scope of the News essay which, again, was not intended to put forth a solution to the problem -- which the News has been doing in its editorials throughout the year -- but to tell both sides of the argument, and lead the reader to a conclusion that, wherever his sympathies lie, the status quo is unacceptable. We've got to accept that the size of the illegal immigrant invasion, and its nature, are without precedent in our history, and we've got to either take massive measures to repel it (my preferred option), or accept it as essentially unstoppable, and work to regularize and assimilate the ones we have living with us. The Dallas News' official position is that we can and must do both, but I personally don't agree.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | January 1, 2008 12:10 PM
Hey Rod, you've said everything you need to say and done so quite well. If these other folks want to put up straw-men and knock them down, well maybe they need the exercise.
Posted by: John E. | January 1, 2008 12:55 PM
I think Mr. Roach is projecting. You have spent time digging into Auster's personal life as if you are some kind of what.....avenger ? You write as fact that he was a draft dodger ? That he has a family fortune to live on ? You state he has a mental illness. You don't find your behavior, strange ? As a lawyer, a professional, I find your behavior disgusting. Everyone who wants to read the truth about the interaction between Mr. Auster & Mr. Roach should go to Auster's archives. Perhps Mr. Auster will be so kind as to make those interactions available.
Posted by: Mr. Smith | January 1, 2008 1:02 PM
Rod:
I don't mean to be rude, but how do you send 12 to 22 million people back to their native countries more or less at once while "maintaining basic human dignity"?
No such mass forced deportations in human history have done so. And virtually all such events have been conducted by dictatorships -- many of which ultimately resulted in genocide.
I think we'd avoid the genocide part, but the rest of it would certainly impinge on CITIZENS' rights, even if you believe illegal immigrants have none.
Posted by: Larry Parker | January 1, 2008 1:07 PM
Rod, first up, sorry for calling you Ross in an earlier post. I mixed you up with Ross Douhat.
But can you help me with something I reckon you're in a position to know/find out: what is the circulation figure for the Spanish edition of the DMN? Wikipedia quotes a daily figure for the paper of 410,000, but I don't know if that includes the Spanish version numbers, as well.
And, now it occurs to me: is the Spanish version aimed specifically, both in content and the its editorial line, at Hispanic readers?
Posted by: Jason Radley | January 1, 2008 1:11 PM
I don't mean to be rude, but how do you send 12 to 22 million people back to their native countries more or less at once while "maintaining basic human dignity"?
Well, let them return the same way they chose to come here. Or by bus or aeroplane if we're really feeling generous. Or, better still, send them to Canada. That would result in the sharpest turn to the right in Canadian political history.
Posted by: Jason Radley | January 1, 2008 1:15 PM
Rod Dreher writes:
"The impression it was intended to leave the reader with was that we should either a) take decisive action to stop the inflow, or b) if we're not going to do that, then get about the business of making these new immigrants part of life in mainstream America."
Could Rod point us to the place in the article where he presents "taking decisive action to stop the inflow" as a serious option for America? I don't see it anywhere. What I do see is Rod's statement:
"If illegal immigration were an easy problem to fix, the nation wouldn't be at an impasse."
Which sounds to me like the usual open-borders line that it's either impossible or so difficult to stop illegal immigration that we might as well not even try.
Also, as I've pointed out, there is nothing in the article about doing anything to make the 12 million illegals leave, i.e., enforcement of workplace and other laws that will make America a less viable option for illegals so that most of them will gradually leave on their volition and others will stop coming.
On another point, I think an important lesson in this exchange is that it was a mistake for the DMN to adopt its current "transparency" policy by which it informs readers which individual on the DMN editorial board wrote this DMN editorial. The transparency policy has led to the present absurd situation in which the DMN and Dreher tell us that Dreher wrote the article, and simultaneously Dreher expects us not to react to the article as his work. That is an unrealistic demand to make on people. If the DMN and Dreher wanted us not to see the article as Dreher's work, they should have stuck to the normal custom of newspapers and kept the article's authorship anonymous. If they had done so, Rod Dreher would not have come in for this attack and the discussion would have been focused on the Dallas Morning News as a paper, not on Rod Dreher as an individual writer.
That's why unsigned editorials exist: to express the corporate view of an institution, not to express the views of individuals. A newspaper that says of its own editorial, "This editorial was written by Rod Dreher who disagrees with it," has made itself absurd.
It has also unfairly put Dreher in an impossible position where he inevitably looks like a person who is not true to his own beliefs, a person who keeps saying, "I personally believe X, but in this article I wrote not-X, but this is not a contradiction, because I'm just a hired hand, and besides, not-X is a reasonable position and I defend it"
Larry Parker writes:
"I have to say, Larry Auster's continued refusal to make the distinction between a NEWSPAPER editorial and a COLUMNIST editorial is about the most solipsistic thing I have seen on this board, ever."
Is it really so solipsistic? Consider: Here we are, with Rod Dreher discussing with us and defending the article that he wrote, and yet we're not supposed to think of him as being responsible in any way for the content of that article. Has Larry Parker ever heard of DoubleThink? That's what he expects of us.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 1, 2008 2:00 PM
I think I'm in good company--as in the gazillions of people Auster has written off for life in melodramatic style--in saying that he's a bit thin-skinned and crazy. Brilliant perhaps, but also crazy. I have a normal life and job and don't beg for money on my blog and don't live or die by the two or three places that will publish me. (NR, Amren, Front Page and Am Con are all too low rent or impure for Auster apparently)
PS In the age of google, it takes about two seconds to check people out, particularly people of Vietnam War age who cannot account for what they were doing when good Americans were fighting and dying over there for their country, and particularly when those people claim to be conservative. He brought up this issue, may I remind you, by criticizing John Kerry's courage in sustaining a Purple Heart, but even if that was shady it seems like a guy who dodged the draft doesn't have standing to criticize John Kerry's or any other Vietnam Veteran's courage.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | January 1, 2008 2:34 PM
Prior to last night, I had only glanced at "mansizedtarget's" attacks on me. Then I read them all. I am struck by Rod Dreher's allowing pure character asassination like this to be posted over and over in his blog. Does Rod perhaps feel that mansizedtarget's attacks on me are just recompense for my criticisms of Rod?
In any case, people should know--which I didn't realize myself until a reader pointed it out to me last night--that mansizedtarget is blogger Chris Roach, whose blog is MANSIZEDTARGET.COM. Roach has had a crazed animus against me for several years, ever since he began making personal attacks on me over criticisms of John Kerry at my website, View from the Right, and I had to block his posting privileges. On a couple of rare occasions since then he has sent me intelligent comments and I've posted them, but then he would re-launch his attacks on me and I finally permanently ended all e-mail correspondence with him.
For anyone who is interested, here is the VFR discussion from May 2004 in which Roach was finally barred from VFR. It concerns Kerry's claims about his war record and whether it was legitimate for non-veterans to have opinions about the issue at all.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002279.html
In that thread, I wrote:
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 1, 2008 3:27 PM
Poor little Chris Roach was written of by Lawrence Auster.....is that why you are so hurt. Perhaps Auster should make available on his blog your disgusting, twisted sexual comments about him, and the people who comment to him. You're the worst kind of freak. I'm sure Auster has kept all his contact with you in his archives....I remember it. Perhaps people on this blog would like to see who you really are.
Posted by: Mr. Smith | January 1, 2008 4:32 PM
Who the heck is Auster anyway? And why should I care?
Posted by: Max Schadenfreude | January 1, 2008 4:34 PM
Well, I've decided to put this thread out of its misery by referencing Monty Python.
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode08.htm
The Colonel: "Now, I've noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I'm not having things getting silly. Those two last sketches I did got very silly indeed, and that last one about the bed was even sillier. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do...except perhaps my wife and some of her friends...oh yes and Captain Johnston. Come to think of it most people like a good laugh more than I do. But that's beside the point. Now, let's have a good clean healthy outdoor sketch. Get some air into your lungs. Ten, nine, eight and all that."
Cut to two hermits on a hillside.
You can always trust the Colonel for a bit of good sense. Even when he is wearing a tutu. Now will you playground pugilists please take your squabbles off to Mount Athos and have it out with the good brothers there.
Posted by: sigaliris | January 1, 2008 5:13 PM
Prior to last night, I had only glanced at "mansizedtarget's" repeated attacks on me. Then I read them all, and I am amazed at Rod Dreher's allowing his blog to be used as a platform for a campaign of character assassination. Is this his general policy, or does Rod perhaps feel that mansizedtarget's attacks on me are just recompense for my criticisms of Rod?
In any case, people should know--which I myself didn't realize until a reader pointed it out to me last night--that mansizedtarget is blogger Chris Roach, whose blog is MANSIZEDTARGET.COM. Roach has had a crazed animus against me for several years, ever since he began making personal attacks on me over criticisms of John Kerry at my website, View from the Right, and I had to block his posting privileges. On a couple of rare occasions since then he has sent me intelligent comments and I've posted them, but then he would re-launch his attacks on me and I finally permanently ended all correspondence with him.
For anyone who is interested, here is the VFR discussion from May 2004 in which Roach was finally barred from VFR. It concerns Kerry's claims about his war record and whether it was legitimate for non-veterans to have opinions about the issue at all.
In that thread, I wrote:
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 1, 2008 7:49 PM
The fact that he has to ask if it's SO solipsistic ...
Other Larry
Posted by: Larry Parker | January 1, 2008 7:53 PM
Larry Parker writes:
Gosh, Larry P., I guess you really got me on that one, huh? If that's your only comeback to what I said about your position, I guess you really have no argument, do you?
For the record, I will remove the "so," and change my previous comment to:
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 1, 2008 8:36 PM
Max Schadenfreude:
Now that is a name that I, a German linguist and graduate from the Munich Goethe Institut, can appreciate. Lawrence Auster is a brilliant conservative blogger who writes on a wide variety of topics. It is the one place, that I can go to for intelligent, open and frank, no-holds barred discussions on race, religion, and other topics concerning demographics. Check him out at amnation.com
Mark Jaws
Posted by: MarkJaws | January 1, 2008 8:43 PM
Isn't a "Man of the Year" (Texan of the Year) nomination simply a synonym for "Newsmaker of the Year"? Certainly the first third of the article did a fine job of demonstating this, showing both the positive and negative cultural and economic effects. The article did a fine job of supporting this premise.
Posted by: Issaquah | January 1, 2008 8:47 PM
Dear Mr. Jaws,
My questions were rhetorical.
(I loved you in those campy 1970's Bond films btw.)
Sincerely, every and always, etc. etc.,
Max
Posted by: Max Schadenfreude | January 1, 2008 8:56 PM
Herr Schadenfreude:
I don't know Chris Roach or Lawrence Auster, and I could not care less about their past squabbles. I am a frequent contributor to Auster's site, but I have disagreed with him on a number of occasions. However, I strongly resent Mr. Roach's reference to those of us who enjoy amnation.com as "vile sycophants." He comes out the worse for it and I can see why he goes by Mansizedtarget.
Mr. Dreher, I think you are holding up fairly well, and as one who must put food on the table for your crunchkins, you do what you have to do. My beef with your editorial is that it does not fully expose the cost of illegal immigration - even more so, Hispanization, because legal Latin citizens, 1/3 of whom are on welfare, are costing us dearly. Sorry if the truth hurts, but the citing of undisputable government data and facts should not be made a moral issue as leftist media elites have been doing so for the past 50 years. They remind me very much of the Roman Catholic Church 400 years ago in its dealing with Galileo.
Posted by: MarkJaws | January 1, 2008 9:39 PM
Mr. Smith, you're simply making things up. I said no such thing. As for the thread in question, I invite anyone who wants to to read it. I think it shows Auster's fundamental rudeness, lack of perspective, lack of grace, know-it-all-ness, and generally annoying pontifical qualities. They're worthy of Manhattan's Upper West Side. These are qualities he's exhibited in his latest beef with Dreher. I especially liked his response to a commenter where he said, his comment was a fallacy "all too common today, especially among younger people" and where he implied the simple online monicker "Roach" (which is my last name) might make one confused that this was not a last name (or an alias sometimes necessary in our PC times) but the name of an insect.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | January 2, 2008 2:14 AM
Did, I wonder, Auster walk out of those campy 1970s Bond movies?
Ummm, only joking Larry.
And Rod, I trust you're in the process of finding that relevant information I requested. It would be a very bad form to ignore it.
Posted by: Jason Radley | January 2, 2008 8:54 AM
Let me see if I've got this right.
Auster deliberately misreads an editorial and dishonestly attacks Dreher on immigration issues -- whereupon Dreher reaffirms that he is with the Tancredo wing of the conservative movement, but that does not end Auster's attacks.
Auster has attacked just about anyone who is anyone in the conservative movement in a petty and silly manner, so his attacks on Dreher should come as no surprise.
Auster has even attacked stars a little lower in the firmament, such as Mr. Roach.
Mr. Roach's main offense was to defend John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran from Auster's slurs on his military record.
I've read Roach's blog, and he is a thoughtful, honest, and generally polite, conservative. A lot of us thought that the attacks on Kerry's service record (while good politics) were in poor taste. Not too shocking that Auster was one of the people with poor taste.
Further, it is not terribly surprising that Auster chose to criticize Kerry's PURPLE HEART (!) but himself has no personal military experience. This despite (reportedly) being of the right age to have served in Vietnam.
Posted by: George | January 2, 2008 9:29 AM
Mr Smith,
Mr. Roach did not make the nasty comments on Mr. Auster's site that you are referencing. I did, there was no excuse for them, and I regret and apologize for them.
The Roach/Auster exchange is, I believe, reflected in its entirety in the "Kerry War Record" post linked by Mr. Auster above.
Posted by: Wade C. | January 2, 2008 10:28 AM
"Did, I wonder, Auster walk out of those campy 1970s Bond movies?"
Not at all. I'm a big fan of the late '70s Bond movies.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 2, 2008 10:31 AM
I think it shows Auster's fundamental rudeness, lack of perspective, lack of grace, know-it-all-ness, and generally annoying pontifical qualities.
Ironically, I see exactly these qualities (as well as a crazed obsession with Auster and a penchant for nasty personal attacks) in Mansizedtarget's posts in this comments section, none of which exactly make me want to read his blog.
Posted by: James P. | January 2, 2008 12:01 PM
One funny thing about Auster's critique is that he's essentially calling Dreher a liar. Auster reads the piece and says, "this is a sign of liberalism." Dreher responds, "I'm not liberal, it was supposed to show both sides, and even though I signed it, it clearly contradicts my well established views on the matter." Isn't it a little unsettling and hard-to-argue with someone who, when you say "I'm not a liberal," then says "My esoteric reading of your opinion piece says you are. You either don't know it (i.e., you're stupid) or you're not being honest (i.e., you're a liar."
Dreher's pretty smart and articulate, it should be plain to see. It's not like he's got a gobbeldygook philosophy that has no meaning to him or anyone else. So I must ask, "Is Auster calling Dreher a liar?" And, if so, this seems far worse than the name-calling stuff going on in the comments.
Posted by: Chav | January 2, 2008 1:16 PM
Ok, it was you Wade C that made those comments. If I remember, you were the other lawyer ?
Posted by: Mr. Smith | January 2, 2008 1:22 PM
Wade C. writes:
"Mr. Roach did not make the nasty comments on Mr. Auster's site that you are referencing. I did, there was no excuse for them, and I regret and apologize for them."
I acknowledge and accept Wade C.'s retraction and apology. Though it comes three and half years after the fact, his sincere apology is very meaningful.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 2, 2008 3:14 PM
Chav says that I'm essentially calling Rod Dreher a liar. Chav badly misses the point and distorts what I am saying. In saying that Dreher has adopted certain liberal views without realizing that he has done so, I'm making an argument about the role of conservatives in liberal society that I've made a thousand times, about many conservatives, not just about Rod Dreher.
As I say over and over, in the modern Western world, virtually everyone is a liberal, whether he realizes it or not. Liberalism--the belief in non-discrimination as the guiding principle of society--is the default position for everyone, the ground that we stand on. Thus most modern conservatism is a variant of liberalism. Today, someone who disagrees with liberalism on some points, while otherwise accepting the basic premises of liberalism, is called a conservative. Such conservatism is accurately described as right-liberalism, which is distinguished from left-liberalism.
Thus, because of the overwhelming and largely invisible presence and dominance of liberal attitudes and modes of thought, conservatives often think they're opposing liberalism, while in fact they are going along with it. Look at how President Bush's conservative supporters kept construing every leftward move of his as really "conservative"! This doesn't make the conservatives liars or fools. It makes them members of modern liberal society. My position is that we must oppose liberalism in principle, not just on this or that issue. To stand on ground that is truly separate from liberalism takes continual conscious effort.
Which brings us back to Dreher. Dreher sincerely calls himself an "anti-immigration hardliner," while also supporting the idea of calling illegal aliens "Texans," which is the same as calling them "Americans," which would make it morally impossible for us to remove them from America or even treat them as illegal aliens at all. That's not an esoteric or tendentious analysis. It is the logical and inevitable result of calling illegal aliens the "Texan of the Year."
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 2, 2008 3:48 PM
That's a good point, but I'm not sure if Dreher is guilty of this. For starters, folks who live somewhere for a decade or more, even illegally, are changing the meaning of the concept Texan. This to me is the reason immigration matters. Because if 50% or more of Texas is made up of recent Mexican immigrants, the new meaning of Texas and Texan will have to be accepted on some level as a fait accompli. There are warring concepts of Texas and America presently, just as there have been warring notions of France and Frenchman after 1789 and warring notions of American in 1776. Societies change, they sometimes have internally contested identities, immigration and otehr types of change stress these competing identities, and this seems to be a simple factual acknowledgement on the part of Dreher in his piece.
To recognize this change, all the while saying the floodgates need to be closed, assimilation pursued where appropriate, and deportation (and self-deportation) in other cases precisely because Texans and America have a right to maintain a particular type of community, demographic balance, etc. is the heart of traditionalist conservatism. So I don't see how recognizing both sides of the issue, all the while championing the pro-restriction argument on economic and cultural grounds, is the least bit liberal on the part of Dreher.
Posted by: Chav | January 2, 2008 4:02 PM
Chav writes:
"Societies change, they sometimes have internally contested identities, immigration and other types of change stress these competing identities, and this seems to be a simple factual acknowledgment on the part of Dreher in his piece."
It's an age-honored debating tactic: Chav states the contested point--the Hispanicization of America and surrender to that Hispanicization--as already decided. Which, without doing so explicitly, simply eliminates the other side of the debate, so that there's no debate left to have.
But the Hispanicization of America is precisely what many Americans do not accept as decided. After all, when was this decision made? When did the American people decide to become a Hispanicized society?
In reality, it was snuck up on them, as is done with all radical changes in a society. See my article on Bush's 2000 speech where he celebrated the spread of the Spanish language and Hispanic culture in America. He said: "By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America." Really? Had there been a single speech or discussion prior to W.'s nomination in which it was understood that to choose him as nominee was to choose a Hispanic America? There had not been. Bush, like a despot, was declaring HIS desire to be already decided upon, foreclosing an actual debate on it.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=16425
Chav, on a different level, is doing something somewhat similar. For Chav, the Hispanicization of America is already a fait accompli, and all that's left for us to do is figure how to adjust to it (while Chav contradictorily imagines that we can also maintain traditional America even as we adjust to Hispanicization).
But I and millions of others say: The question is NOT "How do we adjust to the Hispanicization of America?" The question is: "How do we stop and reverse the Hispanicization of America?"
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 2, 2008 9:43 PM
Mr. Auster:
Are you telling me that you have never been asked to write an article by an employer that you disagreed with?
Even a press release or a fact sheet?
Not even once?
You would be the first professional media writer in modern America with such editorial freedom if that is the case.
Posted by: Larry Parker | January 3, 2008 12:16 AM
It is a fact that 1/3 or more Texans are Hispanic. It is a fact a good percentage were born there, even if they are children of illegals. It is a fact that these folks are in some measure Texan if living in Texas for a long time matters to "Texan-ness," though admittedly they are not traditional Texans.
Auster you seem to have some problem with the concept of complexity, because you completely skipped over how I analogized this to other socieies with contested identities like France or 1776 America. (I mean, would you say by way of analogy the Loyalists were not Americans, and it's simply a liberal America-hating conceit to recognize their humanity and their American-ness.)
Auster, when you're saying I surrender to this reality, did you see where I wrote, "To recognize this change, all the while saying the floodgates need to be closed, assimilation pursued where appropriate, and deportation (and self-deportation) in other cases precisely because Texans and America have a right to maintain a particular type of community, demographic balance, etc. is the heart of traditionalist conservatism." I realize that it's also a time-honored debating tactic to mischaracterize your opponents arguments, but the words are right there for anyone to check in black and white.
I should add, when you begin this colloquy by saying, "Chav badly misses the point and distorts what I am saying," you unnecsesarily alienate me and your audience. Usually, in matters of communication, one concedes that one might have been unclear before attacking one's interlocutors for "missing the point," but you have an entirely different style, I see, and you are frankly a bit unclear and unfair in your characterization of opponents' arguments.
Posted by: Chav | January 3, 2008 9:31 AM
I wrote two reasonably careful replies to Chav. I disagreed with his points in a firm but civil way. I didn't attack him personally. But now he tells me I'm "alienating" both him and my "audience."
He takes particular offence at my saying that he was "badly missing the point," as though that is language beyond the pale of acceptable discourse. In fact, the actual statement of Chav's to which I said that he was "badly missing the point" was his accusation that I was accusing Rod Dreher of being a liar. So, it's perfectly ok for Chav to say that I'm calling Dreher a liar, but if I defend myself from that serious charge and reply that Chav is "badly missing the point," then I am doing a bad thing, I am alienating Chav and everyone else as well.
Also, Chav says I ignored his point about assimilation. Not true. I specifically mentioned it, and I also said that it was contradicted by his main point about accepting Hispanicization. Just like Rod Dreher, Chav wants it both ways. He thinks he can call for the acceptance of Hispanization AND go on calling himself a conservative who believes in assimilation. Because I point out the fundamental contradiction between those two views, because I say that you can't have acceptance of Hispanicization and the assertion of American traditional culture, Chad now says I'm "alienating" him and suggests that I have an "entirely different style" from the norm that renders me unfit for carrying on a discussion.
Chav's basic message: Auster is unfit for decent society. Which, by the way, is the same argument that's been made over and over in this thread by the demented commenter mansizedtarget.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 3, 2008 2:22 PM
Sometimes you have to see things how they are and then decide to do something about it. That's all I was trying to say. It's called planning, intelligence, and strategy. This is what we're facing. It's what the UK is facing. Now let's do something about it.
And I don't care what you say. It's obvious you're calling Dreher a liar and now you're lying about that. Real UK Chavs have a sense for this sort of thing.
Posted by: Chav | January 3, 2008 3:09 PM
There are warring concepts of Texas and America presently, just as there have been warring notions of France and Frenchman after 1789 and warring notions of American in 1776.
These are not reassuring analogies! These events involved enormous casualties, reigns of terror, widespread economic devastation, civil war, and foreign invasion. Is that what we have to look forward to with the Hispanicization of Texas? If so, I'm glad I don't live there.
Posted by: Lugo | January 3, 2008 3:42 PM
Chav writes:
"And I don't care what you say. It's obvious you're calling Dreher a liar and now you're lying about that."
Well, now we know for a fact who is calling whom a liar.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 3, 2008 3:49 PM
Good grief. How many times do people have to tell you that you're rude, pompous and obnoxious windbag until you step back and consider, just for a moment, whether it might be true and say something, not about them and their character, but rather something about your communication ability and style,or, rather, lack of it.
Posted by: Mansizedtarget.com | January 3, 2008 6:29 PM
Let me try once again return to the very relevant - but apparently taboo - subject of the demographic reality of Hispanization. Because if the illegal alien was selected TOY due to his or her "impact" on Texas, then Mr. Dreher and his DMN should have fully explored and analyzed all aspects of this "impact," and that should have included the stress placed on Texan public infrastructure and civil society. There is plenty of kosher data out there, primarily from the US Census and the Pew Hispanic Research Center to indicate that when Hispanics flood into an area, the oldtimers quickly realize they are no longer in Kansas. This clash of Third World with First World is the missing portion of the TOY equation.
Posted by: MarkJaws | January 3, 2008 9:12 PM
How many times do people have to tell you that you're rude, pompous and obnoxious windbag until you step back and consider, just for a moment, whether it might be true and say something, not about them and their character, but rather something about your communication ability and style,or, rather, lack of it.
I dunno, people have said the same thing about you, and it doesn't seem to have affected your behavior at all. Your own communication ability and style is, well, wanting to say the least.
Posted by: Lugo | January 3, 2008 9:42 PM
Mark Jaws writes:
"This clash of Third World with First World is the missing portion of the TOY equation."
I agree with Mark, but let's acknowledge that as most people read the article, it will not seem that way. The article does point to the fact that Hispanics are more different from native Americans than were the European immigrants of the past:
So, the article presents alarming facts about radically culturally different immigrants, but then it slyly places that problem under the rubric of native Americans' "anger"--of course liberals always describe conservative resistance to liberalism as "anger." The message is that the problem is not real, the problem is white Americans' prejudices or their unwillingness to accept change. And, as Rod Dreher has told us in this discussion, we must beware of our own hatred of Hispanics and our tendency not to see them as human beings.
Further, the article, like every mainstream centrist media article on immigration I've ever read, immediately cancels out the problems it has pointed to with the assurance that the immigrants are assimilating and all will be well:
See? Everything's ok! No matter how bad things may seem, everything is really fine, because the immigrants will all "assimilate."
Then in the article's last section it presents its best and worst case scenarios. Here is the worst case scenario:
Notice that the worst-case scenario has shifted from the radical cultural change brought by the importation of Mexican rural culture as described earlier, to a Canadian situation where you have two European peoples with different languages. The latter situation is, of course, very different and not as dire.
Thus the fact that this is a progressive takeover of America by Mestizos is shunted aside by (1) the idea that the cultural change is really just a perception of "angry" white people; (2) the idea that the Hispanics will all assimilate in the end and all will be well; and (3) the "Canadianization" of even the worst-case scenario. In the end, Mark Jaws turns out to be right. According to the article, the worst we can expect are tensions similar to those between Canadian Anglophones and Francophones, not the Third-Worldization of the U.S.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 3, 2008 10:32 PM
If I were to list the arguments usually made in favor of Latin American immigration (they work harder than we do, they take jobs we won't, what we we do without all of the dishwashers and cooks and gardeners etc.), I find that most of them appear in the article.
The list of arguments against high levels of immigration, legal or illegal, is rather lengthy, and gets even lengthier when you add arguments that are specific to illegal immigration. There are economic arguments, environmental/population growth/sprawl arguments, cultural balkanization arguments, cost of government services arguments, increasing wage/wealth inequality arguments, political arguments relating to the health of the GOP after demographic change, crime considerations, and more. Just listing the argument categories would take longer than detailing the same little list of pro-immigration arguments that are repeated ad infinitum in every discussion.
I ask Rod Dreher if he thinks the article even remotely represented this range of arguments, and if not, was it because his bosses would not allow such arguments to be even mentioned in passing? Did he have a sentence censored such as, "Many Americans believe that a huge variety of population growth related problems can be traced to immigration, as immigrants and their birth rates account for more than 85% of all population growth in recent decades?" See how little space that took? (Although it was just one of numerous categories of argument listed above.)
Posted by: Clark Coleman | January 4, 2008 1:36 AM
Rod,
On one hand you say that we should keep in mind the humanity of illegals, not mistreat them, not condone violence, etc. Fine. You also say that we should not allow people to come into this country illegally, and that those caught here should be deported. Fine again.
What happens if our enforcement of immigration laws results in tremendous harm to illegals? To wit, what if America seals its borders and deports illegals, and six months later Mexico is embrolied in a civil war like Burundi 20 times over, where tens of millions are starving, dying, and rioting against an oppressive government that has them mired in poverty? Do we then keep the borders closed, and deny their humanity? (I say yes). If not, are we really ENFORCING our laws?
I find that liberals always claim they believe in law enforcement, only to turn around and whine how laws - when actually enforced - have a "disparate impact" on this or that group. In reality, this is a backdoor way of discouraging law enforcement of any kind.
The $64,000 question, Rod. Does a country have a right to exist, enforce borders, and exclude others from coming in for any reason or even for no reason? Do countries retain this right regardless of what such a policy does to the internal stability of other countries or the "humanity" of those in other countries? Is preventing a civil war in a neighboring country BY ITSELF a reason to allow untold millions of foreigners to come into YOUR country?
Posted by: Joseph | January 4, 2008 9:34 AM
Mr. Dreher:
As I said before, I loved your book, and your wonderful, upbeat personality filled the pages of the text, making it a very enjoyable read. Furthermore as a native New Yorker whose mother is a resident of the Cobble Hill Nursing Home on Henry Street, I was able to connect with the type of life style in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn you described in "Crunchy Cons." So, it somewhat pains me to have to pile on, but I am very much concerned with the attitude of the elites (your editorial bosses) who are more upset with the reaction to this invasion than with the invaders themselves.
I grew up in a Puerto Rican housing project on the lower East Side, Mr. Dreher. Hispanization of that area resulted in the following: (1) Graffiti covering the entire neighborhood (2) Latin gangs terrorizing the older Jewish, Slavic, and Italian residents (3) Schools becoming battle grounds in which white kids were routinely intimidated, beat up, groped, or worse. (4) Small businesses forced to close and leave the area due to break-ins, holdups, and vandalization of commercial property.
These are the type of real and justifiable fears I have, Mr. Dreher - and it is happending in neighborhood after neighborhood as the Latin invasion consumes one block after another. If there is anger by those of from my camp, it is because the pllitical and cultural elites routinely dismiss our concerns as merely "racist" and "xenophobic."
Posted by: MarkJaws | January 4, 2008 11:40 AM
This is an interesting thread, with many useful insights.
I confess I share Lawrence Auster's concerns and conclusions about the effect of The Dallas Morning News's naming illegal aliens "Texan of the Year" for 2007. It's hard not to construe that as saying that, in effect, illegal aliens are Texans - hence Americans as well. Probably most DMN readers don't parse what they read as carefully as those commenting here. The award itself and the tone of the DMN editorial, no matter who wrote it, have the effect of saying that this change has happened, on some level we must accept it - including accepting illegal aliens as fellow-Texans and, by definition, fellow-Americans - and if we are too unwelcoming in our response to it, we are somehow untrue to the promise of America. I detect more than a whiff of the "Proposition Nation" notion of America that Auster and others have so ably demolished.
Yesterday Chav made an interesting analogy when he wrote: "There are warring concepts of Texas and America presently, just as there have been warring notions of France and Frenchman after 1789 and warring notions of American in 1776." This is thought-provoking, not least because, as Lugo noted, it suggests the future this change may foist on us is likely to be bloody. Still I think it is inapplicable to our current crisis because of one fundamental difference.
The "warring notions" of America in 1776, at least between those who favored independence from Great Britain and those loyal to the Crown, were disputes among Americans - the people of a country, which the Thirteen Colonies were in a real sense by 1776, disputing among themselves what course their country should take. The American Revolution was not instigated by a huge influx of foreigners, and it did not change the nature of the Americans of the time.
Similarly, the French Revolution of 1789 was a clash of warring notions about what form and course France's government should take. The revolutionaries stated their case in universalist Enlightment phrases, but what they were fighting about was who, and what regime, would rule France. Analogously to 1776 in British North America, it was a dispute among Frenchmen, although the kinds of revolutionary were very different. The French Revolution was not instigated by a huge influx of foreigners, and it did not change the nature of the Frenchmen of the time.
The American situation today vis-a-vis both legal immigration and illegal entry and overstay is very different. While there are differences of opinion among Americans about how to respond, this is an imported problem - abetted to be sure by short-sighted and often mendacious Americans. To give the illegal aliens/legal immigrants - and, even worse, the governments of their homelands - any say in how America resolves this problem takes our national fate as Americans out of our hands. We not only have internal pressures from ethnic pressure groups and other liberals to concede, adapt to and support these largely unwelcome guests among us, we also have unrelenting pressure from foreign governments (Mexico is the worst offender, but India, China and Central and South American governments meddle as well; even Ireland and Poland are in on the game) to make over our country to any of their citizens as choose to barge in on us.
The American Revolution wasn't about whether America should be British-American in a cultural sense; that was a given. The French Revolution wasn't about whether France should be culturally French; that too was a given. America's immigration crisis and illegal alien invasion, and how we respond to them, are entirely about whether America will remain American.
The DMN editorial naming illegal aliens as 2007's "Texans" of the year says this: "Maybe these ambitious, hard-working immigrants, whatever their documentation, will write the next great chapter of a story that's still deeply American, though with a different accent. If the optimists are right, much work remains to be done to incorporate all immigrants fully into new cultural traditions."
I can't see how to read that as other than an endorsement of the "ambitious, hard-working immigrants" (carefully blurring the distinction between the DMN's "Texans" of the year, illegal aliens, and legal immigrants) and as a call to cultural surrender to them (the deeply American story, whatever that means, will now have a "different accent" and we will all have to incorporate into "new cultural traditions"). Retaining or, God forbid, strengthening America's existing traditions in our commonly understood accent is rhetorically foreclosed.
I also confess to being a sometime commenter at Mr. Auster's site, and I posted there a pessimistic, but I fear accurate, forecast of what the differently accented new post-American cultural tradition is likely to look like, based on what too much of what America looks like already. Suffice it to say, despite having lived and worked in Mexico (and enjoyed it) and being a life-long Spanish-speaker, it is a future this American devoutly does not wish for the United States of America.
Posted by: Howard Sutherland | January 4, 2008 1:01 PM
I'm a regular reader of Auster's site. Mr. Auster is relentlessly principled in making his points for traditionalist American conservatism and in examining the liberal features in our culture, and I think that discombobulates people who shoot wildly from the hip, which is a typical blog practice on fine display here.
Posted by: Jaz | January 4, 2008 9:27 PM
How are the left and right liberal elites able to foist upon us the pending "global-warming" catastrophe while breathlessly and relentlessly advocating for an indisputable cause, namely, mass Third World immigration into the Western World?
Posted by: thordaddy | January 5, 2008 12:43 AM
Thordaddy makes an excellent point. True environmentalists should be very concerned about the environmental policies of overpopulated 3rd World countries, and the how 3rd world peoples will treat our lands when they get here (is there such a thing as a Mexican environmentalist?). The explanation for this and many other contradictions of principle is simply that liberalism has no real principles. There is rather one goal that overrides all else: the subjugation and destruction of the West and Western peoples. That which furthers the revolution is the truth.
Posted by: Van Wijk | January 5, 2008 3:56 AM
Van Wijk,
It seems much more sinister than what we agree upon. The Western World is facing a double assault via mass immigration and man-made global warming. We are taking in listless and unemployed Third-Worlders and creating productivity, i.e., CO2 emissions. This, of course, is in addition to the creation of additional CO2 emissions due to the initial mass migration. On top of this explosion in CO2 emissions that must have occurred over the last 30-40 years via the Third World migration, we are being punished and asked to tamper our lifestyles in the name of global warming. So as we allow millions of immigrants to come seek a better lifestyle we must slow down, be less productive and subsidize the well being of others. We are being punished for subsidizing the Third World under the rubric of man-made global warming.
No good deed goes unpunished, is the saying.
Posted by: thordaddy | January 5, 2008 4:57 AM
Back to Auster's point:
Essentially, Dreher has said two things.
1. I agree with illegal aliens being "Texan of the Year."
2. I am a hardliner on immigration.
I think Auster's point is that both statements held in conjunction are contradictory. An immigration hardliner, by definition, must believe in the inherent right to stop any and all immigration, legal or otherwise, for whatever purpose or no purpose at all. Any additional caveats and the hardliner's position diminishes.
If one designates illegal immigrants as Texans, then he must either mock the law or distort the traditional understandings of illegal immigrants and Texans. Although, he could also be applying more liberal meanings to such terms.
So the question is whether Dreher's agreement that illegal aliens are Texans significantly diminishes any notion of him as a immigration hardliner?
Posted by: thordaddy | January 5, 2008 5:19 AM
"Auster you seem to have some problem with the concept of complexity, because you completely skipped over how I analogized this to other socieies with contested identities like France or 1776 America. (I mean, would you say by way of analogy the Loyalists were not Americans, and it's simply a liberal America-hating conceit to recognize their humanity and their American-ness.)"
This is a fallacious argument. Anyone who knows American History--as well as European, knows that several things happened after both revolutions. In the newly founded America, the Royalists were thrown out--they either moved to Canada or they went home to England. In France, the Royalists were beheaded.
At no time did any members of either side in both revolutions "see the humanity" of the other side--it was a fight to death and there were many traitors who sought to sit on the fence and thus come out on top regardless of who won. In the end, they were seen for what they were--duplicitous individuals who had to go.
America has always been distinctly different than her third world neighbors to the south. The idea of annexing Mexico following the war of 1848 was hotly debated in the House and Senate. In the end, everyone saw the futility of trying to integrate such a disparate culture into American culture. That is the reason why America deported Mexicans on a wholesale basis three times in the 20th century alone.
America can never remain America as a bilingual state--let alone a state that has become Latin American--the proposition of a republican democracy within a Latinized culture is impossible. One need only look south to see the difference culture makes in the wealth and safety of a people and their nation-state. The "Banana Republics" to our south have always been oligarchies and will always remain so. Just look at the mess California has become--and every "sanctuary" city in America. Broken school systems, impoverished hospitals, rampant crime, ruined urban infrastructures, etc. etc. etc.
It is beyond me why any thinking individual would want America to become a third world, banana republic.
Posted by: Robert Brandtjen | January 5, 2008 1:38 PM
hi everyone i wrote the following to lawrence auster:
hi this is your friend Amit again from New York City. i had previously bid you a happy new year but it seems as if there is no happy new year at vfr because you continue a battle with rod dreger. he is not a bad man though you think him misguided he is guided in the right direction to bring all of us together kenyians with Americans so there be no bloodshed anywhere in the world. rod says that the states were like kenya and before my parents came to America they also feared viol_ence against them against peoples of any color. but they were told that since 1960 white people no longer hanged other people not like them and that it was safe to come to America. so far we have not been violated and now i understand why since rod dreger explained how the process evolved (but you still don't believe in evalution, how come why not since evalution is going forward to the betterment of mankind). you should not think about blagging like it is a war and once againn i bid you a fond and happy new year so that you may have p[eace inside and contentment with people like rod dragher. thank you.
Posted by: Amit Grover | January 5, 2008 2:54 PM
Auster, Thordaddy and Brandtjen make some excellent and substantive points regardging the inherent contradiction in the Dreher position.
I fail to see any real mystery here as far as DMN's sudden urge to call illegal aliens "Texans" thereby insulting legal citizens, and Dreher attempting to characterize this as a hardliner stance. What is going on here is the slow process of diluting the very concept of being an "immigration hardliner". See for instance the increasing number of liberals spouting the word "enforcement" in order to siphon off votes from a popular sentiment. If you can't beat the people you must join them, you co-opt and dilute the very thing they support. We've seeen this bait and switch time and time again today's media conservatives. Get the people behind you by playing the conservative populist card, and once they're on board it's the old bait and switch. All very cynical and unprincipled of course. But then again, that's modern liberalism for you. It always seems to come back to open borders, co-existence and keeping your mouth quiet. No other options seem available...
Posted by: Timothy Havelock | January 6, 2008 10:21 AM
I had not previously replied to the point by Chav about "warring concepts" of national identity which Robert Brandtjen discusses, and it would be worthwhile doing so. Chav said that "50% or more of Texas is made up of recent Mexican immigrants" (sic), and therefore "the new meaning of Texas and Texan will have to be accepted on some level as a fait accompli.... Societies change, they sometimes have internally contested identities, immigration and other types of change stress these competing identities, and this seems to be a simple factual acknowledgment on the part of Dreher in his piece."
But then Chav said:
When I then said that Chav was urging the surrender of Texas to Hispanicization and that his claim to be advancing a traditional conservative point of view was a delusion, he accused me of lacking an ability to handle complexity and of other sins as well.
But consider. Chav is calling on Texas to accept its warring identities as a fait accompli. One of those identities if Hispanic. It is the case that Hispanics as an organized community, and Mexicans in particular, favor the illegal immigration of their fellow Hispanics/Mexicans. Hispanic spokesmen constantly threaten that the GOP will lose all Hispanic support if it does not accept illegal immigration, support amnesty, and so on. That is the culture--the pro-illegal immigration culture--that Chav says Texas must accept as half of its divided identity. Yet at the same time Chav says that the floodgates must be closed, assimilation pursued, illegals deported, the traditional culture and identity of Texas preserved, and the restrictionist position maintained. But how can any of those things be successfully carried out, if the Hispanic identity with its pro-Hispanicization, pro-open borders stance is accepted as fully half of Texas' divided identity? Obviously they cannot be successfully carried out.
Chav thus wants two mutually incompatible things, acceptance of Hispanicization, and resistance to Hispanicization, and he got angry and insulting toward me when I said that that was impossible. He felt that I was refusing to listen to him or that I was not understanding him. In fact I understood him perfectly. I understood that what he was saying was blatantly contradictory and false.
Posted by: Lawrence Auster | January 6, 2008 1:49 PM
Amit Grover--
You are an ignorant man and thus prove the point that immigration restrictionists have--that is, to wit, people from the non-West have no place here as they cannot comprehend our culture and our history and are too lazy to even try.
The vast majority of hangings in this country were of Europeans, not others. However, all were once held to our laws and thus if they committed a capital offense, they were hanged or shot.
I suggest you return to your homeland and leave mine alone.
Posted by: Robert Brandtjen | January 6, 2008 2:34 PM
hi everybody, amit again
Hi again my friend Lawrence Auster in New York City. you wrote somehting at rod dregers blag and so did i so we crossed pathhs but did not speak to each other and i did bid you a happy new year and hope all is well with you my friend. but i believe it is time you made piece with all the warring elemints in your soul so that we could talk with honor and peace and people like rod dreger be inside our crcle as it shoul;d be in this great nation of ours yours and mine and his. i think and believe that vfr shoul;d learn to practrice satyagraha towards all eviland not strike out against peoples for it is not people that are the enemies but the bad elements of the spirit world that we all fight against. yes i see you latley recognize the greatness of barak obama and the service he has come to preform on behalf of all peoples in all colors thankfully this is a stage in evalution that our great country needs and you will agree to this evalution. one again i beif you a fond and happy new year and it will indeed be a fond new year that you will remember in fondness next yera if you practise the great love for all mankind. peace be with you and noit strife
now to Robert brandtjen - please be not so hostile to us immigrants (btw I am a young student in NYC) so also forgive me my youth. people that come here raise up the indignant culture so that each new generation evolves to a higher level (yes evalution is also happening here on this continent and includes you and me and lawrence so we achgieve a higher unity from a lower stage. much peace and joy to you robert
Posted by: Amit Grover | January 6, 2008 11:24 PM
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