Victor Davis Hanson on our 'path to Armageddon'

American Thinker ^ | 2/9/2014

[Altura Ct.]

Historian Victor Davis Hanson recently gave one of the finest and most memorable presentations on the subject of immigration.

America could be on "a path to Armageddon," given the blend of relativism, racial preferences, and nullified immigration laws, warned Hanson in an interview with Mark Levin, [link opens in pop-up, interview begins at 51:00].

Hanson is a military historian who taught the classics and is now a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Winner of the prestigious National Humanities Medal (2007) and the Bradley Prize (2008), his writing is generally seen as well reasoned and insightful.

Hanson offered a blistering attack on Republicans and left-wingimmigration policy, pointing out that Republican leaders have stopped using the word assimilation. Assimilation used to be the ideal that was strived for by immigrants and encouraged by our society. Instead of urging assimilation, some Republicans are bizarrely promoting amnesty for people who are not assimilating.

Hanson pointed out that many of today's immigrants are not repeating the pattern of the Italians or Greeks, as just two examples. While Latino studies programs can be found at almost all universities, one does not find such "studies" for Italians or Greeks. That is just one dramatic distinction between immigrants today and past immigrants.

[Excellence]

srbfl

[raybbr]

If people had paid attention 24 years ago....

The Path to National Suicide by Lawrence Auster (1990)

An essay on multi-culturalism and immigration.

Click the Pic!!!!

Excerpt....

How can we account for this remarkable silence? The answer, as I will try to show, is that when the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was being considered in Congress, the demographic impact of the bill was misunderstood and downplayed by its sponsors. As a result, the subject of population change was never seriously examined. The lawmakers’ stated intention was that the Act should not radically transform America’s ethnic character; indeed, it was taken for granted by liberals such as Robert Kennedy that it was in the nation’s interest to avoid such a change. But the dramatic ethnic transformation that has actually occurred as a result of the 1965 Act has insensibly led to acceptance of that transformation in the form of a new, multicultural vision of American society. Dominating the media and the schools, ritualistically echoed by every politician, enforced in every public institution, this orthodoxy now forbids public criticism of the new path the country has taken. “We are a nation of immigrants,” we tell ourselves— and the subject is closed. The consequences of this code of silence are bizarre. One can listen to statesmen and philosophers agonize over the multitudinous causes of our decline, and not hear a single word about the massive immigration from the Third World and the resulting social divisions. Opponents of population growth, whose crusade began in the 1960s out of a concern about the growth rate among resident Americans and its effects on the environment and the quality of life, now studiously ignore the question of immigration, which accounts for fully half of our population growth.

This curious inhibition stems, of course, from a paralyzing fear of the charge of “racism.” The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.

[varon]

bttt

[P.O.E.]

one does not find such "studies" for Italians or Greeks

Used to be called "Western Civ". It's mostly trashed because Western Civilization was imperialist, racist, capitalist, etc.

[dforest]

Hanson is always right on this issue. I wish we had people like him at the top instead of the Boehners, Cantors and Ryan types.

He is also 100% correct about the GOP needing to take up the cause of the sad and dying middle class that Obama pretends that he is helping, but instead is destroying.

To Obama, the only “middle class” are those that are considered as union.

[Kozak]

VDH is dead on. This IS the hill to die on.

[Rockingham]

For the GOP to support amnesty and excessive immigration in the hope that it will benefit them politically makes as little sense as an acknowledged alcoholic with a bad liver doubling his drinking in the belief that the larger dose will be curative.

[Kozak]

Woa. Western Civ is NOTHING like Latino studies. Nothing.

[P.O.E.]

I know - that’s the problem.

[Altura Ct.]

This IS the hill to die on

Got that right.

[ClearCase_guy]

In the 1970s I was a history major at a major urban university. The core history classes that everyone at the university had to take (even history majors) were Western Civ I and Western Civ II.

The Left had figured out the game-plan by then, and they had infiltrated and poisoned the curriculum. The Western Civ curriculum focused on Christianity (overall, a bad thing), the French Revolution (best thing ever), prison reform (enlightened societies do not have prisons), and sexual morality (it's all good).

Very strange "tour" of western civilization, but a pretty clear view into the goals of the Left.

[VRWC For Truth]

We wouldn't have a problem if the feral grubment would enforce the immigration laws already on the books. Throw the illegals out.

[Jacquerie]

GOP needing to take up the cause of the sad and dying middle class

Our political situation makes sense if we drop the GOP v. Rat mindset, and view our DC oppressors as members of the Uniparty. The junior partner in the Uniparty, the GOP wing, doesn't take up the cause of a dying middle class because there is nothing in it for them. One doesn't get to K-Street or other patronage jobs by rocking the boat. Getting in the face of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et al only brings on media wrath and possible dis-election this November.

[NotTallTex]

“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder,” Arnold Toynbee.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

If people had paid attention 24 years ago....

They did. And now they are running this nation's government.

[GOPJ]

He {Obama} finds the [middle class] without the romance of the poor and without the connections of the elite."

Obama's forging a 'banana republic' alliance between criminal classes, dependent woman and elite liberals - - classic third world hellhole stuff...

[arthurus]

"Uniparty" is, itself misleading. The Republicans are not equal members of a large party. Republicans are merely the Designated Opposition of the Democrat Party for use so long as an opposition is felt to be needed. At some point a picture of an opposition will no longer be needed. Then the Republican office holders in the Republican Division will serve another purpose. They will be labeled Wreckers and Traitors or whatever the epithet du jour happens to be and will be the subject of the Show Trials and executions that adorn EVERY communist system.

Republicans in the meantime do whatever they are told to do by the Senior Division in the hopes that the crocodile will eat them last. It will, instead eat them first when it gets around to the business of real consolidation of Rule.

[Kozak]

I’ve viewed the ruins of the Roman Forum, and the Walls of Constantinople.
They filled me with an overwhelming sense of loss . Such great Civilizations, all lost. I fear we are on the cusp of another Dark Age.

[VRW Conspirator]

Legalization is nothing but a virtually irreversible step to amnesty.

Legalization would create the Great American Apartheid.

Legalization is a trap. 11+ million people who have the legal right to assemble and organize.

Who the heck do these politicians think they are kidding?